Ben Shapiro

Folks, covering the news in the markets, well, it is fast and furious like drinking out of a fire hose, but here is the thing. The Daily Wire, what we are about is fact. We're going to bring you fact from a conservative perspective, and that means we're going to be honest with you. We are not going to BS you. The Daily Wire gives you what matters.

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If you're an investor, are you putting all your money back in the market? Are you just are you perfectly complacent that whatever Trump's professed policy today will be President Trump's professed policy tomorrow? And again, the Trump administration is signaling that there may not be an off ramp. This will take longer than expected.

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So yesterday, President Trump spoke to the coal industry, and here's what he had to say.

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OK, listen, coal is great and coal miners are wonderful people and we should be deregulating around coal. But the idea that we need to reorient the entire American economy to produce more coal, for example, is is a strange move. President Trump last night did a speech in front of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

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And there he briefly boasted about his what he called war on the world. Then he sort of revised his statement in the middle.

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So if the last several days have been about voting, about the markets saying what they think is going to happen, now the rubber hits the road, now the pedal has hit the metal, and we're going to find out what these tariffs are actually going to do. The tariffs hit last night at 12.01 a.m. According to the Wall Street Journal,

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Okay, so it's our turn to rip them off. It's not exactly a modus for a zero tariff policy. And this is why they make signals. And they make signals are freaking the market out. They are. And it's not just the market. Again, in the end, the policy is going to be what the policy is.

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If the tariffs come down the way they're currently coming down and if your prices skyrocket, if businesses that you like start to go under because it turns out that the marginal increase in price is too much for people who are selling you retail and they go under and jobs are lost, that will be a problem. The economy is interconnected.

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Pretending that there is kind of Main Street and Wall Street and that they are two sides of a wall and they have no connection with one another is not true.

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Peter Navarro, who is the architect of much of this trade policy, a man who used to be a zero growth or actually in his early career, and then called himself Ron Vara in his own writings to create a fake name under which to attribute many of his writings. It was like Voldemort. His last name is Navarro. Get it? Ron Vera. Get it? You don't? This is dumb.

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Anyway, here's Peter Navarro, who should be nowhere near trade policy, explaining that the actual goal of the administration is not, in fact, to go to zero tariffs. It is, in fact, to rectify trade deficits. Good luck with that. The Vietnamese GDP per capita is $4,000 per year. You're going to get them to buy a lot of American software, are you?

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US stocks ended Tuesday in a downswing, capping a volatile session that began with hopes of newfound clarity on the president's tariffs policies. Now, remember, I talked yesterday and the day before about the fact that there are basically two different and widely variant rationales that have been given for the trade war. One is that we are attempting reciprocality.

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It's the same thing, right?

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Okay, so we're going to get the Vietnamese to write. He says right there, zero tariffs is not enough. This is the battle inside the administration. Off-ramp? No off-ramp. U.S. Trade Representative Jamie St. Greer, he wouldn't put a timeline on any of this yesterday. He was testifying before Congress.

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Okay, but there's no timeline. So again, the timeline is one of the keys here because people start to feel the pain and the timeline starts to accelerate rather dramatically. The current polling suggests that less than half of Americans support the new tariffs. Democrats, of course, say that they are very familiar. Only 36% of Republicans say they're very familiar with the tariffs, by the way.

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When it comes to the global tariffs, brand new Reuters Ipsos poll finds 73% of Americans expect that prices are going to rise under President Trump's tariff plans. Only 4% say prices are going to go down. Those 4% apparently hang out with Peter Navarro. The poll also showed 57% of Americans overall oppose the tariffs. Only 39% support them. That is not a popular policy.

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A vast majority of Republicans still support the policy because, of course, President Trump is promoting it. Seventy three percent of Republicans back it. That's a low number for President Trump's policies. Most of his policies with Republicans are in the 90s. About 24 percent of Republicans announced them. Independents are split 57 against 41 percent in favor.

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And that is before anything kicks in. So those numbers are likely to go the wrong way for President Trump, not the right way for President Trump. Again, nobody's actually feeling any pricing pain right now. And there's no world in which the prices don't go up when you put these kinds of tariffs on products. It doesn't work that way.

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Well, this has led to what is the most obvious proxy battle in the administration between Peter Navarro and Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been just beating the living hell out of Peter Navarro online. He called him yesterday, Peter Retardo. Peter Navarro said to Elon Musk, he said that Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler.

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And then Elon responded, quote, Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false. And then again, called him Peter Retardo and said he was dumber than a sack of bricks. I mean, I'm on Elon's side of this one. Gotta be honest, I think that Navarro's policies here are ridiculous in the extreme. The White House was asked about this and Caroline Lovett gave the best response.

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She says that this is boys will be boys. Yeah, except one of these boys built trillions of dollars of value in the economy. And the other one of these boys used a pseudonym Ron Vera in order to promote his cockamamie economic policies. So one of your boys is one of your boys is Doogie Howser over here. And the other one of your boys is is the bizarre dude from the Goonies. So great. Here we go.

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What we want is for everybody to go to zero. It's sort of Elon Musk, Scott Besson's idea. If we're going to do a trade war, the goal is to get everybody to come to the United States on bended knee. We go to zero tariff policy, and now free trade rules the roost. That is rationale number one. Then there is the second rationale. which is, in fact, restrictionist.

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And Caroline Leavitt is very good at her job. She then dropped this. She said that Nancy Pelosi hated trade deficits. And so we are now doing Nancy Pelosi's policy. Now, I understand dunking on the left for switching their position. I just don't understand why everybody on the right is switching their position in order to mirror Nancy Pelosi's position from 1996.

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All the angles, every fact, every time with unfiltered daily shows from the best in the business and the best in investigative journalism. You deserve the whole story. Don't settle for narrative. Subscribe to facts. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe already. So unsurprisingly, the markets started the day down in pre-markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down almost 1,000 points.

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OK, I mean, like, cool that we get to dunk on Nancy Pelosi and all, but I don't understand why in order to dunk on Nancy Pelosi, we have to agree with Nancy Pelosi in 1996. She was wrong. Nancy Pelosi is virtually always wrong. She's only switching her position now because the Trump administration is mirroring her old position. It shows that she's dishonest.

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It doesn't mean that she was right in 1996. And Nancy Pelosi has been blind on politics for years. But how about blinds? You didn't see that transition coming, did you? Blinds.com makes it incredibly easy to upgrade your windows with custom treatments. Their team of design experts guides you through the entire process, ensuring you find the perfect style and color for every room in your house.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What makes Blinds.com stand out is their hassle-free approach. You can choose to handle the measurements and installation yourself or have local pros take care of everything. There's no showroom markup. Installation is just one low cost regardless of how many windows you are covering. Blinds.com makes it super simple.

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First of all, they have great consultants who are going to let you know what is the best window covering, how to do it yourself. They can send somebody to help you. It's no wonder they're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings with over 40,000 five-star reviews. Every purchase backed by their perfect fit and 100% satisfaction guarantee, giving you complete peace of mind.

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The idea here is that tariffs make America rich. We need to tax other goods from other countries in order to prop up domestic manufacturing, in order to come up with some sort of subsidized industrial policy in the United States in order to reshore. And this wing of the Republican Party is led by people like, for example, Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.

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With hundreds of styles and colors available, you're sure to find the perfect match for your home. Shop blinds.com right now. Save up to 45%. That's 45% off for a limited time at blinds.com. When you check out online, don't forget to tell them you heard about Blinds.com from the Ben Shapiro Show. Rules and restrictions may apply. That's Blinds.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Check them out and let them know you heard about them from the show. Also, tax season is now here and the IRS is turning up the heat. With the April 15th deadline fast approaching, now would be the time to act. If you've fallen behind on filing or you owe back taxes, delay will only make things worse. Every day you wait increases your risk and the consequences.

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. Tax season is here. Don't wait for April 15th to make a move. Beat the IRS to it. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's tnusa.com slash Shapiro. Don't fight the IRS alone. Check them out. tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, again, the big story that the Trump administration is pushing and the most interesting story is, of course, the tariffs on China. Now, from my perspective, it's the tariffs on everybody else that I'm the most concerned about. I don't understand why we're hitting Lesotho with a 50% tariff. The great and powerful people of Lesotho, GDP per capita, $916.

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We must stop the Lesothans from stealing our precious bodily fluids. We have to, the Cambodians must be, they must stop this. The great and powerful people of Madagascar with their 47% tariff we hit them with last night. Anyway, but the trade deficit must be, it must be ended. You know, Iraq, way too powerful. The people of Iraq, 39% tariff.

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So when it comes to alienating various countries, one of the things we need to look at is how much trade those countries or polities are doing with the United States versus how much trade they are doing with China, for example. So I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity, the...

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amazing AI service, this question, please provide the percentage of the following countries or polities total trade represented by trade with the United States and the countries are China, the EU, Japan. So for China, the percentage of China's total trade represented by trade with the United States is approximately 5.38%.

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So in other words, yes, we trade a lot with China, but on an absolute basis, China is trading with the United States. Like 95% of their trade is not with the United States, with other countries. For the EU, Our trade partnership with the EU represents about 46% of their total trade. For Japan, because it's a far eastern country, we represent approximately 8% of their total trade.

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And these two rationales are incredibly different. And Trump has been retailing both of them at the same time. President Trump has been sometimes saying that he wants reciprocality, and sometimes he's been saying that tariffs will make us rich, and so it is totally unclear to the markets which one he wants. And let us be perfectly frank about this.

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Okay, so now take a look at the EU with regard to China. So I asked perplexity, what percentage of EU trade is with China? And what percentage of Japan's trade is with China? So the answer, according to perplexity, is that the percentage of EU trade represented by trade with China is 21.25%, which is very, very high. That is a very high number.

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You would imagine that the United States would have a lot of trade with the EU. Obviously, we have a lot of ties with European countries. Our shipping is actually fairly easy. It's directly across the Atlantic. Shipping from China takes a fair bit longer, especially now that the Houthis have been holding up traffic in the Red Sea. But that's a big number.

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And so if we alienate the EU, could they swivel toward China? Sure. How about Japan? So Japan is a much more interesting case. So Japan, only about 8% of their total trade is with us. 42% of their total trade is with China. 42% of their total foreign trade is with China. which means that if we alienate them and China offers them an open hand, will Japan start swiveling toward China?

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This is one of the big questions. The thing I'm worried least about is the Chinese on a moral level. However, there are some complexities to Chinese trade policy. Now, I'm an advocate of smacking the living hell out of China for as long as I can remember. My entire political career, I've always thought that the globalization warmup with China was a gigantic mistake.

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I think there's a case to be made that Henry Kissinger's opening of China in the 70s was a gigantic mistake. We should have kept them closed and collapsed them from the inside, the way we did the Soviet Union. We didn't do that.

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We opened up China and then China took advantage of capitalism in order to weasel its way into global markets in a completely damaging way to the United States and to world security. So the United States said on Tuesday night, 104% duties on imports from China would take effect after midnight. What exactly does that mean? Well, it'll be interesting to see what the fallout is.

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China, of course, is vowing to fight to the end on the tariffs. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said, quote, if the U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is made, it's a mistake on top of a mistake. If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end. China then retaliated, with its own gigantic tariff on American goods.

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Now, of course, China already had tariffs on American goods and they consume far less of our product than we consume of their products. So we're hurting them way worse than they are hurting us in these terms, for sure. However, however, there are some complexities, which we'll get to in a moment.

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Here's the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson saying that pressure, threats, and blackmail will not work.

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If what he wanted was reciprocality, he did not need to declare a trade war on every country on Earth at the same time. He could have simply gone to Japan and said, listen, We need you to do the following things to get to a better trade deal. And if you don't, we're going to slap you with the tariff. And you could have done it behind the scenes and a trade deal could have been negotiated.

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Now, there are two possible risks here for the United States in what is happening with China. And this is, I think, why Oren Kass, again, a proponent of the tariffs, is saying we should go slower with China. There are two possible risks. One comes from the fact that Donald Trump didn't just punch China in the face, which, again, I'm not only fine with, I'm perfectly fine with it.

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I think it's a good idea. If you punch China in the face, you need to be offering a warm, welcoming hand to everybody who is ringing at China. You can't alienate everybody at the same time. If you are going to declare a trade war, you need allies in the trade war. You need people who are on your side of the trade war.

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Slapping Vietnam, slapping South Korea, slapping Japan, slapping everybody, slapping Australia, slapping everybody in the Indo-Pacific region at the same time you're slapping China is a great way of alienating people into China's orbit, especially when China is now going to all of these places and offering them zero tariff policies.

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And the difference between China and the United States is that China, being an authoritarian state, can actually hold its policy for longer than five minutes. One of the benefits of democratic capitalism is that supposedly there will be an open market policy that is predictable from administration to administration.

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If that shifts and every two years you're going to get a complete change in free trade positions, well, that is not a good basis for a solid world economy.

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If you are any one of these allied American states, if you cut a free trade agreement like Vietnam did with the United States in the 90s, if you have a free trade agreement with the United States like South Korea does, if you're one of these countries and we are currently alienating you, aren't you going to start triangulating with China?

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If you are going to do this thing, what you do is you solidify your alliances with all these countries and then you smack China. If you alienate all these countries and then you smack China, China is going to go to them and offer them a warm hand.

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And these countries, which have seen the United States over the course of the past two decades, abandon Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, among others, the Kurds. They're going to start thinking maybe we need to triangulate. Maybe the United States is no longer the world's global hegemon. Maybe it's not that powerful anymore.

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At the very least, we need to hedge our bets until you're actually strengthening China while you're attempting to fight China by smacking everybody who's not China. just on a geopolitical level. That is risk number one. Then there's risk number two. And this risk is quite real. That risk is, let's say that you really isolate China's economy. Let's say you get what you want.

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Everybody around China isolates China to the largest possible extent. But you haven't done what you need to do in order to solidify the Taiwan Strait. Why at that point would not China go for taking Taiwan, figuring it's got nothing to lose? If you box them in so strongly, and again, I'm not saying this isn't a catch-22. It is a bit of a catch-22, which is why...

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One of the problems right now with all the tariffs kicking in at once is that it takes a while to negotiate your way out of these things. So, for example, the USMCA, which was the replacement agreement for NAFTA. This is the one that President Trump negotiated with Mexico and Canada during his first term. That took 13 months from the initiation of negotiation to the actual final product.

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a slow, more incremental, well-thought-out policy that allows the reshoring of key industries from China to Vietnam, to India, to other countries, including the United States. A gradual tightening of the noose that doesn't at any point give China the reason to just go and grab Taiwan and destroy the entire semiconductor industry for planet Earth. That's the other danger.

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You go too fast and you can provoke China into doing the thing. Now, again, it would be up to China whether to do that or not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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The U.S.-Vietnam free trade agreements, about four years to negotiate back during the 1990s. At the very least, you are talking about weeks to months minimum to negotiate new free trade agreements with all the various countries that you're talking about.

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Thank you.

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If it takes weeks or months to do it for one country, think about what it would mean to do it for 50 or 60 countries, which is what the Trump administration is currently talking about. So now that the tariffs are kicking in, the reality is going to set in.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . . ., en P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in a if he takes the wins. So take the wins.

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The markets realized this late yesterday, which is why the Dow Jones industrials jumped at the beginning of the day on hopes that Trump was going to issue some sort of postponement. And then they dumped at the very end of the day on the realization that he, in fact, was not going to do that. The S&P 500 fell 1.6%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.2%. Each had rallied more than 4% earlier.

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Again, there was sort of outsized optimism that maybe President Trump was going to get talked out of the thing. He was going to issue some sort of Bill Ackman-like postponement for 90 days. And it turned out that that didn't happen. And then the tariffs hit last night. And so the markets were roiled overnight. That swing, by the way, marked the first time in the S&P 500 since at least 1978.

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The benchmark hit an intraday high up more than 4% only to close down more than 1%. Donald Kalsagny, chief investment officer at Mercer Advisors, said, I don't think we've seen the bottom yet. We're still early innings on this whole tariff issue. It's going to take some time to play out.

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All right, coming up, President Trump actually did get a win, another win, from the Supreme Court yesterday. Plus, we'll get into the mailbag. The only way that you can watch all of that and the rest of the show is to join Daily Wire. Plus, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.

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And again, the enthusiasm started when Scott Besant, the treasury secretary yesterday, made clear that he thinks that we're going for an off-ramp. So, for example, here was Scott Besant early yesterday saying, you're going to see some big deals fast. And this is what made the market go. Much more sanguine.

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It's why you saw the markets yesterday jump because the assumption was this means that Trump's going to do some postponement, that all of this was basically a big gamble, a big bluff, a sort of leverage play in order to get other countries to come on bended knee. This is what the Treasury Secretary has been proposing to Trump all along. You're starting to negotiate.

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How soon do you think we could see some deals be made?

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The S&P 500 was down about 2% as well. Frankly, I'd be a little bit surprised if it doesn't go lower today. And the reason I say that is because, of course, last night at 12.01 a.m., all of America's tariffs went into place. Now, how do those tariffs actually work? It takes a little while for them to kick in in practical ways.

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So then he reiterated that. He said that President Trump had good calls with the Japanese. As we mentioned, on Monday, the Nikkei dropped precipitously. On Tuesday, it recovered precipitously on precisely the rumors that Bessence is putting out there that there will be a trade deal in the making with Japan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Again, so what you're hearing from one camp is take the off-ramp, get some good deals. And so Japan, which was set to be hit, and last night, in fact, was hit with a 24% tariff, they were looking for an off-ramp. And again, this is not just Scott Besson who is saying this. Caroline Leavitt, who's the White House press secretary, she was saying this as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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She said yesterday, countries are falling all over themselves to make deals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Okay, so again, this sounds like off-ramp, correct? Off-ramp is the sound of this. And this is why the markets yesterday were a little bit happier at the beginning of the day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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And Caroline Lovett, again, reiterated this because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just visited the White House where he said that he was not only going to rectify any tariff imbalances, he was going to rectify the trade deficit, which again, I'm not even sure how he would do that. But this is the kind of verbiage that obviously the administration wants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Okay, well, the way that it could serve as a model is if the United States then, for example, went to Vietnam, which is also offering zero, or Taiwan, which is offering zero, or Israel, which is offering zero, and said, okay, deal taken, great, we're postponing the tariffs with regard to you while we negotiate this thing out. That, of course, is not what is happening.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Right now, people are holding off in the hopes that there will be an off-ramp. Europe, for example, is not retaliating as of yet. Europe is holding off in the hope that something here will come to fruition. According to the Washington Post, the European Union is taking a Zen approach. The bloc's member states will vote Wednesday on its first belated response to a litany of Trump tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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and will announce line-item tariffs on American goods to counter U.S. levies on steel, but the EU is still working through how exactly to respond to other U.S. tariffs, including on cars and a blanket 20% tariff that Trump announced in a global trade blitz.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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The phased EU response partly owes to the nature of the 27-member bloc, which seeks political consensus among countries with disparate national priorities, but it also comes from a desire in Europe to allow for negotiation given the risk of further American escalation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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not just because the two economies are answer to one, but because Europe exists thanks to the security umbrella of the United States. Even some of the biggest advocates of the tariffs are starting to make the argument that Trump should be taking off ramps here. Here, I cite Orrin Cass. So Orrin has been a longtime proponent of a sort of right-leaning industrial policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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the way that these tariffs typically work is that there is a process, the product arrives at a port of entry, and then there's essentially a record that is kept of what has just been imported. And then the company that brought it in has somewhere between 10 and 30 days to actually pay the tariff on the good. And so there's a bit of a delay effect given this process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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He's the chief economist at American Compass. And again, his policy has been very interventionist with regard to the economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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I did an interview with Oren, it must've been seven or eight years ago at this point, in which we discussed the fact that there really kind of were no in principle limits on what he thought the United States government should do with regard to propping up particular parts of American industry. He has a piece today titled, Stop Freaking Out, Trump's Tariffs Can Still Work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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But what it really is, is a plea to President Trump to not go as fast, not break as many things, and to negotiate off-ramps. When even Oren Kass is telling you, Mr. President, that you should really take this slower, you probably should take this slower. Oren Kass writes this, going from zero to 60, he's talking about China here, which we'll get to in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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He says, going from zero to 60 so fast is unnecessary and unwise. The most determined company could not shift production so quickly. A better approach would be to raise the Chinese tariff in three steps. 20 percentage points now in a year and in two years, which is actually quite slow, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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And for Congress to legislate this by revoking China's permanent normal trade relations status, as was the bipartisan recommendation of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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For the trading partners who have already come forward to negotiate, little would be lost and much saved if Mr. Trump thanked them with a six-month grace period in which to bring their best offers to the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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So again, here you got Oren Cass, who's a proponent of this tariff regime, agreeing with Bill Ackman, who certainly is not a proponent of the tariff regime because Cass understands that Leroy Jenkins-ing this thing, running into the middle of the world economy and slapping everybody in the face is actually not a particularly wise policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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He says, those who fail to deliver could be hit with half the Rose Garden tariff rate and be given six more months to get it right before the full weight lands. Businesses would have time to assess their risk and plan accordingly, facing a landscape in which the obvious imperative is to start investing in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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And he says, whatever path President Trump chooses, he could greatly increase the odds of successful negotiations and the largest possible U.S.-led economic bloc by explaining exactly what he wants. And Orncast sounding very much like I sound here on this show. Clarity would be good. Gradual implementation would be good. What exactly are we looking for would be a useful thing here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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And this is not about being a panic. And this is about if you are going to do good policy, you need to know what the policy is. What is the end game here? It's funny. People always want an end game with regard to, say, Ukraine. And they are right. There should be an end game with regard to Ukraine. I want an end game with regard to the trade war. What is the goal?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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What is the thing we are seeking to do? Are we seeking to end all trade deficits? Because it ain't going to happen. Are we seeking zero tariffs? Because that's doable. But we should be negotiating that as expeditiously as possible. Every policy requires a goal, and that's also true for you on a personal level. Your goal with your cell phone company should be excellent coverage, better price.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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And this is where Pure Talk comes in. They're the cell phone company I use for business every day. They're cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is right. Pure Talk says, I don't think so. To $100 a month cell phone plans, that's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Listen to this unlimited talk text, 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus. Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. Talk directly to my producers in our live chat. And as always, you get that free leftist tierist Tumblr.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

754.472

With Pure Talk's US customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

771.37

Go check them out right now. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get that year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Also, Now, that old mattress that I used to have, the one that I got from the big box store, you sleep on it, and then you realize, after you have a better mattress, just how bad the old one was. My new mattress from Helix is great. The old one was just terrible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

789.767

You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already complaining at you? That was me with the old mattress. Don't even get me started on how it turned into a heat trap at night. Since switching to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest of days. And here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

79.665

With that said, you're going to see prices adjust very, very quickly because everybody can see the tariff train coming down the road, how it's going to impact their business. So all the talk about how this is just for the stock market, it's just the Dow Jones, stop talking about the S&P 500, talk about Main Street and real business. Once the tariffs are in place, it hits everybody.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

803.036

Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or you share a bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match for you. Tons of benefits to the Helix mattress, including the fact that mine is firm but breathable, which means I'm sleeping better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Helix is offering right now an incredible deal with their Spring Savings Event. Visit helixsleep.com slash ben, get 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash ben for 20% off Sitewide, find your perfect mattress, start sleeping better tonight. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben to get 20% off sitewide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Warren Cass says, finally, Mr. Trump's administration needs to get serious about other policies necessary to support reindustrialization. This is, I think, one of the things that is the unspoken part of what the trade war means. It means massive government intervention in the American economy. I'm not just talking about tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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I'm talking about massive subsidies, shifts in wealth, shifts in economic burden from the 80% of people who are not in the manufacturing industry to the 10% of people in the manufacturing industry and maybe the 10% in agriculture. That's what we're talking about. We talk about a lot of 80-20 issues.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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The services sector in the United States represents about 80% of all employment in the private industry sector of the United States. Only about 10% is manufacturing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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What we are talking about here, if you're talking about reindustrialization, not through deregulation, but through subsidy, is moving wealth from 80% of the public to 10% of the public, essentially, if what you're talking about here is tariffs that are designed to increase prices on everybody so as to benefit American manufacturing and or subsidies. This requires massive interventionism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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This is a centralization of government power. That is what this is. There's no other way around it. Oren Kass makes this clear. He's at least honest. He says, Mr. Trump's administration needs to get serious about other policies necessary to support reindustrialization.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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If the United States is going to reduce its trade deficit quickly without painful cuts to domestic consumption, it's going to have to increase production capacity just as quickly, either to expand efforts to other markets or to substitute for imports at home. This requires industrial policy akin to what the Chips and Science Act has already achieved for semiconductor manufacturing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Now, remember, President Trump does not like the Chips Act. He thinks the Chips Act is bad and stupid. So you can't have it both ways. Orencast says new infrastructure will have to be built, new sources of energy brought online, perhaps most critically, and enormous resources must be poured into workforce development.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Again, there's the boondoggle that has been work source redevelopment in the United States, the idea that you can simply retrain workers as opposed to how the job market actually works, which is you go to a job and you kind of learn how to do the thing on the job.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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So far, the markets are a good way of aggregating human knowledge in the moment. As Benjamin Graham, the Warren Buffett mentor, suggested, in the short term, markets are a voting machine. In the long term, they are a weighing machine. We are now currently moving from voting to weighing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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I've never seen an analysis that workforce development, meaning, like, you take, what, people who are in the services industry, and now you're going to teach them how to work at a factory, that what you actually need to do is put them in some sort of night school in order to do that. In any case, when even Orin Cass is telling you look for the off-ramp, the off-ramp seems pretty appealing, but...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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Then there's the part of the administration that is saying, no off-ramp. And this mixed signal is the reason why markets are freaking out because they don't know exactly what to expect next, but it's not going to matter. Honestly, now it's not going to matter because now that the tariffs have hit, either the off-ramp is taken in quickly or it's not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2176 - MOTHER OF ALL TARIFFS: The Tariff War Has Begun

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If the off-ramp is not taken, then the pain is going to be felt by American consumers and, by the way, American producers. And if the off-ramp is taken... Yes, that will be better. But a certain amount of damage is already done. If you're an investor and President Trump is switching his policy from the most audacious tariff policy of our lifetime to the reverse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

already tons coming up on today's show dave portnoy is featured in the biggest internet story of the moment which raises questions about cancel culture and answerability for doing bad things plus we get to war looming between india and pakistan president trump declaring a ceasefire with the houthis in yemen first if you are tired of the endless media lies it is time to join us

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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I said Monday on the program that people should stop giving money to bad people because I think people should stop giving money to bad people. But there is another argument, and it's a pragmatic argument, the counter argument. It's pragmatic. Sure, it's unpleasant that we have to give money to people like, say, Shiloh Hendricks, who say and do bad things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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But if we don't, the social media mob will have incentive to continue targeting people in evil and nasty ways, and even targeting people who aren't even doing bad things, like Justine Sacco or something, sort of a bad joke. To stop cancel culture, we need to uncancel not just the people who don't deserve cancellation, but even the worst offenders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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So my friend Matt Walsh on Monday made this argument. It's an interesting, I think, fascinating and colorable argument. Sometimes you do have to fight fire with fire. It's a pragmatic argument, right? That if you want to get rid of cancellation of people who shouldn't be canceled, then you have to basically stop the social media mob.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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The problem is I don't think that this tactic is going to work pragmatically. In fact, I think it's going to fail. It's one thing to declare a sort of mutually assured destruction in a case where the parties involved are responsive and responsible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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So, for example, I have argued in favor of a sort of mutually assured destruction to stop secondary corporate boycott tactics that the left enjoyed for decades. So I, along with Matt, agree that sometimes we ought to boycott Bud Light because that teaches corporations to stop pandering to the woke, even if, generally speaking, we don't like boycotts. But that only works for one reason.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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Corporations are responsive to the market. They are responsible to their shareholders. You know who's not responsive or responsible? Social media mobs, by definition. So the idea that if you make a person who does a bad thing rich, then the even worse people targeting her will stop targeting her, that's not going to happen on an actual practical level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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What actually will happen is that each side is going to continue to fund and support its own worst offenders, thus leading to even further general degradation of the social fabric. Social media mobs will be so outraged by the funding of the canceled person that then they will seek to support even worse people on their own side.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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Meanwhile, criticism of bad behavior and speech, which again, that is sort of a normal part of a moral life. It says in the Bible that you're not supposed to put a stumbling block before a blind person. What that means is that you are not supposed to let people go without warning if they're engaging in bad behavior.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1140.14

And if they're engaging in evil opinions, because there are in fact opinions that are quite evil. If you believe in the mass murder of entire populations, for example, that's kind of an evil opinion. Criticism of that, if you get rid of it, if you say that that sort of criticism is cancellation, It's a sort of puritanical thought crime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1158.092

This leads to a bizarre logic where it is actually worse to criticize a Nazi than to actually be a Nazi or where it is worse to actually criticize the woke insanity than to be a woke insane person. Mobs in general are not dissuaded by the failure of their cause. In fact, they're very often emboldened by it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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The only thing that actually will stop a mob is the judicious application of countermeasures. You rob them of their initiative. So, for example, the equal application of law. If somebody is being doxxed, physically threatened, those people should be tracked down by law enforcement and go to jail because they're violating the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

119.703

Okay, in any case, Dave Portnoy is the owner of Barstool Sansom Street. The bar put out a statement saying that it involved a customer whose actions were deplorable. And Portnoy said that two customers were involved. The bar blamed misguided employees who ignored the company's training and their zero tolerance policy for discrimination and hate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1195.404

We should support people whose social sanction, whose cancellation far outweighs the supposed social crime. We should support them, not as sort of a moral matter because what they said is great, but because if the punishment outweighs the crime, if it's way too extreme for the crime, that is a bad thing for the system. We should totally oppose, obviously, inappropriate cancellation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1217.516

When people are canceled for dumb reasons, that should be complete support. And we should allow forgiveness where appropriate. People should, in fact, ask for forgiveness, and we should give it to them. One of the reasons forgiveness has gone out of style is because people feel like they're going to be dunked on the moment that they actually ask for forgiveness by the social media mob.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1234.612

But the bottom line is this. If we are going to share a society together... A social fabric does require a more nuanced view of how we treat these sorts of things that we don't like. And that nuanced view can't just be cancel everyone or cancel no one. And cancellation itself has to be actually really defined. What does it mean?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1256.77

Because if we now define cancellation as just being criticized by somebody, you've actually shut down free speech. You haven't exacerbated or made better free speech. These are things we have to think through as a society. Social media has made this necessary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1268.589

And as our common moral standards degrade, the society is going to continue to fall apart through a sort of reactionary cycling between the cancel everyone and cancel no one sides of this particular argument. We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, choosing simply safe for my studio, super duper easy decision. When I arm the system,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1287.329

Before we leave, call it a day, my team and I get instant peace of mind knowing our equipment, our creative work product are, in fact, protected. With SimpliSafe standing guard, I can focus on my projects and rest easier, confident I'm covered if anything happens, especially while I'm out of the office or traveling. I would love for you to experience that same security in your home.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1303.9

With SimpliSafe, families enjoy the gold standard in home security and genuine peace of mind whenever they arm the system. Unlike traditional systems that only respond after a break-in, SimpliSafe's active guard outdoor protection works to prevent intrusions before they happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1316.809

They're AI-powered cameras with live professional monitoring detect suspicious activity, allowing agents to intervene in real time, speaking to potential intruders, activating spotlights, contacting police before anyone enters your home.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1327.18

With no long-term contracts, affordable monitoring at about a buck daily, and a 60-day money-back guarantee, SimpliSafe delivers both protection and value for homeowners. I'm on the road right now, but I've got that SimpliSafe system at my studio in Florida, and so I feel a lot safer knowing that they are there when I'm not. Visit simplisafe.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1345.213

Claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitor and plan to get your free first month. That's simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Also, tax day may be over, but tax trouble is just beginning for millions of Americans. If you missed that April 15th deadline, or if you still owe back taxes, the IRS is ramping up enforcement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1363.546

Every day you wait only makes things worse. With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily, and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years. Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast. The good news, there's still time for Tax Network USA to help. Self-employed? Your business owner?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

138.766

And again, private companies can have those sorts of policies. If you are an employee and you are asked to say the N-word on a sign or screw Whitey or whatever it is, and you say no, that is what you are supposed to do as an employee of Barstool. Well, the president of Temple University, John Fry, announced that a student believed to have been involved in the incident had been suspended.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1381.341

Well, even if your books are a mess, they've got it covered for you. Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track fast. Even after the deadline, it's not too late to regain control. Your consultation is now completely free. Acting now could stop penalties, threatening letters, and surprise levies before they escalate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1397.812

Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. You may have missed April 15th. You have not yet run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help before the IRS makes their next move. Again, call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1416.962

Already, meanwhile, in world news that is slightly more important, it appears that India and Pakistan may be on the brink of war. These are both nuclear armed powers. This should be a reminder, by the way, that a world in which many, many countries are nuclear is a supremely risky world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1430.365

So just to illustrate how dangerous the world could become, let's talk for a moment about who has nuclear weapons and who is a nuclear country, meaning they have nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons, because the threshold for developing nuclear weapons is much higher than for just developing civilian nuclear energy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1445.935

So right now, according to our friends over at Perplexity and sponsors over at Perplexity, there are nine countries that have nuclear weapons. Russia, the United States, China, France, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Okay, so... There are also a bunch of countries that host foreign nuclear weapons. That includes Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, and Belarus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1464.685

Belarus has been hosting Russian nuclear weapons since 2023. Okay, now imagine that all of those countries decided they were going to develop nuclear weapons of their own. So Turkey right now is hosting nuclear weapons that are essentially US-sponsored.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1479.574

But imagine there are a bunch of countries right now that have civilian nuclear programs, but not nuclear weapons, and then they decide to go nuclear. There are a bunch of countries that are planning civilian nuclear energy, like Jordan, Egypt, Poland, Kazakhstan, and several others in Africa, Asia, and South America. Do we think that this would be a good thing?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1498.823

Do we think that the world would become a safer place because of massive nuclear proliferation? Well, the reality is that in the absence of the sort of American global overwatch, in the absence of a feeling of security by America's allies, and with the growth of America's enemies, more and more countries are going to feel that the guarantee of their security is nuclear armament.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

1519.251

If you're enjoying having to care about India and Pakistan right now, let me recommend that you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. Seriously, if India and Pakistan were just having like a little border dispute and firing at each other right now, people across the world would not be watching this conflict.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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They are watching this conflict because both of these countries are nuclear armed and people are concerned that if this were to escalate, you would end up with nuclear war. And in that nuclear war, that could drag in China, which is a border country, and it could theoretically drag in other surrounding powers and possibly even the United States if this thing were to escalate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is why people care about things like global thermonuclear war. India yesterday launched military strikes on targets in Pakistan, both countries said on Wednesday. Pakistan claimed it had shot down five Indian Air Force jets, an escalation that has pushed the two nations to the brink of wider conflict, according to CNN.

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That would be the person who posted this in celebratory fashion. Well, then apparently Portnoy reached out to this person whose name is Mokan. Originally, he said he was very angry and it happened at his bar. He himself is Jewish. He was upset about it. And he said that he was going to make it his life mission to ruin these people like I'm coming for your throat. And then he backed off of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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India's missile strikes were targeting terrorist infrastructure, they said, across nine sites in Pakistan's densely populated Punjab province in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. That came in response to a massive terror assault. by terrorists in Indian-administered Kashmir by Pakistani terrorists. Pakistan, of course, does operate in cahoots with terrorist groups.

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Pakistan is extraordinarily radical. This is why they were housing, for example, Osama bin Laden for years in Pakistan. Pakistan said at least 26 people were killed in Wednesday's strikes. The country's prime minister, Shabazz Sharif, described the strikes as an act of war. Islamabad has now vowed to retaliate. Now, the United States and China are sort of the powers sponsoring each side.

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So the United States does have a relationship with Pakistan because supposedly Pakistan helps us with counterterrorism. Let's just say that that support is incredibly intermittent. And the United States also supports India, which is a democratic ally of the United States and is an incredibly important country geopolitically. Very fast increasing economy, very fast increasing population.

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A border country again with China, if you wish to build a sort of geopolitical wall against Chinese interventionism, then India is a key part of that. both sides, China and the United States, are urging weapons down. They're saying that they don't want this escalating any further. They're trying to encourage India to say that they've done enough at this point in response to the terror attack.

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And China is trying to encourage Pakistan to step down. Again, I don't think this escalates much from here because I don't think that either country has an incentive to drive a vastly larger war in which the end could actually be mutual nuclear destruction. Both India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir, but the truth is that it's kind of divvied up. The last clash in the region happened in 2019.

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Something similar happened. A suicide bomber killed 40 Indian paramilitary police officers in Kashmir in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. And then the attacker claims that he was a member of an Islamic militant group in Pakistan. Nice people. India then retaliated with airstrikes and Pakistani forces shot down a warplane, captured an Indian pilot, and then a negotiated release happened.

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This will probably be something similar. So again, the panic that this is going to leap into nuclear war is likely unwarranted. With that said, the reason everybody is worried about this sort of stuff is that a larger nuclear armed world is incredibly dangerous because everything gets put on the brink of disaster immediately.

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It is the reason why, for example, the war in Ukraine has lasted so long. If Russia were not armed with nuclear weapons, then presumably Western support for Ukraine would have been significantly larger and significantly more powerful. And there would have been a possibility of Ukraine literally pushing Russia out of their country.

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But that couldn't happen because of the possibility that Putin might actually unleash nuclear weapons were he to be pushed out of Donbass and Crimea. And so that war has just sort of continued for years on end. And geopolitics requires, it requires some sort of stability. The United States has been the guarantor of stability since World War II.

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As the United States recedes from the world scene, the world is going to become significantly less stable. And that chaotic and unstable world is going to lead to problems for the United States because the world is extraordinarily interconnected. Our economies are interconnected at this point.

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This is why you see sort of a drive from the Buchananite wing of the Republican Party to move simultaneously toward foreign policy isolationism and economic autarky. Now, the consequences of that are lower living standards in the United States. Everything is more expensive. Jobs are fewer in number.

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He put out another statement saying that he wanted to reconsider his approach. And instead, he was going to send the people responsible for the sign on all expenses paid tour to Auschwitz, which, by the way, I think is actually quite the wrong approach.

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Autarky in the modern economy is a great way to reduce your footprint and also to reduce your living standards. But as the world becomes more multipolar, as the United States withdraws from its hegemony since World War II, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, the globe is going to get more unstable, not less.

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Speaking of which, yesterday, President Trump declared that there was a truce with the Houthis. Now, the Houthis, again, is a terrorist group in Yemen. They've been holding up shipping in the Red Sea and firing at a wide variety of ships in the Red Seas, basically destroying that trade route. So everybody now has to go around the Horn of Africa in order to ship things from east to west.

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Well, the United States has been bombing the Houthis, and the Houthis apparently came back to the United States and said, we'll stop bombing American ships. We'll stop going after American ships. In fact, the Houthis said they'll stop going after everything except Israeli ships.

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Now, the problem with that, of course, is that the Houthis have attacked a number of ships that they claim are Israeli that are not actually Israeli. The other problem with that is that the Houthis should not be firing at anybody in the Red Sea, because if the idea is they get to pick off boats one by one, and there's no collective response...

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well, they're going to start picking off more and more boats from more and more enemies. But President Trump, and again, there's a broader geopolitical context to this. What this really appears to be is a setup for a bad nuclear deal cut by the Trump administration. Now, President Trump has been saying that the Obama-Iran deal is the worst deal in history. He's been saying that since 2015.

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And President Trump has also said steadfastly and repeatedly that Iran cannot be allowed nuclearization. They have to be completely denuclearized. Let's be clear what is happening with the Houthis. Yes, the strikes mattered on the Houthis by the United States and by the Israelis, by the way. Yesterday, Israel basically blew up the Sinai airport. But not just that.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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What this really is, is a predicate, and the Middle East is reading this way. It's reading it as a predicate to a United States deal with Iran that will essentially allow an Obama 2.0 deal, a path toward nuclearization, opening up of the Iranian economy that will allow funding of terrorism and ballistic missiles, the Houthis are a proxy group for the Iranian government.

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I actually don't think that the right approach for people who don't like Jews is to send them to a place where Jews were killed in the hope that this is somehow going to make them better human beings. I just don't think that is a great approach to education in this way. I think that basically throwing up the middle finger is the proper response.

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And this is being read this way by the entire Middle East. You can look at the cartoons that are coming out in the newspapers from Iran to Qatar to Saudi Arabia. This is exactly how it's being read. So President Trump yesterday, he explained that the Houthis have said that they are not going to bomb our ships, which, of course, is a good thing.

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And again, the suggestion here is not that the United States needs to, quote unquote, keep bombing the Houthis on behalf of Israel or something like that. We don't. The Israelis, it turns out, have extraordinary firepower and have been bombing the Houthis themselves. However, we have to be clear as to what Iran is doing here. Again, I'm not saying that Trump is doing the wrong thing here.

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What I'm saying is that Iran is attempting to play him. And so the Trump administration must be very careful as to what they are doing. Here's President Trump yesterday.

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Okay, so Stephen Miller, who of course is a top advisor to President Trump, senior advisor, he says the Houthis will no longer be firing on U.S. ships. Now the question is whether that means U.S. ships, all ships, or what this means.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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Okay, so if that's the extent of it, then sure, great. You know, the fact that the Houthis will stop firing on shipping in the Red Sea is great. Although, again, if they're firing on ships that they consider quote-unquote Israelis, they have fired on a bunch of ships that are not Israeli in orientation while claiming that they are, in fact, Israeli. However...

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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This is part of a broader gambit by Iran. Let's be very clear what is happening now. It's not that the United States bombed the Houthis into submission, and so the Houthis are stopping their activity. What the Houthis are attempting to do at the behest of Iran is basically carve off the United States from Israel in the Iranian nuclear negotiations. That is the goal.

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According to a report from the New York Times, two Iranian officials said that Iran had persuaded the Houthis to stop their attacks on U.S. assets as part of the Omani mediation efforts.

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CNN cited people familiar with the matter as saying that Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his supposed negotiator extraordinaire, who has yet to negotiate a good deal, had worked with the Omanis over the past week to broker the U.S. Houthi ceasefire. The sources said the ceasefire was also meant to help build momentum in the Iran nuclear talks where Feshkov is leading.

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And we'll get to how we ought to respond as a society to bad things said publicly, which is what this is, a bad thing said publicly. Okay, well, he offered to pay this, and apparently he then had a call with this person, Mo Khan. He said, let's try to turn a hideous incident into maybe a learning experience. Adding the offer was cliche and very unlike me.

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So again, the goal here for Iran is to basically say, okay, the Houthis will stop attacking U.S. ships in the Red Sea. And in return, you guys cut a bad Iran nuclear deal and wash your hands of the whole region. That is the goal. Now, of course, Iran is not going to stop developing nuclear weapons, particularly if the Trump administration cuts a bad deal.

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And what is the predictable result of all that going to be? The predictable result is going to be something very much like what just happened in Yemen, meaning the Israelis took it upon themselves to destroy the entire airport in Sana'a.

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So if you want Israel bombing Iran, actually the best way to ensure that Israel is going to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities is to cut a bad Obama nuclear deal because Israel will then have no choice but to go ahead and do that.

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Daily Wire Plus members get ad-free access to the best conservative news and commentary, plus access to our award-winning investigative journalism that exposes the government corruption the mainstream media refuses to touch. You'll even get our premium entertainment library, films and documentaries that break the box office, shift the culture, and say the stuff no one else will.

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So if what you're seeking to avoid is escalation, then stronger peace through strength, stronger strangling of the Iranian economy, stronger demands upon Iran would be the way to actually do that. It's not possible to see the Houthi deal outside of the context of the broader Iranian issue. I mean, President Trump said that back in March.

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He literally put out a statement in March saying that the Houthis are just an Iranian proxy state. So the reason, again, that the Houthis are doing this is to try and suggest that if Iran basically goes after Israel on its own, that the United States will... sort of disappear, that it won't matter at all to the United States. And they're hoping the United States will buy into that.

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Of course, that's not actually true factually. If Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon, they wouldn't just be threatening Israel. They would also be threatening, presumably, the UAE. They'd be threatening Saudi Arabia. They'd be threatening other areas in the Middle East, ranging from parts of Syria, presumably, to Iraq, to places like Azerbaijan.

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An Iranian nuclear weapon creates geopolitical instability for sure. And so if this is an attempt to basically say to the Trump administration, get an easy win with a headline, and then we get to go nuclear. And after all, we don't care about you. We just care about the Israelis. First of all, the Iranians are good at this. They know the game that they are playing.

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And if the United States shows that it is uninterested in the region, the Iranians are not going to stop being interested in the region. And that will lead to more conflict. Again, when the United States recedes from the world scene, it is not that what fills the gap is something better and more peaceful and more wonderful.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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What fills the gap is usually something significantly worse, significantly more chaotic. And as I said before, with regards to India and Pakistan, If the world is a more chaotic place that has an impact on the United States economically, it has an impact on the United States in terms of security. Now, again, that is not a call for full scale American war in the Middle East.

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No one is calling for that. I think there's a strong case to be made that Iran being absolutely dishonorable, a country that is led by Islamic maniacs. I mean, that really is what the country is. It's an Islamic dictatorship, a revolutionary dictatorship.

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that they are untrustworthy in the extreme when it comes to foreign policy that killed thousands of American soldiers on Iraqi soil and all the rest. It seems to me that there's a strong case, not an impregnable case, but a strong case to be made that a single B-2 sortie involving the United States to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities would greatly reset the region.

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But at the very least, the United States should not be engaging in some sort of SOP to Iran that titularly allows us to escape responsibility for things going on in the Middle East while dramatically increasing the possibilities of chaos in the Middle East, which could be what is happening. President Trump, by the way, teased that he has a very big announcement ahead of his Middle East trip.

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It is unclear exactly what this means. Of course, it could just be a Bitcoin announcement. He's done that before. But we don't actually know at this point.

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And apparently, he then revoked the offer for MoCon. Why? Well, because MoCon then put up another video. So remember, this whole thing became public because this person put up the video himself. This is not somebody who was outed by a third party. This is somebody who was posting in celebratory fashion on his Instagram publicly.

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Okay, so, you know, again, President Trump pitches like nobody else, so we're all on the edge of our seats about that. Meanwhile, by the way, the, again, unstable world that is being created as America basically recedes and tries to move into a more multipolar age, that's having impact on Eastern Europe as well.

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Apparently, Poland is now feeling some anxiety because, of course, they're bordering Ukraine, if the idea is that the United States is sort of withdrawing from the Ukraine war, which... Appears to be quasi happening, kind of happening, not really clear what's happening. Poland is getting nervous as well.

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The possibility of serious nuclear development in pretty much every country that borders with a Russia or a China or a Pakistan or an Iran is very, very real. And a universal nuclear weapon world is going to be a very, very dangerous place.

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Meanwhile, the markets are actually on the rise thanks to the fact that President Trump now seems to be looking for an off-ramp in his trade talks with the Chinese. Now, again, there is a good way to box in China when it comes to trade. Bill Ackman, the investor, put out a statement yesterday that I think is totally correct.

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He said, what if President Trump were to announce that China tariffs would immediately be reduced to 20% and then escalate thereafter by 0.5% per month for the next 12 months, and then by 1% per month for the next 12 months and 1.5% per month for the next 12 months, and so on, which would mean like a 6% increase for a year. So by end of year one, you're at 26%. And then 12% the year after that.

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So after that, you're now 38%. This approach, he says, would incentivize companies to relocate their supply chains from China while enabling them to continue to operate profitably during the transition. China would be incentivized to make a good deal with President Trump as promptly as practicable, while the risk of a dramatic shock to the U.S.

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and global economies would be greatly reduced if not eliminated. And this is right. He's totally right about this. As I've said many times on the show at this point, doing a trade war with China is not a bad idea if you do the preconditional work. The preconditional work involves better trade deals with everybody else on earth that is not China and with whom you can ally to box China in.

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Part two would be to gradually escalate the tariffs to give people time to reshore their manufacturing from China. Part three would be to find other supply lines for key national security-based industries like rare earth metals, for example.

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And four would be to rapidly build up the United States' naval capacity so that if China, feeling in a box, tried to go for Taiwan, the United States could dissuade them. Those are all preconditions to really going after China on the trade route. And this is exactly what Ackman is saying. President Trump yesterday said that China wants a deal.

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a sign saying F the Jews, and then putting up a video begging for money. So here he was begging for money, saying now he was the victim. So I guess that the logic here is you do something crappy, you publicly post it, you get called out on it, and then you ask for money, which doesn't seem like a wonderful thing to do. Here is MoConn.

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Okay, so again, that's fine. The question is, what are the deals going to look like? So President Trump says that he could be announcing 50 or 100 deals. And Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has said that those deals, they take a long time to negotiate, by the way. A typical trade deal might take a year to negotiate.

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You'll probably have some term sheets, basically one or two page rough outline that will allow the United States to at least temporarily lower tariffs as the rest of the negotiation goes on. Here's President Trump talking about announcing further trade deals.

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Okay, so, and we'll see what those trade deals look like. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, again, simple rule for the Trump administration. When Secretary Besson talks, markets are quieted. When Howard Glutnick or Peter Navarro talk, markets freak out. There's a good reason for this. Here's the Treasury Secretary.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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The reality is that if you're playing poker and you hold four aces, you don't need to act as though you are bluffing because you have the cards. The United States does have the cards when it comes to these trade deals. If we went to Vietnam behind the scenes, like, guys, we need you to lower your non-tariff trade barriers. We need you to do that right now or we're going to slap you.

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And you don't do it publicly. Just do it privately. They'll lower it because we have all the leverage in that relationship. And one of the big problems for the administration and the reason why the economy continues to sort of be held in advance, investors are still waiting to put their money back in, is because President Trump says things and then Besson basically has to fill in the gap.

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He has to backfill it. So President Trump, of course, said that kids don't need $30. They only need $2, which is a very bad approach to this particular issue. And Scott Besson is out there trying to defend it because that's his job.

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OK, now, again, if you can explain to me why you need to own two dolls instead of 30 in order to own a home. I like the relationship between the two should be made clear by the administration. Let's just put it that way. Yesterday, Mark Carney, the freshly elected liberal prime minister of Canada who should not have been elected.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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Pierre Poliev should have been the prime minister of Canada at this point. Mark Carney showed up and President Trump. basically acknowledged that his intervention in the Canadian election helped swing the election to Carney. Here he said, he can't take full credit for Carney's win.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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Yeah, you know, it would have been a better election if President Trump hadn't declared trade war on Canada and then talked about annexing their country. Carney, for his part, had a grand old time in the Oval, basically shellacking Trump to his face. So here's Mark Carney saying that Canada will not be bought, which, of course, gives him a lot of street cred with his people back home.

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And then Carney went on to fact-check Trump in the middle of the Oval Office meeting. And you know who wouldn't have done any of this? Pierre Poliev. Would have been much better if you were prime minister. Here was Carney.

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So he's fact-checking Trump on Trump saying that we actually don't need Canada. We don't have a big trade relationship. And Carney happens to be correct there. We actually do sell billions, as in upward of $350 billion of stuff in Canada. They are our largest single trade partner, actually. President Trump, for his part, refused to give up on Canadian annexation.

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This is what he had to say in the Oval yesterday.

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Okay, well, Carney was asked later, afterward, what he was thinking when President Trump was talking about annexing Canada. And here's what he had to say.

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So, again, you know what would have been better than this? Pierre Poliev. I can't say that enough because there are some members of the right who seem to believe that it's like a big win to dunk on Pierre Poliev, who lost because, again, the Trump administration decided to Leroy Jenkins some sort of trade war with Canada. Again, I just don't see the purpose of that.

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I don't see why that had to happen. And I hope that Mark Carney, who is not going to be a good prime minister – I hope that the Canadian people see that and that his tenure as prime minister is short-lived. Well, folks, the show continues in just a moment with a piece of good news for the Trump administration.

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The Supreme Court has made a ruling as to whether trans people can be banned from the military, at least for the moment. First, you have to become a member. We have all sorts of great stuff. We've got Matt Walsh's movies. We've got series with Jordan Peterson. We've got All Access Live. We have Run, Hide, Fight, all sorts of good stuff. In order to watch, though, you have to be a member.

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Okay, so this is the new game, obviously. Obviously, this is the new game, right? This follows hot on the heels of the Shiloh Hendricks story, which we talked about yesterday on the show. That was the woman who allegedly called a child the N-word at a playground and then was caught on video basically doubling down on that. And that was posted by a third party.

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And then people came after her and then people raised like $500,000 for her. And just to be clear, This person, Mo Khan, who he never denies the allegation that he was the person who put up the sign saying F the Jews. In fact, he then went on the show of a person who is extraordinarily and publicly anti-Semitic on X, where he where the host said that Portnoy is a filthy Jews.

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And Mo Khan basically just, of course, because Mo Khan is a person who does not like Jews, clearly.

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Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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So that's delightful. Sounds great. So Portnoy then responded and he said, well, Mo Khan is a liar and a piece of bleep. So here was Portnoy's response.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

37.405

The fight for our country is happening right now. Be a part of it at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Alrighty, folks, the big online story of the day, the story that has exploded across the interwebs is a controversy involving Dave Portnoy. Dave Portnoy is, of course, the founder and owner of Barstool Sports.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

440.322

Okay, so let's be clear about this. It's okay for black people to feel offended and correct for them to be offended if somebody calls them the N-word. And it's okay for Jews to feel offended if people say F the Jews. And it's okay for white people to be offended if somebody says F whitey, right? All of these things are bad things to say.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

457.512

The fact that this even needs to be said is indicative of a breakdown in the social fabric that is pretty catastrophic inside the United States. Portnoy put out a letter where he said, Portnoy offers Kahn the chance to make things right by educating himself on the history of anti-Semitism across the world. Kahn accepts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

479.908

Then days later, he changes his mind and decides he's a victim who now needs to be sent Solana. While Mo's apology may win him at some made-up awards nobody cares about at Harvard or Columbia, this unfortunately is the real world. A world where Mo Kahn is an anti-Semitic grifting piece of bleep who deserves an awful life. A world where hate has no place. A world where Portnoy is a great man.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

497.612

Team Portnoy. So again, Portnoy is... who Portnoy is. He is a person who obviously is self-aggrandizing and very grand on the world stage, all this kind of stuff. Okay, but there's some deeper points to be made here. And It speaks to where we are as a culture. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, free online services like Google actually charge you because they use your personal data.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

520.519

They track your behavior. They sell that information to advertisers. When something's free, you're not the customer. You are the product being sold. Your digital self is traded to unknown entities who might want to sell you a product, influence your political views. You manipulate your vote. To reclaim your privacy and protect yourself online, you should use ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

53.394

He also owns a series of bars, restaurants around the country that are labeled with Barstool. And the reason that he's in the news today is because of a controversy that broke into the open when a person who is a student apparently at Temple University named Mo Khan went to a barstool bar and proceeded to order from the back room some sort of dish.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

536.352

Without a VPN, your internet provider can legally track and sell your browsing data in the United States. Meanwhile, data brokers collect your information across websites and apps, creating detailed profiles of you through your IP address.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

546.9

ExpressVPN solves this by routing all your activity through encrypted servers, preventing your ISP from seeing or selling your data, while also hiding your IP address so brokers can't actually track you. Now, I'm traveling a lot these days. That means that I have to use public Wi-Fi. If I'm using public Wi-Fi, I definitely am using ExpressVPN. It's incredibly simple to use.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

563.692

You just tap once for protection. It works on all your devices with a single subscription covering up to eight devices. You don't need technical expertise to use it. The tech reviewers at CNET and The Verge do rate it as the number one VPN worldwide. I partnered with ExpressVPN because I would love for all my viewers to have access to important privacy protection.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

581.107

That's why right now you get an extra four months free when you go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. Get an extra four months totally free. Also, if you're unable to watch old family videos anymore because you have all of your old family videos on like video cassette tape and nobody has a VCR or everything's on old film reels or something,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

601.22

You're going to love my friends over at Legacy Box. Legacy Box offers a comprehensive, cost-effective, thoughtfully designed approach to memory preservation. And they make it incredibly simple. Just pack up your outdated tapes, films, and photos, mail them in. Their professional team handles the rest right here in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

616.012

Everything comes back digitized to the cloud so you can view and share your memories from any device, anywhere. It's so effortless, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. Plus, with Mother's Day just around the corner, this makes for a perfect present the entire family will, in fact, enjoy. So I've done this for my parents and for my in-laws.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

631.742

The videos that have been uncovered and that we can now watch and access, it's amazing. I mean, it's connecting with your own family past, and you can do it anytime with Legacy Box. Join over 1.5 million families that have trusted Legacy Box with their memories. Go to LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro. Save 60% during their best ever Mother's Day sale. LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

651.172

Again, they've got that Mother's Day sale. It's their best ever. Use LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro and save 60%. So let's talk about cancel culture for a second. There are three perspectives on cancel culture. Okay, so I wanted to find cancel culture here because I think people are equating many different things that are not actually cancel culture.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

671.866

If you cancel somebody or if you criticize somebody, for example, that is not a legal ban on their behavior. That is social ostracization. So let's talk about social ostracization or sanction for behavior or opinion. Not legal sanction, not banning people, not trying to jail people, just banning. people not wanting to hang out with you, or it can be a whole range of activity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

691.134

Cancellation can range from people criticizing you, theoretically, to people wanting to not hang out with you, to people firing you, to people deciding no one can hire you, right? It's a whole range of activity. So there are basically three generalized perspectives on cancel culture. One, any violation of any taboo ought to be treated with the harshest possible measure of cancellation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

710.771

That's perspective number one, which is like the cancel everyone perspective and use like the harshest, most brutal methods of quote unquote ruining people's lives for any level of rhetorical transgression. Perspective number two is that no one should ever be canceled for any reason. So no criticism, no social ostracization whatsoever. no calling out, nothing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

729.685

That you can say whatever you want and there will be no consequences, socially even, attendant on you saying those things. And then there's perspective number three, which is I think the sort of more moderate, complex, and true perspective, which is some behaviors or opinions are actually disgusting and do in the real world receive social sanction. and other behavior should not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

73.682

And one of the things they do, I guess, at these bars is they have a sort of letter board. And you can ask the waiter or waitress to change the letters on the letter boards. You can say, break up with him on the letter board. Or you can say, go Eagles on the letter board. Well, this guy asked for a very specific thing on the letterboard. F the Jews. And then he proceeded to post that video online.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

750.959

And the level of forgiveness and social sanction ought to vary, which is complex, right? Because you might be talking about, do you want to have dinner with somebody? Or you might be talking about, should somebody be able to, quote unquote, hold a job, which is much, much harsher. Or you might be talking about, do you want somebody in your school or not, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

765.868

These are all different methods of dealing with behavior that people find unacceptable in the social world. So the problem with the first perspective, that all violations of all taboos ought to receive the social death penalty, is that it is censorious. It prevents useful conversations from happening. It's unforgiving. It's uncharitable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

785.836

So we ended up for probably 20 years in this country with people being canceled, meaning socially ostracized, losing jobs, losing career opportunities, being destroyed for correct opinions like men are not women or for saying a word in Mandarin that sort of sounds like the N word. Social media mobs were activated in order to destroy people who violated literally any taboo. The lines were bright.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

806.048

And if you cross the line, you were destroyed. And this led to a reactionary right, which then moved to perspective number two. Cancellation should never happen. There shouldn't even be criticism. Social sanction, even criticism, is never ever the answer. In fact, it's the problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

821.358

Now, the problem with this perspective is that if there is never any social sanction or criticism or ostracization for bad behavior or terrible opinion, that's just called moral relativism, in which the ugliest opinions and expressions are supposed to be given equal credibility with decent or even controversial but useful opinions. So the real answer in a normal society would be number three.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

841.488

Sometimes people deserve the social consequences for what they do. Not always, but sometimes. And the social consequences can vary. They aren't irrevocable in certain circumstances. Forgiveness could be possible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

851.918

So just for example, in the normal world, you don't have a duty as a business owner to hire or have over to dinner somebody who shouts the N-word at children or who says that white people are colonizers and evil. But also in the real world, it would be a bad thing to do to post that person's address online so people can then go to their house and harass them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

869.977

In the real world, you have every right to avoid buying a Bud Light because they claim that men can be women. And you also have every right to decide you don't want to engage with a company that says, for example, that the police are systemically racist. You also shouldn't go to the home of the CEO and threaten to burn down his house. Now, we all used to know this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

886.425

In your daily life, we know this. If there's some kooky guy, some guy who's kind of a yucky guy, who everyone knows sits around like marinating about the Jews or the whites or the blacks or whatever, we all just kind of avoid that guy. And that's not a bad thing. That's OK. The sort of emergent, informal standards of the social fabric used to work just fine because most issues remained personal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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So, for example, in the pre-social media era, if Shiloh Hendricks existed in that era before cell phones, she might have said something awful to a kid and everybody in the neighborhood would have known that she was being crazy and everybody would have basically stayed away. And the same thing would have happened with this Mo Khan character. He'd have done something ugly and nasty at a restaurant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

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The employees probably would have lost their jobs for involving themselves. And everybody just kind of would have stayed away from that dude. Social media has made pretty much everything worse because now there's a mob waiting to form always. Basically, that's all social media is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

93.227

And here's what it looked like. So you can see there are a bunch of girls who are laughing, thinking it's hilarious. As a waiter holds up a sign that says F the Jews. a lot of celebration in the club. So that's always wonderful. That's just delightful. All these people seem like just delightful, transgressive, wonderful human beings.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

938.751

It is a mob waiting to form around an issue, just like kind of white blood cells in your immune system waiting for something to attack. Now, mobs form to destroy people, and so we are all forced to decide on the spot whether we think a person is bad or good, hero or villain, deserving of shame or support. What level of shame? What level of support?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

958.476

But the biggest thing is that in this country, because we have lost the boundaries of what is sort of informal, acceptable debate, not legal bans again, what is sort of the acceptable range of argumentation, the Overton window, as it's called. We no longer even agree on the vague outlines of an Overton window.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

973.65

We're descending into a world of either total cancellation for everyone with whom we disagree or total support for bad behavior in order to fight total cancellation. And the thing is that these two perspectives are mutually reinforcing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2194 - Dave Portnoy, Shiloh Hendrix, and Cancel Culture

986.179

The moral relativism of there should be no social consequences or criticism for anything leads people who don't like the stuff that's now being said to call for more social consequences, which leads to more reactionary moral relativism, which leads to more social consequences and back and forth until the end of time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Well, folks, last night was an incredible night in the United States Capitol. President Trump gave an astonishing, just terrific speech at the joint session of Congress, the quasi state of the union address. We're going to break it all down. I was in the room for it, which was really inexperienced. First, if you're not a Daily Wire Plus member, now would be the time to join the fight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

103.224

And really, it's an amazing team. It's an amazing team that President Trump has put together. Being in the chambers of the Congress for the speech was definitely an interesting experience.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1048.29

Again, Democrats freaked out about it. He mentioned George Washington. How could he? It's a self-deprecating joke at the end, right? I don't know about that list, but we'll take it. Okay, come on. So President Trump then did something incredibly smart. So again, the entire speech I think was great. It's fascinating how the State of the Union has evolved over the course of time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1070.017

So I'm old enough to remember when it was a big deal in 2009 when President Obama was trying to push Obamacare and a representative named Joe Wilson from South Carolina got up and shouted at the president, and said, you lie. By the way, he was correct. Obama was, in fact, lying. And this was a national scandal. How could this one guy get up and yell at Barack Obama? Just absolutely awful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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How could something like this happen? And then in 2010, there was another controversy because President Obama said something overtly false about the Supreme Court. And Justice Samuel Alito, who's in the audience, was caught on tape kind of shaking his head. How dare he? Oh, my God. Oh, the decorum. The media apparently have no such qualms about Democrats acting like complete jack

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1112.699

yelling, screaming, acting like just spoiled brat kids on a college campus in the middle of a Tuesday, blocking classes for the other students. They have no problem with that. I mean, the entire time Democrats are just heckling Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1124.445

So what Trump did, very smart, right off the top, President Trump says, listen, I'm not going to play this game where the cameras cut back and you see one side of the chamber standing and one side of the chamber sitting and you figure the president is just too divisive. I'm just going to

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

113.773

And I say interesting because the contrast could not be starker between the enthusiasm on the Republican side of the aisle, the excitement, the feeling that America is on the upsurge on the Republican side of the aisle, and the absolute murderous depression in which Democrats have now sunk themselves. And you could feel it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1153.339

of President Trump's blockbuster speech in a moment, first during taxis, and your sensitive information travels through a lot of hands and a lot of systems, from payroll to tax preparers to data centers, and that's even before it reaches the IRS. Every single stop is a potential vulnerability. Your W-2 contains exactly what identity thieves are looking for to wreak havoc on your life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1170.163

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1203.701

Join right now. Save up to 40% off your first year of membership. Call 1-800-LifeLock and mention promo code Ben or visit LifeLock.com slash Ben to save up to 40% today. Terms apply. Again, that's LifeLock.com slash Ben to save up to 40% today. Also, Grand Canyon University, private Christian University, beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1223.357

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1235.945

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1248.911

Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others? That's yours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1267.199

Let it flourish. Find your own purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu. Grand Canyon University, gcu.edu. So what Trump is doing here is he's saying, listen, I dare you not to clap. And in fact, half the night was devoted to things that if you are a sentient, decent human being, you have to clap for.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1288.906

I don't care if you're a Democrat or if you're a Republican. If you don't clap, as we'll see, for a 13-year-old brain cancer survivor becoming an honorary member of the Secret Service, like, I... Really? You're not going to clap for that? But this is the whole setup. So Trump basically double dog dares Democrats not to clap for things. They're never going to clap for anything that I do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

130.927

It was not even as though there was an animated sort of point of resistance for Democrats. As they filed into the chamber, they looked like a bunch of depressed college students who had just finished debating philosophy and smoking pot in their dorm rooms. That's what it felt like. It was an amazing thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1307.856

I'm going to say a bunch of super popular stuff right now. And watch, Democrats won't even clap. And that's why you can't vote for them in the future. That's why they don't deserve power. Very smart move from the president of the United States right here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1391.854

And he was doing this all night, by the way, this sort of hand motion where he points out at the Democrats. He's like, you guys, you're not. I see you. I see you not, you know, clapping for the obvious, obvious things. And then he says a bunch of obvious things. This is one of the themes. And so this was sort of a combination of Trump saying obvious, excellent things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1408.398

And also the Oprah Winfrey show, because he did something different. President Trump did, as we'll see during this address, then what other presidents do when they pick people out of the audience. So that's a that's a mainstay of State of the Union address.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1420.543

Really, since Ronald Reagan, who is also a performer, obviously, Reagan pioneered the use of people in the audience where he would say, and there's Barbara and Barbara is a hairdresser who's had to overcome racism. The problems of licensing in her state. Stand up, Barbara. And everybody cheers for Barbara.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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So President Trump did something different during the speech, which is he actually did things. It's kind of like the Oprah Winfrey show. Look under your seat. There's something awesome. There really was a sort of presenter vibe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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He held up an executive order in the middle of the in the middle of the speech handed him by the vice president, establishing and renaming a park in honor of a young girl who was killed by illegal immigrants. Or he called out somebody in the audience who had just received an acceptance to West Point. And all of these are sort of like nice, warm moments.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

145.348

And it was just dead on one side of the aisle, not just because they've lost the election and now they no longer control Congress or the Senate or the White House, but also because they cannot find the thing to attack President Trump over. And so what they decided to bring were campus tactics. It was like a Columbia University tentafada, but on the floor of Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1465.028

It's President Trump taking it to the next level, which, of course, is what he's good at. President Trump originally was an extraordinarily successful TV personality. That's one of the big reasons he's president of the United States today. And Democrats couldn't even clap for stuff like that. So here's an example. So yesterday, President Trump says there are only two genders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And this, of course, is an issue near and dear to our heart here at The Daily Wire. I'm not sure there's any company on Earth that has fought harder on this particular issue. As I told you a couple of weeks ago when President Trump signed an executive order on this matter, from literally the day that we launched this company, we made it a rule that we would never refer to people by false pronouns.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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They would only be referred to by their biological pronouns because there are only men and women, males and females. There is no such thing as a male who is a female. That is not a thing. It is a category error. And we fought that every step of the way. So obviously, Matt Walsh has been a lion on this issue. We're also sitting next to Riley Gaines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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We've obviously worked with Riley in the past on this. And Riley herself has done amazing work on this. The three of us were sitting together. And so we were like out of our seats for a huge amount of this. There was a point in the speech where President Trump was talking about two genders. men being banned from women's sports, and then he paid tribute to a young woman named Peyton McNabb.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Now, I don't care where you are on this particular issue. Peyton McNabb is a young woman, as we will see, President Trump's going to talk about it, who got hit in the face with a volleyball, hit by a very large male, and sustained actual serious brain damage because of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And Democrats could not clap in support of her because it was attached to the baseline logical motion that men should not hit volleyballs in the faces of women. Democrats could not get on board for that. So here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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You had a bunch of members of the squad who showed up wearing pink, supposedly to protest the idea that Trump hates women or something. Well, by the way, they refused, as we'll see, to applaud for a woman who was brutally injured by a man spiking a volleyball at her. And... The Democrats refused to applaud, but they were wearing pink for women.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Okay, now, Democrats didn't stand for this. Democrats didn't even cheer for this. Why? Because they want men to play in women's sports. These are 80-20 issues Trump takes the right side of, and then Democrats don't know what to do with it. President Trump also bragged on Doge, talked about the creation of Doge. Doge is highly popular with the American people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Despite all attempts to turn Doge into some sort of wedge issue for Americans, Americans want an investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse at the governmental level. Democrats have focused their ire on Elon, but the brilliance of what Trump has done with Elon is that Elon can take it. What does Elon care? He's the richest man on earth. What does he care?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Okay, so he's a little more unpopular with the people. Good news, he's not actually an elected official, Elon Musk. And it was really funny. There was a point here where Trump was saying, we are putting the power back in the hands of the people, taking it away from the unelected bureaucracy. And Democrats started pointing up at Musk. Well, he's unelected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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He's literally trying to cut the bureaucracy. You understand you're making an argument that he shouldn't cut the bureaucracy because he's a bureaucrat cutting the bureaucracy. No, that is not going to wash. Here's President Trump on Doge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Get exclusive breaking stories from our investigative journalism team. The stories the mainstream media will not cover. Enjoy ad free uncensored Daily Wire shows, plus live chat in the app with other members. And yes, even more. Access exclusive Daily Wire documentaries, movies and series and stay ahead with breaking news and instant reactions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

1813.617

This is real. By the way, this is my favorite part of the speech by far. It was just a comedy routine. It's just a comedy routine. I mean, just listing off this stuff. And by the way, those asides are for sure not in the teleprompter. Those little asides was like, and no one even knows what that is. It's true. Now Democrats are like, I know where Lesotho is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Some of them had on kind of hideous jackets that had Black Lives Matter regalia upon them. You had a bunch of Democrats who showed up with little placards and signs, which was sort of a leftover from a Rashida Tlaib thing that she did.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The president should know where Lesotho is. And the president's like, no one knows. And Americans are like, I don't know. That's true. By the way, the way that he does, he's such a comedian. Okay, I think it is worth noting here, Donald Trump is an amazing performer, like an amazing performer. He has two special gifts as a politician. I've seen... Both of these in action in person.

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One is he's amazing in a room, like truly incredible in a room. This is an underrated skill. Many politicians don't have it. He talks to people. He actually likes people. He's a people person. And so working a room, he's amazing. His other skill is that he's funny as hell. He really is funny. And so he has comedic timing and he can't teach comedic timing.

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It's either a thing you got or a thing you don't. And so the way that he even reads off these inanities is hilarious, right? He says, you know, we're paying for, we're paying for voter, for voter transparency in Botswana, right? Like he pauses and then the pause, right? The ellipses is before in Botswana. He's saying, we're paying $60 million for voter transparency in In Botswana. Right.

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So you have a moment where you're like, OK, that doesn't sound that bad. And they say in Botswana. Oh, my God, that's ridiculous. Right. That's great comedic timing. And he did this for a long time in the speech. And it was really funny. And what's smart about this is that the total sort of bottom line cuts that he's talking about are not a gigantic percentage of the American budget.

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I mean, let's be clear about this. I've said this a thousand times. I'll say it a thousand more. In order to get America's debt problem under control, you're going to have to touch the third rail of American politics. No one wants to do that. But what President Trump was doing last night was incredibly smart politically because Americans have two simultaneous positions.

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One, they don't want cuts to any of these major welfare programs. And two, they want cuts. So what he's doing is he's identifying cuts, but not touching the things that Americans actually don't want touched, which is smart. And just as a political matter, it's incredibly smart. And by the way, extraordinarily funny. And Democrats are sitting there all sour facing. How do you not laugh at this?

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The congresswoman from Michigan, the pro-terror congresswoman from Michigan, who herself showed up a couple of years ago at a speech or a year ago to speech, holding one of those little placards. It was incredibly memeable. It looked as though she was their Brazilian steakhouse waiting for them to bring the next round of flat iron steak.

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Like, are you in favor of teaching guinea pigs how to transgender themselves in Romania? Like, is that is that a thing that you're like huge on is super duper important or what? And then President Trump got into a litany of talk about waste and fraud in Social Security. Now, at this point, I'll point out it was it was very funny.

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I do want to point out that we are not actually paying 360 year olds their Social Security benefits. That's not actually what's going on. Basically, we have an incredibly stupid system for processing Social Security payments in which all the listings are really, really old. And there's like a default date that you list somebody's age at if you don't actually know their age.

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That goes back to 1875 or something. There's actually been an audit of Social Security. There are people who are fraudulently obtaining Social Security, but it is not tens of millions of people who are obtaining fraudulent Social Security. It was, however, a reminder that America's government is filled with kind of inanities and stupidity.

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So here is President Trump talking about waste and fraud in Social Security.

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That was a funny line. It was a funny line. Well, meanwhile, there were some actual controversial sections of the speech. The most controversial section of President Trump's speech was not anything about illegal immigration. It was nothing about foreign policy. It was none of those sort of hot buttons. It was the economy.

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So as I've been saying for a while, I am concerned that the stock market right now is overvalued. The stock market is currently running at an outrageous P.E. ratio. It's the price to earnings ratio. Typically, when you're evaluating a company, when you're trying to determine how valuable a company is, the earnings, unless it has some sort of tremendous growth potential,

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have to be demonstrated in the stock price. And a sort of typical metric that's been used for decades is a metric first put forth by Benjamin Graham, who was a sort of mentor to Warren Buffett, that suggested that the price-to-earnings ratio on a company should be somewhere at the upper end in the 16 to 18 ratio. Right now, the entire Dow Jones Industrial Average is trading at a 28 ratio.

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That's way too high. The so-called Magnuson 7 stocks, that'd be stocks like Nvidia and Amazon and Apple, they are trading at a PE ratio that exceeds 55. Certain stocks like Tesla are trading at a PE ratio that is almost 200.

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Now, it may be that Tesla justifies that stock valuation by suddenly leaping forward in AI in new and unbelievable ways and totally revolutionizing the way, for example, shipping is done in the United States. I think that's one of the promises that Elon is trying to make with Tesla. However, it seems that the stock market is currently inflated. Inflation itself remains stubbornly high.

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And so apparently all Democrats thought that was a genius idea. A bunch of them did that as well. The Democrats acted like puerile, spoiled children with no point of opposition. It felt terrible for them, truly. It wasn't even an organized opposition. This is a party that is out of control on the Democratic side of the aisle. The Republicans are in lockstep with regard to the Trump agenda.

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In other words, there are vulnerabilities in the American economy, for sure, for sure. And we've been talking about this for, at this point, several months. And if you go back to the Biden administration, longer than that. I think there's some systemic vulnerabilities in the American economy. So President Trump is trying to do some stuff about that.

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One of the things he's been trying to do, which is radically revise how regulations are done. Excellent. Unleash Doge to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse. Great. Increase productivity. By, for example, unleashing America's energy resources, which you talked about last night. Fantastic. And then there are tariffs. President Trump has talked a lot about tariffs.

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And last night, he talked a lot about tariffs. And he's using the phrase retaliatory tariffs. And there's sort of two sets of tariffs that he's talked about. One is the set of tariffs that went into place this week on Canada and Mexico.

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And already there is some sound that those tariffs are going to be revised pretty quickly because Canada and Mexico are going to make concessions with regard to, say, fentanyl or with regard to border security that will allow the United States to then lower our tariffs. The other thing that President Trump has talked about are reciprocal tariffs.

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Reciprocal tariffs are the idea, as President Trump explained last night, that if a country is tariffing our goods at 20%, we should retaliate by tariffing their goods at 20%. We are a far larger market than they are. Now, if the goal of that is to leverage their tariffs down, totally in favor. That's great.

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We should, in fact, use our market power in order to flex on those countries and force them to lower their tariffs. If, however, the idea is that tariffs are in and of themselves an economic good for the United States, that is generally untrue. Tariffs are very good for the industries that are protected, at least for a moment.

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And then when those tariffs are removed, those industries tend to be bloated and problematic. This is what happened to the American auto industry in the 1950s and 60s. We had high tariffs on foreign autos. We signed incredibly lucrative union contracts within our auto companies. Our cars became too expensive and not good enough.

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And then when we opened up any of those tariffs and we allowed, for example, Japanese cars like Toyota into the market, suddenly the American auto manufacturing sector just took a nosedive. Tariffs tend to protect bloated industries. And so the only purpose for tariffs that I think is legitimate is in order to get other people to lower their tariffs or as a matter of national security.

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You're trying to protect industries that even if they're bloated, you need them shored in the United States. President Trump has sort of a different take on tariffs. He seems to suggest over and over and over that tariffs are actually a net benefit to the American economy overall. It's just good for the American economy, tariffs.

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The evidence suggests that that is not, in fact, the case because Americans are both producers and consumers. So, again, what that means is if you're in an industry protected by a tariff because other countries now have to. The American consumer now has to pay an inflated rate for, say, a Japanese car as opposed to an American car.

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That's good for an American car manufacturer for the domestic market. It is very bad for the American consumer who now has to pay a higher price. And every American is both a producer and a consumer. And so if you're not in the industry that is positively affected by the tariff, then you're just getting hurt as a consumer.

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And overall, if there are lots of tariffs, then everybody gets hurt more as a consumer. You end up with a restricted supply of a product while the demand remains similar. And that is a recipe for actual inflation. Now, President Trump was talking about tariffs last night. He laid out a very commonsensical case for reciprocal tariffs.

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The Democrats have no capacity whatsoever to even get together in opposition. You have Nancy Pelosi, who is down there, looking fairly sober, and she was not one of the people screaming at President Trump, for example. And she herself has been demonstrative in the past.

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Again, the question for me on a going forward basis, and we'll get more into this, is whether the emphasis in the phrase reciprocal tariffs is on the word reciprocal, meaning you lower yours and we'll lower ours, you raise yours and we'll raise ours, which again, that's a great way to leverage other countries.

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Or if the emphasis is on tariffs, like tariffs are in and of themselves a positive beneficial good. As I've said before, I think President Trump likes to make the case that tariffs are a positive beneficial good, but he also could be doing that as leverage. He does this all the time. He could be saying, listen, I love tariffs so much. I love them. They're unbelievable.

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I'm totally willing to do it because I love them anyway. You're going to have to convince me not to do it. That's a good piece of leverage. Here's President Trump last night on tariffs.

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So, again, that may be true in the short term. I don't think that's true in the long term. In the short term, it's good politics. Most presidents do engage in some sort of protective trade barriers around key industries in which they are seeking to win votes. That's a longstanding policy going all the way back to Ronald Reagan and before.

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However, it remains to be seen whether that is going to have a large negative impact on the economy if, in fact, a durable set of high tariffs are to become a regular part of the American political landscape. This is the thing that I fear most. President Trump requires a strong economy. Now, the thing I know about President Trump also is he doesn't like a weak economy.

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So if it turns out that the stock market takes a dump, I don't think he's going to keep sticking with the thing that is negatively affecting his presidency. He's not stubborn when it comes to actual results. He lives in the world of reality.

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So he is not the kind of person who just keeps banging his head against a wall, seeking to achieve a different result from the same action over and over and over. OK, back to the other portions of the speech. And one of the key messages of the speech is Democrats can't clap for anything, right? He said it right at the top.

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So for example, President Trump announced that we had captured an ISIS terrorist who was responsible for the Abbey Gate massacre.

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It is worth noting at this point that Joe Biden's complete unwillingness to even reach out to and meet the families of those murdered at Abbey Gate is one of the signal blots on a not only unremarkable, but insultingly terrible political career for the former president of the United States. President Trump announced

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I mean, you remember when President Trump was president the first time, and he gave a State of the Union address, and she literally tore it up. on camera in performative fashion. She was actually the adult in the room on the Democratic side of the aisle last night. Hakeem Jeffries was basically a non-entity on the floor.

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at the State of the Union, the capture of one of the terrorists responsible, and Democrats sat on their hands.

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That's a great thing, right? Well, not for the Democrats. Again, I was sitting right above the Democratic side. The speaker's box is on the Democratic side of the aisle. And so I'm looking right down at Democrats who are all on their phones, texting, taking selfies, exploring X. I may be doing some elicit. In any case. they wouldn't get up and cheer for that.

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I mean, that's just a win for America. I don't understand. If a terrorist gets captured, that is good for America, is it not? Or how about if I were to tell you that President Trump brought home a man who was essentially held hostage by the Russians for 14 years and that he was in attendance? Would they clap then?

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The people who were getting all the attention were members of the squad, some members of the Senate. Bernie Sanders performatively walked out looking real old, walked out about 15 minutes before the end of the speech. It was a bad look for Democrats.

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So, again, Democrats, where were they? They're sitting on their hands. Hey, how about if I told you that the president of the United States called out a young man who wants to go to West Point and told him in the room that he had been admitted to West Point? Again, Trump took it to the next level.

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As I say, most of the call outs are typically not anything beyond we're going to call you and give you a hand. President Trump actually sort of handed out prizes in the room. This is a great moment. Democrats couldn't cheer for it.

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Did Democrats stand for that one? Nope. And then he gets a high five from this next person. It was actually a little bit earlier in the speech that the moment of the night came. So President Trump called out a young 13-year-old boy. And this 13-year-old boy had brain cancer several years ago. He had scars on his head from where he had surgery.

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And this boy has wanted to join NYPD, so they made him sort of an honorary member of NYPD. And then President Trump called in the new head of the Secret Service, Sean Curran. And Curran, of course, is one of the agents who was protecting Trump on that terrible day in Butler, Pennsylvania last year when the president nearly had his head blown off on live television.

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And meanwhile, President Trump was taking the 80% side of every 80-20 issue it was possible to take in the speech, and Democrats were wrong-footed the entire speech. Which is the reason, by the way, that by every available poll statistic, a large majority of people who watched the speech liked what President Trump had to say.

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And the president makes this kid an honorary member of Secret Service. It was great. It's like a wonderful moment. I don't care who you are. It's just fun and wonderful and charming and delightful. And there was literally one Democrat, one, who stood up and clapped. If you can't clap for the cancer kid, I don't know what's wrong with you people.

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I honestly, God, don't know what's wrong with you people. You have a screw loose. I mean, just on a pragmatic level, put aside this sort of moral and empathetic level. On a pragmatic level, a politically pragmatic level, what are you thinking? What in the world are you thinking? Do you like the split screen of you guys sitting on your hands? Well, a young black kid who has survived brain cancer

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is given a Secret Service membership and gives a hug to the head of the Secret Service. I'm sorry, this is like American as apple pie. It's like one of the most American things I've ever seen in my life. All it required was a yellow glow put on by a sepia light and an upswelling of music and a giant American flag unfurled in the background. It's like all that it needed, right?

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This is like Americana times a million. And you guys are sitting there on your hands looking like you're sucking on lemons. It's unbelievable. Here was the president last night.

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And then his dad holds him up, right? And like, and then he ended up giving Sean Kern a hug and one Democrat applauded. What the hell is wrong with you people? Are you insane? Have you lost your ever loving minds? You're so unlikable. You're so terrible. Like an aggregation of all the most annoying human beings on literally planet earth. That's who you are.

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And you made that absolutely clear last night over and over and over again, over and over and over again. And the president of the United States called out the family of Lakin Riley. Of course, we all know Lakin Riley's name. She was University of Georgia student who was murdered by illegal immigrants. He called out her family in the crowd. Again, Democrats sitting on their hands. No applause.

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Just unreal.

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According to CBS News, the party identification of speech watchers who were polled, 51% were Republican, 27% were Independent, and 20% were Democrat. Among speech watchers, the approval rating was 76%, which means pretty much all the Republicans and pretty much all the Independents approved of the speech.

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And again, big applause in the chamber, except from the Democrats. It was amazing. President Trump, there are some again, there's so many great moments last night, truly. And it was an amazing pleasure to be in the chamber of real honor because it was historic moment. It really feels like America is on the upswing when President Trump speaks in tones of optimism. There's a reason for that.

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I will say it was very funny in the room when when President Trump was talking about the Panama Canal and Greenland, like highly enjoyable. First of all. Secretary Rubio has already gone down and visited Panama. And Panama has already pledged they are going to get rid of Chinese ownership at both ends of the Panama Canal. We've talked about this on the show.

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There are several problems with the Panama Canal. The biggest problem is that you have two Chinese-owned companies that basically have stations at the end of each side of the Panama Canal. And should they decide to, for example, just... obstruct the canal in either direction, that is a massive threat to America's naval might on both sides of the North and South American continent.

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Like it's a real problem. And so Rubio had already, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, he'd already negotiated an end to that. He also already negotiated a win for the United States in lowering fees for the transit of American naval military ships through the Panama Canal. President Trump then says in front of Rubio and the entire crowd, we're taking the entire canal.

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And you can see that the secretary of state seems a little surprised. He, too, had a surprise under his seat as it turned out.

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One of the things President Trump did during the speech that I think was quite clever, and again, we're going to go through it in detail. So if you missed it last night, we'll go through the highlights. We'll go through the bizarre Democratic opposition. In some ways, my guess is it was better to watch it on TV.

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And then President Trump would go on to also claim Greenland. And it was very funny. At one point he says, we're going to have the ability to join us if they want to become a state. but we'll get it one way or another. The invasion of Greenland is imminent. There were two really actually important moments last night, two quite important moments.

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I think that the single most important moment came when he was talking about illegal immigration, because this is where President Trump, I talked about this yesterday on the show, this is where President Trump has experienced his biggest success. He has lowered the illegal immigration rates of the United States by 97 percent, 97 percent. That's an astonishing number.

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And again, we spoke with the borders are Tom Homan, who is straight from central casting as a law enforcement bulldog. And we talked about that with him yesterday on the backstage live. You should give it a listen. Here is the president saying the obvious. Joe Biden left the border open. He left. It was Joe Biden. It was not Congress. It was not anybody else. It was Joe Joseph R. Biden.

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I thought this was the takeaway of the night. Here was the president of the United States last night.

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Be the first to know what's happening at the Daily Wire. Head on over to dailywire.com right now. Become a member and join the team. So last night was amazing. A couple of days before President Trump's quasi state of the union address, we were invited by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to join him in the speaker's box at this address to a joint session of Congress.

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So some of this I'll be watching for the first time with you on TV because I got to see it live. But the truth is that some of it probably played even better on TV than it did in the room because Democrats were so loud and obnoxious. In many cases, it was very difficult to hear actually what President Trump was saying on the microphone. The sound system is not unbelievable in the room.

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Again, this is like his moment when he said we didn't need a new piece of legislation. We need a new president. That's the whole ballgame. It's the whole ballgame. When people look back on this historical era and they wonder how President Trump was reelected, there are many reasons why President Trump was reelected. Obviously, he's a unique political figure.

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He is sort of a colossus bestriding the American political scene. There's just no other way to see it. What he's done is historic here. But Joe Biden's signal failures on two particular issues led to his party being out of power. Those two issues were illegal immigration. He left the border wide open, wide open. And inflation. Those were the two big issues.

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And then there was a third issue lurking in the background of everybody's mind. That was really sort of the ghost in the machine of American politics. And that was the just patent insanity of saying that boys can be girls. Those were the issues. And Trump is on the right side of those issues. He is. And now, there was one moment where Democrats actually applauded. What was that one moment?

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When Trump talked about how the United States has spent the last few years funding Ukraine in its war with Russia to defend against Russian predation. And I will say, I think it was very smart of Vladimir Zelensky to finally back off the Idiotic line that he took on Friday trying to force President Trump to say things he didn't want to say.

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Zelensky issued a letter yesterday before the State of the Union address in which he essentially said, thanks to the United States for all of the aid, that he wanted to sign the rare earth minerals deal, that he's looking forward to moving toward peace. These are all things Zelensky could have said on Friday and should have said on Friday, but I'm glad that he said them yesterday.

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He's again, the off ramp is clear here. The question is not really whether Ukraine will get there. It's really whether Russia will get there. President Trump is trying his hardest to get Russia there. President Trump talked about funding Ukraine.

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And the Democrats, the only time they applauded all night, not for the cancer kid, not for the young woman with brain injury, traumatic brain injury from being pulverized by a volleyball hit by a man, not for the man who got into West Point, Not for the family of the 12-year-old girl who was murdered by illegal immigrants and now a national park is going to be named after her.

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Not for any of those people. They cheered for Ukraine. Now, the only reason they're cheering on Ukraine is because they believe that President Trump is a Russian tool. That's the only reason they care. Because I'm old enough to remember in 2012 when one Mitt Romney was running against Barack Obama and said that our largest geopolitical opponent was Russia.

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And Barack Obama said to him in open debate, the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back. So you guys are just liars. I don't believe you at all, at all. But they actually unfurled Ukraine flags. They've shared for Ukraine. And again... I want Ukraine to beat Russia. I would love for that to happen. I'm also realistic about what a final settlement looks like here.

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This led to perhaps the funniest moment of the night. We got a big laugh in the room where President Trump is talking about the war and Elizabeth Warren decides to clap very loudly. And she was in the front row and she was in the front row of the Democratic side of the aisle. And here's how it went.

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But what President Trump did, just in terms of content, he spent nearly the entire speech on domestic policy, which is smart. The American people care much more about domestic policy than they do about foreign policy. Now, listen, I care deeply about foreign policy because I think that foreign policy affects Americans.

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Oh, my gosh. Just wrong-footing them from beginning to end. An amazing performance by the President of the United States last night. He closed with some pretty inspirational talk. You know, talk that I've been... I've been saying for a while, the United States is a country of pioneers.

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And President Trump, I thought that the closing of the speech is one of the best closings of any of his speeches I've heard.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Again, this is all just great stuff. And the entire night was just Trump wrong-footing Democrats. And even Democrats kind of recognized this. So in the aftermath, not only was there great polling data suggesting that the American people really liked the speech overall, but even Democrats on the cable news channels were freaking out about the lackluster Democratic response.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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We spoke about this just a couple of days ago with regard to, for example, the use of the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency. It has a massive impact on how Americans live, even if we don't think about it a lot. But what President Trump understands on an innate kind of gut level is that Americans care when he says America first, when most Americans here is not 1930s isolationism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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So Jake Tapper properly pointed out the Democrats just seemed to absolutely demoralize the whole night. They did. I was in the room. I was watching them the whole night. They looked as though they just wanted to crawl in a hole. They looked like they couldn't believe they had to be there. And they had no unified point of opposition. Truly amazing stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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I mean, that is right. That is totally right by Jake Tapper right there. And by the way, neither do some of the hosts. So last night, in one of the more disgusting moments, actually, MSNBC host Nicole Wallace, she was talking about T.J. Daniel, who's a 13-year-old cancer survivor. And after expressing her warm feelings for him, she then somehow turned it into a referendum on January 6th.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Unbelievable. That's your take? That's it? Really? That's where you went with that? Really? You're doing an amazing job. Rachel Maddow flipped out, which is her usual mode. You never know whether she's going to laugh, whether she's going to cry, Rachel Maddow. I think that's kind of her resting confused face. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Really? Calm down. It's fine. He wanted to be there. The kid got to become a Secret Service agent like it was good. It'll be all right, guys. You'll survive. Even Stephen Colbert was mocking the Democrats for their feeble response. He was celebrating Al Green because Stephen Colbert is such an idiot. But here is Stephen Colbert basically. Why can't you all be Al Green? OK. All right. It's a take.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Well, most Americans here is not some sort of racist buzzword. What they hear is that American citizens should be taken care of first as a first priority. And that is inarguable. Of course, that is 100 percent true. And so the entire speech last night was directed at this thing. And President Trump kept picking, again, the issues where he is clearly the winner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And there's Stephen Colbert holding up a sign that says, try doing something, and to cheers. Well, they can't do anything because they lose. Apparently, President Trump's strategy here is, I win, you lose. So, and Democrats buying right into it. So, slow clap for the genius Democrats. Really an amazing job.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Alrighty, coming up, we're going to get into the Democratic response, the official response to President Trump's State of the Union address. First, a couple of reminders. One, Please go to PardonDerek.com, that's P-A-R-D-O-N-D-E-R-E-K.com, PardonDerek.com, to join our campaign to get a federal pardon for Derek Chauvin, the man who was clearly railroaded in the George Floyd death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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A federal pardon won't free him from jail, but it will reset the table on his conviction in state court. And of course, it will rectify a grievous judicial wrong. Whether you believe that he was responsible for George Floyd's death or not, there's no question he did not get a fair trial. There's just no question about any of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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By the way, he is not responsible for George Floyd's death, in my opinion. Make sure that you go to PardonDerek.com right now and sign up because we are going to be putting some pressure inside the administration for precisely this. Also... Before we discuss anything with regard to Elise Slotkin's response to President Trump last night, you have to become a Daily Wire member.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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I mean, it's just required. We have so much great content there. Not only are you going to get to hang out with me behind the paywall for All Access Live or in the mailbag, you're also going to get all of Matt Walsh's amazing content ranging from his show to What is a Woman to Am I Racist? You can check out Run, Hide, Fight and other amazing entertainment content.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Bye.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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The two biggest issues that he mentioned over and over last night, illegal immigration and boys are not girls. These are 80-20 issues in the American public mind. Even Democrats understand that the Joe Biden open border was totally unworkable and, in fact, was a deliberately evil attempt to open America's southern border and endanger America's economy and endanger her citizens.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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There is literally no excuse you can think of that is good enough to explain why he opened the border, a non-nefarious excuse for why he opened the border. And Americans know that. So President Trump spent an awful lot of time on that last night. President Trump also spent an awful lot of time on the basic proposition that boys are not girls.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And I have to say, I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and I keep asking them the same question. You know, you guys, you lost the last election. You didn't get totally blown out. Republicans only have a very slim majority in the House, a very slim majority in the Senate. And President Trump won all the swing states. But it's not as though he won 360 electoral votes or something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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He didn't win a 49-state landslide. So why do you guys keep holding on to an issue in which you guys prove that you are insane? You guys keep saying on the trans issue, it's a small issue. Why do you guys keep talking? Who cares? It's a tiny percent of the population. Here is the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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When you pick an issue and say a totally loony thing about that issue, it implicates your views on all the other issues. If I am interviewing to be your accountant and we have a great interview and all of it is going just fine, and then I drop the idea very seriously that birds are not real, that birds are a mythical creature and actually all birds are robots.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Even if I mention that for 30 seconds out of our two-hour interview, are you hiring me? The answer, of course, is no, because you now know that I'm insane. So if Democrats choose to take the insane side of what is a clear issue, then they are going to lose. And President Trump knows that, and he hammered it home time and time again last night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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By the way, again, kudos to the people who are sitting next to me in the speaker's box, Matt Walsh and Riley Gaines, two people who have fought endlessly on this particular issue. So many of us fought for freedom on the issue of men are not women. But this country was founded on freedom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Brits? Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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By we, I mean me and Matt Walsh. And it was truly a terrific experience. In our row was our friend Riley Gaines, who, of course, has taken such a lead on the trans in sports issue. Tom Homan, the border czar, was also just a few seats down. We had the opportunity to sit with Tom Homan a little bit beforehand for the backstage live episode.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network. Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com. You make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless price right again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro and claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Again, visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. Go check them out right now. Get the special deal, puretalk.com slash Shapiro and claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Again, they're the company that I use for all of my cell phone needs, my cell coverage. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com. Also, you know what's frustrating? Spending hours searching for the best car insurance rates. I used to spend the entire weekend comparing quotes way back when, only to end up more confused than when I started. And so I was thrilled to discover that Insurify exists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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It's the insurance comparison site that revolutionized how everybody shops for coverage. They have dozens of top insurers competing for your business, and that means better rates for you. The best part? Everything happens online. No phone calls, no fees, absolutely no spam. In just 10 minutes, you can secure coverage from trusted insurance providers across the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Their privacy matters at Insurify. They never sell your information. With their decades of experience and excellent Trustpilot ratings, you know that you're in great hands. Go to Insurify.com to compare car insurance quotes in real time and start saving today. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y.com, Insurify.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Average potential savings based on initial quotes received by 183,234 customers seeking insurance through Insurify. Actual savings may vary depending on the state of residence, individual circumstances, coverage selections, and insurance provider. Savings results are not guaranteed. Go check out your rates today at Insurify.com. That's Insurify.com. So I want to get into the actual speech.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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So President Trump comes into the chamber. Obviously, Republicans are ecstatic because America is back. And that was the feeling. Here is the opening of President Trump's very optimistic speech about the future of the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And again, you can see President Trump is in such a great mood. You can see it in the hand motions. I will say that it is a little tiring being in there for like an hour and 45 minutes during the speech. And, you know, you're standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down. You get your squats in. I will say that your hands get a little tired from from all of the applauding.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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You should take a listen to that and hear what Tom has to say about the status of the American southern border. The enthusiasm was tremendous. Before the actual address to the joint session of Congress, there's sort of a big meet and greet inside the speaker's office and in the hallways surrounding.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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I've done more applauding last night than I think I've done probably in my entire life combined, mainly because I don't applaud for things all that often. But it was amazing. And again, the feeling in the room on the right side of the aisle was absolute enthusiasm. We're back, baby. We're going to do this thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And on the left side of the aisle, it looked as though everyone had just taken a cyanide pill. I mean, really, it was that bad for the Democrats. And so it was in that moment that a hero for the Democrats arose. That hero's name is Representative Al Green. Representative Al Green from Houston, Texas, is an old man. I mean, he just, there's no other way to put it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Representative Al Green is a 77-year-old man. He walks with a cane. And he decided that it would be a wise move to get up at the beginning of the speech and start yelling at the president of the United States and never stop yelling at the president of the United States. Now, we've spoken with Speaker Johnson before. He had expected all sorts of antics from the Democrats. Some of those materialized.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Some of those did not. There were rumors Democrats were going to bring empty egg cartons and wave them at President Trump because the price of eggs is too high, a phenomenon that started, of course, under Joe Biden. been too high for a while. There was some talk that Democrats were going to chant, they were going to yell, they were going to bring props, all of the rest of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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He did say that he thought there was a very good shot he was going to have to pound the gavel on the table and then invoke congressional rules of order to bring some sort of order back to the situation. Well, Al Green decided that he was going to be the man who stood up. He was going to be the guy who set up the breach.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Now, Al Green is also one of the people who, as we'll see, has been calling for President's impeachment from literally the first day that President Trump became president again. He is a leader of the resistance, but like the old guard of the resistance. And he started shouting at President Trump, bizarrely enough, about a topic that is really stupid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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One of the things about Trump that befuddles Democrats is that many of the key issues that they have yelled at Republicans about are not Trump's issues. So, for example, last night, Democrats were holding up these little signs that save Medicaid. President Trump said he's not going to cut Medicaid. or save Medicare, or save Social Security.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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President Trump, to my chagrin, has said that he doesn't want to touch any of those large-scale entitlement programs. So this totally falls flat. So President Trump says, I have a mandate. I won the seven swing states. We have Congress. Democrats have been rejected across the board.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And Al Green starts yelling at him that he does not have a mandate to change the entitlement programs, a thing that Trump himself has said he does not want to do. I mean, if that is your resistance, playbook. I just don't understand. It doesn't make any sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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A lot of cabinet secretaries stopped by, so I got a chance to say hello to many of the cabinet secretaries we've had on the show, many of whom you know and I know. And it's great. I mean, this administration is just filled with terrific people. Everybody from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to the treasury secretary, Scott Besson, to the commerce secretary, Howard Blutnick was there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And by the way, the optic of the man who's going to lead the resistance is a 77-year-old man waving his cane at the president of the United States. Not a great optic, my dude. If you're going to get somebody to do this, get one of your hot, fresh-faced new people to do it. Go get yourself an Ilhan Omar or an AOC or Rashida Tlaib or an Ayanna Press. Get somebody who's got some juice. The

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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Al Green, this was your move, guys? And then he yelled long enough that he had to be taken out by the sergeant at arms. Here's how it looked.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And look at the other Democrats. The Democrats are sitting there, and even they are like, there's nothing we can do about this. Now, you can imagine a scenario where Democrats had actually planned a quote-unquote act of resistance, where Trump said something, and they knew he was going to say it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And then one of them got up and shouted at the president, had to be removed, and the rest of the Democrats walked out as a show of solidarity. That at least would be like an interesting optical move. But Democrats' move was, Al Green was going to yell at the president from the outset about a dumb topic that President Trump is not even taking on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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And then they were all going to sit there looking half-depressed. Cheers to you guys. I mean, just optically genius. And then Al Green leaves the chamber and proceeds to say that he's initiating impeachment against President Trump. I'm sure it's going to go well, my dude.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2151 - Trump’s HOME RUN State of the Union!

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OK, so you're going for another. Congrats to you. This is the face of your Democratic Party. I can't imagine why you guys are doing so poorly. So back to the speech. President Trump announces correctly that he has been the most active president in the first month of his administration of any president in modern history. This, of course, is absolutely true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

Hey folks, Ben Shapiro here. Do not miss our latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage. Join me and Matt Walsh from Washington, D.C. Jeremy Boring, Andrew Klavan, Michael Mullins, they were stuck at HQ. As we discuss everything State of the Union related, we'll give you a behind-the-scenes peek. We were joined by Tom Homan, our border czar. It's awesome stuff. Take a listen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Well, I mean, I think that you're going to expect a very enthusiastic Republican reception. We heard from the speaker that we are expecting a bunch of Democrats to show up with empty egg cartons and they're going to wave them at the president about egg prices. That'll show him. Noisemakers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Folks, I need to tell you about a great way you can improve your quality of life. It's something I've been doing for years that I cannot recommend enough. Is it transcendental meditation classes? Nope, me meditating? It sounds unbelievably boring, so it's not going to happen. Is it Reiki energy healing? I mean, that looks relaxing, but nope, I'm not going to be doing that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I don't know about you, but that kind of stuff is not for me. So what do I do to improve my health and energy if wacky self-care schemes are out? Well, it isn't complicated. It's Bull & Brand Sheets, baby. With their 100% organic cotton sheets, I get a great sleep every single night, and I wake up refreshed to tackle the day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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You ever wonder why you're feeling groggy and frankly resentful toward the world every second you're forced to be awake? It's because your cheapo store brand sheets are holding you back. Getting sleep is one of the most important things you can and must do to be a functioning, happy human being. I can even rest when I'm on the road with their wonderful waffle throw. I do not travel without it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Not even joking. It's in my suitcase. It's truly the easiest thing you can do to feel energized and refreshed. Feel the difference for yourself, gang. Try Bull & Branch sheets for an entire month. If they don't change the way you sleep, you can send them back for a full refund for a limited time only. Get 20% off plus free shipping at bullandbranch.com slash backstage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And as your chance, change the way you sleep with Bull & Branch. That's Bull & Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash backstage to save 20%. Exclusions apply. Seaside for details.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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They're going to try and disrupt as many things as possible, but they've been unable to disrupt the agenda thus far. And so I think they're going to have a rough time of it tonight. But, you know, we'd be remiss. We don't get to sit with the borders are very often. So borders are on home. What are you expecting tonight?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Oh, it is going to be great. And first of all, I think there's a good shot that President Trump is going to announce this rare earth mineral deal with Ukraine. So it'll be a big win for him. And I think it'll rectify a lot of the breach that happened last Friday in that extraordinarily combative press conference between Zelensky, President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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He's obviously going to talk about his accomplishments on immigration that Borsar Homan just mentioned a moment ago. He's going to be talking about the investments that were just made by a number of companies in America. The TSMC, which is, of course, the gigantic semiconductor maker in Taiwan, has announced they're going to spend $100 billion additionally in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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The Honda Civic is now going to be produced entirely in Indiana as opposed to in Mexico. I'm sure he's going to be talking a lot about that. There's been a lot of winning. He's going to talk about DEI. I'm sure he'll talk about Matt's big issue, the issue that if one person really helped push over the line, it was Matt Walsh, the death of men in women's sports.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I'm sure he's going to mention that as well. It's been a I mean, this has been, as we discussed last time we were together, the fastest moving administration in modern American history. I mean, this administration is moving like absolute lightning. It's going to give Trump a lot to talk about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And of course, it's going to get spicy because I would be shocked if there's no dramatics from the fainting couch left out there. Some of them are not showing up. And frankly, to me, that seems like the best tactic for some of them. I think that the ones who are idiots are going to show up and make fools of themselves.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I mean, I think there's some of that. I also think that there is something else happening, too, and that is that there's been this myth in democratic politics really since 2012 that you could create a permanent minority-majority coalition. And so it was almost a no-loss proposition for them. They figured that they were going to win more Hispanic votes in the United States by opening the vote.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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by opening the border, and they could simultaneously bring in new voters. And at the same time, they'd be pleasing all of their white liberal college graduates who believe that the United States bears blood guilt for ever having won Texas and California from Mexico. And so it was sort of a win-win for them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And what they didn't understand is that you are now creating a backlash that's going to make for your undoing. If there's one issue more than any other that really swung the election, it was the illegal immigration issue. And number two was the trans issue. And Democrats are unable to kind of let go of both.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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But I want to ask my buddy Matt here, because he's been sitting here silently as is his wants during our backstage. He's always very excited to be here, as we know. And he's even more excited to travel. Matt, do you feel the electricity? Do you feel the energy? Are you just, like, ecstatic to be here?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I'm going to note that right before this, by the way, Matt actually did up his tie. Like a few minutes ago, before we began, Matt had not buttoned his top button. Well, it's still not buttoned. Yeah, but you've got the tie tight enough that you can masquerade. And his shirt was pretty loose. And he kind of looked as though, and he had the cup of whiskey in front of him and the glass whiskey.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And he looked as though, you know, he'd worked a long day at the accounting office. Right. And now he'd been finally released to his local pub where he could, you know, just let this high down a little bit. And that was actually him dressed up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I will say it was pretty cool. We met with Speaker Johnson right before this, and he actually took us to take a picture, which I'm sure has now been posted online. And he actually showed us a room that apparently has never been used in the Capitol building, which was a prayer room. It was actually like a prayer room off to the side. It's really cool.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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It is a beautiful stained glass window of George Washington kneeling in prayer, you know, the famous painting, and emblems from all 50 states. And George Washington was the last one to use it. Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, at least use it for prayer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I mean, I'm hoping that none of the other Congress people discovered it because the one rule about Congress is you never want to blacklight anything here. It's just a huge mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would be a little surprised if he rolls back the tariffs that quickly. I think that he has to have some sort of headline that he can latch on to in order to do that, some sort of win that he can say that he prized out of Canada or Mexico in order to do that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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The one thing about President Trump that I've said many times, but I think you're going to see it play out with regard to these tariffs, is that President Trump likes good headlines and he does not like bad headlines. Once the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops by 1,500 points in two days, and suddenly the lights start blinking red.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I don't think that President Trump is so wedded to the magical idea of tariffs that he won't reverse himself in order to sort of preserve economic health. That's one thing. There have been some rumors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I doubt that he'll do it tonight, but obviously I was pushing very hard today to pardon Derek Chauvin, which I think would be a good move for the country because while he was convicted on state charges, it wouldn't free him from prison, I do think that it would be very good and salutary for the country for the federal government to make clear that it is not going to

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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hold to account people for crimes they did not commit and in which the jury was pretty obviously poisoned by everybody surrounding the court.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Anybody who thinks that Derek Chauvin got a fair trial, regardless of what you think of the actual outcome of the trial, anybody who pretends that that was even remotely a fair trial or the evidence stacked up to the conviction in that case, I, honest to God, don't understand what you're thinking, to be fairly frank with you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And again, I think it would be a shocker if President Trump said anything about it tonight, but I would not be surprised if something in the near future is done about it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Yeah, yeah, bye. Catch you later.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Well, I mean, right now we're just wondering why we're here. Cause I mean, well, we're exhausted. I mean,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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very long evening yeah and and my annoyance is a you sent the two most easily annoyed people in america to this and uh and and now you're bringing us back and it's 11 35 at night so i have not i have not clapped and i have not clapped that much like in total in my entire life as i did in the room so it's a lot of clapping i will say that um

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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There was one point when Trump thanked them for voting for Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. They didn't even clap for that. I mean, it really was an impressive show. And they kind of were gradually walking out. You could see Bernie Sanders maybe 15, 20 minutes before the end. He gets up and he walks out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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You can see a bunch of the Democratic Congress people starting to file out kind of slowly during the actual event. Now, President Trump's energy was really good. I mean, President Trump is happy to be there. He's in a very good mood. Obviously, Republicans love him. They're really pumped. They're really ready to go. A lot of enthusiasm. And I got to tell you, the Democrats felt dead.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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They felt dead. I mean, it felt like the air had been sucked out of their side of the room, not just because they were depressed because they lost, but also because there's just no juice to the resistance anymore. It feels as though they have kind of lost their point of opposition. And so they're kind of sitting there in weirdly... Oh, my gosh.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And again, when they applauded Ukraine, which which, again, was less about their love of Ukraine and much more about their belief that President Trump is a caspaw of Vladimir Putin. So as far as the speech itself, I think that it is very clear that President Trump was focusing in on two really, really big themes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Aside from the tariffs, which I heard you guys talking about, the two big themes that he kept coming back to. And he actually did come back to them multiple times. He actually would go away from them and then come back to them again. Illegal immigration. He beat the border to death tonight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And I think that that was actually a really smart strategy because it is the greatest single success of the administration so far. I mean, we were talking to Tom Homan earlier. The stats that he was citing are extraordinary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And when President Trump brought that up and talked repeatedly about the damage that criminal illegal immigrants have done in the country and kept going back to that, that is a huge issue. It is an entire country moving issue. And then the other big issue was, of course, one that is all near and dear to our hearts. I mean, obviously, we all care about illegal immigration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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But the one that maybe The Daily Wire has taken the lead on as a company more than any other company in America is the trans issue. President Trump spoke about it. He left it. He came back to it. He came back to it repeatedly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And we had the pleasure, Matt and I, of sitting next to Riley Gaines, who, of course, has also been a big sort of character in pushing forward the notion that traditional sex actually is the metric for how we measure human beings in terms of, for example, sports. And the energy in the room for those two issues was extremely high.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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He gave what I thought was properly short shrifted foreign policy, actually, because he is a domestic policy president. He said, we're going to strengthen the military. We're going to we're going to rebuild our shipping. We're going to build Golden Dome, which is a take on Iron Dome, even though Iron Dome, for the record, is actually a system for shooting down short range rockets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And Golden Dome would be presumably a large missile defense system designed for shooting down, say, supersonic sort of low, low altitude Chinese missiles. You know, same difference. He kind of talked about that, but it was all domestically focused. And I think that's totally appropriate for a president who is, in fact, domestically focused. And I know you guys are talking about the tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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It's interesting to see how he's playing the tariffs and it'll be interesting to see how they materialize. The big question going forward, I think, for both the economy and for President Trump is whether the key word in the phrase reciprocal tariff is reciprocal or tariff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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So if the key word there is reciprocal, I think that, you know, what he's going to do is what, Jeremy, you were talking about, leverage other countries to lower their own tariffs in order so that we can get our tariffs lower and then more free trade for everyone. Yay, hooray. If the key word there is tariff and not reciprocal, meaning what he actually just likes are the tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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economic theory and history tell that that is a dicey proposition. You can see the effects on the stock market almost immediately. You've seen it over the course of the last couple of days alone when Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,500 points. Again, that is a dicey game that he's playing right there if he's fighting inflation. Large-scale tariffs tend not to lower inflation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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They tend to increase prices of goods and services because you're limiting supply while leaving demand exactly the same, which obviously increases prices. And then the question is just going to be whether it is a leverage play or whether it is a principal play that he sort of likes tariffs and has a vision of the world in which everyone reshores to the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And we export, but we don't import, which, again, I think that that is likely to result in some pretty dire economic side effects.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I mean, I think what's in it for us is actually a pretty good pitch. What's in it for us is a pretty good pitch. I think the thing that we do have to remember, however, is that we are also, there is something in it for us, which is namely that our gigantic national debt is actually funded by other countries who are buying our bonds.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I mean, so it turns out that actually there are two sides to the story. It's not just the United States funding everybody else. The reality is that everybody else is also funding us by holding the dollar as the global reserve currency and then holding bonds that they can easily transfer into dollars. So, again, economics is a bit of a sensitive game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And, you know, the one thing and this is the thing that I really fear for President Trump's administration. The one thing that can send things south, because the Democrats are so gone. They're so gone. I mean, that's what you can see in the room. They have lost it. They've lost it. When it comes to the trans issue, they've completely lost it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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When it comes to illegal immigration, they've completely lost it. They're just so far from common sense. The one thing that could really hurt Trump is an economic downturn. It's the one thing he cannot afford. No president can afford it. President Trump more than most because he's seen as a pro, correctly, as a pro-business president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And so anything that can be done to avoid an economic downturn is the thing that he really has to do. The good news about Trump, I think, is that even if he loves tariffs, like adores them, President Trump also, even more than that, likes good headlines and does not like bad headlines. And so if the economy starts to go south, This is one area where President Trump will stick and move.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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By the way, credit to Zelensky for recognizing that he really, really needed to put out a statement before this speech. I mean, seriously, Zelensky blew that meeting on Friday in a massive, massive way. I went through on my show, like the entire details of that meeting, like went through all 50 minutes of that particular meeting. And Zelensky really blew it. And then he continued to blow it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And then today he came back and he said the thing he was supposed to say, which is we're very, very grateful for all the support. We're ready to sign a rare earth mineral deal. We're trying to get to the end of this war. And so tonight, instead of President Trump spending half the speech shellacking Zelensky in Ukraine, instead, President Trump did what he does, which is he pocketed the victory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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And again, I think we're all saying very similar things here. I don't think that President Trump, when it comes to these policies, is sitting there thinking, OK, if I move my rook here, they're going to move their knight here. And then if they move their knight here, I'm going to move my bishop here, checkmate. That's not how President Trump thinks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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The way that he thinks is much more like, I'm going to do this thing. And if you respond in the way that I want, then we can make a deal. And if you respond in a way I don't want, I'm going to hit you. And you know what? Most policy can actually get done fairly well that way. I will say, I did enjoy the break with tradition that was pretty evident from the beginning of the speech.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I think this is what he meant when he said, remember, he put out this truth social in all caps. I'm going to speak plainly tonight. And everybody's like, I don't know what that means. Like, when has he ever not spoken plainly? Where is the subtlety, my man? But, you know, I think what he meant, I'm going to speak plainly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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What he meant was, I'm just going to, if I feel like banging on the Democrats, I'm just going to bang on the Democrats. When he started off, right, I mean, it's hysterically funny. When he started off right near the top and he said, listen, I've been doing this for five years. Five years, five times I've come to you. They never clapped once. I don't even care anymore.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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I'm sorry, that's really funny. And it cuts through the bullshit of the entire sort of evening, which is, you know, propped up as this sort of almost post-imperial event. I've spoken on the program a thousand times about how much I generally hate State of the Union addresses. I will say it was kind of funny because it felt like kind of a post-State of the Union, State of the Union.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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But I'll go a step further.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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He's just hilarious. In the room, it was very funny. There were a lot of things that we were chuckling at in the room, for sure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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At the very beginning, they're clapping for him, and he actually did the Trump dance. I don't know if you guys can see that on camera. He actually did. When they were giving the big ovation, I don't know if they're panning in the crowd or whatever, he literally stepped to the side of the podium and did this thing. Yeah. I noticed this. It was really funny, like really funny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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Yeah, and when you talk about this, it's very clear that the Biden administration, it was an act of will for them to leave the border this way. I was talking to you before we were on air that I was actually down at the border in Arizona. There's a Native American reservation right along the border.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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There's no fencing there because the Native American reservation doesn't want there to be fencing there. And so basically it's wide open. And the Biden administration, I was told by Border Patrol, had assigned them to process people as a number one priority. The drug cartels would essentially drive up with a truck filled with people. They would unload them at the border.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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There was actually a button they could hit at the border that would call Border Patrol to them. Border Patrol would then have to take them for processing, and that would leave the rest of the border completely wide open for the predations of the drug cartels. I think one part of the story that hasn't been told here is just how much the Biden administration enriched the drug cartels.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress

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The drug cartels made literally billions of dollars off of human trafficking and drug smuggling during the course of the Biden administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Folks, let Donald J. Trump cook. So, last night, President Trump gave a press conference, an absolutely stunning, groundbreaking... timeline changing press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he announced his plan for the day after in the Gaza Strip. And people are going absolutely insane over this plan in the Gaza Strip.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What I do know is that all of the same conventional wisdom morons who said that the Abraham Accords would never happen were wrong. All those same conventional wisdom morons who said moving the Jerusalem embassy would set the entire Middle East on fire were wrong and stupid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All the same conventional wisdom dolts who suggested that pressuring Israel in the middle of a war was somehow going to result in more peace rather than more war. They were wrong and stupid. So let the man cook. He did it better than you. He did it better than you, and he's doing it better than you. Okay, so that brings us to the actual proposal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So President Trump yesterday did a press conference. At this press conference, he made the announcement that the United States would take over the Gaza Strip. Now, I don't know what this looks like in practicality, and President Trump didn't spell out any details.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the vision is basically that the United States, presumably getting security help from the Israelis, private contractors, and all of the rest, would essentially turn this into an investment area because it's border territory with the Med. The Mediterranean Sea is right there. This is all the same coastline as Tel Aviv. And so here's President Trump explaining his plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you look back to Trump term number one, perhaps the most stunning example of President Trump thinking differently was the Abraham Accords. Everybody said he was not going to be able to get any sort of deal done in the Middle East. Instead, he ended up with the first true Arab-Israeli peace deals in modern history. He didn't win the Nobel Prize for that because the left hates him too much.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So everybody who is against this, I have a question. What is your alternative? Seriously, I'd love to hear it. Alternatives, anyone? Maybe the alternative that will be put forward by the Arab states is, OK, we don't want this. So now we're going to go in and we'll volunteer to clean it up, in which case President Trump gets a win.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the alternative cannot be continued Hamas rule because that is not going to happen. And just imagine for a second if, wait for it, President Trump was actually right, since he has been right on the Middle East many times before. Imagine if this actually became an economic development zone. where there were in fact hotels, where there were in fact casinos, where there were houses and schools.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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but that was all Nobel Prize worthy and everyone knows it, including the left. Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize for existing. Donald Trump did not win the Nobel Prize for a variety of peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And if Donald Trump had been reelected in 2020, He was just weeks away from brokering a Saudi-Israeli Abraham Accord.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I know, a crazy idea that a beautiful piece of beachfront property might actually be a beautiful piece of beachfront property as opposed to a giant terror hellhole. But is anyone else thinking differently about this? Because it turns out that you thinking the same way brought us here. You thinking the same way brought us here. Now, thinking differently might be a better idea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that's true in your life as well. Now, when it comes to selling your car privately, it can be a giant headache. Endless negotiations, tire kickers, paperwork assholes. But there is a better way to get your unused car off your hands. For 30 years, Cars for Kids has perfected the car donation process to make it truly effortless.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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They'll take your car in any condition, running or not, turn it into funds for kids in need, plus a tax deduction for you. It takes just two minutes on the phone or at cars4kids.org to donate. They'll take over from there, getting your car picked up as soon as the very next day. No haggling, no scheduling conflicts, no paperwork nightmares.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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You'll receive a vacation voucher and maximum tax deduction. while supporting proven programs that help children reach their full potential. With over a million successful donations over three decades, Cars for Kids continues to be a trusted partner for car donors across the country. Again, it's free, convenient, and easy, freeing up your driveway while making a difference for the next generation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Check them out right now. Call 1-877-CARS4KIDS. That's K-A-R-S, the number for kids. Or donate online at Cars4Kids. That's with the number four. Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Donate your car today. car today. Also, what does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts, you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market, inflation, up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball already?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Well, until then, over 38,000 businesses have found a way to future-proof their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP. Imagine having your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR all seamlessly integrated into one fluid platform. That's NetSuite. With this unified business management suite, you're not just juggling numbers,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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You're wielding a powerful tool that gives you the visibility and control to make quick, informed decisions. It's like having a map in a maze of market uncertainties. Real-time insights, forecasting, check. It's like peering into the future with actionable data right at your fingertips. And here's a game changer. You'll be closing your books in days, not weeks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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That means less time drowning in paperwork, more time focusing on what truly matters, steering your business towards success. At The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they're leading the way in future-proofing operations for businesses around the world. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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NetSuite adapts to your needs, helping you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. So he was asked about his plan for the Palestinians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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And what he said is, listen, if you want to leave, you should be able to leave. And guess what? If you're a terrorist supporter, there's no reason you have a right to stay. So the plan is that if you want to go, you should be able to go elsewhere. And guess what? You know, this bizarre idea that people need to be trapped in this zone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is because Donald Trump does not think inside the box. So here's what the conventional wisdom says, and then we'll get to what exactly Donald Trump is proposing that is just exploding brains across the conventional wisdom spectrum. The conventional wisdom has said some of these following propositions with regard to Israel and the Palestinians, the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's polling data, by the way, showing that a huge percentage of Palestinians, if they could get out, would want to. Here is President Trump saying, listen, population movement is the constant of human history. There is no right to live in a terror hellhole. Backing Hamas, building terror tunnels and basically driving millions of people into despair, poverty and death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's no there's no right to that. And if people want to live there, they can live there. And if they don't want to live there, they can't live there. But there's going to be a rebuilding time. So let's get real about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Caitlin Collins was very upset about this because, again, conventional wisdom is you have to keep millions of people suffering in an area dominated by terrorism so that what a terror state can be built and threaten its neighbors. Here's President Trump saying, no, I have a different idea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, what is your alternative? You got one? Let's hear it. President Trump was asked about resettling 1.7 million people, and here was his answer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, now I have a question. Is it more humanitarian to keep people in rubble? Is that the humanitarian thing to do? To keep them in rubble and poverty with no workable economy? Because guess what? Israel is not allowing work visas from the Gaza Strip. That is not a thing that is going to happen under current situations or any time in the future so long as the status quo ante is returned to.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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One, the way that you get to Middle Eastern peace is by solving the Palestinian problem first. by solving the intractable Palestinian issue first, and then peace blooms across the Middle East. This has been the going conventional wisdom for decades in the Middle East. And it was wrong. It was stupid. It is wrong. It has been stupid. Oslo was an ongoing process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So what exactly is the alternative plan? All the people who are, oh my God, let them cook, let them cook. President Trump says, listen, we'll make it nice for people to live elsewhere. Why would they want to live in hell? Exactly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, again, the question would be the alternative. The conventional wisdom has been tried for 80 years, gang. And guess what? It has ended in nothing but death, despair, war, terrorism, the training of young kids to become future terrorists. That's what it has ended in. Okay, so President Trump says, you know, what's the United States' role in all this?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, I see a long-term ownership position is what President Trump has to say. Now, again, There are a lot of details that have to be filled in. There has to be a plan that's filled in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, this could be a negotiating gambit in order to get the Arab states to actually say, we don't want what Trump is talking about, so we are going to get involved in the rebuilding and guarantee the security of the Gaza Strip. This could be a lot of different things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What it isn't is the conventional things that have already been tried and have failed 100,000 times over the course of the years. I saw a tweet last night from one of these conventional wisdom fools saying, well, why don't we just say that the people in Gaza get to stay in Gaza and live side by side in peace with the Israelis? Oh, I don't know. Maybe reality intervened.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Maybe reality should at some point clock people in the head. It turns out it clocked the Israelis in the head on October 7th. And here is President Trump talking about his plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Oslo Accords, which were originally put forward in the early 1990s, have been ongoing for three decades, and they are one of the giant failures in the history of diplomacy. They've resulted in more death, more carnage, more destruction, less safety, and all-out war in the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, it is hilarious to me that Trump says, I want to turn this area into a thriving center of commerce. I want to turn it into a Riviera on the Middle East. And people are saying, how could you be so cruel to the Palestinians? Your alternatives, please. Your conventional wisdom has failed. I'm just going to say it over and over and over because it's true. It's true.

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You keep saying the same thing over and over and over like a fool or a madman. And then nothing changes. The place keeps being a terror-ridden hellhole. And your response to the possible changing of that area into something that could actually be good is that you're upset about it in some way? That's your first response? I have a feeling that maybe you might have a slightly different agenda.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump made some other announcements at this press conference. He announced that the United States would be ending its support for the awful and evil UN Human Rights Council and the UN Refugee Works Agency, which is a corrupt tool of Hamas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump, throughout that conventional wisdom, what he said was, listen, we have an intractable problem over here. A deeply radicalized population that wants to completely destroy its neighbor. The Palestinian population has no interest in a quote unquote two state solution, living side by side in peace and prosperity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So again, this is correct. The conventional wisdom that you have to keep funding evil institutions to do evil things with American taxpayer dollars is pretty incredible. President Trump also had some comments about getting the rest of the hostages out. What he said is, listen, Hamas should move on to a phase two here because what's going to come if they don't is not going to be pleasant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the meeting between President Trump and Netanyahu and the entire team was, of course, very warm. President Trump shouted out other members of his administration in the middle of this press conference, pointing out the solidity of his administration in pursuit of these new ideas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, perhaps the funniest moment came when President Trump was asked at this press conference a question by a female Afghani reporter who apparently wanted him to recognize the Taliban or something, and it didn't go amazing for her.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so if there's going to be peace in the Middle East, we are going to take that issue. We're going to put it to the side. And instead, we are going to look to the common security and economic interests of Israel and its other Arab neighbors. And the Abraham Accords was the result. Everyone said it couldn't be done. Everyone said it was stupid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'm sorry. He's a funny man. He's a very, very funny man. Well, in a second, we'll get to President Trump's Iran policy, which he also announced yesterday. And it is a return to the maximum containment, maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian terrorist state. First, no matter where you are watching or listening right now, take a second and hit that follow button.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It doesn't cost you anything. It makes a huge difference in fighting back against the algorithm that really, really doesn't want you to hear this show. If you want the full show, uncensored, uninterrupted, unshackled from Big Tech Overlord's There's only one way to do that. Become a Daily Wire Plus member.

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As a member, you get unlimited access to our entire library of premium entertainment, including the culture-shaping documentary, What is a Woman? And the hilariously offensive box office hit, Am I Racist? Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe now and join the fight. Meanwhile, President Trump did announce yesterday. An executive order cracking down on Iran. He has said he doesn't want war with Iran.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's not interested in a military strike if one can be avoided. But he's putting significant pressure on Iran, maximum pressure on the government of Iran to deny all of their path to a nuclear weapon. And President Trump was asked in the Oval Office while signing this executive order, Mr. President, there's a lot of talk about Iran trying to assassinate you. What would happen if that happened?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to this brand new executive order from the White House, the Iranian government, including the IRGC, is using agents and cyber-enabled means to target United States nationals living in the United States and other countries around the world for attacks, including assault, kidnapping, and murder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Iran has also directed its proxy groups, including Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad organization, to embed sleeper cells in the homeland to be activated in support of this terrorist activity.

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Iran bears responsibility for the horrific Hamas massacres committed on October 7th, 2023, and bears responsibility for continued Houthi attacks against the United States Navy, Allied Navies, and international commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Since April 2024, the regime has twice demonstrated its willingness to launch ballistic and cruise missile attacks against the state of Israel.

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Everybody said that it was backwards and wrong and unsophisticated and naive and not nuanced. And it turns out it was exactly right because Donald Trump took the conventional wisdom and he set it on fire. John Kerry, moron that he is, historic dolt, wrong about every single thing in his entire long, useless life.

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Iran commits grievous human rights abuses and arbitrarily detains foreigners, including U.S. citizens, on spurious charges without due process of law, subjecting them to abuse. The United States stands with the women of Iran who face daily abuse by the regime. Iran's nuclear program

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including its enrichment and reprocessing related capabilities and nuclear capable missiles pose an existential danger to the United States and the entire civilized world. It is therefore in the national interest to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program and stop its support for terrorist groups.

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So maximum pressure is back on the Iranian regime. Now, at this point, I'd like to point out President Trump is no one's tool. There are a lot of people out there. Many of them don't like Israel. Many of them don't like Jews, who seem to think that President Trump is a mirror of their ideology. There are isolationists who like to think that. There are interventionists who like to think that.

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There are a lot of people who like to think that President Trump is simply an avatar for their particular philosophy. As I've said many, many times, President Trump is an avatar of no one's philosophy. President Trump does not have a thoroughgoing ideology. President Trump is about winning. He's about utilitarian wins. That is what he does.

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And that means he's going to do things that many people don't like. From time to time, as you've noticed, he does things that I don't like. But the reality is that it's his outside-the-box thinking that makes things possible. It makes things possible. So I don't know where this proposal is going to go. You don't know either. It could be a negotiating tactic.

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It could be the opening of a bargaining session with the Saudis. It could be an attempt to put pressure on the Iranians. It could be an attempt to get the hostages out.

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Now, before we get to what exactly that plan is, the first thing that we have to understand is that all of the conventional wisdom, all of the State Department approved conventional wisdom for decades has led to full scale disaster in the Middle East.

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Or it could be face value, an attempt to actually do something extraordinary with a hellhole that has been turned into a hellhole by the population that decided to elect Hamas and the Hamas government that decided to turn it into a terrorist haven. That... Maybe it's that. We don't know yet. But bottom line, as I said right at the top, let Donald J. Trump cook.

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And meanwhile, your quick update on President Trump's nominees. They are getting through at a staggering rate. Pam Bondi is your new attorney general. She was, in fact, confirmed yesterday. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. has been moved out of committee. There was a lot of question about whether he was going to make it. out of committee for Health and Human Services Secretary.

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But last minute lobbying from the White House has put him on a glide path to his actual job as the head of HHS. Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard also made it through committee with help from Senator Tom Cotton, who, of course, is quite hawkish on the Senate Intelligence Committee. So it looks as though President Trump is going to get his cabinet.

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The three candidates who are the most likely to go down were Gabbard, RFK Jr. and Kash Patel, all three look like they are on a glide path to confirmation. All the betting markets suggest they will be confirmed. And of course, Pam Bondi was confirmed yesterday. So all the people on the right who wanted Trump to get his cabinet, he's going to get his cabinet.

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John Kerry, former Secretary of State, he said that peace would never happen in the Middle East unless the Palestinian issue was put front and center, and he was proved wrong at every single turn. More conventional wisdom. The other countries in the Middle East deeply care about the establishment of a Palestinian state. This has supposedly been a top priority.

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Now, speaking of the president and cooking, the president is set to issue an executive order today barring trans girls and women from a female school sports. What does that mean? The actual real headline there is men don't get to play with the girls, which I mean, that used to be common sensical. The order is titled Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports. It's to be signed Wednesday afternoon.

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It's not exactly clear what the order would entail, but one option is to direct the education department to interpret Title IX rules as barring the participation of trans girls and women in female sports categories, which of course makes perfect sense since Title IX was designed to protect actual biological women. It was not designed, in fact, to protect men who believe that they are women.

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The NCAA has already indicated it will move rapidly to change its rules to comply with federal law. So the thoroughgoing defeat of the trans agenda is extraordinary. It's extraordinary. I've talked to you on the show about this. No company did more to help facilitate that defeat than The Daily Wire. We've been standing against this nonsense since literally the first day the company was founded.

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It was a standing rule at this company that we would never in any material ever refer to people by anything like quote unquote preferred pronouns. People would be referred to by what pronouns have always meant. Their actual objective sex.

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At this company, we have stood strong against a wide variety of crackdowns by big tech, by advertisers who have attempted to target us multiple times on the basis of our unwillingness to lie and say that men can be women and women can be men. And President Trump is doing the right thing there, as he did a couple of weeks ago in fighting, quote unquote, gender affirming youth for young people.

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So this is being ranted against by people like Cynthia Nixon. Cynthia Nixon, she of Sex and the City, you know, the one that nobody liked, Miranda. Well, she ran for governor. Nobody liked her there either.

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And now she is claiming that hospitals must be allowed to cut the breasts of healthy young women and to cut the penises of healthy young men and to shoot kids full of hormones because every kid she knows is trans. Now, this of course is insane. It is insane because it is very clear that this is a social contagion. Why is it that transgender identification seems to run real strong?

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among wildly left blue Hollywood types. Why? Why are half the kids in Hollywood trans? Is that just because of a weird genetic anomaly that is only located in the bluest of areas with a high percentage of LGBT parents? Is that the only just magical genetic bottlenecking in these particular areas? Or is it a social contagion?

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Here's Cynthia Nixon refusing to acknowledge the truth that is right in front of her eyes here.

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All of history shows this is not true. When Egypt was in control of the Gaza Strip from 1948 to 1967, was there an independent Palestinian state? Of course, the answer is no. When Jordan was in control of Judea and Samaria from 1948 to 1967, was there an independent Palestinian state? No. Today, there could be an independent Palestinian state in Jordan.

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kid her nephew her niece or all their friends they had their breast tissue cut out at these places here's the thing she's gonna refuse to see the truth because the barbarity of what she's actually done to her own child is so obvious and clear but this is this wild social contagion is over this lie is over it is done It is finished.

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People are no longer going to go along with this nonsense and kudos to President Trump again on doing the right thing. Meanwhile, it is hilarious to watch Democrats respond to the massive changes that are now being effectuated by the Trump administration. The federal government is now being told that if you don't quit, some of you can get fired.

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According to the Washington Post, a supervisor in a government agency now run by allies of Elon Musk told staff earlier this week layoffs across the federal government are likely after Thursday's deadline to accept the deferred resignation offer, according to an email obtained by the Washington Post, a step toward forcibly removing many of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees.

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Well, yes, if you won't quit, then some of you will undoubtedly go. The CIA, too, has been offering sweeping buyouts to the entire workforce. Again, the idea here isn't to clear out the entire CIA. It's to say if you don't want to work for President Trump and do his priorities, since he's the head of the executive branch, well, don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. Have at it.

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We'll see you later. You can take a payout. The goal is not to clean out the entire CIA. You still need CIA officers. The goal is to clear out the people who don't want to do the thing the CIA was actually designed to do, namely target our enemies abroad using the intelligence apparatus rather than people at home using the intelligence apparatus.

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Now, hilariously, the Democrats are losing their minds over all of this. So Hakeem Jeffries, the not speaker of the House, the House minority leader, he's very angry. He says, I can't believe they're raiding the federal government. They're raiding the federal... Babylon Bee had a great headline yesterday. It was a picture of President Trump.

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It said, first fascist in history to cut size of government. Yep. Here's Hakeem Jeffries trying to do the routine.

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And the Hashemite dynasty says no, despite the fact that the vast majority of the population of Jordan actually is Palestinian. Not only are the surrounding Middle Eastern states uninterested in a Palestinian state, they don't want one because they know that it will be a terror haven.

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This is ridiculous. So you're worried about the spread of confidential. That's that's your big complaint. My favorite line yesterday was from Chuck Schumer, who should never be allowed in front of a microphone again. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader. He says Elon Musk is coming in here. He's trying to run this place like a tech startup. This isn't the tech startup.

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This is the federal government. Tech startups are where people make billions of dollars off of innovation. The federal government is where we waste all those billions of dollars on stupid bullshit. Here's Chuck Schumer.

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Okay, so I'm confused. The American people have a right to be part of the debate about the spending, but you don't want it ever cut because the bureaucracy is there. Democrats are in a state of panic, and that means that they are getting dumber and dumber and dumber.

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Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, widely perceived on the left as a possible presidential candidate, is perhaps the dumbest member of Congress. I mean, truly a stupid human being. who's trotted out only because she was basically cast in Hollywood.

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And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to Instagram, which is where she truly wants to be a star, not in Congress, to call Elon Musk stupid, which is legitimately like finding a 900-pound man who has grown into his couch, criticizing the V-Shred guys for their standards of fitness. I'm sorry, this specimen of mental genius

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incapacity is going to criticize the man who built SpaceX and Tesla and was an original PayPal investor. She's going to criticize and call him stupid. What now? Okay, here we go.

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The big reason that so many Arab countries, Muslim countries in the region don't want to take in Palestinian refugees is because they are afraid it will destabilize their country, and they are right. It destabilized Jordan when the PLO was located there in the early 1970s, leading to the full-scale expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians as well as the PLO.

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He is not, he's not smart. Every 19 year old he's bringing in is like a world-class caliber coder. One of them, a 19 year old kid, used actual AI technology to decrypt a piece of like Greek writing that's 2000 years old and nobody been able to actually make out the writing. Those are the people that Alexander Ocasio-Cortez is criticizing. This complete numbskull. Good luck with this particular.

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Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, another one of the Democratic Party luminaries, and she went on CNN where she complained about how tired she was of white tears. Oh, goodness gracious.

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She's had to work so much harder? Truly? There's no comparison between her and Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert? Uh, okay. All righty, then. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar was caught on tape at some sort of seminar recently telling people, giving advice to Somalis who are in the United States illegally on their legal rights in helping to avoid deportation. So much pro-America happening, so much.

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To state that you are advised by a lawyer not to answer questions.

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Learn the laws and prepare yourself, she says, about illegal immigrants.

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Lebanon, which used to be a Christian state, was completely overrun by the PLO and turned into a hellhole. There are Syrian refugee camps that still contain Palestinians because no matter how hellish Syria is, whoever has been in charge there, whether it's Assad or now whether it's HDS, they're not particularly interested in fighting another front war with a radicalized Palestinian population.

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Well, maybe she'll be nice and offer these illegal immigrants a fake marriage so that they too can become citizens of the United States under false pretenses. And meanwhile, nature is healing. It turns out that all it took to get the recruitment crisis pretty much done over at Department of Defense was it not being headed by a bunch of political generals who were worried about white rage.

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So Pete Hegseth took over, and it turns out the recruitment has skyrocketed. And in fact, recruitment has been skyrocketing ever since President Trump won. According to Secretary of Defense Hegseth, in December 2024, the U.S. Army had its best recruiting number in 12 years. In January 2025, the Army had its best recruiting number in 15 years.

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Bottom line, America's youth want to serve under the bold and strong America First leadership of Donald Trump. And then he tweeted out a new U.S. Army ad. And guess what? The Army ad is about... members of the military kicking ass and taking names and not about exploring their LGBTQ identities and the possibility of free hormone treatment. And now people want to join the army. It's crazy.

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It's almost like when you tell people what the army is and what it's supposed to do, people might want to do that thing. Crazy towns. Here's the ad. These are guys who are firing mortars and then you see them fighting. Some doing sit-ups, tanks, guns. People climbing walls. Bazookas, grenades. Night crawling. Firing from tanks.

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Wait, you mean like when we show people what the army does, young men might want to join the army? As opposed to when we tell them that they can read Genderqueer and maybe do a book analysis of Ibram X. Kendi? They don't want to join? I mean, wow, it turns out that was so difficult. It was so difficult.

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Well, folks, on the line, joining me to discuss the end of their possible sporting dreams, Jake Crane, Blaine Crane, David Cohen, the hosts of our very own Crane and Company, said by some to be the most passionate 90 minutes of sports talk in existence. They are also stars of Lady Ballers, a film about their own athletic aspirations.

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Guys, I mean, I hate to break to you the news of the executive order today that President Trump is putting forth, suggesting that Title IX will no longer apply to men who, want to play with the women. I know that's the entire premise of Lady Ballers. So, Jake, explain your feelings on learning that your hopes and dreams have been dashed by the president of the United States.

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So, Blaine, obviously, it's a blow to you as well, especially since you were actually wrestling the ladies in Lady Ballers. And it seemed like you were on a smooth glide path to a gold medal at the Olympics, actually, until this moment happened. So your feelings today?

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In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Kuwait expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians who had sided with Saddam Hussein. So the idea that anyone in the Middle East is deeply interested in the establishment of a Palestinian state is a lie made up by Westerners.

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Well, David Cohen, who actually did play college sports and was nearly the starting quarterback of a major team. David, what do you make of this moment? Obviously, it actually is pretty incredible that we actually had to come to the point as a country where, seriously speaking, where we had to somehow tell colleges that it was wrong to allow biological men to compete with the ladies.

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What do you make of it?

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So while I have you guys here, because our get togethers are rare, I do have to ask you about this this Lakers Mavericks trade, because I mean, honestly, it was probably the biggest story of the weekend. A lot happened over the weekend, including the possibility of the United States taking over the strip. But but I think the biggest

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And Middle Eastern states have gone along with that lie because it's been a convenient way of shifting blame to Israel for their own internal failures and of prying concessions out of Westerners. But it was always a lie. And Donald Trump knows it's a lie. And that's why he has said repeatedly that the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, they don't really care about a Palestinian state.

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story of the weekend was Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers so Jake on a scale of rigged to WWE how rigged is the NBA that this trade happened to allow a 25 year old superstar coming off a near MVP season to go to the Los Angeles Lakers who it seems every generation get a generational talent just by coincidence through some sort of wildly unfair trade

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It has led to an intractable, multi-decade problem of a radicalized Palestinian population that supports terrorism rather than any regime that would actually allow for peace, prosperity, and the building of a livable life. Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people.

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I did see that, actually, that he made his first three the other night, which, again, I feel like if you put me in an NBA game for as many minutes as he's been in, I would have a shot just by chucking the ball at some point down the court.

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Oh, man. Well, guys, if you want to listen to 90 minutes of that, then go check out Crane and Company, our own sports show. And guys, again, your legacy in women's sports will live on forever in Lady Ballers, which is available over at Daily Wire. Plus, appreciate the time.

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We will win. All right, guys, coming up, President Biden has now signed a talent contract with CIA. I wish I were kidding. I'll try to explain. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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That is a side quest. Other conventional wisdom. That the way that you upset the Arab street is when you acknowledge reality. That if you acknowledge reality, the Arab street will go wild. It will be gigantic war in the Middle East.

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The most obvious example of this being the conventional wisdom that if the United States actually moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people, that if that were to happen, then the entire Middle East would go up in flames. And it turns out nothing happened, nothing, because that was a reality.

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And acknowledging reality on the ground is smarter than pretending reality away. Similarly, the conventional wisdom said that any move to acknowledge territorial sovereignty by Israel in disputed areas, like, for example, the Golan Heights, would end with further war. Wrong. Not only is that untrue, it is the reverse.

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When Israel has been able to defend territory, the world gets more peaceful, not less. The world will be more peaceful because Israel is currently occupying the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria rather than, for example, HTS or al-Qaeda. Other conventional wisdom. What the Palestinians really want is peace and a thriving democracy. There is zero evidence adduced to this idea. None.

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In fact, every single piece of evidence is precisely the contrary. The Palestinians, by every piece of polling data ever done, do not, in fact, support a thriving democracy. They do not, in fact, support a quote unquote two state solution. They do not support peace with Israel.

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In fact, their entire raison d'etre, the entire reason for the establishment of a Palestinian people, which was an agglomeration of a variety of people from different areas who over time accreted in British mandate Palestine, largely because of the upward economic trajectory created by Jews who'd been moving in. The entire raison d'etre was the disestablishment of a possible Jewish state there.

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So to give up that aspiration, would be to recognize the thing that is unrecognizable for the vast majority of Palestinians. There is yet to be a single poll ever, ever showing that Palestinians favor a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians living side by side.

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Yet the conventional wisdom likes to pretend that's not the case and then bang their head consistently against a wall and then yell at the Israelis for being so intransigent about not wanting to exterminate themselves. Donald Trump does not accept that conventional wisdom. He recognizes that Israel is not going away.

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Other conventional wisdom that the Palestinians must never be allowed to leave a rubble strewn war torn area, even if they want to, because somehow it facilitates peace to keep would be refugees in an unlivable situation for a decade.

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Today, by polling data, the Palestinian people still support Hamas after the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip, after, and in response to, Hamas killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 civilians. into captivity, where many of them were murdered, many of them were abused, and many of them still are, including American citizens.

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with no infrastructure, with no jobs, with no economy other than the trash foreign aid that has been used historically by terrorist groups to build terror tunnels and stock up on weaponry. That was the conventional wisdom.

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The conventional wisdom is that the best plan in the Gaza Strip was to pour billions of dollars into Hamas to facilitate humanitarian aid, which went directly to building terror tunnels. The only infrastructure built there, the only infrastructure that has been built there over the course of the last 15 years. And somehow the conventional wisdom was, give it more money, more air.

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Make sure that there are more. Why do you think Egypt shut the border? Why do you think the Rafah crossing is closed? That is not because of the Jews. That is because of the Egyptians. Finally, the conventional wisdom says that you cannot facilitate population movement in this area. Now, I just have a question.

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Why is this the only area on earth where even if people want to leave, you can't facilitate the population movement? Israel not only facilitated the population movement of Jews out of Gaza, it forced people who didn't want to leave out of Gaza in 2005. Literally took cities filled with 8,000 Jews and removed them forcibly with Israeli soldiers.

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It turns out that according to the conventional wisdom, the only people who can be forcibly removed from a particular area in this particular area are Jews. And the people who certainly cannot be moved under any circumstances are Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Those people can't move at all.

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It doesn't matter if Kuwait kicks them out or Jordan kicks them out or Lebanon kicks them out or Egypt refuses to take them. It doesn't matter whether they live in refugee camps in Syria. None of that makes a difference. It doesn't matter if literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of people are forced out of Syria due to civil conflict. And so they end up in Turkey or even in Europe.

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That's all fine and dandy. But the minute anybody says that people who even want to leave the Gaza Strip because they don't wish to live in the rubble of Khan Yunus under the thumb of Hamas Then all of a sudden, the conventional wisdom says, no, no, no, no, no, no. They must be forced to remain.

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Listen, what's happening in the Gaza Strip is a challenge, but you've got your own challenges if you are an employer. Research shows one of the biggest challenges employers face is the pressure to hire quickly. And let's be honest, searching for great candidates and reviewing applications can feel like a full-time job in itself. If you're an employer who can relate, I have one question for you.

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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So whatever the conventional wisdom says is wrong, and it has been wrong. And this is where President Trump has always had a different way of thinking about this. He's always had a different way of thinking about this. President Trump thinks outside the box. And what that has led to is more peace and prosperity in the region.

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours.

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Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu today. That's gcu.edu. Again, Grand Canyon University. Again, you're gonna love it. It's great. I've been there myself. I visited the campus. Great people, wonderful faculty. Go check them out, gcu.edu. Okay, here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2132 - Trump Unleashes MIND-BLOWING Gaza Plan!

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Trump has ignored all of this conventional wisdom because it's wrong and because it's stupid. And Donald Trump thinks outside the box. Here are Donald Trump's generalized premises. when it comes to the Middle East. One, intractable problems are, wait for it, intractable, and they're not going away. And simply saying, like a mantra, two-state solution, democracy, living side by side, peace,

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doesn't make it magically happen. If you just say it over and over and over, not only does it not happen, it ends up facilitating the opposite because it turns out that terrorist groups and radicalized populations take advantage of your naivete and your stupidity in order to build up their own weaponry so as to do things like October 7th. They make common cause with terror states like Iran.

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They make common cause with the Houthis and with Hezbollah. They do all of that because they understand Western weakness and Western stupidity. So failing to recognize intractable problems is dangerous. Recognizing intractable problems and not banging your head against the wall is actually a necessity. Recognizing that reality is how you get to things like the Abraham Accords.

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Other recognitions of reality. Israel is not going away, nor should it. President Trump understands that. Underlying so much of the discussion over the past several decades has been this idea that if Israel just keeps giving up land and makes itself more and more unsafe, that magically peace will break out. Again, an idiotic idea.

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And underlying that is a baseline idea that if Israel disappeared, well, you know, maybe the world would be a better, but Israel is not going to disappear. Israel is not going to go away. They're not going to surrender. They're not going to cut off their own heads.

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And after October 7th, they're certainly not going to allow the creation of a terror state in the heartland of the land that Israel currently is on. That is not a thing that's going to happen. Recognizing that reality is just reality. You can like it. You can not like it. It's just the reality. And Trump plays in the world of reality.

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And finally, President Trump understands, again, that the conventional wisdom that all of this is central to the Middle East is wrong and a lie. He recognizes that it turns out Saudi Arabia has its own priorities that don't actually involve the Palestinians. Like, for example, economic development. That is the big priority of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, what he wants more than anything.

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People who think inside the box have led to some of the most intractable, most violent, worst conflict in humanity. Donald Trump has thrown the conventional wisdom out. And what he has replaced it with is common sense understanding of reality and outside the box thinking. And the result was the Abraham Accords.

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is a non-oil-based economy with a future. Because one of the things that's happened that's totally transformed the Middle East over the course of the last couple of decades is the fracking revolution in the United States.

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The complete revision of global oil dominance by the Middle East so that actually the United States is a net exporter of LNG has completely reshaped how the entire globe does energy. And so Mohammed bin Salman, who's sitting on a bunch of oil, is recognizing that technological developments mean that he must move along with the tech or he's going to lose out and his regime becomes unstable.

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Trump recognizes that. The same thing is true of UAE. The same thing is true, yes, even of Qatar, which is going to be made to come around. The reality is that people in the Middle East have interests that are completely disconnected and, in fact, antithetical to the interests of the terror state that a state of Palestine would be.

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So all of this is lead up to Trump's actual proposal, because here's the thing. Everybody's so out of the box. It's so crazy. It's so it's so wild. How could he? Because all of your ideas are stupid and failed. That is the reason. You wonder how we got here? The answer is we tried it your way, the conventional wisdom way for 80 years.

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And not only is it a fail, it is one of the giantest fails in the history of foreign policy fails. That is how you end up with President Trump thinking outside the box. Now, I don't know whether President Trump's vision is going to come to fruition here. I don't know whether it's an opening gambit in a broader negotiation. And we'll get to all of that.

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Today on the show, Elon Musk and President Trump go at it over the big, beautiful bill. Greta Thunberg, remember her, takes a three-hour USS Minnow tour to Gaza. Boys are beating girls again at California track meets. And the Trump White House has found a new and hilarious way to celebrate Pride Month. Yes, it's June. But first, Father's Day is coming. Skip the socks, skip the grill tools.

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It is hilarious to me that Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, he's out there saying that he agrees on the big, beautiful bill, that it's a terrible bill. No, he doesn't. He actually doesn't. The thing that he disagrees with is that it cuts spending at all and cuts taxes at all. Remember, if the Democrats were in charge, we would increase taxes and increase spending.

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He had reached the end of the period of time in which he was capable of holding that office without some form of congressional approval. Over the course of the last couple of days, he put out a tweet saying, quote, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it.

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for very, very different reasons. So Elon Musk is angry about the bill because it spends too much. Schumer is angry about the bill because it spends too little. Just remember, if Democrats are ever in charge again, which I'm sure they will be because politics moves in strange patterns, they will increase taxes radically and increase the spending radically.

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Now, meanwhile, there are some attempts to, again, cut around the edges, and we need to be clear about what it means when we look at what Doge is doing, what these House rescission bills would do. They are, in fact, cutting, but they're cutting around the edges.

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So according to Fox News, the House Freedom Caucus is demanding the House of Representatives vote on the White House's impending $9.4 billion federal spending cut proposal the same week it lands on Capitol Hill.

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The conservative group led by Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland is drawing its line in the sand on Monday with an official position on the coming package, which is expected to call for clawing back government funding for NPR, PBS and USAID. And that's great. That's fine. We should push the rescission bills forward. We should pass them with alacrity. We should move quickly to do it. That is it.

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That is a good thing. $9.4 billion ain't going to do it. It isn't. Meanwhile, Russ Vought, who is the head of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, he says the White House is weighing options like impoundment to formalize those Doge spending cuts. But again, even impoundment of these amounts is not going to radically change the fiscal crisis that America is going to find itself in.

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That is not President Trump's fault. That's not Republicans' fault. That is the American people's fault. We are the voters and we cannot hold two thoughts at once. It is not possible for us. Instead, we say that we like our benefits, but we also want tax cuts, and we also want to make sure that we don't have a debt problem. You can't have all of those things. That's not how it works.

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But because we refuse to acknowledge reality, any politician who tells us we can have all of those things is likely to succeed. Now, meanwhile, what President Trump is right is that the big, beautiful bill is necessary to maintain growth rates.

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If we radically increase taxes, which is what the expiration of the Trump tax cuts would effectively do, if that were to happen, the growth curve in the country, the investment would absolutely collapse. It would be a disaster area. The markets already are pricing in the big, beautiful bill. They believe that the big, beautiful bill is going to pass.

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Well, if it doesn't, then you're going to see the markets really, really dump, especially given the fact that there's already so much turmoil in the markets. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, the tariff regime that President Trump has been threatening will be crimping US economic growth this year and also boosting inflation.

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They said Tuesday they expect GDP to decelerate sharply to 1.6% in 2025 from 2.8% in 2024. They previously expected that we would grow our GDP by 2.2%, but they believe that because of the slowdown in global trade, they are going to see a slowness in growth as well. They also expect that US inflation will pick up. Now, we have seen inflation statistics came out while we were off the air.

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Those inflation statistics for the last month were the lowest that they've been since basically the beginning of the pandemic. They were 2.1% year on year, which is basically where you want to be. The Federal Reserve is tasked with keeping inflation at 2% annually. So that's where you want to be.

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So President Trump is saying that the Federal Reserve now needs to lower the interest rates and boost spending by making more liquidity available in the markets. The problem, of course, is that when it comes to the inflation rate, that is, in fact, a trailing indicator. So what you may be getting in that lack of inflation is a couple of things. Less demand, which is not driving up prices.

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You know you did wrong. You know it. So that is open war on the so-called big, beautiful bill. Meanwhile, the administration, of course, is pushing forward the big, beautiful bill. So there's been some speculation about what caused Elon Musk to lose it on the so-called big, beautiful bill. That speculation was handed off to Axios by presumably some members of the administration.

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And also, you might be getting the fact that the tariff regime has been in and out and up and down. It's the hokey pokey tariff regime. And because of that, the markets are sort of frozen and paralyzed. And they're not radically escalating prices yet. But the idea is that if the tariffs actually kick into full force and effect, that will increase the inflation.

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And the Federal Reserve isn't going to jump too fast to lower the interest rates based on an uncertain economic future. Especially, I mean, President Trump, at the same time that he's tweeting out that Jerome Powell needs to lower the interest rates, is also saying, quote, I like President Xi of China, always have and always will.

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But he is very tough, all caps, and extremely hard to make a deal with. Okay, well, are the markets going to be sanguine about that? If the massive tariffs stay on China, is that going to create price inflation? The answer presumably is yes. And you combine that with a very, very weak jobs report in May.

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And what you see right now is an economic freeze up that is happening because of the amount of uncertainty in the market. So is the Federal Reserve in the middle of all that uncertainty going to throw an interest rate decrease in the middle of that? The answer there is no, because the Federal Reserve believes that eventually the markets are going to get unstuck one way or the other.

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If they wait a couple of months and the inflation stays low and the tariff regime all works itself out, then they can talk about lowering the interest rates. What they are afraid of is that they will lower the interest rates, inject more liquidity into the economy, and then you will get price inflation that is basically double what they want.

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They'll get inflation based on their injection of liquidity by lowering the interest rates. And you will also get price inflation based on a tariff regime that actually does at some point fully kick in. According to ADP, private sector job creation slowed to a near standstill in May, hitting its lowest level in more than two years as signs emerged of a weakening labor market.

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Payrolls increased just $37,000 for the month, below the downwardly revised $60,000 in April and the Dow Jones forecast for $110,000. It is the lowest monthly job total from the ADP count since March of 2023. So again, this doesn't mean that we are in serious trouble here in the United States with regard to our economy.

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However, it is worth pointing out that, as I've said a thousand times on the show at this point, uncertainty breeds its own form of economic chaos. If you don't know what's coming next, you are very unlikely to hire for the future. By the way, this includes in manufacturing. Goods producing industries lost 2,000 positions for the month.

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Natural resources and mining are off 5,000, manufacturing down 3,000. And again, that's not a shock either, because one of the things that has happened is that the oil prices have dropped so much at this point that people are not actually ramping up oil production in the United States. So what does this mean?

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This means that the big, beautiful bill better pass, because if the big, beautiful bill does not pass, then you got a real problem on your hands. Remember, folks, in just a minute, we are going to get to the White House and their take on Pride Month, which is wild and kind of awesome. In darker news, I have bad news for you. you're going to die. We all are.

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I know, just dropping that right on the table right now. But that's where Policy Genius comes in.

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With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policy starting at just $276 a year for a million dollars in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about your future.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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According to Axios, Musk and Trump remain friends and allies. Two people in frequent communication with both told Axios that they said Trump was somewhat irked by Musk's social media sabotage. The sources familiar with the Trump-Musk relationship say there appeared to be four inflection points that led to his caustic attack on President Trump's bill.

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Policy Genius lets you compare quotes from America's top insurers side-by-side for free with their licensed support team handling questions, paperwork, advocating for you throughout the process so you can move forward quickly, get the coverage you need, and get back to living your life. What makes them trustworthy is their personalized approach.

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They know life insurance is not one-size-fits-all, so they clearly present all your options, including coverage amounts, prices, and terms with complete transparency and no guesswork. Secure your family's future today with PolicyGenius. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro to compare. Free life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you could save.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. Also, the business landscape has never been more volatile. Tariff policies shift without warning. Supply chains face unprecedented pressure. Cashflow constraints are tightening across industries. In this environment, real-time adaptability isn't just an advantage, it's survival.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. Meanwhile, we have now entered the month of June.

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And as we all know, June is the greatest month on the American calendar because it is a month of miracles and happiness and joy, specifically queer joy, because June, of course, is Pride Month, the month when we are all supposed to pretend that the most important thing about any human being is their sexual orientation and that all of America must celebrate this together.

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And that is what Pride Month is all about. Well, I have some Pride Month stories. It's not going the way that many people on the left were hoping Pride Month was going to go. So, for example, the U.S. military has now decided that they are going to rename a ship. There is a Navy ship that is called USS Harvey Milk. That was always an absurdity. An absurdity of absurdities. Harvey Milk

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was not a member of the military. Harvey Milk had no impact on military policy. Harvey Milk was a San Francisco Board of Supervisors member in the 1970s who was shot to death after 11 months on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and became a sort of martyr for the so-called gay rights cause. He also happened to be a guy who was stooping a 16-year-old boy. So, you know, he was

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One, legislation cuts the electric vehicle tax credit that helps carmakers like Musk's Tesla. Two, Musk was working at the White House as a special government employee, and he was trying to stay in that role beyond the 130-day time limit set by statute for unpaid advisory positions. Ultimately, White House officials looked at that legally and they said, we can't actually extend you this way.

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in common parlance, committing a crime. So Harvey Milk had legitimately nothing to do with the military. He served in the Navy during the Korean War. That's literally his only connection to the military. That was also true of millions of other people who served in World War II or the Korean War or the Vietnam War. The U.S.

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Navy ship Harvey Milk was originally named in 2016 by Ray Mavis under Barack Obama. The idea that we were naming a Navy ship after a man who was only famous for being a San Francisco gay rights activist who was killed in 1978 by a fellow member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who was mad that he had been fired and that he wasn't getting his full salary. That's ridiculous.

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If you're going to name Navy ships, typically you are going to name them after naval heroes. You're typically going to name them after people who had an impact on military policy. You're going to name them after places. The U.S. Navy ship RuPaul should not be a thing. And it was always ridiculous to suggest that we were going to name our Navy ships after sort of DEI heroes in American life.

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And yet that is what Barack Obama was all about. It was deliberately silly by the Obama administration. And now that's being walked back by the Trump administration during Pride Month of all times.

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According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is planning to strip the name from a Navy ship that honors the gay rights icon Harvey Milk, who, by the way, was also stripping a 16-year-old, which is against the law, and could expand the purge to include other vessels recognizing prominent civil rights figures, defense officials said Tuesday.

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Deliberations, officials said, are ongoing after a recent order by Hegseth to Navy Secretary John Phelan with the decision to be announced as soon as mid-June to coincide with Pride Month, which President Trump has rejected celebrating because, of course, typically, pride is considered a sin. You should not celebrate sin. I know that this word sin has gone out of common usage. I get it.

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But it is kind of weird that what you're actually celebrating during Pride Month is the sin of pride. In any case, it was unclear when or even if any other Navy vessels honoring civil rights figures could see their titles changed.

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Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for Hegseth, released a statement acknowledging a review is underway that could result in the renaming of Defense Department installations and resources. In other words, we are no longer going to be painting our bombs with trans pride flags, which to me is a good thing. So in honor of Pride Month, no more U.S. Navy ship Harvey Milk.

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It is amazing this ever happened in our country, truly. You name a Navy ship, app for a guy who is mostly famous for just being a gay rights activist in San Francisco. Truly unbelievable. And meanwhile, in other bad news for the advocates of Pride Month, it turns out that Algeria's Imen Khalif, who was a gold medal winner at the last Paris Olympics in boxing, you may recall, is a dude.

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I know that was perfectly obvious by looking at him. But it turns out that now a leaked medical report shows that the Algerian boxer was abnormal, stating, quote, chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype. So X, Y, in other words. I know we were not supposed to notice that and it was supposed to be a giant shock.

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But yeah, they covered it up because a man was beating up the ladies at the Olympics. Speaking of which. California continues to push forward the absurdity of boys racing against girls while pretending to be girls. According to SoapCentral.com, A.B.

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Also, Musk wanted the FAA to use Starlink. And finally, on Saturday night, President Trump abruptly announced that he was withdrawing the nomination of a man named Jared Isaacman, an Elon Musk ally, to be the NASA administrator. And there was some speculation that that was sort of a slap at Musk.

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Hernandez, a transgender high school athlete, has been making waves on social media after winning two events, including the high jump and triple jump at the California State Track and Field Championships as per KCRA. Hernandez is 16 years old and from Jurupa Valley, California, and her recent participation under the new rule change has caused nationwide controversy. He, you mean his participation.

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As part of the new rule by the California Interscholastic Federation, if a trans athlete earns a top position, the next highest ranking cisgender athlete can also share the placement and also receive a medal as per the Guardian.

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Yeah, but if you put the dude at the top of the podium and then you're like, yeah, but we'll put like an extra girl at the bottom of the podium so that she can be like number four and three are kind of tied. How does that make the girls feel any better? They're still standing there below a boy at the top of the podium.

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Hernandez won first place in the high jump where she, he cleared five, seven, five feet, seven inches without any failed attempts. He shared first place with two other athletes, Jalene Wetland and Leilani LaRue. He also won first place in the triple jump and received a gold medal in second place in the long jump. The whole thing is unbelievably silly.

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Of course, there was a plane that was flown over the track and field state championship that read no boys in girls sports. The Independent Council on Women's Sports and Women Are Real, which is Riley Gaines' group, were the two groups that took credit for flying the banner during the event. And good for them. Because the American people are not in favor of this.

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It is not only silly, it is insulting to women and girls and harms girls when they have to compete against boys. Well, some businesses have been getting the notice that Americans are no longer on board for this sort of social radicalism. Others have not. One of the groups that has not, sadly, is MLB, Major League Baseball. 29 of MLB's 30 teams are celebrating Pride Month.

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They're coming to literally every Major League ballpark, apparently. Not sure why any of that is necessary. The Rangers are the only MLB team that has never waded into the LGBT messaging during Pride Month, according to the Daily Wire.

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In response to questions about skipping Pride Month events, the team said last year, quote, our longstanding commitment remains the same, to make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball, in our ballpark at every game, and in all we do for both our fans and our employees.

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We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community, which is the way that you actually ought to treat your fans, by the way. Six teams changed their official logos on social media to include some version of the Pride flag. Another 11 teams wrote a post acknowledging Pride Month.

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It is obviously the most lib cities that decided to go ahead and change their entire logos like the Mets, New York, and Baltimore Orioles, and Washington Nationals, and Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco, of course, the Giants. None of that is super giant shock. However, is this the sort of stuff that is going to drive viewership for the lagging MLB? Absolutely not.

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Get Dad something he'll actually use. Daily Wire Plus, now 40% off. He'll get ad-free shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media. Plus, full access to our premium entertainment library, including Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series, Parenting. It's the content he wants, with the values he raised you on. No shipping, no fluff. Just click, gift, and instantly become his favorite child.

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by members of the Trump personnel team that Isaacman, who was only nominated to that position, presumably because he was friends with Musk, was now being smacked because Musk was leaving and it was safe to smack him. That was part of the speculation. The sort of more innocuous explanation is that Isaacman had a history of donations to Democrats.

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The game of classic Americana, catering to the most radical social policies, is one of the silliest marketing fails I can imagine. Truly a silly marketing fail. And it's failed for everybody. Disney continues its string of layoffs, according to the Daily Wire.

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According to Reuters, Disney is now preparing to conduct mass layoffs that will affect hundreds of employees across various departments, including film and TV, publicity, casting, development, and corporate finance. I mean, maybe that's because, again, so much of their content has been woke trash for the last 10 years or so. Snow White, of course, was a massive bust.

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The live-action remake supposedly cost $115 million based on a $410 million budget. It only earned a worldwide box office gross of $195 million. Major problems with Snow White. The movies that have been doing okay for Disney are, of course, basically remakes of classic Disney without any of the woke involved in it. It's a Lilo and Stitch remake. It's a big business at the box office.

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No shock there. Well, actually, there's some people on the right side of the aisle who think that the new Lilo and Stitch movie is, in fact, woke. It appears to me to be, if it's woke, it's less woke than Snow White. So by comparison, they're moving in maybe the right direction a little bit. But it's just indicative of a change in the American mindset. Americans are tired of this stuff.

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It's one of the reasons why President Trump is, in fact, president. And it's one of the reasons why President Trump has now authorized his administration to stop parroting the woke propaganda for the month of June. In a moment, we're going to get to Greta taking a boat to the Gaza Strip. Yes, the most obnoxious person alive going to visit terrorists. Good times.

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First, you know when you're getting ready for bed, going around locking doors, turning off lights, and you just want that peace of mind knowing everything is secure? That's exactly what you get with SimpliSafe. It really makes all the difference when it comes to home security. Most security systems only kick in after somebody already broke into your home. By then, it's too late.

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SimpliSafe's new ActiveGuard outdoor protection actually helps stop the break-ins before they even happen. Here's how it works. AI-powered cameras work with live monitoring agents to spot suspicious activity around your property. If someone's lurking around, the agents can talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights, and call the police if needed. It stops crime before it starts.

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What I really like is there are no contracts and no hidden fees. Plus, SimpliSafe has serious credibility. CNET just named them Best Home Security System of 2025, and over 4 million Americans trust them. They're also ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today. I personally have a SimpliSafe system at the studio.

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It means that every time my staff signs off, they leave the office, they don't have to worry about what's going to happen next. Monitoring plans start around $1 a day. They offer a 60-day money-back guarantee so you can try it risk-free. Visit simplisafe.com slash Shapiro to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free.

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That's simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Now, meanwhile, in what has to be not only one of the stupidest stories of the day, but one of the stupidest stories ever, we're still talking about Greta Thunberg. Now, you recall Greta when she was a not particularly cute child and we weren't allowed to make jokes about her not being particularly cute because she was a child.

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Well, now she's 22 years old. So I can say whatever the hell I want about her. And she is an obnoxious brat. She was always an obnoxious brat. She first heard about climate change in 2011, she says, when she was eight years old. And at that point, she stopped talking, stopped eating and lost 22 pounds. That was at like age 11. Hey, that is really bad.

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And the White House is very big into the idea of Republican loyalty. even though, again, many of the people who surround the president were not always fans of the president. Okay, so let's leave aside the speculation about why Musk was attacking the bill and look at the actual content of the attack. So the actual content of the attack suggests that the bill spends too much money. And that's true.

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And we know that her parents were worried about her. They got her some treatment, but apparently he then took her out of school and decided to put her on camera for literally the rest of her life, which is a weird way of doing treatment. He actually said, quote, she can either sit at home and be really unhappy or protest and be happy.

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Well, I'm not sure why we are supposed to listen to an unhappy teenager protesting just to make them happy. At least someone's happy. She's spent the last decade or so gallivanting around the globe protesting. It's like her way of having fun. She started with climate change where she famously lectured all the adults for not doing enough in her humble opinion.

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I mean, not humble opinion because she's not humble at all. She's, as I say, truly obnoxious. She said that the adults were not doing enough to stop the world from getting warmer. She didn't have any solutions, but she could yell at the adults.

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It was her very obnoxiousness that endeared her to the left-wing media machine in the first place, which, for some odd reason, finds small children saying idiotically reductive garbage to be wise and useful. So here was, here she was in 2019, yelling at the adults. Oh, my God. You can't get this out of your mind once it's there. It will be implanted in your brain forever, this obnoxious nonsense.

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I mean, who cares? I mean, the fact that this was ever treated as a serious issue is beyond me. But it shows that the left is literally willing to use anyone as their tool. And they particularly like using children specifically because then if you say that the child is wrong, like you're attacking a child. OK, well, here's the deal. Now she's 22. So I can say whatever I want about her.

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OK, she's an adult. She still dresses like a little girl and she still cosplays as a teenage girl. But now she has graduated to the new leftist radical cause of the day, standing for Hamas in Gaza. So this Swedish truant who still has not graduated college is now heading for Gaza in a boat. Yeah, she's heading to Gaza in a boat. It's funny. Sorry, it's funny.

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This spoiled Brad who's never held a real job in her life and will never need to because she'll just be a professional activist forever getting herself arrested for no reason. She's going in a boat. Yay. It's like Lonely Island. She's on a boat, a boat reminiscent of the terrorist flotilla from 2010 in which friends of Hamas sent a set of ships to Gaza to

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laden with goods that would have immediately have gone to support the terror group. That particular flotilla was offered passage at Ashdod, which is an Israeli port. And they turned it down because they were worried that Israel would confiscate the goods, which Israel would have, because again, it was illegal. Israel had offered, by the way, to coordinate any aid with the UN.

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That flotilla was designed to attack Israeli troops. Like they brought weapons on board, they brought water cannons and stuff. And when the Israelis boarded the ship to stop it, This is back in 2010. Some of the people on the ship even grabbed the weapons of the Israelis. 10 Israeli soldiers were wounded. There were nine of the people on the ships who were killed by Israeli troops.

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They had openly said they wished to die as martyrs. So again, that was the terrorist kind of propaganda ship of the time. That was 2010. Well, fast forward 15 years and we're doing the terrorist propaganda ship again. So back to our moronic story, Greta's new pleasure cruise.

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So our pippy long stocking wannabe heroine has now loaded onto the so-called Madeline ship, which is launched by the so-called Freedom Flotilla Coalition. This Freedom Flotilla has not called for the freedom of Palestinians from Hamas ever, or the freedom of actual hostages currently being held in tunnels as they are dying. Anyway, Thunberg has taken the lead, calling to dismantle Zionism.

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The bill does spend too much money. As Senator Johnson has pointed out on this program, the bill maintains Biden levels of spending. It does not cut the spending back to 2019 levels. So idealistically, should we go back to 2019 spending levels? Absolutely. Even if we did, by the way, go back to 2019 spending levels, we were still on a debt crisis trajectory, just a little bit slower.

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This is her goal, to dismantle Zionism, which just for the record, means the forcible murder of millions of Jews who currently live in an actual, not fictional state called Israel. Here she was just a few months back saying as much to her friends in Stockholm. So she's chanting crush Zionism here. That's what she is chanting. And she's so happy.

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Remember, she garners her happiness from this sort of performative idiocy. Well, she is now joined on the magic boat of stupidity by propagandas from the Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera, as well as an actor from Game of Thrones, Actually, the right actor, it's the Davos Seaworth guy. So at least he's used to being on the water for fake.

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They say they're trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, even though actually what's happening in Gaza right now is kind of amazing. Israel has taken over the distribution of humanitarian aid along with the Americans, and they're doing it directly, which is very good because people are now being fed in the Gaza Strip. by people who are not Hamas.

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One of the big problems with the UN is that they worked for Hamas. And so all the aid that was going in was being hijacked by Hamas. Hamas was then taking it and either using it themselves or they were selling it back to the Palestinians at inflated rates to pay for their terror tunnels and all the rest.

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So what's happening right now is that Palestinians are actually beginning to get aid and it's breaking the Hamas strangleholds over the Palestinian population. It's actually creating the possibility of a true Palestinian uprising against Hamas. Hamas centers of distribution. Like warehouses storing flour are now being attacked by Palestinians.

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So the Palestinians are now free to actually receive aid without having to worry about Hamas stealing it. So what Greta is doing is actually part of a gigantic propaganda effort launched by the exact same pro-Hamas forces that lied earlier this week by claiming that Israel had shot dozens of people at an aid distribution center. It was a complete and total lie parroted by the left-wing media.

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It was parroted by the BBC. It was parroted by CNN and the Washington Post. Again, it's all part of a bigger propaganda operation. So here's Greta, who suddenly decided that climate change is so passe and that Hamas is super hot right now. So she said, quote, the world cannot be silent bystanders. This silence and passivity that we are seeing from most of the world is deadly.

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We are seeing a systematic starvation of two million people. Literally, the Israelis have been shipping in trucks filled with aid to the same people who took hundreds of Israelis, hostages and murdered. murdered over a thousand. She says, every single one of us has a moral obligation to do everything we can to fight for a free Palestine. It's obnoxious Swedish brat. She's so obnoxious.

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Again, this is all part of her broader crusade to get herself arrested so she can get attention. The same kinds of attention she used to get when she was effectively a child actress. But sort of like other child actresses, she can no longer earn a part.

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And so we have now reached the Britney Spears, Katy Perry desperation point of the Greta Thunberg character arc in which she just does increasingly sordid and idiotic stuff in order to get attention. So here she was a few months ago just getting herself arrested.

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Okay, so, yeah. This is what these people get off on is the chanting and she's wearing the terrorist keffiyeh. Again, if you airdropped Greta without the keffiyeh into Gaza, she would last a millisecond. Now, this sort of stuff would be super silly and kind of funny, of course. I mean, listen, I kind of hope, secretly, that this whole thing turns into one of these entertaining reality specials.

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Because in 2019, we were spending about $4 trillion a year. And today we spend $6.5 trillion a year, which is a radical increase, obviously. But it is not as though the underlying issue, which is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, was going away, even if we went back to the 2019 spending trajectory. But on an idealistic level, obviously, this is true.

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So, like, the engine breaks and we get the world's most ridiculous version of Gilligan's Island. The problem is Greta, despite the hair, really can't carry it forward the way Marianne did. Actually, the whole crew of the USS Minnow has now been replaced by smelly environmentalists who really, really hate Jews.

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And like the USS Minnow, they may be stuck wherever they land for years at a time because none of these people is going to make a radio out of a coconut. I mean, if you think Greta ain't making no radio out of no coconut. Anyway, the real question here is the same as always. It really is a serious question.

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Why is it we can almost always identify, actually not almost, just literally always, climate change activists as fans of Hamas, one of the least environmentally friendly groups on the planet? And the answer is simple. It's something called the Omnicause. For the left, there is one giant mush of cause. Okay, it doesn't matter if you're talking about trans rights or the environment or Hamas.

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It's all part of the Omnicause. What unites the Omnicause? Well, it's that people hate the system. And by this, they just mean capitalism in the West. That's all. Greta hates capitalism. She hates the West. That's the end of it.

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And whether she is attacking the West by siding with Hamas or whether she's attacking the West by parroting a bunch of random green environmental nonsense, she's been doing this crap since 2019. She released a book in 2019 and somehow incredibly became even more obnoxious. At some point, we're going to reach the obnoxiousness singularity with Greta Thunberg and the world will end.

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She said in 2019, quote, What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It's a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide by the so-called global north to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order. I mean, notice the language there. She's talking about genocide in 2019. In 2019, I like the West generally.

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So yes, that's what's happening here. This is a boat full of just complete clods who hate the West. And that is why they all talk like this at university campuses. And this is why the media support them because this is all part of a broader left-wing rubric that says that capitalism is bad and successful people are exploiters.

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And everybody who is poor and makes bad decisions in life, all those people, all of them are all exploited by all of those terrible capitalistic Western pigs. Meanwhile, she's a Swedish. So listen, I wish all of these people a pleasant three-hour tour.

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And if they land on the shores of some uncharted desert isle, I hope that they land without the kafias so they can see how the Hamas locals treat them without their terror, solidarity insignias. how Westerners are actually treated when they end up among the actual barbarians that they believe they support.

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Meanwhile, again, as I say, this is part of a broader movement that actually is quite dangerous because when the West begins to parrot the absolute lies of terror groups, that has consequences. It does. When you continue to say the word genocide, when a genocide no longer and never has applied in this area, then you are fomenting the same language that leads to a raising of the temperature.

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And when you raise the temperature this much, people are going to get violent. And this, of course, happened over the course of the weekend in Boulder, Colorado. So in Boulder, Colorado, there's a terrorist suspect who, as it turns out, is a radical Islamist who was let into the country. He's a 45-year-old Egyptian national.

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And this is why so many conservatives feel torn about the big, beautiful bill. Because, yes, it does some good things, and it also does some quite bad things, like keeping in place the Biden levels of spending. So then you get to the question of the pragmatic. Idealistically... And on an ideological basis, Senator Johnson is right. Senator Rand Paul is right.

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And he was originally let into the country on some sort of asylum claim, which, again, ridiculous. Absolutely insane. So he moved to Colorado Springs three years ago with his wife and five kids. He'd spent 17 years living in Kuwait. And then he claimed asylum. He said that he was only able to live in the United States. The man entered the United States with a tourist visa in 2022.

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That's a six-month visa. He then overstayed, like half a million immigrants do every year. And then he claimed asylum so he wouldn't be kicked out. And then he was given a work permit while he waited years for his immigration case to work through the system. And as it turns out, this is just a Jew-hating, radical Islamist piece of crap.

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And what he ended up doing was going to a pro-hostage rally led by some presumably liberal Jews in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder, Colorado is not known as a conservative hotbed. And he proceeded to throw Molotov cocktails, injuring 12 people. One pretty seriously. Then he's arrested on scene.

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So here is a video of this delightful new American, the asylum refugee, a person that we definitely needed to leave in the country. He was driving to attack people with Molotov cocktails. And as he was driving, he was speaking in Arabic to a camera. And here's what he had to say. Allah is greater than anything. Allah is greater than the Zionists. Allah is greater than America and its weapons.

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Allah is greater than the F-35 planes. Allah is greater than everything else. So why do we fear those who are inferior to Allah rather than fear Allah himself? Do not forget, Allah Akbar. Do not forget that Allah is greater than everything. Not the Zionists, America, Britain, France, or Germany. And only Allah has the right to be feared.

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I say to my mother, my wife, my children, my brothers, my people, I attest before Allah and before you that Allah, his messenger, and jihad for Allah's sake are more beloved to me than you and the whole world are. I think the funniest thing about the Greta Thunbergs of the world is these people say like everything they believe right out loud, right out loud. You don't just hate the Jews.

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It's America, Germany, France. Jihad and murder are more beloved to him than his own family. Like they say it all right out in the open. Nobody ain't hiding nothing. And yet we're supposed to believe that actually this is all because of victimization and the exploitation and colonization and all this kind of trash. So we know exactly who this person is. Another failure of our immigration system.

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Remember, it was just last week that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, was before the United States Senate saying, we are going to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests who hate the country. And the Democrats were like, no, you can't do that. And Rubio's like, ah, the hell I can't.

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Critics like Chip Roy in the House are right. On a pragmatic level, they are wrong. And the reason that they are wrong on a pragmatic level is because Republicans, again, have the slimmest of slim majorities in the House. Do you truly believe that there is a majority in the House to cut spending back to 2019 levels? The answer, of course, is absolutely not.

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Again, the Democrats are really mad about this. How could he say that there are people coming to our campuses and into our country who hate the country? They all love our country. They're all wonderful. No, they're not. No, they're not. And we should be deporting all of the people who believe like this person believed. And if you pretend that there is no evidence, that's not true.

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He was posting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012. This particular suspect. Well, now, Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security head, she says that the Boulder suspect's family has been detained by ICE and marked for removal, which seems like a pretty good solution.

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OK, now, again, when it comes to the immigration policy of the administration, it's totally right. But there are two factors that are now happening. One is the loose immigration policy of the Biden administration and the Obama administration and other administrations has led to a moment where America is chock filled with people who hate the country.

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If you want to see the full effects of that, take a look at France, where there are riots in the street constantly by radical Muslims who are just burning stuff. all over the place. You know what we don't need? That in America. We don't need that. And the Trump administration is doing exactly the right thing in stopping all of that.

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Well, the other thing that's happening is the media's parroting of Hamas propaganda is leading to a radical uptick in left-wing anti-Semitism and left-wing terrorism. It is not a coincidence that this sort of thing is happening on the heels of the murder of two people in Washington, D.C., two Jews in Washington, D.C., one of whom was an American citizen.

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That's because the media continue to parrot literally every piece of propaganda. Again, the thing that's happening right now in Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is the distribution of aid designed to get to the people and not to Hamas, is wildly successful. Hamas is attempting to stop it.

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They want a reversion to the UN handing out the aid because if the UN hands out the aid, it keeps Hamas alive. And so the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been doing a good job. So what did Hamas do? They just lied. They claimed that Israel had opened fire near a Gaza aid distribution center and killed dozens of people and injured hundreds of others. And it was just a lie.

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According to officials from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on civilians massing near an aid site. Now, question, why would Israel possibly do that? That'd be the stupidest possible thing they could do is just start firing indiscriminately at crowds of people gathered to receive aid.

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It is controversial enough to make any cuts at all in the House. The same thing is true in the Senate. Republicans have, effectively speaking, a three and a half vote majority. I say in a half because they have 53 votes in the Senate. And J.D. Vance, the vice president, can break a tie. But that is a very slim majority, just practically speaking.

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Legitimately the dumbest thing in history for them to do if they didn't do it, it turns out. Israel denied it was behind the attack. And then they released a drone footage of unidentified masked men shooting unarmed civilians near the aid center. And they released contemporaneous footage showing that they had nothing to do with any of this kind of stuff. The Hamas line was not substantiated.

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In other words, it didn't matter. CNN put out a headline immediately, quote, at least 31 Palestinians killed after Israeli forces opened fire near Gaza aid distribution center. The BBC went with a similar headline, quote, 31 dead after Israeli forces attack near Gaza aid center, says Hamas run health ministry.

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On ABC's Good Morning America, again, they just quoted the Hamas run health ministry uncritically. The Washington Post had to issue a botched retraction. They updated their story, changing its headline to read, more than 30 killed by gunfire near a U.S. aid site in Gaza. The paper did not add an editor's note explaining why it made wholesale editorial changes to the story.

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This kind of media coverage, the lie about genocide, the lie that Israel is just indiscriminately shooting people near an aid station, this kind of stuff is Hamas propaganda. It is Hamas propaganda. Clearly, Implicitly, that's what it is. And it's being fomented by a media that, again, agrees with the Greta Thunbergs of the world and actually really despises the West in major ways.

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Despises capitalism, is far left, believes that the West bears some sort of blood guilt for its success. Caroline Leavitt over the White House ripped into the BBC over its reporting correctly.

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Good for Caroline Leavitt and company. That is exactly right. And of course, the White House knows this because nobody has been more maligned than the White House on a wide variety of issues, including on immigration. The headline of the weekend, by the way, is this Washington Post headline about immigration. It's an unbelievable headline.

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Quote, the mysterious drop in fentanyl seizures on the U.S.-Mexico border. The reasons behind the decrease of fentanyl seizures in the U.S. and along the Mexico-U.S. border are complex. That was their headline. It is not a mysterious drop. We told people not to illegally immigrate, and we said we would arrest them if they do. And then they didn't come.

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That's why there's a drop in the fentanyl traffic. We actually closed the border. It turns out it was not hard to do. We did an entire series last year called The Divided States of Biden, in which one of the episodes, we traveled down to the US-Mexico border. It was wide open because of Joe Biden's policy. We closed it, and the Washington Post says it's mysterious. It's funny.

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You figure that if somebody tried to do the Ron Johnson approach and cut back to 2019 levels in this bill, you would get fallout from Josh Hawley in Missouri, from Susan Collins in Maine, from Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. You probably get some fallout from other senators in purple states who would feel that their neck was on the line.

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When good things happen... For the Trump administration, it's mysterious. Mysterious. We have no idea why. We have no... Who could understand? I mean, we know why. So can the White House. The White House responded to this stupidity.

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Of course, that is 100% right. And the Democrats, for some reason, keep wrong-footing themselves on these issues. These are very obvious issues. Don't let people who hate the country into the country. Arrest people trying to get into the country illegally. Maybe keep track of the people who are in the country.

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New ABC News report breaking, two Chinese nationals have been charged with allegedly smuggling into the United States a fungus called Fusarium grominarium, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agro-terrorism weapon, according to the DOJ on Tuesday.

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Apparently, these two characters were allegedly receiving Chinese government funding for their research, some of it at the University of Michigan. So they were literally developing a bioweapon, according to the DOJ. So what are the Democrats focused laser-like on? Not threats foreign and domestic, but on going after the people who stopped the threats, foreign and domestic.

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Here's Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, threatening to reveal the identities of ICE agents.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, unbelievable. Like that's your focus. The Democrats have a unique capacity. I will say, President Trump, it's amazing. He's like a magnet for iron filings of dumb from the Democrats. Just whatever is the dumbest possible thing they can do, they just immediately rush to it. The most popular part of President Trump's agenda by far is his immigration agenda. By far.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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It's not close in the polling. And Democrats are like, what if we target ICE agents? What the hell is wrong with you people? Why are you so stupid? I don't understand. Meanwhile, in international news, President Trump is saying the same thing that he's been saying for 10 years and somehow people are surprised.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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So you probably lose seven, eight senators if you tried to do the thing that Senator Ron Johnson is trying to do. If politics is the art of the possible, then the question becomes this. Would you prefer to have the current levels of spending without a tax cut? Or would you prefer to have current levels of spending minus a little bit plus a tax cut? Those are the two choices on the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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So President Trump has been in the midst of these negotiations with Iran via Steve Witkoff, the special envoy. Again, I'm unimpressed, shall we say, with Steve Witkoff's negotiating acumen thus far. But President Trump has now come out and he has said, we will not allow any enrichment of uranium, is what he says on Truth Social.

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He says, under our potential agreement, we will not allow any enrichment of uranium. Now, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had also said that. Steve Witkoff had also said that. But that does apparently contradict a proposal that Witkoff made to Iran on Saturday, the details of which were reported by Axios on Monday.

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Well, if Witkoff is making proposals that are not what the president wants, then he is betraying a fundamental promise made by the president of the United States in both terms. President Trump has been very clear on this. No Iranian enrichment because we don't trust them, nor should we. There are reports that they are rushing toward a nuclear weapon as fast as possible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The idea that Iran desperately needs nuclear energy for civilian purposes is on its face an absurdity. It is a wildly underdeveloped economy. They have some of the greatest oil resources on planet earth. What are they worried about? Environmental consequences of drilling precisely. It's absolute bull and everybody knows it's absolute bull.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Iran would like an interim deal whereby they have some sanctions removed just to get beyond the period where they can rearm and close the skies. The big problem for Iran right now is there's an open window above Iran. Israel destroyed a lot of their air defense capacity in the last round of fighting between Iran and Israel.

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And that means that a potential strike on their nuclear facilities is quite real. So Iran has been doing a couple of things. One is they're apparently digging even deeper bunkers for their nuclear facilities, hoping that this will somehow protect them from an Israeli strike or a combined Israeli-American strike or something like that. And they have been delaying. They really want to delay.

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This is their big deal. Try to run out the clock. Try to simply push the negotiations and push them and push them and push them. Apparently... There was a report earlier this week that the Trump administration would propose an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels while the U.S.

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and other countries work out a more detailed plan intended to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon, but also give it access to fuel for new nuclear power plants. That is a non-starter. It should be a non-starter for the Trump administration. Again, that was exactly the thing that President Trump was rejecting in that Truth Social post. No enrichment. Why?

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Because anything less is the JCPOA, what President Trump labeled the worst deal in American history. Anything less is the Barack Obama deal. The JCPOA, the Obama deal, allowed Iran to retain all of its centrifuges and enrich uranium to 3.67%. Any proposal that mirrors anything remotely like that is the Obama-Iran deal.

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It also sunsetted provisions on bomb-making technology so they would have a full-scale nuclear program by 2030. It also ignored Iran's missile program, which they have been steadily developing. It also allowed them to spend all of the sanction relieved money on as many terror groups as they could, which is how they rebuilt their entire terror network from Hezbollah down to the Houthis in Yemen.

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All the monitoring was being done by inspectors basically selected by the Iranian regime. Inspectors from the IAEA were forced to petition Iran's mullahs to visit sensitive sites and then wait over two weeks, which obviously is a way of ensuring that Iran could move around whatever materials they were pushing. So again, all of this cannot be imitated by the Trump administration.

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And this was the point that was being made by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson when he talked about the mistake that Elon Musk is making in attacking the bill. Here he was.

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President Trump has said that over and over and over again. It's not me, that's President Trump. President Trump has said correctly that it would be bad for the world for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That is the purpose of these negotiations. If Iran refuses to negotiate along the lines the United States wants, the United States should simply stand back and say, okay, well, we did what we could.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then the Israelis will do what they have to do. That is the proper solution if these talks go sideways. Now, again, the easiest solution and the probably least risky solution, if the Iranian talks go sideways, which I assume they will, because the Iranian foreign minister keeps tweeting over and over again this morning about how they need their nuclear program

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If that continues, the easiest solution would just be to fly one sortie over Iran that takes out the nuclear facilities with B-2s. That would end it. Done. And that would not lead to worldwide conflagration, would not lead to a giant regional war because Iran does not have the resources for that. Who exactly would ally with Iran in such a war? Russia is a little busy, you may have noticed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Go to dailywireplus.com, use code DAD40, and save 40% now. Alrighty, folks. So the big, beautiful bill is reaching fruition in the Senate. What will the final form look like? We don't actually know at this point, a lot of negotiations happening inside the Republican Senate caucus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Russia's had very little interest in defending Iran along any serious lines for the last couple of years, not just because of Ukraine, but because Iran's military is, in fact, inferior in the region, which is why they've had to use terror proxies. But if the United States does not wish to participate in such a strike for whatever reason that I think is baseless, then let the Israelis do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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But don't sign a deal just to sign a deal, because that would, in fact, violate the stuff that President Trump has been talking about for years and years and years. Speaking of which, the Ukrainians unleashed one of the great military attacks in modern history over the course of the last few days. They unleashed them in a surprise attack on Sunday.

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They hit airfields from eastern Siberia all the way to Russia's western border. According to The New York Times, they secretly planted a swarm of drones in Russia. The assaults had several Russian aircraft on fire, stunned the Kremlin, and dealt a strategic and symbolic blow to Moscow's relentless bombing campaign in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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So apparently, Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian drones had attacked airfields in five regions stretching across five time zones, Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur. Several aircraft caught fire in Murmansk near the border with Norway and also in Irkutsk in eastern Siberia. Ukraine said 117 drones were used in the attacks, causing $7 billion in damage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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The SBU said dozens of aircraft were damaged in the strikes. The New York Times verified videos that showed successful strikes at Olenya Air Base in Romansk and Belaya Air Base in Irkutsk. The plan was called the Operation Spider's Web. Drones were planted across Russian-near military bases, according to the Ukrainians, and then they were all activated simultaneously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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The plan began a year and a half ago. And apparently, people who were involved in the attack were withdrawn from Russia before it took place, according to the Ukrainians, and taken to a safer place. And this was all done remotely. Over many months, according to the Ukrainians, dozens of drones were secretly transported into Russia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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The drones were packed onto pallets inside wooden containers with remote-controlled lids, and then they were loaded onto trucks. Ukrainian officials said the crates were rigged to self-destruct after the drones were released. There was no indication the truck drivers knew what they were hauling, according to Ukrainian officials.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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I mean, it really is an unbelievable operation, very much akin to the Israeli beeper operation, like operations ahead of a long tail planned far in advance and show the vulnerability of Russia to this sort of attack. By the way, not just Russia. It means the United States really needs to up our own security because this sort of attack could be carried out by, say, Chinese forces.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And they're shipping tons of stuff over here all the time. And let's just say that our ports are not particularly secure. Apparently, their video is showing drones flying less than four miles from the Olenya airbase. The person recording can be heard suggesting the drones had been launched from a truck parked down the road.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Ukraine said 41 planes had been hit, about one-third of the strategic cruise missile carriers at Russian airbases across three time zones. The Times obtained radar imagery from a space imaging company. Seven strategic bombers appear to be destroyed, likely four Tupolev Tu-22M and three Tupolev Tu-95 bombers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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American and European security officials said they estimated as many as 20 Russian strategic aircraft may have been destroyed or severely damaged. I mean, points for creativity for the Ukrainians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And one of the goals is demonstrating for the Ukrainians that they are not going to surrender, that they are going to continue to push, and that the best thing that the Russians can do is come to the table, which is, in fact, the proper approach here. Vladimir Putin has shown zero, zero compunction about continuing the war so far. the Ukrainians are going to have to push him to the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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That's how it works in a war. You don't get to an armistice unless both sides feel that they've gone about as far as they can go. Right now, Russia does not feel that. But if Ukraine continues to push, maybe they will. All righty, folks, the show's continuing for our members right now. We'll get into the fraught New York mayoralty race. Apparently, a socialist might win again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Now, again, it's not a giant shock that critics of government spending are feeling a little bit frustrated, but welcome to the party, pal. I mean, some of us have been very angry at government spending for literally our entire public careers. So many of the sort of newfound budget hawks I mean, listen, I'm glad that they're there, but let's be real about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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When Republicans actually had control of Congress, which they gained in 2010, thanks to Barack Obama's radical increase in spending, and then the Tea Party movement came about, and then Obama got shellacked in the midterms, Republicans were never capable of making these sort of significant spending trajectory cuts that would have been necessary to actually fix the problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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The last time Republicans...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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seriously attempted to fix the problems with the federal budget was 2005, when George W. Bush, after his reelect, attempted to move toward what would be the equivalent of health savings account in Social Security, which was called privatizing Social Security, which effectively said to people who are below a particular age that instead of you receiving a defined benefit package,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Instead of that, what you would actually do is take the money you would pay to Social Security, they'd put it in an investment account, and then it would be linked to the stock market. If that had happened, by the way, then many of the budgetary problems that we are now looking at would have been solved. But everybody didn't like that because this is the third rail of American politics.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And let's be real about this. President Trump ran in 2016 on the principle that he would never touch these things. So I don't know why anyone is acting all shocked and appalled by this. This was part of the MAGA movement. Part of the MAGA movement was big spending. Pretending that part of the MAGA movement was not big spending is silly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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So yes, it is great that Elon Musk came in and wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse with Doge. And I'm glad Doge is there. I'm glad the Department of Governmental Efficiency is going line by line through every budget item at all the various departments and looking for places where funds are being misallocated or misspent. That's fine. But that is not going to touch the underlying problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And again, What you see with President Trump is what you get. President Trump pledged he was not going to touch these major social benefit programs. So when we talk about President Trump not being a small spender, that's always been true. And he was a heterodox Republican politician. So I asked our friends and sponsors at Perplexity about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And of course, you have people who are fiscal hawks like Senator Ron Johnson, who's been a guest on the show, talking about the shortcomings of the big, beautiful bill in terms of spending. Obviously, this bill maintains Biden levels of spending. It does not, in fact, cut back to 2019 pre-pandemic levels of spending.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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How much did President Trump expand spending from 2017 to 2019? I didn't want to count the pandemic. And then I asked, how much is the federal government slated to spend in 2025? What percentage of that spending is Medicare, Medicaid, social security and service on the debt?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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So to answer the first question, Trump era federal spending expansion from 2017 through 2019, according to perplexity, when president Trump took office, the CBO projected deficits would be two to 3% of GDP during his term. The deficit instead reached nearly 4% of GDP in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019, driven largely by the 2017 tax cuts and increased discretionary spending.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Over his four years, President Trump signed or enacted $7.8 trillion in new initiatives. By the way, only $2 trillion of that was actually attributable to the 2017 tax cuts, which means $5.8 trillion was everything else. This year, the federal government is slated to spend $7 trillion. And how's that money being spent? And this is the key.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Okay, if you actually want to redo federal spending, you need to look at the entitlement programs. According to Perplexity, The 2025 outlays, Social Security, $1.4 trillion. That is 20% of the federal budget. Medicare, $1 trillion, another 14% of the federal budget. Medicaid and other health, $0.8 trillion, $800 billion. That's 11% of the federal budget.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Net interest, almost a trillion dollars, 14% of the federal budget. Altogether, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on our debt, almost 60% of our federal budget. Hey, that is a wild, wild statistic. And this is why when people say, well, you can cut on the discretionary spending, cut on defense, that is not the major driver of our national debt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Until the American people get serious about that, ain't nothing going to change. And so this is why I say there is a difference between the ideologically accurate and the pragmatic. And Elon, again, my sympathies are with Elon. He's a man coming from the tech world outside of government. He just wants to fix the problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And this is what you see with a lot of the tech guys who are associated with the Trump administration. All they want is to fix the problem. They come in and they say, I want to fix this the way that I would my company on a slash staff. I want to recapitulate the hiring process. I want to make sure that everybody knows what they do here. And this is exactly what Elon did when he came in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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He was literally doing the thing that Steve Jobs used to do at his own company. Steve Jobs famously used to go walk around the office. He'd get in the elevator with somebody and then he would ask them to define their job. And if they couldn't, he would fire them. And Elon literally tried to do that with the federal government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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The problem is the federal government is not, in fact, a private company. It does not work that way. And you can't apply the same actual calculation and how to change it that you would to a privately held company. It just does not work that way. The way that the federal government actually works is that you have to figure out if there is enough consensus to do a big thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And then you have people inside the Republican caucus, like Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, who thinks the bill actually goes too far in cutting spending. The House bill goes too far by putting work requirements on Medicaid, for example. So as always, you have a fractious Republican caucus. And the question is, what gets through?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Right now, Republicans have a consensus to do a big thing with taxes, which is maintain the current tax rate. And they have the consensus to make some relatively small cuts with regard to the future of Medicaid growth. And again, let's be clear about this. This is not a cut to Medicaid. It is a cut to future Medicaid growth. That is what the support is there for.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And if politics is the art of the possible, then what is President Trump supposed to do? He can't just magic this thing into existence. And this is one of the great lies about politics generally. Politicians will always tell you they can magic things into existence. No politician can. We have a system, for better or for worse. In many cases, for better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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When it comes to the inability of the American people to actually take debt seriously, certainly for worse. The short-term thinking of the American people will end up biting us directly in the butt when it comes to the national debt. Now, remember, a little bit later on in the show, I'm going to get to Greta Thunberg going to the Gaza Strip. I know, like the absurdity is, it truly is quite real.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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But you know what else is absurd? The cost on your cell coverage. Pure Talk is my wireless company, a veteran-led company, and they believe every man and woman who has faithfully served this country deserves to proudly fly an American flag made in America. That's why Pure Talk is on a mission to give an allegiance flag, the highest quality American flag, to 1,000 U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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veterans in time for the patriotic holidays. Flag Day, U.S. Army birthday, they're coming up June 14th. Independence Day, of course, comes up July 4th. To switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk this month, a portion of every sale will go to provide these high-quality flags to deserving veterans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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With plans from just $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data, you can enjoy America's most dependable 5G network while cutting your cell phone bill in half. The average family saves over $1,000 a year. I use Pure Talk for all of my calls, like all of them, personal, business, everything. Their program's great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Just go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. If they're good enough for my calls, they're good enough for everyone's. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, I always assumed restless sleep was inevitable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Night after night, tossing, turning, waking up with that aching back. I convinced myself that's how sleep was supposed to be. And then I tried Helix Sleep. And they made a mattress just for me. And it's way, way better. When I'm on the road, I miss my Helix Sleep mattress. Now I easily fall asleep. And trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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What's emerging right now inside the Republican Party is a fight between the ideal and the pragmatic. And neither side is actually wrong in this particular fight. So this has now boiled down to a fight between President Trump and Elon Musk. So Elon, of course, recently left the administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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And producer Zach also just bought a Helix mattress topper on Monday, apparently. Should be arriving any day. He's excited, but my whole family has Helix Sleep at this point. It is great. Helix is offering an incredible summer sale right now. Visit helixsleep.com slash ben, get 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com slash ben for 20% off site wide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash ben for this exclusive offer. As Spencer Jacob writes over at the Wall Street Journal, The package of tax and spending measures sent to the Senate, now officially called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, could act like a budgetary wolf bait.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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It would add around $3 trillion to debt levels over the next decade compared with existing estimates, and $5 trillion of certain temporary features were made permanent, according to the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget. For perspective, federal interest this fiscal year already will be more than the defense budget and more than Medicaid, disability insurance, and food stamps combined.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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Moreover, the CBO's estimates assume the bond market will not only tolerate a surge in spending, but become more relaxed about it with lower yields. So what if it turns out that with lower yields, people buy fewer bonds? Well, then you have a vicious cycle. Jamie Dimon said you're going to see a crack in the bond market if this continues.

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Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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But the reality is that Americans don't understand a lot of this stuff. Things seem to be going okay. And so we will walk our way off that cliff. And again, I'm a person who's been advocating literally my entire career for restructuring of these entitlement programs, but you're not getting in the bill. So the question is yes on the bill or no on the bill. President Trump,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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spent his weekend attacking opponents of the bill in the Senate, including Rand Paul. He put out a statement in which he snapped at Senator Paul, quote, Rand votes no on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are actually crazy. Losers. The people of Kentucky can't stand him. This is a big growth bill. Now, again, the people of Kentucky certainly can't stand him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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They keep reelecting him. I have major disagreements on Senator Paul with a wide variety of issues. I don't disagree with him on this one. But where Trump is right is that Rand Paul does not tend to live in the world of the pragmatic or the practical. Now, again, I don't think that Senator Paul is to blame for that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2210 - Greta Goes To Gaza!

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I think you do need people in the caucus who are going to try to pull as hard as they can to the right. However, when we, the American public, are considering would it be better for the bill to pass or not to pass? The real question is, do you want to see all the tax rates increase and the spending remain the same, which is likely to be what happens?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2189 - The Secret SUCCESS of DOGE

Well, folks, a lot of news to get to, as always. But first, time is almost up. We are in the final hours of our Daily Wire 100-hour flash sale, celebrating President Trump's first 100 days back in office. This is your last chance to get the best deal of the season on a Daily Wire Plus annual membership. Trump is trying to rebuild the country. We're trying to rebuild the culture.

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Ep. 2189 - The Secret SUCCESS of DOGE

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It was all supposed to be directed against the Chinese government, preventing them from growth, reshoring manufacturing in the United States. And the administration keeps saying that China's gonna come to the table. So Scott Besant, the treasury secretary yesterday, he said, over time, we're gonna see the Chinese tariffs are actually horrible for China. China's gonna have to back down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2189 - The Secret SUCCESS of DOGE

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Of course, that includes the freeze on support for USAID, along with another $62 billion plus in competitive grant funding for the Transportation Department, according to the estimate. Democrats also are detailing $943 million frozen for the Head Start early education program. By the way, Head Start is one of the great fails in federal history. Head Start, the idea that you're

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Ep. 2189 - The Secret SUCCESS of DOGE

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So that is all fine and dandy. There's only one problem. China doesn't seem to care. Why doesn't China seem to care very much? Well, the answer is China has some systemic advantages against the United States. Their biggest systemic advantage in a trade war is they don't give any dams whatsoever about their citizens. That's the biggest advantage. They're an absolute communist tyranny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When I say communist, I don't mean that they actually practice communism. They don't. They practice a form of mercantilism. But it is the Chinese Communist Party running the place, and they don't care about their citizens whatsoever. If you disagree with them, they will gulag you. If they don't like you enough, they will just kill you.

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So you think China cares that its citizens are going to suffer from the trade war so long as it also makes the United States suffer? They're actually in favor of it, which is why China is not coming to the table. There is no evidence whatsoever that China is actually negotiating with the United States at any serious level at this point.

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In fact, China put out a defiant propaganda clip yesterday on Twitter. Here's what it sounded like.

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Okay, so China is trying to build a multipolar world in much the same way that Russia wants a multipolar world with itself as sort of the center of Eurasia. China would love a multipolar world with itself at the very least at the center of the Southeast Asian part of the globe. Plus, they're spreading their tentacles all the way across Eurasia into Africa, even into South America.

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So they are very pleased, actually, that President Trump, in declaring a trade war on China, also decided to simultaneously declare a trade war on everybody else because that pushes all those countries toward China and away from the United States. That is why China is perfectly happy with this situation. They actually are quite pleased with all of this. They don't care about their citizens.

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They're happy to make trade deals with other countries. They have been traveling. Xi Jinping has been spending every day in other countries trying to cut trade deals. And meanwhile, the United States is trying to claw its way back to kind of status quo ante. They're claiming that they're cutting brand new magical trade deals. We haven't seen any of those trade deals as of yet.

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It is currently April 30th. President Trump declared Liberation Day April 9th. So when do we get to see the trade deals? Well, again, the markets are waiting for it. The markets are enthusiastic about the possibility. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday teased that the Trump administration had reached its first trade deal. He didn't say who it was with.

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He didn't say what exactly the trade deal would constitute. But the markets responded by being very enthusiastic because they clearly want the off ramp. The markets want the off ramp. They don't feel that this trade war is well thought out. Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, was asked specifically by CNN's Caitlin Collins, which deals are closed? When can we expect to see some deals?

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radically increasing the chances for young children if they go to a federally funded, federally run preschool program. The data on Head Start has been pretty solid for a long time, showing effectively no difference between kids who go to Head Start and kids who do not. There's also been some $10 billion frozen and canceled for the National Resources Conservation Service as well.

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Here is his answer.

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I'm sure that that is true. I'm sure there are a bunch of countries who want to trade with the most powerful economy on planet Earth, the United States. And maybe we get some trade deals that are marginally better than the old trade deals. At the same time, China has strengthened its hand in a lot of ways.

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A lot of countries are de-dollarizing because they're not betting on the volatile nature of the Trump administration's foreign policy. We need to get back to some sort of stability in the trade situation. And as fast as humanly possible, the markets are begging for it. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, FBI data shows most break-ins happen during daylight, not at night.

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As the summer days get longer and you're out more, your empty home becomes an excellent target. SimpliSafe's proactive security stops threats before they happen, protecting your home while you enjoy those sunny days. Millions of Americans trust SimpliSafe as their new standard in home security, giving them peace of mind whenever they arm their system.

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Unlike traditional systems that only react after someone's already broken in, SimpliSafe's active guard outdoor protection prevents break-ins before they happen. Their AI-powered cameras with live monitoring agents detect suspicious activity, speak directly to potential intruders, activate spotlights, and can even call the police, all before anyone gets inside your home.

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SimpliSafe also boasts battery backup to ensure your home is still protected even during power outages. I'm on the road right now, but they are setting up a SimpliSafe system at my studios back home. Team at home, beware, nothing will get passed. Simply safe, unnoticed. Plus, there's no long-term contracts or cancellation fees. Monitoring starts just a buck a day.

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Everything comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. Visit simplysafe.com slash Shapiro. Claim 50% off a new system with professional monitoring plan and get your first month for free. That's simplysafe.com slash Shapiro. There's no safe like Simply Safe. Also, don't mistake what I'm about to tell you about for another injectable weight loss solution. It's something different.

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These impressive weight loss results come from a physician-developed dietary supplement called Lean. Lean was developed by medical and academic professionals as an alternative to GLP-1 medications, eliminating the need for injections.

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Research on the components in Lean demonstrates their ability to regulate glucose levels, significantly decrease hunger sensations, and enhance metabolism by utilizing fat stores as an energy source. Real people have seen real results and have shared their experience. Patty S said, I finally found a weight loss product that works. I wanted to lose 20 pounds and lean really curbs my appetite.

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Kelly F said, amazing. I immediately noticed an energy boost and a healthy loss in weight. I would promote this product to anyone. One of my producers getting set up with Lean told me they are excited to see the results. If you or someone you know is struggling to lose weight and a healthy diet and exercise don't seem to be doing it for them, Lean is for you. Let's get you started with 20% off.

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Just use code BEN20 at TakeLean.com. That's code BEN20 at TakeLean.com again. TakeLean.com. Results vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease and is not a substitute for care from a healthcare provider. Meanwhile, opponents of President Trump are in fact succeeding in areas around the globe, including Canada.

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Democrats, of course, are very angry about all of this. Listen, all of the spending is going to have to be then... put permanently into the no-spend category by Congress. They can do so with a simple 50-vote majority in the Senate. That is the path presumably Congress is going to have to take.

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There's been this sort of bizarre divide that has emerged in some of the Trump supportive movements. And that divide is kind of tripartite. There are some of us in the Trump camp who are very upset that Mark Carney won the election in Canada because he is in fact a shill of the World Bank. He worked for the IMF.

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When you talk about like globalists, Mark Carney is sort of the definition of a globalist, meaning international institutions ought to rule the roost. Immigration ought to be relatively open. There ought to be commerce, not regulated by country or bilateral deals, but commerce with some of the worst places on earth, including places like China. Carney is very much in favor of regulation.

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He was a net zero guy. That guy's the prime minister now. So I think that is quite bad on a personal level that President Trump intervened in the Canadian election by basically just crapping all over Canada repeatedly to no actual effect, by the way. Like, where's the big win? And so Carney got elected. I think that's bad.

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And then there is another wing of the Republican Party that says that basically Trump's activities had nothing to do with the victory of Mark Carney, which to me is just pretending nonsense. or coping.

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I don't think that there's any argument that can plausibly be made that President Trump saying repeatedly that Canada was going to be the 51st state and then suggesting over and over that tariffs were going to force them to capitulate their sovereignty to the United States. Maybe we'd invade. That had no impact on the election whatsoever. That is not what the polls show.

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But there are some people in Team Trump land who are making the case that basically this is about Pierre Poliev blowing it in some way, despite the fact that he was leading by 25 points in December. And then there's the third category of people who seem to be perversely happy that Mark Carney is the prime minister. And that group of people, a lot of those folks seem to be convinced that

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that if there is a right-wing leader who is allied with principles of conservatives in the United States, but is not quote-unquote Trumpy enough, better to have a left-wing leader than somebody who is not, what, a Trump knockoff? It's a sort of bizarre perspective. I see people dunking on Pierre Poliev. You're happy that ugly Justin Trudeau is going to be the prime minister over there?

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Join the fight before the clock hits zero. Go to dailywire.com. Use code DW100 to join right now. Well, We have been hearing for a very long time that Doge, that would of course be the Department of Governmental Efficiency under the tutelage of Elon Musk, has been a giant fail.

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Well, if you think that Trump had nothing to do with the election, then I defy you to answer why exactly the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, thinks that Trump had a lot to do with the election. Here he was, torturing Trump at his victory rally.

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And we are now moving in this administration from the sort of executive order side of the administration, what President Trump can do unilaterally to Congress. The focus needs to move to Congress because the truth is that President Trump, Doge, they can temporarily freeze a lot of this funding. But unless it's rescinded by Congress, it will go right back into place after a certain period of time.

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So I have a question. Why is that better for the United States? Seriously, why is it better than Mark Carney is the prime minister of Canada? He's openly saying, by the way, that he wants to reorient away from the United States and toward Europe and China. So what's the upside? Seriously. Here he was, again, making the case that Trump is trying to break us so he can own us.

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It was this campaign slogan that basically allowed him to defeat Pierre Poliev, who is in every way a better candidate. By the way, Poliev is not going away. The Conservative Party actually won a larger percentage of the vote in Canada than they have at any time since 2011 when they last won the government.

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The big story of the election is not just that Carney won, it is that he also drew votes from a lot of the sort of fringe left-wing parties who consolidated around him in order to quote-unquote fight Trump. Here's Carney.

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By the way, the person who is saying that he basically lost the election for Poliev is President Trump. This is one of the things I like about President Trump the most. He's totally transparent at all times. He did an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. Again, don't do interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg. Jeffrey Goldberg is an absolute Barack Obama mouthpiece. He always was.

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He was a Joe Biden mouthpiece. He still is. I don't understand the deep desire by President Trump to reach out to say the New York Times or the Atlantic. In any case, he did an interview with Goldberg and Goldberg asked him about Canada. And here's President Trump's answer. Quote, well, the Canadians, here's the problem I have with Canada. We're subsidizing them to the tune of $200 billion a year.

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OK, there I assume that he is talking about our trade deficit with Canada, which is largely based on their oil. If you take out the oil and gas from Canada, which, by the way, we do need that. We have refineries in the United States that are built for the kind of oil and natural gas that we import from Canada. But if you take that out, we actually have a trade surplus of Canada.

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In any case, Trump says we don't need their gasoline. We don't need their oil. We don't need their lumber. We don't need their energy of any type. We don't need anything they have. I say it would make a great 51st state. I love other nations. I love Canada. I have great friends. Wayne Gretzky is a friend of mine. I mean, I have great friends. I said to Wayne, I'm going to give you a pass, Wayne.

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I don't want to ruin his reputation in Canada. I said, just pretend you don't know me, but they're great people. They know, you know, they do 95% of their business with us. Remember, if they're a state, there's no tariffs. They have lower taxes. We have to guard them militarily. And then Goldberg says, you want them to become a state? And Trump says, I think it would be great. And then Trump added,

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This is the reason why Democrats are freaking out about all of this. They're worried that Republicans are in fact going to start passing rescission bills that would make permanent many of the freezes and turn the freeze into a cut.

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Quote, you know, until I came along, remember, the conservative was leading by 25 points. Then I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I've thrown the election into a close call, right? And so President Trump knows that President Trump basically threw the election to Mark Carney. And my question is, how does that benefit President Trump? How does that benefit the United States?

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Mark Carney is openly saying he wants to reorient toward China. He literally is saying that.

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In that same speech, he said that he wanted to supercharge Canada's trade with Europe and Asia, quote, the system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for our countries for decades, is over. These are tragedies, but it's also our new reality.

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He is pledging closer integration with the European Union. He's also, presumably, going to be turning toward China. That is no shock. He is eager to turn toward China. So are many of the people on the left.

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President Trump, in revolutionary fashion during his first term, told the world, including the left, that China was a geopolitical opponent of the United States who needed to be treated that way. And large swaths of even the Democratic Party in the United States understand that. So that he deserves credit for. But if you are going to box in China, that requires a meticulously thought out strategy.

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And you know what would help is allies like Pierre Poliev in power in Canada and not Mark Carney in Canada. Now, Carney is going to face some serious problems in Canada. Carney's economy, which again, he inherits from his own party, the Liberal Party, is really, really sluggish.

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If you look at the first year of the Trudeau government, 2016 through 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal, Canada's real GDP growth per capita was 2.5% versus 18.7% for the United States. And business investment per worker, excluding housing, actually fell between 2015 and 2023. So he's going to have to face down a lot of this stuff. But...

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According to the Reuters News Service, the administration is citing the Doge efficiency movement and the undoing of the federal government's DEI initiatives as reason for blocking congressionally approved funding. The question is, how much the executive branch can actually block that funding under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Usually the president has to tweak levels by proposing cuts.

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That does not mean that it is a good thing that he ends up as the actual prime minister of Canada when all this is said and done. It would be much better for the United States to have an ally in that position rather than somebody who hates President Trump. Poliev likes Trump. Poliev likes conservatives.

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The best case scenario at this point for conservatives in Canada is that the Liberal Party, which does not have an open majority in the parliament, they have to ally with some fringe parties in order to achieve a majority, that they govern poorly, the government falls within the next 24 months, and then Poliev is prime minister. That is quite possible.

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However, this election was within grasp of people who were more conservative. And if you don't think it had anything to do with President Trump bashing the Canadians over the head, And then Canadians getting the wrong impression that Poliev was allied with that bashing. I don't know what to tell you. And that is not a good thing. That is not a point of bragging.

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Meanwhile, in good news, apparently President Trump is in fact shifting his position with regard to Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine, Russia in general. There's a good article in the New York Times about the Finnish leader, President Alexander Stubb of Finland, who is optimistic that Vladimir Putin will in fact be stared down by the president of the United States.

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In an interview with the New York Times on Sunday, Stubb downplayed his effect on Mr. Trump. He apparently has a good relationship with President Trump. He says that President Trump is going to actually stand down Vladimir Putin. Stubb said, quote, everyone has to understand the only thing that Putin understands is power.

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I mean, there's a reason why Finland has one of the strongest militaries in Europe, and the reason is not Sweden. The reason is because Russia shares an 835 mile border with Finland and they fought a bunch of skirmishes and wars with Finland.

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And in fact, Russia, Alexander Dugin, who we talked about last Friday on the show, he has openly called for the quote unquote Finlandization of much of Western Europe, meaning sort of regimes that are puppet regimes friendly to the Russians. And Finland doesn't like that very much. So according to the New York Times, Stubb has been having discussions with President Trump

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He said, the president is running out of patience. We've now seen statements which are quite tough on Putin in Russia. I hope the Kremlin understands you don't play with President Trump. Obviously, I certainly hope that this is the case. I think that the proper way to get to the end of the war is in fact to stand Russia down. Otherwise, Russia is not going to accept an end of the war.

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I've been calling for precisely the same thing in this war since about month four. The same thing. Freezing of the lines. Essentially a Korean armistice. That is the best available thing. And everybody, I think, understands that.

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I think that the Ukrainians understand that the prospect of them winning back the Donbass and Crimea regions are basically non-existent at this point, given their current levels of weaponry and military materiel and manpower. However, you know who doesn't understand that right now is Vladimir Putin, who continues to up the ante every single day.

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Vladimir Putin is basically waiting for the United States to drop out of this. And then he's going to push incredibly hard. And if Vladimir Putin were able to ingest Ukraine full scale, that would be quite bad for the United States. It'd be quite bad for NATO. He claims that he doesn't want to actually be on the borders of NATO. So first of all, NATO is already on his borders.

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Since April 2023, there are other countries that are on Russia's borders that have actually joined NATO, including Finland. Finland was not a NATO member and then it joined NATO. Okay, but NATO already borders. the Russians in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Were the Russians to actually ingest Ukraine, there'd actually be more on the borders of NATO, not less on the borders of NATO, obviously.

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They're worried about Ukraine turning into a NATO country. There is no actual offer by NATO right now to have Ukraine join. So that is just a reality. Ukraine's constitution does call for them since 2019 to actually try to join NATO. You can see the reason why, and it's because Russia actually does not want a direct fight with NATO at this point.

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Although if they gathered Ukraine in, it's quite possible they might try something in Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, probably Lithuania, considering that Kaliningrad is actually like a small province that exists bizarrely as Russian territory on the borders of Lithuania on the other side, like physically disconnected from Lithuania.

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That, of course, would be the rescission. That has not happened so far. Now it is up to Congress, which brings us to Congress. And again, right now, it would be an act of political magic. Every time you get a Republican majority together, it's a bit of political magic. That's just the way that it works.

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In any case, if they were to ingest Ukraine, it would actually put them on the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, all of which are NATO members. So it broadened their confrontational capacity with regard to NATO. But put all of that aside, the bottom line here is that the Russians very much would love for this war to continue so long as it gives them the possibility of victory.

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President Trump, I think, is understanding that at this point, which is a very, very good thing. And meanwhile, in another thing that the Trump administration ought to understand, the Iranians are playing them. The Iranians are always playing them. The Iranians have no intention of giving up their nuclear facilities or giving up any of their nuclear program.

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The idea that you're going to be able to contain the nuclear program a la Barack Obama and the JCPOA is fabulous nonsense. It is not true. Simultaneously, by the way, the idea that a military strike by Israel or by Israel accompanied by some B2s from the United States would result in a full-scale regional war in which the United States would have boots on the ground is a lie. It is not true.

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There is no evidence that that is the case. I would not be in favor of such a war. No one is in favor of such a war. The United States killed Qasem Soleimani during Trump's first term, and we did not end up in a full-scale shooting war with the Iranians with American boots on the ground in Iran or anything remotely like that.

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Killing the Houthis in Yemen, which is actually quite far away from Iran, geographically speaking, does not amount to a shooting war in Iran with American boots on the ground in Iran. That is not what that is. That is an attempt to free the Red Sea of Houthi piracy and allow free shipping.

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The reason I bring all of this up is because Iran is now basically trying to wheedle their way into the good graces of the Trump administration. Steve Witkoff, of course, has been deployed over there. He's quite friendly with the Qataris. The Qataris are a cutout for the Iranians.

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They funnel over the past decade and a half or so, something like $1.8 billion to Hamas when they're not spending hundreds of millions of dollars on American universities for some odd reason that no one can discern. According to Bloomberg, Iran is now pitching its sanctioned economy to him as an investment opportunity, which again, listen, I'll give it to the Iranians. That is smart.

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And President Trump is a dealmaker. He likes deals and he likes economic deals. It's why he talks about the possibility of an economic deal that would include Russia in the world economy. Maybe new economic opportunities arise. Now, that does have its positive aspects. The Abraham Accords are largely based on the idea that commerce conquers all.

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However, as China shows, commerce does not always conquer all. Countries that hate our guts are perfectly willing to use the tools of capitalism using mercantilist theory in order to enrich themselves and then oppose us wherever they can. China has done that. So here's the question. Is Iran more like Saudi Arabia and the UAE or is Iran more like China?

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And the reason for that is because the Republican House of Representatives majority is so unbelievably narrow. And even in the Senate of the United States, you have to acknowledge just pretty much right off the bat that Collins and Murkowski are likely to go the other way on major legislation. So you're from 53 votes to 51 votes.

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in terms of its actual intentions with regard to the United States? The answer is pretty obvious, but Iran is attempting to basically play the Trump administration into allowing them a nuclear program by pledging that they're going to allow for some sort of economic cooperation.

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According to Bloomberg, with talks between Iran and the United States over the Islamic Republic's atomic activity showing signs of progress, top Iranian officials are for the first time in decades overtly promoting their economy to the White House to secure a lasting and more effective nuclear accord. If Trump wants a deal that's better for the U.S.

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than the one he jettisoned in 2018, the Iranians want the same for Iran. Tehran's top envoy, Abbas Arahi, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last week, a new nuclear deal could give the U.S. companies access to what he claims is a trillion-dollar economic opening in a country of about 90 million people with some of the world's biggest oil and gas reserves.

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Obviously, this is a way of attempting to draw President Trump in, to draw him into a deal. Russia is also attempting this same sort of tactic. Again, our enemies are smart. They're not stupid.

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They understand that if the Trump administration is looking for economic deals, offering them economic deals is a great way to get themselves off the hook while simultaneously promoting the most anti-American activity in respective regions, whether you're talking about Ukraine, whether you're talking about Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, the Gaza Strip, or any of the rest.

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Again, the question that the Trump administration should be asking itself is if the Obama-Iran deal was bad, which it was, and if China is capable of using capitalism as a tool against the United States, why in the world would we think that Iran is incapable of using market integration as a tool for the spread of terrorism, for example, or that Russia is incapable of the same?

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The answer is they are very much capable of the same. Meanwhile, the culture shift in the United States is very real. And we have said here at The Daily Wire that we are now norming in America. It's not mooring in America. It's norming in America. We're getting back to something looking like normal. You can see it happening, right? Yes, there's a lot of world chaos.

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Yes, there's a lot of market chaos. But just culturally speaking, people are done with the sort of cultural chaos that suggests that, for example, the kids must be trans. According to The Wall Street Journal, MasterCard is not renewing its corporate sponsorship of the New York City Pride March, the city's annual march for LGBTQ plus minus divided by same rights for 2025.

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MasterCard has supported Heritage of Pride, that is the nonprofit group that organizes the New York March, but now they are not returning. That also includes Pepsi, Nissan, Giant in Banking City, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Most have not opted out of all Pride activities in the United States. They'll instead kind of downgrade it to a branded booth or something.

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And then, of course, there are still holdovers like Mitch McConnell, who is still in the Senate, who may vote against something President Trump wants. There are a wide variety of other senators with various other interests. So getting this whole thing together is, in fact, an attempt to herd cats by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, as well as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Can they do it?

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but they're not going to be making a major spend. Why? And the answer is because it turns out that it alienates a lot of the normies when you have men in assless chaps walking down the street with a Budweiser brand on them. People don't like it very much. Other pride events in recent weeks have lost key sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and Diageo in San Francisco.

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So again, many of these companies are starting to minimize their sort of overtly DEI-driven attempts to woo the radical left. That is a good thing because it turns out that most Americans, they don't care if people who are gay wish to live the lives they want to lead. What they don't want is giant pride parades sponsored by America's biggest corporations walking through the middle of their cities,

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with men with ball gags. That's just not a thing that they're very interested in. And some of these corporations are starting to figure that out. All right, guys, coming up, we'll jump into the vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you actually have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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That's the question. So the deadline keeps getting pushed off for the new tax bill, which presumably will include some elements of rescission, although rescission can be done separately. Originally, the talk was that by Memorial Day, there would be a tax bill. Memorial Day, of course, is May 26th. Now, Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is saying that the tax bill target is July 4th.

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He was speaking yesterday from the White House press room, and he said that the tax bill negotiation is actually going better than they thought it would.

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We've been hearing this from the legacy media who have been saying that all the cuts are basically fake, that nothing is happening, that it's chaos, that it's wrecking the country. No one social security check has been stopped. The Medicaid checks are still going out. The Medicare checks are still going out. The government, unfortunately to my mind, is still running much as before.

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So obviously that needs to happen. If the tax bill were not to pass, that would be a disastrous problem for the Trump administration, which is already fighting significant headwinds caused by the tariff war. Besson told reporters, we have three legs to the president's economic agenda, trade, tax, and deregulation. We hope we can have this tax portion done by the 4th of July.

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Now on the deregulation front, again, I think one of the reasons why the business community has not let the bottom fall out on the stock market is because there are a bunch of sort of conflicting pieces of data that the Trump administration is putting out. Business, investment, people don't like the trade war. People do like the deregulation and they want the tax cut.

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So if those are the three legs of the stool in terms of what business would like, the trade war is not something that business typically likes.

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Business does want the tax cuts made permanent because uncertainty there, if you suddenly have to pay a significant percentage more of your income into the federal government, well, that's going to be a serious problem for a lot of businesses, for a lot of individuals, for investors. If the tax regime were to return to the 2015 status quo, for example, that'd be a huge problem.

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And so the tax bill does have to pass. And then there's the deregulation side, where, again, business is very optimistic about deregulation and sort of hoping that President Trump backs off the tariff war.

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The deadline, according to Politico, pegged to the Independence Day recess comes as Republicans work through significant sticking points to get the party line mega bill through the House by Speaker Mike Johnson's Memorial Day target.

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Besson's updated timeline came out long after Senate Majority Leader Thune told reporters early on Monday the speed of the process would be dictated in part by the need to raise the nation's debt ceiling. He said that would constitute a hard deadline for lawmakers because the debt ceiling hike is going to be included in the one big, beautiful bill.

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Democrats, of course, are not going to get on board with any hike to the debt ceiling because they are going to use that as leverage in the same way that Republicans use the debt ceiling as leverage. President Trump has suggested the possibility of completely blowing out the debt ceiling and basically getting rid of it as a tool of legislative control.

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Most members of Congress, including Republicans, are not in favor of that because were that to happen, then it would basically remove a giant point of leverage.

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Besant told reporters after a big six meeting of top GOP negotiators that they don't have a new X date, but they'd have more information about when the country will need to raise its borrowing limit before the end of the week or next week as well. So again, there are a lot of things that are up in the air and Speaker Johnson is going to have to magic this thing through.

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The same thing is true when it comes to Senate Majority Leader John Thune. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, free online services like Google actually charge you by using your personal data. They track your behavior and sell this information to advertisers. When something's free, you're not the customer. You are now the product being sold.

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Your digital self is traded to unknown entities who may want to sell you products, influence your political views, even manipulate your vote. To reclaim your privacy and protect yourself online, you should use ExpressVPN. Without a VPN, your internet provider can legally track and sell your browsing data in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, data brokers collect your information across websites and apps, creating detailed profiles of you through your IP address. ExpressVPN solves all of this by routing all your activity through encrypted servers, preventing your ISP from seeing or selling your data while also hiding your IP address so brokers can't actually track you.

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You know, when you're traveling a lot the way that I have been, it is really, really important to protect your data, which is the reason why I use ExpressVPN. It's incredibly easy to use. You Tap once for protection. It works on all your devices with a single subscription covering up to eight devices. You don't need technical expertise to use it.

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However, much spending has in fact really been stopped. There's been an open question as to how much spending will be permanently stopped. How much can be temporarily frozen versus actually just cut? Will firing these employees actually stick? But Democrats are caterwauling because as it turns out, Doge actually has been quite effective in stopping an enormous amount of spending.

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The tech reviewers at CNET and The Verge do rate it as the number one VPN worldwide. I partnered with ExpressVPN because I want all my viewers to have access to this important privacy protection. Head on over to expressvpn.com slash pen and get an extra four months for free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash pen. Get an extra four months. Totally free.

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Less than stellar credit can close so many doors from buying a car to securing a new apartment. Kickoff changes that narrative with credit building plans designed to safely jumpstart your score in the simplest, fastest way possible, making financial possibilities more accessible. Again, producer Jake just signed up. He's excited to get started building his credit.

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He said he's looking forward to seeing how increasing his credit score is going to help him reach his financial goals. Kickoff is the number one credit building app out there. They make it so simple to sign up and start credit building. You can sign up in minutes right from your phone. No credit check required. Cancel any time. No hidden fees. No interest.

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Users with credit under 600 increase their credit by an average of 28 points in the first month alone. Build your credit fast with Kickoff, the best credit building plan to jumpstart your credit. Get your first month for a buck. That's 80% off the normal price when you go to getkickoff.com slash Shapiro today. That's Kickoff without the C. Get K-I-K-O-F-F dot com slash Shapiro.

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Must sign up via getkickoff.com slash appear to activate offer. Offer applies to new kickoff customers first month only subject to approval. Average impact of 28 point increase in first month based on Equifax Advantage score 3.0 changes for kickoff customers with starting credit below 600 who made the first on-time payment between January 2021 and March 2024.

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Payment and credit activity outside kickoff can have impact on your credit. Terms and conditions may apply. Offer subject to change. Individual results may vary. And meanwhile, speaking of the trade war, and one of the heavy pressures to get this thing done, one of the biggest pressures to get this thing done in terms of the tax bill is the continued fallout from the trade war.

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The reality is, as I've said before, we still are not feeling the actual fallout from President Trump's declared Liberation Day trade war. That fallout will be felt over the coming weeks. It takes ships a while to get to the United States empty. It takes a while for people to not fulfill their orders or for prices to rise.

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Well, all of this broke out into the open yesterday when controversy erupted over a proposal from one group within Amazon to basically list on products what the cost of tariffs would be. Punchbowl News had reported that Amazon was going to show how much Trump's tariffs are adding to the price of each product, according to a person familiar with the plan.

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The shopping site would display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs right next to the product's total listed price. Now, I have to tell you, I think this is a great idea. I do. In fact, I would love for Amazon to go even further. I think that Amazon should break down how much of a product's price is the sales tax in each individual state.

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I think that they should tell us how much of every product's individual price is attributable to the business having to pay social security tax payments. I think we should have a full breakdown on what actually goes into the pricing mechanism here. But I think it's good.

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I think that in the same way, I thought it was good when businesses were listing the additional cost of Obamacare in their bills in 2011, 2012. Right after Obamacare passed, there were businesses that actually put on the receipt how much higher the prices were because they had to pay for the Obamacare of their employees. I actually am in favor of this sort of transparency.

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Is it trillions of dollars? No. Is it hundreds of billions of dollars? The answer apparently is yes. According to Reuters, President Trump's administration has so far withheld at least $436.87 billion of congressionally approved funding, the top Democrats on the U.S. Congress's Appropriation Committee said on Tuesday.

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I think that it's a good thing. In the same way that I don't think companies should be forced to do anything like this, but I kind of like it on a personal level when companies list the calorie counts of particular products, because if you're on a diet or you're trying to figure out what sort of calorie counter you're trying to hit, you go into a restaurant, it tells you the calories. That's good.

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It helps me have more information before I make my decision. But I think when it comes to public policy like tariffs, the American people should know the cost of the tariff war. It helps us make better decisions. The White House, however, took this as a gigantic insult.

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Caroline Leavitt at the White House, she said that this was terrible and that actually it was doing the work of China to show how much additional cost was created by the tariffs.

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So actually it was not going to apply to all of Amazon. Apparently it was going to affect items that were sold on haul, which is Amazon's answer to Timu, the Chinese retailer. So it's actually in competition with Timu showing exactly how much tariffs were going to cost.

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Now, again, the idea that this is some sort of horrible thing that Amazon is taking an anti-Trump administration approach to the tariffs, they're a retailer. It would be shocking if Amazon did not oppose massive importation taxes that the Trump administration is placing on product.

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Again, I know too many people in the business community who are having to hike their prices, who are seeing their demand plummet, who are going to have to lay people off as the tariffs start to actually bite. So more information is better from where I sit. As far as the suggestion that Amazon should actually have put a listing of the effect of inflation on pricing, I mean, they do.

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You can go to Amazon right now and you can see what a product cost four years ago versus what the product costs today. It's actually not hard to find out at all. And it's one of the reasons why Joe Biden is no longer president of the United States.

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I mean, aside from the fact that he's dead, one of the reasons is because Americans very obviously knew that inflation was taking a massive toll on their pocketbook, that things cost a lot more in 2024 than they cost in 2021. Again, if you think it's a good economic policy, you should probably be in favor of the transparency.

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If you think the tariff war is a good idea, that it's good for American consumers, then then you're going to have to explain why the American people should not know about the impact of the tariffs on pricing. Speaking of which, the Trump administration has been trying to carve some holes into a variety of these tariffs. One of those holes was going to be tariffs for US automakers.

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According to Axios, the Trump administration said on Tuesday will ease tariff pressure on automakers with reimbursement for taxes on foreign auto parts. So senior administration officials say the relief came after conversations with domestic auto manufacturers, many of which have warned about the economic damage from the previously imposed 25% tariff rate.

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The frozen allotment spanned the federal government, according to the first estimate of potential impoundments in the project, led by Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. You'll remember Rosa DeLauro, she of the purple hair. Almost $42 billion was frozen or canceled for the State Department.

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President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would reimburse automakers for as much as 15% of those tariffs paid on imported foreign parts. That would move down to 10% next year. So it's still going to hike the tariffs on imported auto parts. It'll make it a little bit less egregious for domestic American auto manufacturers.

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However, at the same time, Howard Lutnick has now said that foreign automakers are still going to get slammed. He says that there will be tariff relief for U.S. built cars with 85 percent domestic content. But there are a bunch of factories in the United States owned by places like Honda, for example, that is a foreign company that may not actually be freed of all of this.

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So why would you then buy a factory or build a factory if you're Honda, if you're a foreign car, if you're Volkswagen? Why would you build a factory in the United States if it doesn't even help you escape the tariffs? So even internally, this policy has some serious problems. Speaking of Volkswagen, by the way, on Wednesday, they reported a substantial drop in first quarter profit.

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Europe's biggest carmaker reported an operating profit of 2.9 billion euros. It's 3.3 billion dollars, according to CNBC. For the first three months of the year, that is down 37 percent from the same period last year. And again, Volkswagen is sold in the United States, meaning there are American jobs that are attached to Volkswagen. There are dramatic fallout events from the tariffs.

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And as far as the Amazon of it, apparently President Trump called Def Jeff Bezos and he wanted Bezos to kill it. So Bezos did. That seems to be the impression, at least. So how's all this affecting China, right? Because this was all supposed to be directed against China.

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well president trump is keeping his promises he's moving fast and he is breaking things in historic amazing amazing ways so yesterday the president of the united states via his office of management and budget put forward a proposal that would temporarily pause three trillion dollars in spending from the federal government now That temporary pause is in fact only temporary.

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When President Trump says, I'm not going to spend the money that you sent here until it actually complies with the will of the American people, apparently that's a constitutional threat to the order, says Chuck Schumer, this disastrous Senate minority leader.

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The executive office of the president, the Office of Management and Budget, led by Matthew Vaith, who's the acting director for the moment, put out a memo saying, quote, the American people elected Donald J. Trump to be president of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar.

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By the way, I love the Democrats definition of a heist. So according to Democrats, a heist is not when you steal American taxpayer dollars to pay the bills of the gender studies major at Wellesley. That's not a heist. What is a heist is when the president of the United States refuses to spend taxpayer dollars on nonsense. That is somehow stealing from you, the taxpayer.

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So spending your money on crap, that's not stealing from you. Not spending your money on crap, that's stealing from you, according to Chuck Schumer. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, quote, I think this is a normal practice at the beginning of the administration until they have an opportunity to review how the money is being spent. We'll see what the extent of it is.

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And what they intend to do in a more fulsome way for now, I think it's just kind of a preliminary step I think most administrations take. Now, this is going to raise broader issues of what the powers of the presidency ought to be. So the power of the purse famously is held by Congress under the Constitution of the United States.

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How far does the executive have the ability to prevent the disbursement of those funds? Well, according to the Constitution of the United States, the president... has to make sure that the laws are faithfully executed. But what exactly does that mean, faithfully executed?

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He has independent constitutional authority, presumably, to say, I'm not going to spend this money if I think that it violates the Constitution. And then it all gets hashed out by the Supreme Court. But this kind of lives in a gray area of the law that the Supreme Court has never really ruled on.

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The reality is that thanks to the vast growth of the federal bureaucracy, there is a reason why the government ratchet only works in one direction when it comes to the size of spending.

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Until the president has something like impoundment power or a line item veto, government spending is just going to increase because the only way that actual government work gets done is by passing these giant omnibus packages to get enough people on board to actually pass them. And it's always easier to spend than it is to cut.

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In fiscal year 2024, of the nearly $10 trillion the federal government spent, more than $3 trillion was federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans. Career and political appointees in the executive branch have a duty to align federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through presidential priorities.

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Congress has yet to actually issue, in my lifetime, a serious cut to federal spending. They've cut the trajectory of the growth of federal spending. They've yet to issue an actual, serious, real cut to federal spending. Again, there is a reason why there has been a bipartisan level of support for things like a line item veto, historically speaking.

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So, you know, we'll see how the Supreme Court rules on all this. The media, of course, are trying to play this up. It's going to be chaos. Everyone will die, just like everyone died of net neutrality during the first Trump term. Here's Dana Bash over at CNN. And she's panicked, obviously.

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Well, this idea that Trump wants chaos, I don't understand why it's suddenly considered normal or non-chaos to spend trillions of dollars on absolute sheer trash. And this is the gap that exists between normie America and non-normie America, the media elites on the coasts. For them, normal is spending trillions of dollars on absolute nonsense.

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For normies, it turns out that not spending the dollars on the nonsense, that would be more normal than spending the dollars on the nonsense. Stephen Miller. who is a very aggressive defender of the president's agenda. And let me just say at this point, I have never seen an administration that has more able defenders of its agenda than the Trump administration. It really is an amazing thing.

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Well, the new Trump administration is giving the media some restless nights, but here's the thing. Restless nights don't have to be a part of your life. Tossing, turning, waking up with a sore back. I used to think that's how sleep worked. And then I discovered Helix Sleep. Let me tell you, it's a game changer. What makes Helix different? They don't just sell you a random mattress.

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They actually match you with the perfect one for your body and sleep style. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, or somewhere in between, they've got you covered. And trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else.

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Okay, it means, because the Helix Sleep Mattress works for me, I'm not waking up my wife in the middle of the night by tossing and turning. regulates the temperature. It means I don't get too hot at night. If it's too soft, the mattress, I tend to get back pain. Well, since Helix was made for me, I don't get that anymore.

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Right now is actually the perfect time to upgrade your sleep because Helix is offering an incredible deal. Head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben, get 20% off site wide plus two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off site wide plus two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. helixsleep.com slash Ben.

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Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending wokeness and weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and making America healthy again.

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I've been reliant on them for my sleep quality for years at this point. Go try them out yourself. Helixsleep.com slash Ben. Get 20% off site wide plus two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. Also, as we welcome a brand new year, it's time to focus on what matters the most. Meat. I'm not even kidding because here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meat is wonderful and goodranchers.com brings you the meat that you need at the price that you want. They're here to help you turn all your resolutions into solutions. When you buy your meat from Good Ranchers, you're directly supporting local farms and ranches in the United States, skipping the chaos and imported meat in the grocery store.

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Good Ranchers delivers high quality, 100% American meat straight to your door. So you can start 2025 with better choices, better meals and better moments at home while still enjoying steakhouse quality meats. The best part? No antibiotics, hormones, or seed oils, so you can feel good about what you're fueling your body with. It also saves you valuable time and money.

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All the cuts are pre-trimmed and pre-portioned, which makes meal prep so easy on even the busiest of days. They're all individually packaged and vacuum-sealed as well, so you have less waste. You never have to throw freeze or burn cuts away again.

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Remember, visit goodranchers.com, use my code BEN, claim 25 bucks off free express shipping and your choice of free ground beef, chicken, or salmon in every order for an entire year. Spending more time with family, spending less money on going out to eat, enjoying quality, nutritious American foods on your resolution list this year? Well, be sure to visit GoodRanchers.com.

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Use my code Ben today for meat that delivers just that. GoodRanchers.com. American meat delivered. As I said before, Carolyn Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, she's terrific at her job. She's great. Stephen Miller is a very aggressive defender and a very effective defender of the president's agenda. Tom Homan speaking on immigration. J.D.

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Vance obviously was like made in a laboratory to deal with legacy media. President Trump himself. I'm old enough to remember the Bush administration when George W. Bush somehow seemed to think that it was beneath him and beneath the Republicans to actually defend their agenda aggressively, that it was somehow not Marcus of Queensberry rules.

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Trump administration people do not have these same hangups. They go with the media and then they refuse to accept the premise of the question and they fight back. Here was Stephen Miller, for example, with Jake Tapper on the spending freeze.

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The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve. In other words, we got elected, and now we are going to implement the priorities of the American people.

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Okay, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Again, the level of defense this administration is putting forward for its agenda is unprecedented. It's unprecedented in my lifetime and maybe ever. It's an amazing, amazing thing to watch. That wasn't the only big thing that President Trump did yesterday. He also offered a buyout to millions of federal employees.

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Basically said, listen, if you don't wish to work for me, great, here's the check. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. According to NBC News, President Trump's administration is offering federal workers the chance to take a deferred resignation, which would mean they agree to resign right now, but they get paid through September.

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A senior administration official told NBC News they expect 5% to 10% of the federal workforce to quit, which they estimate could lead to around $100 billion in savings. All full-time federal employees are eligible except for members of the military, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and other jobs excluded by the agencies.

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White House Press Secretary Leavitt said in a statement, quote, That is correct, and that is good. There's an email that was sent out to all federal employees, including a draft resignation letter for them to sign.

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It said, "...if you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce.

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At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency, but should your position be eliminated, you'll be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.

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If they resign under the program, you'll retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30th, 2025." So basically, show up to work or you can leave. You can also leave. Naturally, the left is fighting mad about this because they are afraid that a bunch of people will take the buyout.

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This memorandum, according to the OMB, requires federal agencies to identify and review all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the president's policies and requirements. By the way, This does not include assistance provided directly for individuals.

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AFGE National President Everett Kelly ripped into the Trump email saying, quote, it should not be viewed as voluntary. Quote, the number of civil servants hasn't meaningfully changed since the 70s, but there are more Americans than ever who rely on government services. Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have a vast unintended consequence that will cause chaos.

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Okay, I have a question. Why is that chaos? Seriously, if you don't want it, get out. If you don't want to be involved in a performance culture, a return to the office, enhanced standards of conduct, that's what the Trump administration is calling for, then here is your payout and you can get out. And that is the email that was put out by the Office of Personnel Management.

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And again, I'm making it real easy for people to resign. All you have to do is type the word resign into the subject line of the email and hit send. That's it. They're basically saying, listen, we could fire you or you could leave. But if you're going to come into work, you come to work for the administration, which is, of course, the way to do this.

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President Trump is also moving to fire Democratic members of two independent federal commissions, which is good. The EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is a left-wing dominated organization established in the 1960s and 70s. Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burroughs, formerly the chair, have been dismissed.

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He also fired the head of the National Labor Relations Board, the worst government board in America. I know the NLRB. We comply, I have to say this, by law. We comply with all legal standards when it comes to labor. Also, the NLRB is trash and the National Labor Relations Act is garbage.

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I know this because they literally tried to haul me up on charges for suggesting that I would fire employees who tried to dictate the editorial coverage of our company, which is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. I was joking about it, by the way, and they still sent us an investigative letter. That's what the NLRB is.

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So Trump has now fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox. I would hope that the NLRB is completely disestablished. Trump also removed the EEOC's general counsel, Carly Gilbride, who oversaw civil actions against employers on a range of issues, including discrimination claims from LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign and pregnant workers.

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He also terminated Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB's general counsel. Good, good. These are career issues. left-wing employees, and it is worthwhile for them not to have jobs, period. End of story. Again, Trump is moving fast. He is moving fast. And the left is panicked because he's not using any authorities that were not available to Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Remember, guys, you built this.

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Nothing in this memo, in the memo itself, should be construed to impact Medicare or Social Security benefits. So all the lies you're now hearing from the media suggesting that individual benefits from these mandatory social spending programs are going to be impacted by the OMB order, that's false, it's a lie, and it's being promoted by people who are lying to you.

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You don't like Trump using executive authorities in this way? Well, maybe Barack Obama shouldn't have dictated that he would use a pen and a phone if he couldn't get Congress to do his work. Maybe Joe Biden shouldn't have tried to use OSHA to cram down vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans. something we had to sue him at Daily Wire to stop.

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Maybe Joe Biden shouldn't have tried to end around the Supreme Court by relieving student loan debt to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. You guys built this entire system. It used to be that the federal government was small and had significant checks and balances between Congress, the legislative branch, and the presidency and the Supreme Court. You guys obliterated those.

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And now you're real sad because it turns out that President Trump is going to use the levers of power that you put in place in order to crank back the level of government spending, in order to crank back the level of government regulation and control. You break it. You bought it. Tough boogies, folks. I'm sorry this is happening to you.

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I'm sorry that you built the system that is now being used against you. But maybe you shouldn't have built it that way if you didn't want it. By the way, I have to say, I'm loving this. I am. It is great because no matter how the Supreme Court rules on impoundment, we're going to find out what the actual story is on impoundment.

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No matter how the Supreme Court rules on these hirings and firings, we're going to find out what the actual powers of the presidency are. And I think that's a good thing. Clarity is a good thing.

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For too long, we've lived in this gray area where the combination of media, Democratic Congress, the President of the United States, Democrats, have been able to cram down vaster and vaster government spending programs in the name of the people without any checks and any balances. That day is now over, and I think it's excellent. Meanwhile, President Trump

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issued a historic executive order yesterday as well, protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation. I'm going to declare victory here on behalf of The Daily Wire. Okay, The Daily Wire, there's no company in America. We don't toot our own horns on this as much as we should.

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There is no company in America that has fought harder and fought longer and fought more on the issue of the evils of transgender ideology and child mutilation than our company. We have dedicated our company to this issue for years, for literally years.

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I mean, going back well before What is a Woman, the groundbreaking documentary made by our own Matt Walsh that totally shifted the debate on transgenderism and transgender ideology. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I was assaulted on national television by a transgender identifying person for the great sin of suggesting that a biological male is in fact a biological male. That was in 2015.

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Okay, that is going back 10 years. So I've been on this battle for a very, very long time. I believe that the very famous exchange that I had with a student at a university talking about why isn't she 60 when she claimed that boys could be girls. And I said, so why can't you be trans age? Why can't you be 60? I believe that was in 2014.

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According to the OMB, to implement these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the president's executive orders. In the interim, to the extent permissible under federal law, federal agencies must temporarily pause

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I've been fighting this battle for as long as this battle has been going on. So has our company generally. There's no company in America that's done more on this We were happy to push people like Abigail Schreier when Abigail was pushing her book, Irreversible Damage, which really was a groundbreaking book. We helped to promote that book heavily.

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There's not an aspect of this fight in which we have not engaged as a company. And so thank you to President Trump for putting the capstone on that. Now we need a national ban on this sort of stuff from Congress.

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But according to the executive action from the White House, it is now ordered across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.

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This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation's history and it must end. Countless children soon regret they've been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy they'll never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.

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Moreover, these vulnerable youth's medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and tragically, sterilization. Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States.

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It will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called transition of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures. Good for the White House. And by the way, thanks to our allies in this fight, ranging from Charlie Kirk at TPUSA,

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He, of course, worked with us on the documentary Identity Crisis that was available on X and now is available at Daily Wire Plus. There are so many people who have been part of this fight. This is a giant victory for the right and a complete reversal of the trend of social leftism from where it was even five years ago. That is a long-going battle for this company.

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We should take a victory lap on it, for sure. Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to President Trump on illegal immigration and the left fighting him first. Let's be real, mainstream media isn't just broken, it is corrupt. They do not report the news, they curate it to fit their agenda. And Americans, we're done with it. That's why The Daily Wire exists.

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We're not here to follow the narrative, we're here to crush it. Our reporters go where the truth is, no matter how inconvenient it may be for the powerful, and we're not stopping there. We're creating the entertainment Hollywood won't. Bold movies, fearless documentaries, shows that fight back against the cultural rot. Here's the thing, none of this happens without you.

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The fight for truth and culture starts with your support. Join the movement today at dailywire.com slash subscribe zone. Sit on the sidelines, be part of the revolution. Well, meanwhile, yesterday, a star was born over at the White House, the brand new White House press secretary. Carolyn Leavitt is 27 years old.

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She took to the podium yesterday and she announced a massive sea change in how the White House is actually going to be treating the media. First, she said that there would, in fact, be a brand new important focus on new media that. Instead of legacy media being given all sorts of special attention, the new media would be given all sorts of attention. One of the members of the new media was there.

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That, of course, is our own Mary Margaret Ohan. She is our senior White House reporter. She was in the room. Mary Margaret, thanks for joining the show.

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All activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders included but not limited to financial assistance for foreign aid, non-governmental organizations at DEI, woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal.

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So let's talk about the mood in the room. Obviously, it was very, very packed. There are a lot of new media figures. It was different from the past. Talk about what it was like in there.

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Much of that spending will go forward. But the idea here is to review all of the spending the federal government is doing in a non-mandatory basis. So there's a lot of mandatory spending in the federal budget. That includes Medicare, Social Security, many aspects of Medicaid, right? All of those things are going to continue So are various payments to law enforcement bodies, to defense.

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In fact, we do have a clip here of Caroline Leavitt. She was asked a question by the legacy media asking about standards of truth inside the White House. And here she was slamming the legacy media.

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So Mary Margaret, obviously there's a sea change in how the media are being treated at the White House. Did you have any responses from the legacy media to the fact that they are now being treated equally and with equal status to new media like Daily Wire, for example?

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One of the great boondoggles in American public life is in fact non-governmental organizations that are being paid by the federal government. Grants that are going to left-wing social organizations on a non-profit basis but are being funded by American taxpayer dollars.

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That's Mary Margaret Olihan, our senior White House reporter. Congratulations on actually now being an accepted member of the White House press corps. Really appreciate it, Mary Margaret.

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All righty. Well, as we say, Caroline Leavitt was a star yesterday. She had a bunch of exchanges with members largely of the legacy media. That did not go particularly well for the members of the legacy media. Again, I've not seen a robust press response by a Republican administration this way, certainly in my lifetime.

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You probably have to go back to the Reagan administration to see anything like it. And I'm not even sure how good that was considering that back then you had three major press TV networks and only a couple of major newspapers. And now you actually have alternative media available.

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Here was Caroline Lovett, who's questioned about whether the administration would be deporting only criminals or whether it would be deporting all illegal immigrants. Here was Caroline Lovett slapping around a member of the media.

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Man, she is good at this. She's very, very good at this. Again, she is an aggressive defender of the president's agenda. She was also questioned by the legacy media about inflation. So the media finally decided that inflation matters, but only once Trump is president. So they asked her about the price of eggs and she went off.

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No later than February 10th, 2025, according to this memo, agencies shall submit to OMB detailed information on any projects, programs, or activities subject to this pause. Each agency must pause issuance of new awards, disbursement of federal funds under all open awards, other relevant agency actions.

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Again, this administration is not being run like prior Republican administrations. Speaking of which, the Trump administration has now ramped up deportations after a fairly slow start. One of the reasons that the deportation numbers have been lower for Trump is because the number of people arriving on the southern border has absolutely cratered under Donald Trump.

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People are not showing up on the southern border. Many of the supposed deportations that were undertaken... by, for example, the Obama administration, were actually what we call turnbacks at the border, people who would arrive, and the administration would simply say, you can't get in.

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Nobody's even bothering to show up at the southern border knowing that Donald Trump is immediately going to turn everyone away, that CBP, that ICE are not going to allow people to use the border of the United States as a sort of porous Swiss cheese zone where he can move through at will.

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But according to the Wall Street Journal, ICE made nearly 1,200 arrests on Sunday and just under 1,000 on Saturday, marking an uptick after arrest numbers in President Trump's first few days were roughly in line with daily averages seen under the Biden administration. The media are predictably upset about all of this. Stephen Miller, again, was on with Jake Tapper on CNN.

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And Jake Tapper was asking who exactly is going to pick the fruit and pick the vegetables. And Stephen Miller was like, Jake, the number of illegal immigrants who actually are in the fields picking fruits and veggies is pretty low.

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OMB may grant exceptions, allowing federal agencies to issue new awards or take other actions on a case-by-case basis. So again, the lie that this is sort of a blanket nuking of all federal spending, Would that it were so, it is in fact not so. The reality is it is a temporary pause that can be relieved by the OMB giving the ability to give the grants. So what is this?

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Everybody knows that this is true. This is obviously true. And the agricultural conversation has been a misdirect for a very long time. As Steve Miller points out, we do have temporary farm work that is available for people who cross into the United States legally. That is an actual program under President Trump. But the reality is that for the left, they actually just want unlimited immigration.

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This is what Sonny Hostin, the idiotic id of the Democratic Party, has to say. She was on The View yesterday saying, actually, you know what? You're not a criminal for crossing the border illegally.

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Applause from the morons in the audience at The View. Actually, it is a criminal offense to cross the United States border illegally. That is a criminal offense, actually. But again, all this is part and parcel of what appears to be a really kind of lackluster pushback from the Democratic Party against President Trump.

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One of the reasons that they're having such trouble is because they can't actually decide on what the narrative is. Trump wants chaos. Okay, well, we just had chaos for four years. It's not chaos to say that we shouldn't spend trillions of dollars on stupid nonsense. Oh my God, I can't believe Trump's saying that people have to come into work. Really? That's going to be your line?

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Okay, so, you know, they go back to the well every so often. You have Anand Jiridharadas, the worst commentator over at MSNBC, suggesting that the Trump agenda is to make America white again, which is weird since he has the most multiracial Republican coalition of my lifetime.

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Okay, that's kind of weird since, again, there's no evidence whatsoever that Donald Trump is trying to cleanse the country of people who are not white. Like, no evidence that that is the case. And he won something insane. He won almost a majority of the Hispanic vote in the last election cycle. So, yeah, good luck with that particular argument.

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It is a way of taking a harder look at the federal spending that has been going on and that has grown wildly out of control and in which your taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize groups that, for example, sponsor illegal immigrants. or go toward social engineering of the left, transgenderism, right? That is the explicitly stated policy of the OMB.

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The reality is that the only way for Democrats to take on President Trump is to do what John Fetterman is doing, the senator from Pennsylvania who is, in fact, a solid Democrat, right? He is a socialist-leaning Democrat in terms of these economic programs. But what he's doing is smart. He's saying, listen, Trump is doing what he campaigned on. I'm sure there are areas where we disagree.

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And when we disagree, I'll smack him. But I'm not just going to start screaming at the moon. Here's John Fetterman yesterday on The View.

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Again, he is being rational about all of this. If Democrats could appear rational, that would certainly help. But it doesn't appear rational when the Senate Democrats decide to filibuster a bill that would have stopped American funding for the corrupt anti-Semitic International Criminal Court.

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Fifty four people in the Senate voted in favor of basically putting sanctions on the ICC, which is a deeply corrupt, evil institution that would, in fact, target Americans and American soldiers. There's no reason why the United States should be either subsidizing or not punishing people associated with the ICC. Forty two Democrats had supported this in the House.

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And a couple of Democrats supported it in the Senate. But Chuck Schumer. the supposed show mayor of Jews, right? This is what he says. This is the guardian of Jews, Chuck Schumer, who's a disgusting, perverse individual in terms of his politics. The Senate minority leader, he said, quote, the bill before us is poorly drafted and deeply problematic.

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It will have many unintended consequences that undermine its primary goal. Okay, again, the reason that Democrats are voting in favor of the ICC is because they are just beholden to the radical left. Senate Majority Leader John Thune ripped them yesterday over all of this.

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Okay. By the way, Democrats are in a state of panic. Senator Gary Peters from Michigan. who would be a very vulnerable seat for the Democrats, has decided he is not going to run for reelection in the Senate in Michigan in 2026. So that 2026 Senate map is starting to look kind of not terrible for Republicans.

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It was supposed to be a bad year for Republicans, 2026, but it turns out that there are a bunch of seats that are up that are really, really narrowly Democrat. That includes, for example, John Ossoff in Georgia. That seat is going to flip. That takes Republicans to 54. You could easily see a world in which Gary Peter's seat flips and suddenly Republicans have 55.

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Now, does the president have this authority? Well, the president has always had something called impoundment authority. And the question is, what is the scope of that authority? So what exactly is impoundment? Impoundment includes any executive action to withhold or delay the spending of appropriated funds.

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In New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen, she is running. New Hampshire is moving toward battleground status. That would take Republicans to 56. Again, the map does not look particularly amazing for Democrats looking forward in the next election cycle. So Gary Peters stepping out is a bad sign for them. Meanwhile, in a moment, we're going to get to Jim Acosta. Have we seen the last of him?

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He apparently is leaving CNN. We shed a tear for Jim Acosta. If you're not a member, become a member. Use Coach Bureau. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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This is according to the Cyclopedia of Congressional Budget Law and the Congressional Research Service. Impoundment goes all the way back to the Jefferson administration, in which Thomas Jefferson decided that he didn't want to use a particular amount of money that was allocated to the executive branch to buy a certain type of gunboat, but it was also used under the LBJ administration.

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According to the Congressional Research Service, President Johnson made broader use of his power to impound by ordering the deferral of billions of dollars he was spending during the Vietnam War in an effort to restrain inflationary pressures in the economy.

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Richard Nixon, when he was elected president, attempted to use impoundment authority to stop a wide variety of spending programs that were pushed forward by a Democratic at Congress.

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Eventually, the administration would announce major impoundment actions affecting a wide variety of domestic programs, including, for example, a moratorium on subsidized housing programs, community development activities, disaster assistance. Court challenges reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not actually rule on general impoundment authority.

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It suggests that one particular law had been ignored by President Nixon in using impoundment and that he couldn't do that for that one law. But the Supreme Court has actually never ruled in a broad fashion how far impoundment authority actually goes. Congress then passed something called the Impoundment Control Act over the veto of President Nixon.

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The Impoundment Control Act effectively says that the president has to inform Congress of all proposed rescissions and deferrals and submit specified information regarding each. And then the comptroller general has to oversee executive compliance with the law and notify Congress if the president fails to report an impoundment or improperly classified item.

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All that stuff is going to continue. What this is meant to do is allow a pause for the various branches of the federal government, which are under the control of President Trump, to actually look at the spending and ensure that they are spending in accordance with the president's wishes and with the wishes of Congress. So there's a big freakout that's happening today. We'll go through it.

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If there is a rescission of spending, the president says, I'm just not going to spend this money, then the Empowerment Control Act provides that funds must be made available for obligation unless both houses of Congress take action to approve the rescission request within 45 days of continuous session.

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So perhaps that is what President Trump is figuring right now, is that he will effectively rescind the spending. He's got a majority in both houses of Congress. And then Congress will just give him the go-ahead on the rescission of the spending. Now, the truth is,

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that the question of a line item veto, which is effectively what impoundment acts as, it's the president being able to go through and redline a particular budget. This has been a bipartisan consensus in favor of this sort of stuff since the 1990s.

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In fact, in 1996, the federal government with President Clinton and a Republican Congress passed a line item veto through Congress and the Supreme Court struck it down, suggesting that it was unconstitutional. But According to Daniel Henninger, writing back in 2011, here is a list of U.S. presidents and public figures who have used or supported broad impoundment power.

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Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, the Bushes, John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore, Pat Buchanan, Jeff Hensarling, Russ Feingold, Joe Lieberman, Judd Gregg, both Paul Ryan and Barack Obama. So why exactly did this happen? Well, number one, After Watergate, again, Congress kicked back against Richard Nixon using impoundment authority. That's number one.

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And number two, it's unclear who exactly should be in control of this authority. Should it be Congress or should it be the president? Presumably, President Trump is going to push this, and then we will see how the Supreme Court rules on impoundment authority. And the idea that, by the way, all of this spending is a good idea is obviously asinine.

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Yesterday, Carolyn Lovett, who, as we will see, is an absolute star. She is the new White House press secretary. She, of course, was a representative for the Trump campaign as well. She's 27 years old, and she is terrific. The upgrade from Karine Jean-Pierre to Carolyn Lovett is extraordinary. In any case, Carolyn Lovett, yesterday, she held her first press conference.

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at the White House, and she said, listen, turns out there's a lot of money that we can cut, including, for example, $50 million that was slated to go to the Gaza Strip to pay for condoms.

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Okay, now, people on the left are saying, ah, no, no, no, that was just for sexual health in Gaza. Okay, I just have a question. Why are we paying for sexual health in Gaza? I was made aware by the left that there is a supposed genocide in Gaza, but they're stopping people from producing people in Gaza.

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By the way, the population of Gaza has actually increased, not insubstantially, during the Gaza War. What are those condoms actually used for in Gaza, by the way? Believe it or not, it turns out that the Hamasniks in Gaza have come up with extraordinary new uses for condoms, including blowing them up with helium, using them as balloons, and attaching...

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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By the left, by the media, claiming that President Trump is doing something deeply unconstitutional, fascistic. Here's the thing. You do not get to expand the centralized power of the executive branch for full on a century, controlling every aspect of Americans' lives, spending $7 trillion.

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actual flammatories to them to set fires in Israel. And that is not even a joke. That's a thing that they've been doing. And if you just look at the cost on that, that'd buy something like 25 million condoms for use in Gaza. I don't know what they're doing over in Gaza, but I'm not sure why we would be paying for that.

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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Well, folks, the federal government spends your money in ways that you don't like. It also keeps tabs on you. Did you know that multiple companies maintain living profiles based on your internet activity? Everything you do online is recorded and sold to big tech companies, advertisers, and yes, government agencies.

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The organizations behind this are called data brokers, companies that generate billions of Thank you for watching. It prevents data brokers from building a profile on me.

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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The internet was designed to give us the freedom to explore and learn as equals, but data brokers compromise that freedom by selling your information to marketers and big tech companies, but then restricting control of what you see online. With just one subscription, you can protect your entire family. It only takes one tap to connect. Even your kids can figure it out.

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ExpressVPN works on all your devices, phones, tablets, TVs, desktops. You can have ExpressVPN on up to eight devices all at once. Right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Go to expressvpn.com slash ben. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben.

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Also, this country was founded on freedom, freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea. And then they tried blockading us. And we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Great Britain? Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone.

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just $45 a month, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service. Unlimited talk, text, 25 gigs of data, and mobile hotspot at a fraction of the price of the big guys. all on America's most dependable 5G network.

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 by visiting puretalk.com slash Shapiro today. Switching is easy. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase. From Pure Talk, America's wireless company. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. Their coverage is excellent. If I trust them with my coverage, why wouldn't you?

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Ep. 2127 - Trump Takes A WRECKING BALL To The Federal Government!

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Because my phone calls are really important to me. I think they'll be important to you as well. Check them out, puretalk.com slash Shapiro today for the special deal. Now, one of the things that the Trump administration is running into, and this is clear, every time they make an action, executive order goes down, there is what we call malicious compliance.

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And then when your political opponents take over and they use that power in order to cut back the amount of power the executive branch will actually be exerting in Americans' lives, you don't actually get to then claim that he is a dictator. You don't get to do that. You break it. You bought it. You built this thing.

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I talked a little bit about this yesterday. Malicious compliance is where you, opposing the president's agenda, pick a bad example of where the president's agenda should not apply and you apply it there.

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So, for example, in the Department of Defense, if there is an executive action that goes out banning DEI in the Department of Defense, some low level staffer will, quote unquote, maliciously comply by saying that now nobody can teach about the Tuskegee Airmen. And it turns out that that's not what Trump meant at all.

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And Department of Defense head Pete Hegseth immediately rescinds that particular stupid application. of the executive order. A malicious compliance has become a way for so-called deep staters, meaning career employees in the executive branch who don't like President Trump or his agenda, to try to thwart that agenda with bad headlines.

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And one example of that came yesterday when there was a temporary shutdown of the Medicaid enrollment website. Now, do you think that President Trump wants the bad headline of shutting down the Medicaid enrollment website when he put forward this OMB executive action? Do you think that that's actually what he, of course not, of course not.

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And actually within hours, President Trump and the White House immediately addressed this. Carolyn Leavitt put out a tweet, quote, the White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage. We have confirmed no payments have been affected. They're still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly.

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Now, again, one of the things that's happening here is you have members of the deep state who are coordinating with the media to do things like this and then claim that the end of the world is nigh. So you'll hear lots of headlines over the course of this week about how various nonprofit programs will have to shut down in lieu of the federal aid.

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Because if they don't get that aid today, then, well, they're going to have to shut. That's not the way the grants work. Typically, grants are annual. That means that people budget for longer than a week. You don't get a check from the government every month. If you're a nonprofit governmental organization, typically it comes in a lump sum at the beginning of the year.

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But people are going to play it as though everyone is going to die this week if the temporary pause goes forward. Earlier in the day, Politico reported that Trump's freeze on federal aid and grants is still reverberating as the gears of government churn out the real world impact of the administration's broad order.

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But again, what you are seeing mostly is just malicious compliance here from various people inside the so-called deep state attempts to sort of humiliate the Trump administration. The Medicaid portal story, which was the biggest story yesterday in the mainstream media, was just silly. It was up and running again within hours.

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And then you can't be shocked when the person who takes over decides he's going to use the instruments that you created in order to actually downgrade the amount of impact that those instruments have on Americans' everyday lives. So yesterday.

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And clearly what happened is that there was somebody who's in the Medicaid system who decided – That pretending that they were complying with Trump's order, they were going to shut down the website to create something humiliating for President Trump. Now, meanwhile, a lot of this is going to end up in the courts, as I suggested.

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The question of just how far impoundment control goes is an open legal question. A federal judge, according to CNBC, has paused until next week the Trump administration order that would have frozen the issuance of existing federal grants and loans until agencies vetted them.

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The judge, named Lauren Ali Khan, ruled during a hearing conducted on Zoom that they would have to prevent the shutdowns and the freezing orders. Ali Khan said her administrative stay would expire 5 p.m. Eastern time Monday unless she decides to grant a temporary restraining order as requested by plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit earlier in the day challenging the Trump administration's actions.

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Now, again, one of the things that is very strange about the way that our judicial system has been working is during Trump 1 and Trump 2, is you'll have a local district judge, like a low-level district judge, issue a nationwide injunction on a federal policy. I'm not sure exactly how that is supposed to work legally. The DOJ objects to Ali Khan's administrative stay against the OMB.

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Ali Khan's stay only affects the disbursement of government funds that have already been authorized, not money that was being sought. In any case, this will end up at the Supreme Court level, and that will determine presumably exactly how far impoundments can go. Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, is out there shouting about how supposedly lawless this is, saying it's a constitutional crisis.

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Let's just get this straight. When it's Joe Biden unilaterally declaring that he can relieve billions of dollars in student loan debt, which, by the way, is not allocated by Congress. then the Democratic Party is totally fine with it.

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Already, folks, we have a lot to get to today, including some more leaked chats of the D.C. shooter. What is his left wing philosophy? What was driving all that? King Charles is making land acknowledgments in Canada. Now the left is out of its damn mind. Plus, President Trump's big plans to actually keep the House in 2026. And what's going on in the stock market? Tons going on right now.

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I mean, first of all, the universities of the United States should not be subsidized by taxpayer dollars to teach kids to hate America. That is a bad thing. We shouldn't be subsidizing the philosophy of NPR.

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South Africa and a bunch of other countries, because it turns out that all of those countries were originally created as sort of functioning polities by the British Empire. This bizarre idea that he can arrive on Canadian territory and start apologizing to the indigenous for the presence of white people in this particular area is absurd, especially coming from King Charles.

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Hilariously, NPR and three Colorado public radio stations are now filing suit against the Trump White House over the president's executive order that bars congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS, which of course is again, totally appropriate because why should American taxpayers be subsidizing the far left insanity of NPR and PBS?

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And the self-righteousness of a media that has repeated all of the insane nostrums of the left on these issues. People like Scott Pelley over at CBS News, Now, these are ridiculous people.

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Understand that there is, in fact, a wall-like tsunami of left-wing agitprop that comes from our media, from our universities, and it bleeds down into people like the DC shooter and bleeds up to the monarch of Great Britain. That is a deeply evil philosophy and wrong philosophy covered up for by the self-righteousness of schmucks like Scott Pelley of CBS News.

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Scott Pelley, who I'm name checking right now because he did a much celebrated commencement speech at Wake Forest University, where he talked about how wonderful he is. He said, we discuss, not destroy. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.

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An insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, into our private thoughts. And then he compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and such. These are the people who have propagated this nasty philosophy in the name of journalism and then celebrated themselves. Here's Scott Pelley enjoying the crowd's applause for this sort of garbage.

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To move forward, we debate, not demonize. I like this crowd. Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. Of course he does. Because they're all part of the same think group. My favorite thing about the Scott Pelley speech at Wake Forest University is him citing Orwell to the effect that it is newspeak to get rid of buzzwords like diversity, equity and inclusion.

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No, the newspeak was diversity, equity and inclusion, which just meant racial preferences. DEI was just a soft form of what Cyril Ramaphosa was saying, which is that if you are the right race and you can't kill the Boer, it's totally fine. And there he was cheering it.

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You want to know why it is that President Trump has picked up ground in nearly every metro of the United States, with the exception of some of the highly college-educated metros? This would be the reason, because President Trump rejects this philosophy.

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One of the amazing things about the Trump administration is that if you look at the polls right now, the Trump administration's policies on a wide variety of topics aside from immigration, not wildly popular. But it doesn't matter because the Democratic Party is running at 27 percent in the opinion polls.

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And the reason for that is because they cannot divide themselves from this radical left philosophy that has deadly consequences. Meanwhile, President Trump is trying to come up with a plan. so that he can maintain the House of Representatives. That, of course, is an uphill battle. Off-year elections are always rough for the party in power.

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The Republican hold on the House is incredibly narrow right now. And President Trump knows effectively that the minute Democrats take over Congress, then his administration is done because it will just be investigations up the wazoo. There'll be lawsuits. The pen and the phone probably won't suffice at that point. He won't have a Congress to work with.

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Impeachment will almost certainly be on the table in the House of Representatives literally day one. So President Trump has laid out a five-step plan to retain Republican control of the House. The GOP right now has an eight-seat majority. That includes vacancies created this year by the death of three Democrats. But, you know, those are Democrat seats. So really it's like a five-seat majority.

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And there are some retirements that have already taken place. So it's going to be a rough ride in 2026 for Republicans if history is any guide. So what exactly is the Republican Party trying to do? According to Axios, the White House is targeting several Republicans in politically divided swing districts and urging them not to ditch their seats or run for higher office.

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who is the greatest beneficiary on planet Earth of the imperialism of the British Empire. And the reason I bring this up is because, once again, there is this philosophy that is afoot on the left and in parts of the center, which says that a human universal, which is migration, settlement, annexation, conflict, that is a human universal. It is not unique to white people.

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So President Trump, for example, is trying to get New York Representative Mike Lawler, who is one of the holdups in the House Big Beautiful Bill because he wanted salt deductions. Trump wants him to stay in Congress rather than running for governor because he's afraid that that seat will then turn to a Democrat.

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They're also hoping that some of these incumbents retain their seats rather than running for governor. So, for example, Michigan Representative John James is running for governor in Michigan. President Trump is apparently worried about the GOP's chances of keeping that seat. They're also worried about the central Kentucky seat held by Representative Andy Barr.

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Meanwhile, President Trump is going to unleash giant gobs of money in these House races. Apparently, according to Axios, he's built a $500 million plus political apparatus. There are already commercials airing in 13 districts where Trump won in November, but the House GOP candidates lost. President Trump is also going to oppose a lot of primary challenges.

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because the idea is that burns up a lot of money and divides the population in those districts. And what you really want is a clear run to the congressional seat. They're going to raise a lot more money, presumably. And they're going to ramp up recruiting in some of these swing districts. So that is the actual path to try and retain a House majority at this point.

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In order to retain that House majority, however, the next couple of years have to go pretty swimmingly for President Trump. And herein lies one of the problems with President Trump's tariff war. We'll get to more on that in just a second. But first, I bet you know the Cars for Kids jingle. In fact, I would be kind of shocked if you didn't. Listen. Okay, so I got to tell you something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Cars for Kids is not just a catchy jingle. This amazing organization will come to you free of charge at your convenience and tow away any old vehicle you've got sitting around and turn it into charity funds for kids.

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They take care of all the paperwork and logistics, and you walk away with a tax-deductible receipt for the sale price of the car, a vacation voucher, and space in your driveway for that new vehicle. Don't wait. Call 1-877-CARS4KIDS or go to cars4kids.org. That's cars with a K and the number four to donate right now. It takes just a couple of minutes to give them your information.

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They take care of it from there. They've done this over a million times. They can help you as well. That's cars4kids.org slash Ben. Remember, that's cars with a K, cars4kids.org slash Ben. Also, choosing SimpliSafe for this studio, one of my easiest decisions.

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When we are in the system before we leave or call it a day, my team and I get instant peace of mind knowing our equipment and creative work are protected. With SimpliSafe Standing Guard, I can focus on my work and rest easier. Confident that I'm covered if anything happens, especially while I'm out of the office and traveling. I want you to experience that same security in your home.

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With SimpliSafe, families enjoy the gold standard in home security and genuine peace of mind whenever they arm their system. Unlike traditional systems that only respond after a break-in occurs, SimpliSafe's ActiveGuard outdoor protection works to prevent intrusions before they happen.

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Their AI-powered cameras with live professional monitoring detect suspicious activity, allowing agents to intervene in real time, speaking to potential intruders, activating spotlights, contacting police before anyone enters your home.

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With no long-term contracts, affordable monitoring at about a buck daily and a 60-day money-back guarantee, SimpliSafe delivers both protection and value for homeowners. Again, it is the best way to keep your studio, your home, any place that you want to keep safe, safe. Visit simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. Claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan.

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Get your first month for free at simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. So right now, President Trump's tariff war, it is taking a toll on the economy. I understand that right now, if you look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500, it's bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. I totally get it. The economy has not plummeted. Consumer confidence remains pretty strong.

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It is not unique to Westerners. It is not unique to Europeans. It's just that white people, Westerners, and Europeans have been much better at it than other parts of the population on planet Earth. They're more successful, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries at it.

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There's still a lot of money awash in the economy thanks to the inflation of the last several years. But Americans are still somewhat disquieted about the path forward here. There is, in fact, a toll on the economy because uncertainty is its own form of risk when it comes to investment.

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So, for example, right now, as I say, people seem pretty sanguine about the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500, because if you look at the numbers, the S&P 500 for the year is off maybe 2% from where President Trump was when he took office. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off, I think, 3.8% from January 21st, 2025, somewhere in that neighborhood.

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And so people are like, well, he's doing all this tariff stuff. It's reshifting manufacturing, which we will see if it's actually doing that or not. I'm doubtful that tremendous amounts of manufacturing are going to reshore because of the tariffs that he's placing right now. But okay, let's assume that some of that is happening. That's fine.

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But if the idea is that the markets have only sunk 2% or 4%, depending on the market, based on President Trump's tariff vacillation, and inconsistency. That's actually looking at the wrong stat. If you actually want to look at what this sort of vacillation and inconsistency costs the markets, what you should be looking at is what would have happened if Trump didn't do any of this stuff.

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So the real question here should be, what should the markets have been right now versus what are they right now? not what were they in January versus what are they right now, which again, minor shortfall, but what should they have been and what is the delta to where they are right now?

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So I asked my friends and sponsors over at Perplexity this question, assuming the same rate of growth as the period November 5th, 2024, that is the day before election day, to January 21st, 2025, that of course is inauguration day. What should the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 be today? And what is the percentage difference between where they are today and what they should have been?

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And the answer is that using daily growth rates during that period and projecting values, basically the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to perplexity, should be at close to 48,000. It is currently around 42,000. The S&P 500 should be at about 6,100. It is currently, or it was a couple of days ago, around 5,800. So the shortfall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is well above 10%.

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Okay, but that does not mean that there is some unique sin that attends to whiteness being Western, being European, or anything remotely like it. And having King Charles read off this land acknowledgement is so ridiculous and absurd just on his face. Here we go.

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The shortfall in the S&P 500 is around 4%, but theoretically could be larger depending on how you do this projection. Investors are desperate for President Trump to actually be consistent. They want the consistency. They want some level of understanding of where the policy is going to be tomorrow. Beyond that, the fact that President Trump did all of this tariff action,

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under the auspices of a law that probably doesn't actually carry the weight, right? It's all done under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That's very likely to be overthrown by the courts. Let's be real about this. It's very difficult to understand what is the national emergency invoked by the president of the United States

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on trade that would justify the gigantic tariff regime that he has put in place, this 10% blanket tariff plus 30% on China. What exactly allows the president to unilaterally set tariffs this way? That should be the purview of Congress. All this stuff should have to be going through Congress. And by the way, one of the beauties of having to go through Congress is actually less inconsistency.

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When you have an executive branch that can willy-nilly do what it wants, you end up with wildly vacillating policy. When you have a legislature you have to deal with, the checks and balances create a level of of gridlock, which leads to consistency in policy, as opposed to this sort of wild vacillation in the markets.

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And the reason I'm pointing this out is because if you want Trump to succeed, if you want Republicans to retain the House, the economy cannot dump between now and November 2026. It cannot. And if all this vacillation leads people to sort of wander around in the marketplace, not know where to put their money, put it in speculative properties, put it in bizarre crypto schemes.

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If that's what people end up doing, they don't know where to put their money. And then some sort of exogenous shock happens to the economy or one of the many bubbles in the American economy burst. And then, by the way, there are a bunch of bubbles. There's a crypto bubble right now. There's an AI bubble right now. There's a real estate bubble right now. Those are all bubbles.

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And we are replete with bubbles in the American economy, thanks to the inflationary policy of the Federal Reserve over the course of the last several years. Too much money, not enough places to put it, and uncertainty about where exactly to put it. And uncertainty about where to put it even in terms of bonds. This is why the bond yields are way, way up.

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Because, again, people aren't even rushing to safe haven in bonds. People literally don't know where to put their money at this point. If the economy should downturn, you got a problem. The Trump administration, again, used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to actually impose those tariffs.

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But the reality is that it's difficult to explain why the executive branch should be able to simply declare a national emergency on the basis of a trade imbalance. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary. He made the case in a filing on Friday that a ruling that narrows the IEPA would have ripple effects across every domain in which economic instruments are used for strategic effect.

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The difference is, of course, that the IEPA was designed for emergency situations. He says, for example, we couldn't have used economic measures to help calm everybody down over India and Pakistan. But actually, we could have because that's an actual national emergency. That was an incipient conflict between two nuclear powers. That is not the same thing as Madagascar sells us too much coffee.

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That is not a national emergency. Madagascar sells us too much coffee or Ethiopia sells us too much coffee. So it'll be interesting to see where exactly the Supreme Court comes down on that one. But again, that sort of inconsistency, these sort of taco trade elements of this, the Trump always chickens out trade element of this is not good for the economy generally.

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What's also not good for the economy generally is a feeling of a bubble. That feeling is created. By appearances of corruption, by appearances of insider baseball, there have been a spate of stories.

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We've been covering them over the past several weeks because they are worthy of note, in which people who are close to President Trump, members of his family, his children for the Trump Organization, or for World Liberty Financial, have been going around and essentially picking up sacks of cash for a variety of business deals all over the world, particularly in the crypto space.

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And again, the crypto space, because it is largely unregulated at this point, and because the Trump team is trying to be pro-crypto, which I think is good. I am very pro-crypto. I own crypto. I own some Bitcoin. I own some Ethereum. I'm an investor in a crypto firm, right? Like, I'm very pro-crypto.

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But if you wish for crypto to actually become a solid part of the financial framework, then what you can't have is the appearance of people selling snake oil out there on the basis of fame and fortune. You can't do that, especially if those people are connected to the Trump administration who's drawing all the regulations.

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That is a problem because if there is an economic downturn, I promise you, promise you, if there's an economic downturn, Democrats are going to run successfully on the proposition that a bunch of people got rich who are close to the Trump family and that everybody else got stuck holding the bag. This is why the economy can't collapse under President Trump. It's also why...

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The Trump family should stop openly engaging or engaging at all in many of the sort of activities in which they are currently engaged. And I mean that ranging from social clubs in Washington, D.C., designed to essentially provide access to members of the administration to crypto events in Qatar.

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Today, according to the New York Times, Trump Media and Technology Group, that is the parent company of Truth Social, said it would raise $2.5 billion from institutional investors to invest in Bitcoin. So they're moving away from their social media play originally, and they're moving into a financial services and crypto play. Now, Trump Media's largest shareholder is President Trump.

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They're going to raise $1.5 billion from about 50 institutional investors by selling 58 million shares. They're going to raise an additional $1 billion from the sale of bonds that can also be converted into shares at a later date. That's going to dilute the value of the Trump media stock right now, but it is also going to radically increase the holdings of the company, of course.

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And by buying Bitcoin while the Trump administration is simultaneously attempting to set up a national treasury in Bitcoin, increasing the price, because again, higher demand means higher price when the supply remains stable, which it is in Bitcoin. It's the whole purpose of Bitcoin. When you do that, what you are doing looks a little skeezy.

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Again, all this sort of skeeziness we talked about with the Qatar jet, this sort of skeeziness is likely to have really bad political effects. Right now, again, if everybody is sort of fat and happy, none of it matters. But if the economy downturns, the sort of oligarchy play that AOC and Bernie Sanders are making is going to sound a lot more plausible.

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And if Democrats take Congress in November 2026, thanks to some sort of economic downturn, I promise you all the people who are pro-crypto are going to get it right in the teeth because Democrats are going to see the entire crypto industry as working closely with the Trump administration. They will see it as an enemy and they will attack it with alacrity.

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The appearance of impropriety can have the exact same effect as impropriety, even if nothing is technically being done wrong. And I don't know whether something is technically being done wrong here. I don't. And I'm not a legal analyst when it comes to SEC filings.

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What I will say is that World Liberty Financial, which is the large crypto instrument that is co-run by the Witkoff boys and the Trump boys and some of the other members of Team Trump, World Liberty Financial is currently selling tokens like millions and millions, like tens of millions of dollars of tokens. Those tokens are not resellable.

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So you are effectively buying, quote, a voting right in World Liberty Financial's decentralized finance policy. I don't even know what that means.

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Maybe it means something, but I'm not sure why you would expend perfectly good money for a token that is not resellable and has no inherent value so you can vote on the direction of a company in which you do not have even remotely a majority because World Liberty Financial is 75% owned by the Trump organization, from my understanding. That sort of stuff, does that look great?

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Is that the sort of stuff that is going to redound to the benefit, non-financial benefit, political benefit of President Trump's agenda? I'm putting these warnings out there because if those warnings are not out there, then if the thing happens, people are going to get taken by surprise. But they shouldn't be taken by surprise because Democrats are already planning this playbook.

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All Daily Wire plus annual memberships are 40 percent off, including all access memberships. This means ad free daily shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media. Access to our full library of original films, documentaries, and series. Early access to offers and announcements before anyone else. Members-only content you're not going to find anywhere else.

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They're already, you wonder why all these pieces are coming out. Number one, because these things are in fact happening. It is not just relegated to left-wing coverage in the New York Times. There's coverage in tablet. There's coverage in the free press. Because everybody is looking at this.

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People who know the financial industry and know crypto, they're looking at this and they're going, this does not look totally right here. Is it likely that the American people are going to like this sort of stuff? Are they going to? Is that going to? Is that going to be good?

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OK, well, I mean, theoretically, since you are the head of the British crown, you could cede a bunch of territory back to the quote unquote unceded territory of the Algonquians. You could do that, but you're not going to do that because the whole thing is ridiculous on its face.

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Again, all I care about here is Republicans retaining the House because if Democrats take the House, the presidency is over. All I care about here is the policy that President Trump has promised the American people he will implement. That's the stuff I want. Anything that gets in the way of that stuff is stuff I don't want. And this is why vacillation on trade policy. This is why.

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the appearance of impropriety among members of the Trump team.

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And again, here I'm going with Trump team in sort of its broadest iteration, including members of the Witkoff family, members of the Trump family, people who are surrounding the Trump family, the 1789 Capitals and the Omid Maliks and the rest of these cast of characters who are obviously doing very, very well while President Trump is president. That sort of stuff, it's going to come home to roost.

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And again, I'm not making allegations of criminal activity here. I'm just making an allegation that when you do stuff that appears dirty to the American public, whether or not it actually is, it is very unlikely that political gravity will not at some point apply. And it would behoove the Trump administration to recognize that. And it would behoove the Trump administration

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to be above reproach on this sort of stuff if they wish a proper agenda to get done. Because the blowback, if things go wrong here, is going to be absolutely exorbitant. We'll get to more on that in a moment. First, I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with the family, even with the busy work schedule.

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition. That means actually eating vegetables. But I don't like vegetables, so I'm very thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days.

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, so I can pop it right into the protein smoothie, and I'm good to go. Head on over to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get that free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro.

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Of course, it's unseated because the nature of human conflict is that when people migrate from one part of the earth to another part of the earth, conflict tends to arise and then someone wins and someone loses. And it is a very good thing that the British Empire won in Canada, not in the War of 1812. It should be part of America. It should be the 51st state.

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Go check them out right now. balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro for 35% off your very first order as a preferred customer and get a free bottle of fiber and spice. You can actually decide that President Trump is not going to carry forward, for example, his tariff threats and it'll probably be okay. Where this becomes a much bigger problem is when it comes to foreign policy.

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Obviously, America's enemies are taking up the same mantle. They clearly are. So Russia right now is pushing incredibly hard in Ukraine. Russia obviously believes that it has the momentum with it. Russia believes that President Trump is going to eventually back off a harsh stance against it. That's what they believe. How do we know that? Because they're openly saying it.

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So President Trump put out a truth in which he suggested that really bad things may happen to Russia if they continue along these lines. Quote, but Vladimir Putin doesn't realize that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I mean, really bad. He's playing with fire. Okay, that's fine.

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But it seems that the Putin team, that they are basically assuming that Trump is going to back off of this. How do I know this? Because Russia Today, which is an official outlet of the Russian government, put out a tweet saying, quote, Putin doesn't realize he's playing with fire. Trump's message leaves little room for misinterpretation until he posts the opposite tomorrow morning.

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I mean, the question is, are they wrong? Okay, first of all, they're insulting and ridiculous, but are they wrong would be the key question here. And the answer is, I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. So right now, President Trump is apparently weighing some sanctions of his own.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump is eyeing sanctions against Moscow this week as he grows frustrated by Vladimir Putin's continued attacks on Ukraine. The restrictions likely wouldn't include new banking sanctions, one of the people said, but other options are under discussion to pressure the Russian leader into concessions at the negotiating table.

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Trump is tiring of peace negotiations and is considering abandoning them altogether if a final push does not work. But what does that mean in terms of further commitment to Ukraine? I mean, if he backs off and then says we're not backing Ukraine, that's exactly what Russia wants. That's literally what they've wanted the entire time. So are those sanctions going to happen?

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And this, again, is an area where it would be great to have the Senate. You know, you remember there's this whole vestigial organ of government called the legislature. It'd be awesome to have them sign into chat at this point.

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So just as with trade, where it'd be great to have Congress sign into chat and, you know, take back its traditional prerogative on what the trade rules should be here in the United States. It'd be great to have Congress sign into chat on new sanctions. Like, does Congress have anything to say about sanctions? They should. There's a point the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is making.

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Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving. Mr. Trump and his advisors fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy, no neocon idealism for them. But on Mr. Putin, they're starry-eyed idealists mouthing peace as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so.

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But if it's not going to be part of America, the basic idea, which is that the world is better off because of the British Empire, the world is better off because of, for example, American power, the spread of European ideals. That is obviously true. The spread of things like property rights, due process of law, capitalism, freedom of religion, these things which are not a human universal.

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The good news is the United States Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia. As GOP Senator Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions. If Mr. Trump signals he supports the Graham, Tom Cotton, Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate.

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I have a question. Why shouldn't it sail through the Senate anyway? If you have 82 co-sponsors, they should just do it. Why doesn't Congress take back its traditional foreign policy prerogative here? That is the thing that actually should happen, because if you wish to remove the sort of static in the line with regard to Russian policy, it would be great to have the Senate sign in.

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By the way, the Senate should sign in with regard to, for example, an Iran deal as well. So a kind of shocking story from Axios yesterday emerged that suggested that President Trump had cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to take any action that could jeopardize negotiations between the United States and Iran on a new nuclear deal.

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Okay, so first of all, I have a question. Israel is not involved in those negotiations. So why should Israel hold off? Real question, Israel is the country most under threat from Iran, not the United States. Okay, so if we were gonna take the full scale, J.D.

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Vann's isolationist realist position, shouldn't the United States just sort of wash his hands and walk away and say whatever happens, happens? But I noticed that's not what's happening. Instead, these so-called restrainers inside the administration, they're not attempting to restrain the United States, which is already restrained.

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I promise you, my 100% certitude is that President Trump is not going to authorize a bombing raid on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Whether or not we should, I don't think it's going to happen. Okay, that's just the reality. So why is the restrainer team inside the Trump administration trying to stop Israel from doing that thing? Why? With what bad deal?

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Iran keeps saying openly they will not stop enrichment. If they were truly afraid of what President Trump is going to do to them, then they would be coming to the table making concessions. Instead, they appear to believe that President Trump and Steve Witkoff and team are more desperate for an Iran deal than Iran is, which is insane.

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There is no reason the United States should be more desperate for a deal with a completely weakened Iran than Iran is for a deal to open up its economy. Iran should be coming on bended knee right now. All of their proxies have been exploded by the Israeli military. Their economy doesn't exist. Right now, the Iranian rial is trading at historic lows. The rial amounts to 0.000024 of a U.S.

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dollar, which is to say that one U.S. dollar is trading for 42,125 Iranian rials, which, shall we say, is not a particularly good record there. That is because their economy has been crushed. And yet the United States is so desperate for a deal. What? For the sake of a deal? The Iranians know this, which is why they're pushing.

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And so when Trump warned Netanyahu not to go and do anything about Iran, just trust us. Okay, listen. I will trust that President Trump will cut a good deal if he continues to maintain the Trump 1.0 stance, which is no nuclear enrichment at all, no nuclear facilities at all. That was something that three weeks ago the Trump administration was saying.

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President Trump himself, again, I'm with Trump 1.0 on this, not Steve Witkoff and J.D. Vance 2.0. Donald Trump 1.0 killed Qasem Soleimani, destroyed the Iranian economy, and held them in check. Then Joe Biden came in, reversed a bunch of that stuff, and you got October 7th and a vast regional war. Why wouldn't we just go back to Trump 1.0?

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That is the foreign policy that actually shaped the Abraham Accords. Why is that not the thing? instead of calling the prime minister of Israel and telling him he needs to restrain himself on Iran, if you actually wanted to negotiate this thing out, shouldn't the Trump administration be going to the Iranians and being, listen, we can't hold these guys back.

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That is the legacy of the West overall. There's always an attempt to take human universals and then project them as West specific problems. That is not true. The problems of murder and rapine and looting and slavery, these are human universals. The thing that is unique about the West is all the other stuff.

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If you actually want to negotiate a good Iran nuclear deal, what you would do is you would say to the Iranians, these Israelis, they're champing at the bit. They're ready to hit you. You need to, let's make a deal. Let's make a deal because otherwise, I don't know what I can do. They're an independent country. I won't.

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But the reason I would assume that there is such lack of comfort from the Israeli government toward the U.S. government right now is because of all the signals that are coming out from the U.S. government ranging from maybe we'll give them like a pause in nuclear enrichment and then later they can enrich or maybe they can enrich to 3 percent, but not 60 percent.

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Or maybe we can basically do the Obama JCPOA 2.0 and ram it through. And meanwhile, by the way, the NSC, the National Security Council, is apparently being cleansed of many of the more hawkish members, deliberately. According to the Daily Scroll, which is a daily newsletter over at Tablet, The NSC, which, again, there are lots of reasons that you want to cleanse the NSC.

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There are a lot of bad people who have been over at the NSC. Most obvious example being Alexander Vindman, who led off the first impeachment of President Trump by leaking documents from the NSC calls between President Trump and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine. But many of the people who are being fired right now are people who were hired about five minutes ago.

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Tablet says shortly after Dan Caldwell, a Koch world restrainer, was fired from the DOD. Merav Sarin was targeted in a messaging op, falsely claiming she was a member of the Israeli Defense Ministry.

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The story, which was sourced to restrainers in and around the administration, was published by the far-left outlet Dropsite News and amplified on social media by the Qataris, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the National Iranian American Council, and organs of the Koch Network, including the Quincy Institute, co-helmed by NIAC founder and Iranian asset, Trita Parsi.

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Now, again, the goal here, apparently, is to sort of cleanse the NSC of people who are not the quote unquote restrainers, meaning the people who are more isolationist in their foreign policy orientation.

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So you wonder why the Russians are feeling their oats right now, why they believe that Trump isn't going to stick by his guns, or why the Chinese are ramping up activities around Taiwan, or why the Iranians are pushing harder in the negotiations now. Again, the Iranians should be back footed. They have no defenses in their skies. Their proxies are gone.

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They no longer even have a route to Lebanon because Syria has been cut off from them. Why aren't they coming on bended knee? The answer is because they see daylight and they see weakness. And as Park McDougald reports, Caldwell's allies, CJD Vance is their protector. They ran to Vance rather than to the president with their concerns.

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And reversing that polarity, reversing that and suggesting that the West is somehow uniquely sinful because it was better at war than other places or because Westerns were better at settlement than the Algonquins who lived on the land where Canada's parliament now sits. That somehow it's a human tragedy. It is not, in fact, a human tragedy. Bad things happen throughout human history.

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Vance's office appears to be taking a leading role in purging the NSC of its Iran hawks, i.e. the people who would oppose a bad nuclear deal with Iran and also have the knowledge and experience to tell a bad deal from a good one.

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And some of the suggestions from Tablet suggest that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in an attempt to sort of maintain good relations with the Vance wing, has now aligned himself with Vance and Witkoff. Again, maybe this all ends well. Maybe it all ends fine. Maybe President Trump sticks by his guns. But certainly that's not the way the Iranians are reading it right now.

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The Iranians are strengthening their demands. That should be an indicator as to where they see the power right now in the Trump administration. And that is not particularly good for the United States or our allies. The pressure right now should be on Iran. It should not be on a democratic ally that is attempting to get rid of the Iranian nuclear weapons.

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Again, the agenda that Trump himself laid out during his first term and in his run for his second term. America's opponents should be afraid. They should not be dunking on the president the way that Russia today just did. Speaking of which, There is a new aid system that has now been unleashed in the Gaza Strip, a humanitarian aid system. It was ripped by everybody on the left.

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It's not going through the UN. It's not going through the UNRW. Right. It is going through sources that are not going to simply hand the aid to Hamas. You can see it's kind of fascinating to watch the coverage of this new aid system. Basically, some Hamas people showed up and tried to shoot people in an attempt to disturb the aid system.

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Hamas was literally warning Gazans, don't get food from the American aid system that's being set up right there. Because Hamas wants to control the distribution of aid. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is running it. There are now two separate sites that have been set up, distributing food to hundreds of thousands of people.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the distribution of aid began normally on Tuesday, with Palestinians lining up to receive boxes of food early in the day at a distribution center in Rafah in southern Gaza. Around 4.30 p.m. local time, a poorly constructed gate collapsed as large crowds tried to push through the narrow entrance. Looting ensued.

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They said they heard shots fired in an effort to disperse the crowds. Apparently, some of the people who were doing that might have been connected with Hamas, or it could have just been too much demand for the aid, and then they fixed it. But here is some actual video of the Gazans thanking the United States for not letting Hamas distribute the aid. This is from Cassie Akiva at Daily Wire.

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literally shouting, thank you, America. It is kind of hilarious that the United Nations is ripping into the system, despite the fact that the UN itself was used as essentially a proxy vehicle by Hamas for literally decades. UNRWA employees were involved in October 7th. UN sites were used as the launching base for rockets and missiles.

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So once again, leave it to the media to completely miscover the situation. They've done a wonderful job of that. Okay, meanwhile, in ridiculous entertainment news, The latest in the Diddy trial, it's Diddy Update. So again, the big question in the Sean Puffy Combs Diddy McFace trial is whether he engaged in sex trafficking or whether he's just a generalized piece of crap, right?

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That's the real question here. The defense admits that he's a generalized piece of crap. The question is whether he is also a sex trafficker violating federal law. According to the Washington Post, the third week of testimony in the Diddy sex trafficking and racketeering case brings more prosecution witnesses to the stand, including Combs' former assistant, Capricorn Clark. Capricorn Clark.

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The bad things are a tragedy. But overall, in the broad scope of history, is it a very good thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent? It's an absolutely wonderful thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent. Anyone who doesn't believe so should probably leave.

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Okay, it's a name. That's better than Taurus Clark or something. In testimony last week, Scott Kutty Mascuti alleged that Clark called him to say that her boss had broken into Mascuti's home. Other former assistants have testified saying they procured drugs and other supplies for Combs and witnessed his physical abuse of his former longtime girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

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Ventura alleges she was coerced by Combs and his associates into participating in the alleged freak-offs. Again, he's pleading not guilty, and they are suggesting that these two had a volatile relationship and that he was, in fact, abusive, but that's not the same thing as sex trafficking. Capricorn Clark described her tumultuous life working on and off for Diddy, a job she still misses intensely.

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Apparently, after his homes were raided by federal agents, she tried to get a job with him anyway. Clark told the jury her job was to keep Combs and his operation professional, but she then described a profoundly unethical web of operations at Bad Boy Records and other Combs companies.

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Clark testified she saw Combs viciously kick Ventura in 2011 as a punishment for her secret side relationship with Kid Cudi. Also, apparently, the last question to Capricorn Clark from the defense attorney was about a comment she made in an April 2024 meeting at which the lawyer was present

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Clark recounted a conversation she had with Cassie Ventura years ago in which Clark allegedly told Ventura she should end her romantic relationship with Combs. Ventura's response, Clark paraphrased to Combs' lawyers, Jay-Z was taken. Who would she date? And apparently Clark said that that was true. So yes, these are all wonderful people who surround themselves with other wonderful people.

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So believe it or not, both Usher and Barack Obama's names have been dropped in the Diddy trial at this point. Apparently, his one-time personal assistant, David James, also says that Diddy took drugs every day, including sometimes downing Obama-shaped ecstasy pills. They make Obama-shaped ecstasy pills? Why? I don't understand. It's weird. Anyway.

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Truthfully, if you don't believe that, you probably should go and you should seed your apartment right now, your dingy apartment in Brooklyn. You should seed it back to the natives from whom your ancestors took it. if that is your idea. But again, it's ridiculous and silly, but it ties into a deeper and more deadly philosophy. And you can see that philosophy springing up in a few different places.

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Apparently, Combs receives his drug haul from a dealer named One Stop, which, okay, good branding there. He's the One Stop shop. All right, fair enough. Again, this is the big question in all of this is whether Combs is just engaging in routine rapper horrifying behavior or kind of worse than normal for a rapper, which is saying an awful lot, or whether he was actually engaged in sex trafficking.

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Again, the indictment revolves around two females that Combs is alleged to have engaged in commercial sex acts as a result of forced fraud and coercion. And then there was a superseding indictment that added a second count of sex trafficking against another victim. Combs is saying these both were my girlfriends. So I guess one of the females is Cassie Ventura.

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I will say I do not have tremendous sympathy for the idea that she was a sex trafficking victim. She does appear to have been there voluntarily. And yes, the fact that he was abusing the living hell out of her speaks to him being evil, but it doesn't mean that he was engaged in sex trafficking if she is, in fact, the person at issue in the sex trafficking charge.

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We'll have Megyn Kelly on to discuss all this because, frankly, Megyn watches this stuff a lot more closely than I do and has a greater level of expertise. Meanwhile, in other entertainment news, it is kind of amazing to watch elderly people who are now desperately attempting to maintain attention. Jennifer Lopez is 55 years old. Now, granted, she's an amazing looking 55 year old person.

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But the desperate need for attention by our celebrity class like Jennifer Lopez is worth a lot of money, like a lot of money. She is supposedly worth at least 400 million dollars. You don't have to do this, Jennifer, just to be just to be provocative. So she is now making out with her backup dancers. Now, I thought that this is a routine that's been around for a long time.

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I'm old enough to remember when Madonna did this, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago. So I'm not sure what the controversy here is. Everything is just old and played out, including J-Lo. So here she was at one of her shows, desperate for attention. I lose control. Okay, so there she is making out with her backup dancers. And again, oh, and multiple backup dancers.

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She's like kissing and making out with. So this is old and tired. Listen, grandmama. She's 55 years old. I mean, come on. Come on. What are you doing at this point? I have to say it is... trashy and gross and stupid, obviously. But there is this thing that's happening in our culture where a bunch of people are masquerading as 17-year-olds who are actually middle-aged. It kind of is amazing.

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It really is kind of an amazing thing. If you are of middle age, you should act like you are of middle age. I don't mean you have to be a fuddy-duddy. I do mean that you should act like an adult. Like you're not a 17-year-old or a 21-year-old trying desperately to gain attention. You see this with Katy Perry also, right?

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Katy Perry is also making a fool of herself doing her international tours right now, being silly. And you see it in the lyrics of a Taylor Swift also who pretends to be a lovelorn 16-year-old girl when in fact Taylor Swift is currently age 35. But you see it all over the place. I mean, truly, you see it in the manosphere too. I see a bunch of people who are sort of in the podcast space

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who are cosplaying at being 17-year-old Beavis and Butthead types. I enjoy Theo Vaughn as much as the next guy, although I think that his political takes are insanely stupid much of the time, because I just don't think that he focuses on that sort of stuff. And if you don't focus on it, he's not claiming to be an expert. That's fine.

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But if you're not claiming to be an expert, I'm not going to take your opinions on these matters particularly seriously. And Theo Vaughn's a comedian. That's fine. It's also worth noting, Theo Vaughn is 45 years old. Theo Vaughn is four years older than I am. Theo Vaughn is like, In the olden days, Theo Vaughn would be closing in on the gold watch in retirement.

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So the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited the United States recently, visited the White House, and he was asked about the kill the boer chants. So in South Africa, among groups like the EFF, it has become common at rallies to sing a song called Kill the Boer, which is about the Afrikaners farmers who originally settled in the area of South Africa as early as the 17th century.

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And he dresses like a skater who's 16 years old, wears his hat backwards, and acts as though he's a refugee from the stoners club in junior high. It's a little weird. Again, he's very funny. I'm not going to, I'm just wondering, and this is kind of the entire branding now. There's a whole generation of people who are 40 and up who are acting as though they are 20 and under.

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And at some point, it's got to become a bit of how do you do fellow kids? Now, to be fair, I've been 80 since I was like 15. I am a fuddy-duddy. I am a grumpy old man. I've always been a grumpy old man. I was a grumpy old man when I was a teenager. That said,

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There is something strange about a country that is rapidly aging in which because we are rapidly aging and we don't have enough kids, we have decided that adults are going to be the new kids. We're going to treat 40 year olds as though they are 20 and 60 year olds as though they are 30. It's a strange look. It's very, very weird.

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At a certain point, shouldn't you just become a responsible adult, you know, able to make responsible decisions? Or are we just going to do this forever? Is everybody just going to turn into Madonna, twerking her way to glory with two artificial hips at the age of 92? That's just a question, I suppose. All righty, folks, the show is continuing for members right now.

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We're going to be jumping into the mailbag. This is why you should become a member. Your question might be next. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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I've been there for hundreds of years and obviously were responsible at one point for tremendous racism against black people. That, of course, is true in South Africa. But the solution to that is not genocidal chance. But the idea is that so long as the people who are shouting the genocidal chance are not white, European and Western, then it suddenly becomes good. It suddenly becomes OK.

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Now is the time to join and save 40%. Go to dailywireplus.com. Use code DW40 right now. Folks, there is a philosophy, a philosophy that has now become dominant on the left and even parts of the center. It's throughout the West. And this philosophy appears to be really, really funny. at first blush, because it's just kind of silly and ridiculous.

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Here's Cyril Ramaphosa trying to make that case.

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You see, it's a liberation chant. Hey, so. The rule for the left is apparently that if you talk about crime statistics in minority neighborhoods, that is a form of genocidal racism. If, however, you literally shout, kill the boar, kill the farmer, that is not in any way a genocidal chant with genocidal intent. It's a liberation chant. Why?

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Because the rules don't equally apply in this left wing philosophy where the sins of the West are unique. And good is the universal human attribute, but the West is unique in its evil. What that means is that the West has to be destroyed. And again, this goes back to a sort of Frantz Fanon philosophy. Frantz Fanon was an Algerian rebel,

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who wrote a very famous book called The Wretched of the Earth, in which he essentially suggested that colonized people had every right to, quote unquote, kill the colonizers and that they could do whatever they wanted in retaliation. Didn't matter what they set up next. It didn't matter what regime they then implemented.

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The important thing was the West was uniquely sinful and the West therefore had to be destroyed from without and within. And this sort of stuff has deadly consequences. And it doesn't matter whether you call this stuff anti-white or anti-Semitic or anti-whatever. The problem with this generalized philosophy is that it is just evil.

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It is an evil philosophy when you separate the world into victims and victimizers. And what you suggest is that anyone successful, anyone who's been uniquely successful is a victimizer and anyone who is not is a victim. And because those people are victims, they therefore have the moral impetus and the moral weight to go out and kill people.

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What you end up with is actual terrorism, actual violence, actual overthrow of the institutions that make the West great in the first place. I bring this up in the context today of the shooter of the two Jews in Washington, D.C. last week. So Ken Klippenstein, who's a left-wing journalist, actually, he's gotten access to this shooter's leaked chats.

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And he's surprised to find that the shooter isn't explicitly anti-Jew. But that's been my point for a very long time is the anti-Semitism of the left, the anti-Jewishness of the left is not really about Jews. It really is more about the idea that any group that is disproportionately successful anywhere on Earth is a victimizer and therefore must be laid low.

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And that is what you see from the philosophy of the shooter. The philosophy of the shooter, which is that the West is uniquely bad. America is uniquely bad. White people are uniquely bad. Jews presumably are uniquely bad. That is not unique to Jews. That is true of a broad overarching left wing oppressor oppressed matrix. And that has deadly consequences.

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And then it turns out that the deeper roots of this philosophy, well, they bear a deadly fruit. So we begin today with a bizarre and hilarious spectacle. King Charles was visiting the Canadian Parliament, and he decided that it would be worthwhile to offer a land acknowledgement. I'm just going to point out at this point how hilarious this is. King Charles is the king of Great Britain.

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So the point that Klippenstein, because he's of the left, is making is that this guy isn't explicitly anti-Semitic, meaning he doesn't say I want to kill Jews. He says he wants to kill Israelis, which apparently is much better. He's just anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. Okay, well, what difference does it make when the Jews are the ones who die?

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And also, when the broader philosophy is not really even about Israel or about Zionism, it really is just about hatred of the West. According to Klippenstein, a woman who knew the shooter said that he was unequivocally not anti-Semitic. Everything I know about the shooter leads me to believe he acted in protest of the Israeli state and Zionist ideology, not Judaism.

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He never ever said anything remotely racist about Jews or anyone, not even in a joking way. This is according to a friend of the shooter. So number one, who cares? He shot two Jews. He shot them because he perceived them to be pro-Israel. That is why he shot them.

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Why exactly does it matter if the hatred in his heart was derived from an ethnic hatred of Jews or whether it was derived from a much more dangerous, bizarrely perverse philosophy? about again, how the successful in the world are evil and everyone else is a victim of those people and therefore murder is justified. We'll be getting to more on this in just one moment.

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First, free online services like Google actually charge you by using your personal data. They track your behavior. They sell this information to advertisers. When something is free, you're not the customer, you're actually the product being sold. Your digital self is traded to unknown entities who might want to sell you products or influence your political views.

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To reclaim your privacy and protect yourself online, you should use ExpressVPN. Without a VPN, your internet provider can legally track and sell your browsing data in the United States. Meanwhile, data brokers collect your information across websites and apps, creating detailed profiles of you through your IP address.

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ExpressVPN solves this by routing all your activity through encrypted servers, preventing your ISP from seeing or selling your data while also hiding your IP address so brokers can't actually track you. I use ExpressVPN all the time. I've been traveling an awful lot lately when I'm in airports. I'm using public Wi-Fi. Hackers should not know what I'm doing online. That's my business.

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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It's incredibly simple to use. Just one tap for protection. It works on all your devices with a single subscription covering up to eight devices. You don't need technical expertise to use it. The tech reviewers at CNET and The Verge do rate it as the number one VPN worldwide.

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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I partnered with ExpressVPN because I want all my viewers to have access to this important privacy protection, which is why right now you can get an extra four months free when you go to expressvpn.com slash men. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash men to get an extra four months totally free. Also, if you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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Did you know that somebody can literally steal your house? I don't mean like they jack it up on a... on a truck or something, but the value in your home actually can be stolen. A scammer can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, and spend about 40 bucks to file it at the county recorder. Then they can take out loans using your home as collateral.

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You won't even know it's happening until you start getting collection and foreclosure notices in the mail. Can you imagine if you or someone you cared about became a victim of these scams? That would be incredibly sad and frustrating, especially knowing there are people out there like Home Title Lock who can help keep an eye on your title.

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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Most people never check on their home title once escrow closes. That's why it's critical to find out right now if you're already a victim by going to hometitlelock.com. They'll give you a free title history report and provide you with million-dollar triple lock protection to help keep your home and equity safe. That's why I recommend and am proud to partner with Home Title Lock.

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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Ep. 2208 - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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And if fraud does happen, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million bucks to fix the fraud and restore your title. When you go to HomeTitleLock.com and use promo code Shapiro right now, you can get a free 14-day trial and a title history report and find out if you're already a victim. That's HomeTitleLock.com, promo code Shapiro.

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The only reason the Canadian parliament exists is because of Great Britain's intervention in Canada, because of the settlement of Canada by British citizens. That would be the reason he is there in the first place. Him doing a land acknowledgement and taking that seriously would amount to essentially disestablishing Canada, the United States, Australia,

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So, for example, the chats to which Klippenstein was made privy, those chats go back a decade. And what the chats actually show, again, this is a person who has a rainbow in his profile, not exactly a shock.

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And he hated, it appears, the Republican and Democratic parties, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, the right and the left, the bourgeois, the United States, the West, and of course, Israel. His hatred of Israel was made evident on October 7th. So this was not about a quote unquote genocide. As I've suggested, I suggested this last week.

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Why does the left like the genocide law with regard to Israel? They like it because it gives some sort of imprimatur of legitimacy to their true hatred, which is just of Israel existing in the first place.

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On October 7th, this shooter was posting, quote, just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters, LMAO. Not just that, this person openly talked about hating America.

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He called Israel the little Satan, which of course suggests that America is the great Satan, which is language that is the language of Hezbollah, the language of Iran as well. When it came to President Trump, obviously he hated President Trump as well. He hated America. He routinely tweeted about America and put it in his group chats. There's a broader philosophy at work here.

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It's the same philosophy that leads to the ridiculous. The ridiculous iteration is King Charles, the King of Great Britain, sitting there and denouncing European presence on the North American continent, which is insane. That's the ridiculous iteration. But the deeper iteration of that is a murderous philosophy that again says the West is uniquely evil. Europe is uniquely evil.

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White people are uniquely evil. Jews are uniquely evil. Israelis are uniquely evil and all of the rest. And that has real consequences in the world.

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And so we can laugh and we should laugh at King Charles being forced to say the words, but recognize that that university led philosophy, the kind of philosophy President Trump is trying to fight at Harvard, by the way, that university led philosophy has real consequences. There was an interview with one of the people who was present at the D.C. shooting.

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And this interview was about the person's experience. This person happened to have been a graduate of Columbia University. And the person said, I totally recognized what kind of person this was because I've seen that exact same hatred in the eyes of fellow students at Columbia University. That is not a shot.

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It's a thoroughgoing left-wing philosophy that is being promoted by our nation's top universities. That is the real underlying reason why President Trump right now is going after Harvard University, by the way. So the Trump administration is now seeking to fully end Harvard's federal contracts

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the General Services Administration has called for a review of federal contracts in a letter viewed by the Wall Street Journal saying that Harvard engaged in anti-Semitism as well as race discrimination in its admissions processes. That is perfectly legitimate. They do not have to send grant money to Harvard.

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If Harvard violates the Civil Rights Act, then they are not owed the money. The Trump team is also weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting. which we should. If you're entering the United States on a student visa, you shouldn't come here and hate the West and hate America. You shouldn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

Folks, a lot of news breaking today. We'll get to all of it. First, if you want more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, the time has come to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, early access to our new releases. Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else.

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I mean, again, if you read the chat, what's fascinating about the chat, as I mentioned yesterday, is that the most responsible and intelligent commentators on foreign policy in the chat are Waltz and Hegseth. It's not particularly close. They're the two most informed, most reasoned people in the chat about what should be done about the Houthis.

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For example, I do not think it is a coincidence that many of both the isolationists on the right and the Obama foreign policy pseudo-realists on the left are gunning for Hegseth and Waltz. I don't think that is merely about the handling of classified information because there are a lot of people on that chat.

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So now everybody was on that chat and no one else is being gunned for, which is rather curious, shall we say. In the end, it is left to Jasmine Crockett, the new hot leader of the Democrat Party. And she's sort of the fresh faced AOC. AOC is still out there. She's now a veteran. But Jasmine Crockett is trying to steal her thunder.

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And that is what the evidence, by the way, is showing right now. Harry Enten over on CNN, he says that despite all of the Democratic attempts to paint President Trump as deeply unpopular, the numbers are better for President Trump than literally any time in his political career.

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This is the congresswoman from Texas, the incredibly voluble congresswoman from Texas, who was left to sum up the real problem that happened in the signal chat.

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Yeah, that was the problem. There's no black woman in the room. That would have solved everything. Thank you, Jasmine. That wasn't even the dumbest thing she said yesterday. So meanwhile, you wonder why President Trump continues to ride high? Like there can be botchery at Doge. There can be mistakes made in signal chats and all the rest of it. However, the Democrats are completely lost.

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They're in the wilderness right now because their leaders are people like Representative Jasmine Crockett. They're attempting to show that they are, in fact, the resistance. And they think that the way that you show you're the resistance is by cursing a lot and by saying deeply insulting, terrible things. So Jasmine Crockett, this is hilarious.

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She was at the Human Rights Campaign, which is all about equality. It's about LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign. And it's supposedly about marginalized people. And she proceeds to drop this insane line.

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So that is some very inspiring talk there. They're in the hot-ass streets with the Hot Wheels governor because he's a hot-ass mess, according to Jasmine Crockett. Now, there are a few problems with this. Number one, Jasmine Crockett grew up in a rather privileged precinct of St. Louis, and so she's cosplaying this sort of attitude.

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But beyond that, when she refers to Governor Greg Abbott as Hot Wheels, she is literally insulting a person who is in a wheelchair, who is a paraplegic, She's insulting a paraplegic for being in a wheelchair by calling him Hot Wheels. And she is being laughed at and cheered by the members of the Human Rights Campaign. which is all about supposedly the inclusion of marginalized people.

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I don't think that you're about the inclusion of marginalized people, guys. I actually don't. I have doubts that that is your actual political agenda. And Jasmine Crockett then tried to walk this back because it turns out that it's actually not a great thing to insult the disabled and to characterize them as, quote unquote, hot wheels. So she tried to walk this back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She tried to pretend she wasn't talking about the fact that Governor Abbott of Texas is a paraplegic. She wrote on X, quote, Now, do you remember at that time? that Trump supposedly made fun of a journalist who had a condition. And it actually was not him making fun of the journalist who had the condition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's the same weird hand motions he does whenever he's talking about someone he thinks is stupid and weak. And then they played it as though this particular journalist was being mocked by Trump and became a national news story. She literally called the paraplegic Hot Wheels. And now she's claiming the reason she called Greg Abbott Hot Wheels is not because he is in a wheelchair.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is because he is sending migrants on airplanes to, to various cities led by black mayors. I don't think that that's what you meant. And the reason I don't think that that's what she meant is because it turns out that in 2021, she liked a post referencing Governor Abbott as Hot Wheels, which was before the migrant transfers. Oopsie-daisy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That was uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon, which, of course, is tremendous reporting. So... This, of course, has generated angst and antagonism in the House of Representatives, which has basically descended. Much of the House of Representatives is staffed by good, responsible people who actually care about their constituents.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then there is, in fact, a contingent of the House of Representatives that is basically Jerry Springer running for various gubernatorial seats. That is what the House of Representatives has become in large part. It is filled with some of the dullest knives in the drawer, for sure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That includes Representative Ayanna Pressley, who is now complaining about the Trump administration for, wait for it, being too white.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Oh boy. This is what you got. You got the cabinet's too white and a Hot Wheels governor. These are your leaders, Democrats. You chose your fighters. Well, Democrats have chosen a bunch of idiot leaders and people who actually reflect some of the worst in humanity and back that. Well, that worst of humanity still exists and threatens people all over the globe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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After more than a year of war in Israel, the need for security essentials and support for first responders remains absolutely critical. Even during periods of ceasefire, Israel must maintain constant vigilance and preparedness for potential threats that could emerge from any direction as the nation continues to face hostility from surrounding adversaries.

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Throughout this challenging time, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has stood firmly alongside the people of Israel, providing essential security resources that save lives. We remain committed to that vital mission. Your gift today,

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will directly contribute to lifesaving security measures, including bomb shelters to protect families during rocket attacks, armored security vehicles, ambulances that provide critical medical care, advanced firefighting equipment for emergency response teams, protective gear like flak jackets and bulletproof vests for those on the front lines, and numerous other crucial resources.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Thank you, and God bless. Let's talk about something that's on every parent's mind, your kid's nutrition. You know how most kids' vitamins are basically candy with a vitamin label? Loaded with sugar, they've got artificial ingredients. This is where Hya comes in. They've created an amazing chewable vitamin that kids actually love. The best part? Zero sugar.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Even the pickiest eaters would give these a thumbs up. They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals. We're talking vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, and more. They've thought of everything. It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, and thoroughly tested for safety, which means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids this high-quality product.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens? Hyatt now has Kids Daily Greens Plus Superfoods, a chocolate-flavored greens powder specifically designed for kids, packed with more than 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, and digestion. Just scoop.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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shake, and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your very first order to claim this deal. You have to go to hayahealth.com slash Shapiro. This deal is not available on their regular website.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H.com slash Shapiro. Get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. And I think that many, many people in the country, there's a whole democratic campaign right now, which like, do you regret your vote for Trump? And the answer so far seems to be absolutely not. for the vast majority of people who voted for Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Connect with a community that shares your values, not one that cancels you for them. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. And with new content added every single week, there's always something worth watching. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

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Okay, that is absolutely right, which means that unless a scandal actually goes to sort of the core of the Trump administration, and by that I mean his actual agenda, not how the agenda is carried out, but the actual agenda itself, it's not going to harm Trump in any serious way. And President Trump knows precisely that. So yesterday there was large-scale controversy over that signal chat.

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And the reason for that is because the specter of Democrat rule is just that scary. Why? Well, because one of the ousted members of the squad, Ayanna Pressley, as I've mentioned before, is the Ringo Starr of the squad. They're far left radical progressives in Congress led by AOC.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, one of the ousted members of the squad, Cori Bush, Representative Cori Bush, she admitted what the Democrats were going to do next if they had gained power. And this is terrifying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They were going to shoot for $10 trillion, $10 trillion in that climate deal. If they'd unified control of government, they would do it again. No wonder people are still resonating to President Trump's message. Speaking of which, President Trump signed a couple of consequential executive orders yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He signed an executive order, according to Politico, seeking to change how elections are administered across the country, especially rules related to citizenship and mail-in voting. The Trump order asserts that federal law requires all states to reject ballots not received by Election Day, directing the Justice Department to take all necessary action to enforce that requirement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That, of course, makes perfect sense because it's very difficult to determine. You can try to do it based on postmark, theoretically. But how exactly are you going to determine quickly and easily how an election was conducted if people are still having their votes counted five days after the election?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The trust and veracity of the American electoral system is deeply undermined by this idea that you can receive a ballot three days after an election and still count it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In Florida, we know the election results literally day up, like within an hour, because they pre-count all of the mail-in ballots, and then they add on day of voting, and then they're done, which is the way it should be done across the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump's order asserts that federal law requires states to reject ballots not received by Election Day, directing the Justice Department to take all necessary action. Across the country, states have wide latitude to administer elections differently. None allow votes to be counted if they are cast after Election Day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Some accept absentee ballots after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Many others require ballots to be in possession of election officials by the time the polls close. For example, in Florida, a ballot must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. In California, a ballot must be postmarked on Election Day but can arrive up to seven days later.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, which is incredibly messy. The executive order also requires the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency, to add proof of citizenship to the national voter registration form. States are required to accept that national form under federal law. They can still create their own voter registration forms.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But if you're going to use the federal voter registration form, you should have to show that you're a citizen. That does not seem particularly controversial. And this bizarre idea that has been put forward by so many people that impoverished citizens can't show proof of their citizenship is insane and ridiculous. You have to show proof of your citizenship every time you drive a car, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What do you think a driver's license is? There are lots of poor people in America who are able to drive or able to buy alcohol using an ID. It actually is not all that difficult. This is an 80-20 issue and Democrats find themselves on the wrong side of it. President Trump also signed an executive order

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Members of the Trump administration were testifying in Congress and talking about whether classified information was actually revealed. It was maintained by Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, that there was no classified information that was revealed. John Ratcliffe of the CIA said the same thing. He said that that chat did not include any real classified information.

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directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. As Fox News reports, the agency probe launched in 2016 was seeking information on the Trump campaign. It was deeply corrupt, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

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It was rooted in a false report that was basically crafted out of whole cloth by Fusion GPS, a firm that was hired via Perkins Coie by Hillary Clinton in order to whip the Steele dossier into existence.

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The Crossfire Hurricane investigation also included impropriety, including the improper surveillance of Carter Page, a member of sort of the Trump foreign policy team, although a very low-level one. President Trump is declassifying all those files, saying you might want to go through this stuff if you're talking about government corruption.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, so as he says, you probably won't like what you're going to see. And that's right. Then the media are not going to look into these files because the files show exactly what was going on during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which, again, is one of the most deeply corrupt investigations in modern American history. No one was fired for that one, by the way. I'll point out as well.

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Meanwhile, the Republicans on the Hill are moving steadily toward their one big, beautiful bill. According to Politico, congressional GOP leaders are coalescing behind President Trump's demand that their massive party line bill include a debt limit increase. Senate Republicans are seeing if they have the votes to make it happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Those plans were cemented during a White House meeting on Tuesday with the senior Republicans in both chambers, top tax writers, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his conference still needed to make a final decision. In order to get that strategy going, President Trump will need to force several key Senate GOP hardliners to get behind it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, the goal here would be to be able to increase the spending limit under President Trump, which is the thing that he wants. It is likely that this will be achieved by President Trump.

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In an acknowledgment that the gamut of linking a debt ceiling increase to a filibuster squirting reconciliation measure might not work, Thune has been careful to leave the door open to striking a deal with Democrats to avoid default in the coming months on the debt limit.

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But many of Thune's members are clamoring to put the debt ceiling hike in the reconciliation bill in order to get all of it done at once because they don't want to actually make concessions to Democrats. So the argument that President Trump is making and that Thune and Johnson presumably are going to be making is you can either

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negotiate a debt limit hike with Democrats, in which case you have to make concessions to Democrats, or you can stick the debt limit hike in this one big, beautiful bill and then pass it along with everything else. And you don't have to make any deals with Democrats. Thune said, I think that's clearly a preferable outcome. Obviously, the House has it in their version.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Tulsi Gabbard suggested that the conversation is under review. Here she was yesterday in front of Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So we have to determine whether or not the Senate can get on board with that idea. The Senate's blueprint right now does not have that in there. Thune stopped short Tuesday of promising Republicans finally had a plan for addressing the debt limit. He believed there was a consensus that was forming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Some GOP lawmakers say they may have to strip out the debt limit measure from the massive bill to extend tax cuts if the U.S. approaches the debt limit too early, like before the lawmakers can come to an agreement. But again, I think that the senators come around. I think it is highly likely that Republicans get their one big, beautiful bill done. And that's a big victory for President Trump.

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It's absolutely necessary because, again, the sort of trade war that's being unleashed on the world is a pressure in the other direction. Trade wars tend to lead to economic stagnation and inflation. The one big, beautiful bill leads to economic certainty. It leads to deregulation in certain areas. It leads to lower taxes. One of these things makes business happy.

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One of these things makes business more unhappy. And so if you're going to do the tariff thing, then it just makes what's happening on the other end, on the legislative end, that much more important.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As the Wall Street Journal reports, barriers to open trade are rising around the world at a pace unseen in decades, a cascade of protectionism that harks back to the isolationist fervor that swept the globe in the 1930s and worsened the Great Depression. It isn't just President Trump's new tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Even before Trump retook the White House, many countries were increasing trade barriers, often against China. Now those efforts are proliferating as countries brace for a new wave of goods redirected across the globe by the U.S. 's rising tariff shield.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The EU said this month it plans to toughen measures to protect its own steel and aluminum producers from imports diverted from the United States by Trump's 25% tariffs on those two metals. Economists suggest that the world could be heading toward the largest, broadest surge in protectionist activity since the U.S.

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Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was a large contributing factor in the Great Depression. Now, economists don't think that we're headed toward a Great Depression or anything remotely like that, but the economic slowdown could be significant, which is just one reason why if you're going to do one thing, you certainly have to do the other.

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Meanwhile, that is something that the administration is pursuing in terms of deregulation and cuts. Doge continues to be popular with the American people as a general rule. They may not like Elon Musk. They may not like the way that this is being pursued. But the basic idea of going through the government with a red pen and just line iteming out all of the bad spending ideas.

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That's something the American people certainly like. And the Trump administration is coming, I think, to a better version of this, which is a more concerted and targeted version of these cuts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Frank Bisignano, who's the Social Security Administrator nominee for President Trump, who's asked yesterday in the Senate about cutting Social Security staff, said, listen, we're not going to cut half the staff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. I don't know.

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Now, again, members of the Trump administration are saying there was no classified material on the chat. The reason that they are saying that is because if there was classified material on the chat, that could theoretically breach actual law. It wouldn't just be an impropriety. It might be a legal problem. And so they're all saying that there was no classified information on the chat.

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Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, says, fine, well, if there's no classified information on the chat, then I guess I'm just going to put everything out there, because there had also been a debate over whether there were actual war plans in the chat or whether it was sort of broad-ranging discussions, what was going to happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you very much. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...,G,G,G,G,G,G

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The kinds of stuff that you could actually say to each other in text as opposed to in a skiff or in some sort of classified venue.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump and two of his top intelligence officials denied Tuesday classified materials about military strikes in Yemen were shared by officials on a group chat on a non-government service, while Democrats denounced the security breach as both reckless and dangerous.

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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As I mentioned, Gabbard and Ratcliffe said that this did not include classified information. The information was not, in fact, classified information. Meanwhile, the Atlantic has now responded by publishing the rest of the information. They say, fairly enough, if it's not classified, then you'll have no problem with us putting that out there.

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., a, men P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P, P, P, gener , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . a in

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, the left feels that finally has some room to run after the supposed scandal of a bunch of Trump national security officials who are on a signal chat together and... Someone from National Security Advisor Mike Walz's office accidentally invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the execrable editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, into the chat.

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Jeffrey Goldberg this morning put out a story about this. They had emailed the White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt. And Levitt had responded, quote, as we've repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat.

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However, as the CIA director and national security advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be an internal private deliberation among high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reasons, yes, we object to the release.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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A CIA spokesperson asked to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe's chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the signal chain because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. But Ratcliffe had also testified earlier that the officer was not undercover and said it was completely appropriate to share their name in the signal conversation.

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The Atlantic, for purposes of caution, is refusing to release the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted. So what exactly do the texts say? Well, at 1144 Eastern Time, this is Saturday morning. The Secretary of Defense posted in the chat, team update, weather is favorable. Just confirm with CENTCOM we are a go for mission launch.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then the HEXA text continued, 12.15 Eastern time, F-18s launch, first strike package. 13.45, 1.45 Eastern time, trigger-based F-18 first strike window starts. Target terrorist is at his known location, so should be on time. Also, strike drones launch, MQ-9s. So Jeffrey Goldberg says, why exactly is this not classified? He says, the signal message shows the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Secretary of Defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him at 1144 a.m. This is 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched in two hours and one minute. Before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi target terrorist, was expected to be killed by these American aircraft.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If that text had been received by someone hostile to American interests, the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic. The Hegseth text continues, 2-10, more F-18s launched, second strike package. 14-15, 2-15 p.m., strike drones on target.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is when the first bombs will definitely drop, pending earlier trigger-based targets. 3-36, F-18, second strike starts, also for C-based Tomahawks launched. More to follow per timeline. We are currently clean on OPSEC, that is Operational Security Godspeed, to our warriors. So again, the Atlantic is saying, okay, these texts are obviously supposed to be classified.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Why is this happening inside a signal chat? So let's separate the legal issue for a second from the actual. national security issue, because there are two real issues here. One is the legal situation. If this was classified information, was it mishandled? If so, is that a violation of criminal law? As we've said, usually violation of criminal law requires some level of intent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This was exactly the standard that was set up for Hillary Clinton in the emails case. If you agree with James Comey on that, that basically you have to have intent to spread classified information. It's not just negligence. It's intent to spread classified information beyond its boundaries. then you're guilty of some sort of crime, then obviously there was no intent here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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No one meant to include Jeffrey Goldberg on purpose in the middle of the chat, obviously. So on a legal standard, very difficult to say that this would be violative of law as actually reinterpreted by James Comey and the FBI and pretty much everybody else going forward from that point, which means 15 years ago, maybe a crime. Today, not so much.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And there, a conversation ensued all about when and how to strike the Houthis in Yemen. And people are pretending to be extremely angry about this. When I say people are pretending, what I mean is that there used to be a time, say 15 years ago, when national security breaches based on revelation of classified information would have been a national scandal.

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And then you reach the question of the political here. Does it look good that this sort of thing happened, that Jeffrey Goldberg was included in this chat? Obviously, it doesn't look good. It was messy and it was a mistake. However, is it going to damage President Trump? The answer here is no.

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And the reason the answer here is no is because the strikes went forward, the Houthis were in fact eviscerated. The terrorist was in fact killed. The strikes were in fact successful. And the discussion that was actually had, as I mentioned yesterday, the discussion was quite fascinating because it illuminated

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Differences inside the president's team over foreign policy and showed that both Secretary of Defense Hegseth and NSA Waltz in particular are very strong defenders of President Trump's peace through strength agenda. This is what Mike Waltz was saying yesterday on national television on Fox News. He said, listen, we're knocking the crap out of the terrorists, which is the central issue here.

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President Trump, for his part, did the right thing. He defended Waltz. And I say it's the right thing here because the idea that Waltz or Hegseth or anyone is going to get fired over this in the wake of the reality about how national security information has been treated is ridiculous. It's particularly ridiculous in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal for which no one was fired.

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So a slap on the wrist is appropriate. A firing is not. Trump's national security team is really, really good. I mean, that's actually the message that you get from the internals of the deliberations. Again, put aside the actual negligence of including Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat. The actual internal deliberations are fascinating, interesting, and high level.

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Here's President Trump defending Waltz.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Well, President Trump is defending Mike Waltz, as he should. Meanwhile, other things that you should be doing, you should be protecting your data. Well, tax season is upon us. While we may be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention. $16.5 billion in IRS refunds flagged for potential identity fraud last year.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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And now we have been through this many times and no one has been prosecuted. And so the idea that anyone takes this stuff super seriously at the top level is kind of ridiculous. Of course, I mentioned this yesterday when Hillary Clinton was let off the hook by the FBI. and by James Comey. At that point, basically, it was open season on screwing around with the classified information.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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One of them that is good, Grand Canyon University. Go check it out right now, gcu.edu. Now, Democrats, of course, are jumping all over this, and they are pretending that this is a deep breach of national security. Again, it is very difficult for Democrats to have a leg to stand on here, considering their past treatment of classified information ranging from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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The bottom line is neither party takes this stuff particularly seriously at this point. Should both parties take it more seriously? Absolutely. Sure. Is it something that anyone takes seriously at this point, especially when it's kind of no harm, no foul? The answer is going to be no going forward here.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Democrats who are trying to seize on this as sort of their moment in time to make hay, they're making a very large tactical mistake, I think, because, again, most Americans don't care about this. Most Americans don't really understand why this is such a major issue other than somebody got messy in the signal chat.

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Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”

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Senator Mark Warner of Virginia ripped into John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, DNI, over the carelessness and incompetence and all the rest of this. I can just say this.

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Again, this sort of outsized outrage is kind of rich coming from these people. John Ossoff, the senator from Georgia, who is not long for the Senate, by the way, went after John Ratcliffe and said, oh, this is totally so unprofessional, just terrible. You guys had literally a person who is dead as president of the United States for several years and you covered it up.

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You guys presided over the worst American humiliation since the Vietnam War with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, where you turned over an entire country of 38 million people to the world's worst barbarians while getting American service members killed. People were dropping out of the wheel wells of airplanes. This is where you're drawing the line of being embarrassed?

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Okay, I'm sorry. From these people, I'm just not willing to hear it. I'm not. I'm not. It's ridiculous. Susan Rice, who is national security advisor under Barack Obama, said this is just terrible. Just absolutely, absolutely awful.

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And so the idea that Americans are sitting around their kitchen tables today saying to themselves, oh my God, I can't believe that they invited a reporter into a signal chat and then nothing happened and the Houthis got hit with missiles. I just don't think that that is going to motivate the American public to move away from President Trump.

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So that's the biggest national security debacle anyone can remember. I know. Again, I remember when you were a part of the Biden administration, like a top domestic policy advisor to the Biden administration that presided over the collapse of Afghanistan, among other things. So, yeah, I can remember much worse debacles than this. Now, is this great? Absolutely not.

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Is this something that you would recommend? No. Is it on the order of... a complete destruction of Western presence in Afghanistan and turning over the country to the Taliban or say doing nothing when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine twice, once. And again, Susan Rice was there for all of this. She was there for the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 by the Russians and she did nothing.

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And then she was there for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And again, totally ineffective. So I'm noticing like a lot of problems with the idea that this is where you draw the line. It's such a procedural approach to government sin. Well, the procedures were not done. Again, I agree. The procedures were not done. That's really bad. Slap on the wrist is appropriate.

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Public humiliations for all. Does that amount to a fireable offense? In this era, the answer, of course, is no. That, of course, is really silly, and Trump is not going to fire, and he shouldn't fire these people. The reality is that many of the people who are gunning for members of the administration, it's interesting which members of the administration they are particularly gunning for, right?

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They're gunning for Waltz because Waltz included Goldberg in the chat in the first place, but also because Waltz happens to be a hawkish backer of Trump's peace through strength. They're gunning for Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who, again, is the hawkish backer of peace through strength.

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Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

Well, President Trump's winning streak continues. It doesn't just continue because of President Trump. It actually is continuing because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is doing an extraordinary job in the House where he has an unbelievably slim margin. His margin in the House is somewhere between one and three votes, depending on who actually shows up for the vote.

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The reason that he pursued one big, beautiful bill is because he figured that if you separated all of these issues out, what you would get is a bunch of bills that would never pass because you'd have too many purists on too many issues who would be able to sink the boat. So instead, wrap it up in one big ball, make people vote up or make people vote down. That was the strategy here.

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So this led to conflict clearly publicly between Zelensky and President Trump. The new text does not do that. The new text does not overtly include security guarantees. Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine would pay some proceeds from future mineral resource development into a fund that would invest in projects in Ukraine. So what does that mean?

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It means that all the stuff that's already being developed in Ukraine, that stuff is not going to be subject to this joint American investment. It's future development that is going to be subject to joint American investment. Now, one of the big problems for the United States with this is that much of the rare earths material that we actually need is in the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine.

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So presumably the United States is not going to gain access over all of that. The size of the U.S. 's stake in the fund and joint ownership deals will be hashed out in future agreements. President Trump did celebrate the actual deal, suggesting that this was the beginning of a security arrangement between the United States and Ukraine.

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He said, listen, what this basically does is it makes sure that the United States is investing in the future of Ukraine. And now we have a pretty strong interest in Ukraine actually not becoming just a Russian precinct.

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Now, again, the New York Times is citing a draft document. The U.S. would own the maximum amount of the fund allowed under American law, but not necessarily all of it. And it appears that the sort of generalized change to the agreement does not require Ukraine to pay back some $500 billion in revenue from rare minerals.

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And apparently, again, it doesn't include a firm security guarantee from the United States, but you can hear from President Trump's language that he is essentially pledging a continued security guarantee from the United States, which is the preliminary to an end to this conflict.

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Everyone knows Ukraine is not going to come to the table unless there is a security guarantee provided to it by the West. And by the way, Ukraine would be foolish to come to the table with anything short of that. They'd be absolute idiots to do that. After all, the United States and the West sold out Ukraine. Let's be clear about this.

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In the early 1990s, Ukraine had literally thousands of nuclear weapons on its soil. In an attempt to denuclearize the area, the United States and its allies in Europe pledged security guarantees to Ukraine in return for them denuclearizing, getting rid of their nuclear weapons. In retrospect, Ukraine never should have done that. It was an idiot move.

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And so now the Ukrainians are saying, listen, we are not going to give up our right to fight for our country unless somebody else is going to come in and guarantee this. That is perfectly rational. And I think President Trump knows that. President Trump says Zelensky is actually coming to the United States on Friday for a joint signing ceremony.

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And if you don't like it, then maybe more Republicans should have been elected to Congress. It turns out that if you have a very slim majority, the bill that comes out is likely to be more quote-unquote moderate in its approach than if you had a much larger majority where you could lose a few moderates in the vote and still maintain a majority. According to Politico,

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Okay, so in the end, we end up where we're basically supposed to be is the United States. We're going to be able to make future rare minerals deals with Ukraine, which is great. And we're also going to ensure that Russia doesn't walk into Kiev, which, as I've suggested all along, was never the policy of the United States.

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Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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There are some people who are associated with sort of MAGA world who'd be eager, apparently, to see Vladimir Putin walk into Kiev. I do not think that President Trump is one of those people. I do not think he actually wants that. He wants the Europeans to pay up. He wants the Europeans to staff the peacekeeping force. He wants... more redress for America's taxpayer dollars in Ukraine.

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And it appears he's going to get all of those things. So we are moving toward a speedy consolidation of position between actually the United States, the Europeans, and the Ukrainians. And now the Russians need to get on board. And I think that the American position with regard to Russia, which is, we'll stop saying mean words about you, but why don't you guys get on board?

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That may bear fruit as well. That remains to be seen. Well, obviously, there's a ton going on in the news. And in this fast-moving news cycle, there's an important issue that very often gets overlooked, supporting expectant mothers facing difficult decisions. There are women in our own communities who need support and guidance during one of life's most challenging moments.

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House Republicans approved a budget framework for President Trump's sweeping domestic policy agenda on Tuesday, a major victory for Speaker Johnson, who worked with Trump and fellow leaders in a chaotic last-ditch effort to win over naysayers within the Republican ranks. And Republicans, again, were very split on this.

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My executive assistant Kelly recently tried their bioactive complete multivitamin as well as the organic complete plant-based protein powder because this year she wants to stay on top of health and wellness.

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Since taking them and getting all the nutrients, vitamins, minerals your body typically needs, she's noticed a big difference in her overall health and strengthened immune response, even with a lot of the bugs that are going around recently. The protein powder is so convenient for throwing in smoothies after gym recovery as well.

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With Live Good, my production team and I can always feel like we're at our best. And what's better than that? All their products fit conveniently into your day. Kelly takes their multivitamin after breakfast. She throws some of the protein powder into smoothies after workouts.

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She's really noticed just how much energy and focus she has throughout the day compared to before she added the Live Good products into her daily routine. If you're ready to make the switch and start saving, we'll make it even easier for you. Use our link. You can save an additional 10% off your first order on top of the already lowest prices. Just head on over to livegood.com.

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Save 10% on your first order. That's livegood.com. Don't miss out on this opportunity to invest in your own health without overspending. Meanwhile, President Trump has made a new proposal with regard to immigration. One of the big questions with regard to immigration is how do we bring the best immigrants here?

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Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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Very few Americans, right, left, or center, want to bar all immigrants from the United States. There are some that is a very low number. Most Americans do not want vast swaths of illegal immigration, people who are impoverished, who are coming to the United States, who are not going to actually adhere to American culture. They're not going to assimilate. They'll be dependent on welfare.

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That's not something most Americans want. However, what most Americans want is some way of finding the best immigrants and bringing them to the United States to enrich our economy and to make America stronger. And again, this is a perfectly rational calculation. The reality is it's very difficult to make the case against full scale like any immigration at all.

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When President Trump has Elon Musk standing next to him, Elon Musk is an immigrant. If you look at the founders of the Magnificent Seven, right, the top stocks in the stock market, several of them, the CEOs of these places are immigrants to the United States.

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Again, this does not mean that there needs to be some sort of antipathy between domestically born Americans and immigrants coming to the United States. Far from it. One of the great strengths of the United States has been its status as a powerhouse commercial republic that basically draws like a magnet the most talented people here in a competitive global environment.

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Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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Of course, we want the smartest people coming here. Well, President Trump actually understands this on a root level. Again, there's all sorts of battles that sort of simmer underneath the lid of the pot in MAGA world between immigration restrictionists and people who are a little softer on immigration. But the reality is that President Trump in the end is a business person.

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Democrats were already celebrating the prospective loss of this bill, and somehow Johnson cobbled it together. For all the talk about how Mike Johnson is inexperienced at this position, how Mike Johnson is simply a stand-in for Trump – Mike Johnson is actually quite good at this. He's very good at this.

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And because he's a business person, he understands the implications of saying no more immigrants. So one of the things that he's doing now is he's proposing that wealthy individuals pay $5 million for what he calls a gold card that would grant them permanent United States residency. Ending an existing program that offers green cards to people who invest in the country.

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He said, quote, wealthy people will be coming into the country by buying the card. They'll be wealthy. They'll be successful. In other words, if you want to come here and invest like five million bucks to come to the United States, that seems like a pretty good investment in the American taxpayer. Here's President Trump explaining.

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Now, again, there's this sort of weird debate that was happening just a few months ago. You'll recall about H-1B visas and foreigners coming to the United States to work in tech. And it sort of devolved into the world's stupidest version of that debate, which was there should be no immigrants at all. Immigrants are bad. And we should involve everybody in the world in our immigration process.

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Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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And that's really a very stupid version of the debate. There are many practical things you can do to make immigration more restrictive while drawing the best and brightest to the United States. And it is in the interest of America, again, to do that.

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Because while autarky sounds fun, meaning the idea that we can produce everything in the United States, the reality is that smart people are going to go somewhere. And if smart people don't go to the United States, they will go to countries that oppose the interests of the United States in all likelihood.

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President Trump says that companies like Apple could pay $5 million to get approval for highly skilled workers to reside in the United States. And he estimated the United States could sell 1 million or more gold cards. He says that it would replace the EB-5 system, which was launched in the 1990s to channel foreign investment into economically marginalized areas and create local jobs.

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And the reality is that Mike Johnson is also significantly more conservative on pretty much every policy issue than any speaker of the House, probably since Newt Gingrich on the right side of the aisle. So originally last night, it appeared that the vote was going to go down to defeat and Democrats were preemptively celebrating.

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It offers green cards to people who invest at least $900,000 or $1.8 million, depending on the area, into qualified U.S. projects and show they've created at least 10 jobs. Spouses of investors and their kids under 21 would also get green cards. The program has had cases of fraud. Obviously, this always happens. I mean, any government program has a lot of fraud.

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You have to do a better job of policing that, obviously, which is why you hope that Doge is going to do exactly that. Under EB-5, every country gets no more than 7% of the program's 10,000 visa annual quota, which creates long backlogs for countries with large numbers of applicants, especially China. Now, again, that seems to me a really dumb way of doing it.

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I'm not sure why we should have sort of quotas by country as opposed to individually looking at candidates and determining whether or not they should come in. Why should there be a quota on, say, France or England or Germany or anywhere else, as opposed to just doing it on the basis of merit?

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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was at the Oval Office on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal, criticized that EB-5 program, pointing to fraud. He said people who apply for the gold card would be vetted. Quote, we're going to make sure they are wonderful world-class global citizens.

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Well, presumably the idea would be that they're wonderful world-class global citizens who want to become American citizens. Trump, he was asking about if Russian oligarchs would be eligible. He said, I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people. And then Letnick started laughing and Trump said, they're not as wealthy as they used to be.

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Now, again, it is unclear exactly how Trump would be able to, quote unquote, unilaterally change this law. But the generalized approach that Trump is taking is draw money and investment to the United States, draw smart people to the United States. That is not a bad approach. That is not a bad approach.

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Again, those who are arguing otherwise, if we're not talking about failures of cultural assimilation, I get that and I'm with you. If somebody wants to pay $5 million to come into the United States and promote Qatari propaganda, for example, the answer should be no. If somebody wants to come in from China and pay $5 million to end up stealing IP on behalf of the Chinese, the answer should be no.

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If you are talking about somebody who will make an excellent American citizen, we go through vetting. And again, this is a very small program. It's like 10,000 people a year. If you're talking about vetting those people and they bring their money and they bring jobs and they bring their know-how, I fail to see how this is a terrible thing for the United States.

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I think President Trump is correct about all this. By the way, President Trump was having fun in the Oval Office yesterday. He started handing out hats that read, Trump was right about everything.

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And yet somehow last night he was capable of pushing through this gigantic House budget bill. Now, there are all sorts of problems with these gigantic bills. The biggest problem, of course, is that no one in power ever has any interest in serious cuts to the things that matter in American government. Instead, they sort of shuttle those cuts off down the road. They make commitments to commit.

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Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar from California suggested that Republicans had been hiding from the vote. As it turns out, he was wrong.

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I mean, hilarious, hilarious stuff. Again, look at the image of this. And then he's got like a map behind him that says Gulf of America. Trump is a world-class troll. He always will be. The greatest troll in world history, probably, President Trump. And second is the guy who's leading Doge, Elon Musk.

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Speaking of which, Elon Musk's super controversial email, you know, the what did you do last week email, which seems not all that controversial to me. It may not be. He's sort of most controversial. sophisticated way to determine who is a good government employee and who is not, because you can just go to ChatGPT and type out five things you did last week.

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Or possibly you're in a department where actually you can't say publicly what it is that you did last week. But the idea that this is some sort of massive attack on the federal bureaucracy for people to actually explain what they did last week

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I mean, if I asked any of my employees, name me five things that you did yesterday, they would probably be able to name me five things that they did yesterday. Just because you're on the taxpayer dime does not mean that you should be basically held as some sort of immune person when it comes to accountability.

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Apparently, over a million federal employees have already responded to last weekend's controversial email. The White House, eager to present the email demand as part of its coordinated attempt to dramatically scale down the size of the federal government, made that announcement at Tuesday's press briefing, according to Politico.

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Caroline Lovett, the White House press secretary, said all federal workers should be working at the same pace as President Trump is working and moving. This is to ensure federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers. By the way, that is literally one third of the federal workforce. That is a big number.

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Again, there's been a lot of confusion as to whether people are, quote unquote, resigning. Now, they could theoretically be fired. Trump could theoretically fire them, but there are protocols and procedures for firing them. The email said failure to respond to this email will be considered a resignation. That's not how resignations work.

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But again, the sort of general approach here, which is to make the federal bureaucracy scared for their jobs, seems to be a useful thing. And in the absence of a large enough Doge department to go through every single one of those 3 million federal employees and determine who's a good employee and who's a bad employee, this is sort of a self-windowing process. That is not a terrible idea.

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Well, the Democrats are, of course, very, very upset about this. Jasmine Crockett, who has taken the lead, she's sort of, I will say, she's sort of stolen AOC's thunder. Remember that time AOC was so fresh and so faced? She was fresh-faced and had a fresh face and all that. And now she's just that kind of, you know, tired lady on Instagram who's,

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who's putting her face in ice water and babbling nonsensically about Bernie Sanders' proposals. Jasmine Crockett is the hot new version of the resistance because she says spicy things on the TVs. Here she was yesterday saying F off to Elon Musk. If you could speak directly to Elon Musk, what would you say? That's it. That's genius level stuff there from Jasmine Crockett.

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That will certainly stop Elon Musk in his tracks. No one has ever said that to Elon before. Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, who is in a run and gun battle with Ilhan Omar for most pro-terror member of Congress. She suggests that government spending being cut is a real – it's horrifying. It's just horrifying because it affects the workers.

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Now, again, this demonstrates – it's amazing how disconnected Democrats are. The argument you want to make, if you're going to make this argument, is cuts to government affect the people. When you cut the government workers, that affects the people to whom the government workers are providing services. You know who no one has sympathy for?

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People on the tax paradigm who whine about how they are going to lose their jobs. Because it turns out that if you're in public service, the people who actually should matter are the people you are serving. But again, Democrats do not get this on a fundamental level because the people who are cutting checks for their campaigns are, of course, the people in the federal government.

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Oh my gosh, these people, these people. But again, this is a very highly popular program, Doge. It's going to continue to be popular because most Americans do want this stuff rooted out. In just a minute, we'll get to a wide variety of Biden-appointed judges who are now attempting to stop the Trump train. The question that has everyone talking right now, however, is what did you do last week?

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No idea why that causes so much drama, but fine. Here's what we did at The Daily Wire last week. The entire Daily Wire gang went back to D.C. for Backstage Live at CPAC. You heard Chris Ruffo on this show breaking big news, sharing tapes exposing Department of Education contractors supporting sex tapes in schools.

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Michael Moles faced off against 25 LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign trans activists in Jubilee's most explosive debate yet. Matt Walsh released clearing the air, a behind the scenes look at the number one documentary of the decade, Am I Racist? And that list is just us being compliant with Doge. Well, it seems simple enough. Don't miss a moment of the news shows and entertainment.

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Become a Daily Wire Plus member now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Meanwhile, judge after judge appointed by Joe Biden is trying to slow the roll of the Trump administration. Yesterday, in less than 90 minutes, three separate Biden appointed judges tried to put nationwide injunctions on President Trump's policy.

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Now, again, this is a very controversial matter, legally speaking, as to whether a local district judge has the capacity to stop nationwide a gigantic presidential action, for example, or say a piece of congressional legislation.

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Why should some district court judge in California be able to block the enforcement of a piece of legislation or regulation or an executive order across, you know, all 50 states? That's a wild proposition. And in the past, up until the 1960s, it was never even requested. Typically speaking, you could...

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enforce an injunction against the government with regard to the specific plaintiff, but you wouldn't have a gigantic nationwide injunction. And it really does break down the system of law and order when any judge anywhere can simply enjoin any action by the federal government wholesale over the entire 50 states. That's a wild notion. And yet three separate judges attempted to do it yesterday.

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First, according to the Wall Street Journal, a federal judge in Seattle ordered the Trump administration to restart the refugee admissions program that legally resettles people from across the globe. Trump had shut that down on day one. U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, issued the injunction on Tuesday.

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During a court hearing, he said that President Trump had acted outside his authority by shutting down the program completely.

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Before leaving office, Biden had set up a program to take in as many as 125,000 refugees this year, and Trump halted the refugee admissions program through an executive order on his first day in office, part of a series of immigration actions meant to shut down the southern border.

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And so a bunch of local refugee-serving agencies, you know, left-wing NGOs, decided to sue the federal government, and they argued that this overstepped the authority that was provided by Congress for the president to do this.

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Now, again, I'm finding it bizarre that the same people who are very much in favor of executive authority when it came to Joe Biden are suddenly turning around and saying that it doesn't apply as soon as the president's name is Donald Trump.

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So, in other words, you can use executive authority to completely ignore immigration law for years on end and let 10 million illegal immigrants through the border, but the minute You reverse yourself and you say, no, no, no, hold up. We're now going to enforce immigration law. Then the NGOs and the judges step in. So that was federal judge number one. Then again, it's all within 90 minutes.

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Federal judge number two indefinitely blocked President Trump's freeze of federal funding. U.S. District Court Judge Lauren Alicon, again, a Biden appointee, enjoined the government from, quote, implementing and giving effect to or reinstating under a different name. The White House Budget Office's directive to freeze federal assistance while the court reviews the spending.

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Ali Khan said defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than 24 hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable. I have a question. Why is that unfathomable? We have 3 million federal employees.

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What is it you would say you do around here? What is it you would say you do? Federal freezes have been a common, longstanding part of American public policy in the executive branch, going all the way back to like Thomas Jefferson.

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So you may not like the extent of the freeze, but the idea that it's unconstitutional to freeze federal spending for a defined period of time to review whether that spending is going to useful things under the auspices of actual legislation. What's your legal case right there? Now, the OMB had put out a memo. The memo had suggested almost an indefinite freeze.

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Okay, but here's the reality. $880 billion is not going to be cut from Medicaid. The reason the Democrats are saying this is because, of course, they're going to claim that the most vulnerable will be hurt by this gigantic House budget bill, which again, expends extraordinary amounts of capital.

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And so that seemed suitable because that was akin to basically the executive branch saying that they were going to never spend money allocated by the legislative branch. But temporary freezes, again, are within the ambit of the executive branch. Kevin Friedel, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, quote, it's an administrative priority to end wokeness.

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And they're backing this with the cudgel of withholding billions, perhaps trillions in funding. On Tuesday, the judge said the plaintiffs had more than met their burden for further relief. So that is number two. So they've blocked President Trump's attempts to stop Biden-era resettlement programs that, again, were put in place by Joe Biden.

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They were not put in place, my understanding, it was by Congress itself. It was Biden who put it in place. But as soon as Trump strikes him out, then no. The answer is no. That's now congressional authority. When it comes to the federal freeze, the idea is not a narrowly driven decision that says, well, you can freeze it, but only for so long.

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Instead, it's just temporary injunction on the whole thing. And then finally, U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali, again, another Biden appointee, expressed frustration that the Trump administration was ignoring his two-week-old order to unfreeze dollars at USAID. The judge said, oh, no, I can't get a straight answer from you.

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He apparently wants to make sure that $15.9 billion in foreign assistant grants get out the door so that we can't get them back. Earlier this month, Ali ordered an end to the blanket freeze after grant recipients and foreign assistance organizations warned of catastrophic consequences. Ali said the State Department freeze likely violated the law. So the idea was that USAID could not be zeroed out.

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Well, I mean, its spending could be transferred over to the State Department. The State Department does have power over USAID. But again, these are all judges who are standing in the way of the will of the American people, not on the basis of constitutionality or balance of powers. They're doing so specifically because they don't like the decisions that Trump is making.

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The job of the judicial branch is to enforce the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch. You can make a case. that the Trump administration needs to be more specific. That's not the case that's being made. The case that's being made here is that they just don't like the policy implications of what Trump is doing, and so they're simply stopping it.

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You want to undermine the credibility of the judiciary even further? Great way to do it. Speaking of credibility. I got to say, the media are just blowing out their credibility each and every day. It truly is amazing. Apparently, it can now be said.

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There's a new book out by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson titled Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. I'm glad that we can do this now, you know, like four months after the election. And I will never stop saying Joe Biden's collapse on stage was the death knell of the legacy media in this country.

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I mean, the debt ceiling is going to have to be lifted by something like $4 trillion over the course of the next 10 years in order to pay for this budget bill. So spending is not really the problem.

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Destroyed it because for years, the legacy media said it was all cheap fakes. It was all exaggerated. Joe Biden was totally fine cognitively. And then Joe Biden went out there and he crapped his pants on national television. He looked as though he was staring into the open maw of death in an open televised national debate with Donald Trump.

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He didn't just finish his own presidential candidacy at that point. He finished off the legacy media who'd been lying to you because they all had access. They all knew. They all knew. I've never met President Biden. They all have. I've never dealt directly with President Biden. They all have. And I could see because I have retinas and a prefrontal cortex.

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Exactly what was happening with Joe Biden. And we'd all been calling it out since like 2019 when he first ran, saying this guy is obviously in a state of cognitive decline. And that became even more obvious day after day after day when they were hiding him in the basement and then releasing him like the cryptkeeper from the coffin. Creak open. He'd get out.

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He'd wobble on up, say a couple of nonsensical sounds from his face hole. And then they put him back in the coffin at night. And we were saying this for years. And the legacy media said that we were exaggerating. It wasn't true. He was fine. Behind closed doors, he was doing hand springs and backflips and reciting all the numbers of pi up to a thousand digits.

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The reason that they are saying all of this is because this budget bill basically kicks back to a bunch of different committees an obligation to cut somewhere else in the budget in order to make up for the supposed lost tax revenue from the Trump tax cuts, among others.

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And then it turned out that he was a senile old dodder. And the entire media knew it. So when he exposed that on national TV, the entire media had to then shift into we're shocked mode. None of them were shocked. But they had to shift into, how could we have known? And now they're reporting on their own failures.

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Now they're reporting on, oh my gosh, you know, it turns out that he was always, yeah, we know, guys. We know. We are aware. The human centipede that exists between the Democratic Party and the legacy media is the untold story of the last 50 years in American politics. the insane conciliation between the media, which is supposed to be a watchdog, and the Democratic Party. I mean, it's full scale.

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It is just a revolving door at this point. And this is why there's all sorts of controversy that is now broken out over the White House picking who is in the press pool. According to The New York Times, the Trump administration said on Tuesday it would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool.

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That's the small rotating group of reporters who relay the president's day-to-day activities to the public. That change breaks decades of precedent. It allows the White House to assert more control over which journalists can witness his activities up close and ask him questions.

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Now, the White House Correspondents Association, a 111-year-old group representing journalists who cover the administration, has long determined on its own which reporters would participate in the Daily Pool. But the White House is like, well, we don't trust you guys because it turns out that, for example, the White House Correspondents Association head is now apparently joining MSNBC.

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Eugene Daniels, the WHCA head and political reporter, is now headed on over to MSNBC. And so the Trump administration is like, why would we allow you, the staffers at MSNBC, to decide who covers the president? When it comes to the White House Correspondents Association, they're not going to allow the Daily Wire to be part of the press pool.

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Not going to allow Daily Caller or Breitbart to be part of the press pool. Not going to allow the Free Beacon or the Examiner to be part of the press pool. The only people they will allow are legacy media outlets that hate President Trump. Obviously. Caroline Lovett said, well, you know what? I don't understand who exactly made, who died and made the WHCA Kings, but they are not Kings any longer.

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According to NPR, in order to get the budget plan just to this stage, Johnson was forced to concede to a demand from some conservative holdouts for $2 trillion in spending cuts. Under the budget framework, the exact details of those cuts will be sorted out later by those individual committees in the House.

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Okay, I mean, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. If the White House doesn't want to designate that, then perhaps they should just pull the room. Meaning there are alternative ways where it's not the White House dictating who's part of the press pool, but it also isn't a corrupt organization run by Democratic acolytes who work for MSNBC.

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That might be a pretty good way of, you know, allocating responsibility for this. Caroline Leavitt said, we are giving power back to the people instead of to the press. And of course, the press is like, no, no, that can't happen. What you're really doing is consolidating power in the way. Again, you're ignoring the elephant in the room.

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The press have been the willing partners of the Democratic Party for as long as I have been alive. They literally covered up Joe Biden's decline. They were all complicit in it. Joe Biden stood up there at the podium.

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with actual note cards, with the faces and names of reporters from a variety of mainstream legacy institutions, all of which were part of the press pool, and pre-printed questions from them. And you were all complicit in it. You were all complicit. Now you have the balls to come back and say, oh my gosh, how can the objective media cover the administration if they're just going to pick?

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You already did it. The Biden White House was already picking who was part of the press pool via the WHCA, which basically worked for them. And now you're complaining? You blew it. This is your fault. If you didn't want to be treated as opposition media by a Republican administration, perhaps you shouldn't have been Praetorian Guard media for a left-wing administration. Unbelievable.

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Here's Caroline Levitt.

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So the House Energy and Commerce Committee is responsible with coming up with $880 billion in the savings. But the reason the Democrats are saying it's all coming from Medicare and Medicaid is because the House Energy and Commerce Committee presides over programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

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Now, again, WHCA is complaining about all of this. Eugene Daniels, who's moving over to MSNBC, said, quote, this move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. They have been for literally years, for years. We know.

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Utter insanity from the press. That's how you got here. That is how you got here. Amazing stuff there. Just true. Slow clap for the media who destroyed their own credibility in order to save the Democrats. And now it turns out that no one actually cares whether they are allowed in the press pool or whether they're not allowed in the press pool. This is your fault, guys. You broke it.

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You bought it. FAFO. By the way, the sort of underlying theme here seems to be that President Trump is not transparent enough that you need the media like in his private spaces in order to with the press pool in order to find out what he's doing. President Trump is the most transparent president in American history. It is not close.

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President Trump answered in the first month of his administration. I'm not even kidding. One thousand and nine questions from the press. One thousand and nine. President Trump loves it like nobody else. Let me give you a contrast in numbers. Joe Biden in his first month took 141 questions from the press. Donald Trump in his first month, the first time around, took 199 questions from the press.

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Barack Obama took 161 questions from the press. Donald Trump in his first month took 1,009 questions from the press. 1,009, as in like eight times higher than any of his predecessors, including himself last time around. And they're complaining that there won't be enough access to him. I'm pretty sure that access is not going to be the problem. I really don't think that's it.

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All right, coming up, we'll get to a hot debate on HBO between Bill Maher and John Lovett on the trans issue. Plus, we'll get to President Trump tweeting out. an amazing AI video of the Gaza Strip, Mar-a-Gaza, Gazalago, as it's said. First, you need to head on over and become a subscriber. We have so much great stuff.

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We've got Jordan Peterson's entire compendium of amazing content, ranging from Exodus to the Gospels to Depression and Anxiety. We've got Matt Walsh's amazing, groundbreaking, massively hit documentaries, What is Woman? Am I Racist? All sorts of good stuff, all accessed with me. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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So House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, he, of course, is suggesting that's exactly where all the cuts are going to come from. They're going to come from Medicare. They're going to come from Medicaid. They're not going to come from Medicare. President Trump does not want any cuts to Medicare.

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Medicaid is a bit of a different story, and we'll get into that in a moment, because the truth is Medicaid is one of the great boondoggles in American public policy. We expend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

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We expend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year on Medicaid, and the returns on Medicaid are truly atrocious, just speaking in terms of public policy, speaking in terms of health outcomes. There's some good studies that actually demonstrate that Medicaid coverage is no better than you having no coverage and just going for emergency care to the hospital. Why?

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Because the reimbursement rates on Medicaid are so low that doctors don't even take Medicaid. Good doctors don't like taking Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are pennies on the dollar of what they could earn from private insurance. Medicaid is in fact a giant government make-work program that does not have particularly good outcomes.

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But just as with every giant government make-work program, it has now become a third rail of American politics. Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats are of course going to suggest that it's tax cuts for the 1%, and on the basis of that, it's going to be cuts for the poor. Let's be realistic about this.

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The only people paying taxes in the United States of America on an income level are the people in the top quintile. In terms of net taxes paid, Net of benefits received from the government. The only people paying any level of net income taxes in the United States are people in the top income quintile. Everybody else is receiving on net money from the federal government.

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All of that has just been a regular feature of American government from Republicans and Democrats for as long as I've been alive, which is why the line in terms of national debt keeps going up and to the right. However. What this budget bill does is it enshrines the Trump tax cuts of 2017. It provides additional funding to defense, which is necessary.

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So if you're going to cut taxes, who else presumably is going to have their taxes cut? How would that work? By the way, it also happens to be the case that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately affected people in actually the middle income quintiles. Anyway, here is Hakeem Jeffries pushing the lie.

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OK, so we'll see if Democrats are able to play this off. The only Republican who voted against the bill was, of course, Thomas Massey, who's basically just Ron Paul reincarnated as a congressperson from Kentucky. He, of course, says this is going to add to the national debt. And the answer to that is, well, duh. If you have an alternative anytime, it would be welcome.

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Congressman Massey, like, you know, an actual credible alternative that people will vote for. I, too, would love a situation in which we eliminate vast swaths of the welfare state. I would love that. On principle, I don't disagree with Thomas Massey. I just think that Thomas Massey's entire approach to governance seems to be standing aside and shouting at things. And, you know, fine.

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If that's what his constituents want, that's fine. But I will say that his approach is not actually aimed... at the sort of horse trading that you see in Congress in order to gain actual support for proposals, it is aimed mostly at sort of virtue signaling on the basis of public policy. And Massey, again, is sort of inconsistent in the sorts of public policy that he will sometimes back.

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Sometimes he is perfectly in favor of things that increase the national debt. For example, he wants to get rid of quote-unquote double taxation on Social Security. Now, I agree with that, but let's be clear. That does, in fact, increase the national debt because it lowers the tax expenditures taken in by the government. In any case...

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217 of the 218 Republicans who are present voted in favor of the budget yesterday. Mike Johnson put out a statement yesterday. After the passage of the budget, his statement, along with Steve Scalise and the House GOP Chairwoman Lisa McClain, said, quote, Today, House Republicans moved Congress closer, delivering on President Trump's full America First agenda, not just parts of it.

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This momentum will grow as we work with our committee chairs and Senate Republicans to determine the best policies within their respective jurisdictions to meet budgetary targets. We have full confidence in their ability to chart the best path forward.

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While there's still much more to do, we are determined to send a bill to President Trump's desk that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, restores American energy dominance, strengthens America's standing on the world stage, and makes government work more effectively for all Americans. Now, again, it is very difficult to do Speaker Johnson's job. It is.

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It's very difficult to do the job of Congress. Because as I say, on principle, I agree very much with many of Thomas Massey's recommendations with regard to cuts, not with regard to the Defense Department, where I think he's delusional, but with regards to so many other parts of the government. There is no American consensus. Unfortunately, I wish there were.

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It provides additional funding to the border, which is necessary. And it pledges to actually take a look at cuts that will offset some of the loss of tax revenue theoretically to be achieved by the Trump tax cuts. And last night, there was all sorts of consternation about whether House Republicans would be able to get it together.

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There is no American consensus on restructuring the entitlement programs that are the systemic drivers of our national debt. You can either recognize that or you cannot recognize that. Again, I wish reality were not what reality is, but that is the reality. That is a fundamental reality, by the way, that Donald Trump understands, which is why he and J.D.

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Vance ran on the prospect of never touching Social Security and Medicare, among other gigantic entitlement programs. Those are systemic drivers of the national debt. They're not touching them. The reason they're not touching them is because they understand the American people don't want them touched. Let's be clear about what's going to happen to America fiscally.

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Over the course of the next 10 years, America is going to lurch toward precisely the same sorts of austerity measures that Europe had to put in place because the United States is lurching toward a national bankruptcy. We are. That's just what it is. There are only two things you can do about that. One, you can push outsized growth. You can try to outgrow the debt.

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You can essentially grow the economy so fast that as a percentage of GDP, the national debt shrinks. I think that is one aim of Republicans. Or theoretically, you can radically increase taxes, which is going to sink the American economy and probably won't solve the national debt. You can't really tax your way out of a $37 trillion national debt right now.

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It's going to get much larger over coming years. Or you could restructure the entitlements. All this government spending, not great, because, you know, it all cuts against freedom. And this country was actually founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean.

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How'd that work out for you, Great Britain? Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network. Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk America's

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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wireless company there's a pure talk.com slash shapiro for details i've been using pure talk again myself for years all my business phone calls and you know i value those calls i need good reception i need a good price that's where pure talk comes in they can help you as well pure talk.com slash shapiro for the special deal also did you know your home could be stolen right out from under you without you ever realizing it the fbi calls this house stealing it's a

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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Here's how it works. Scammers only need to forge your signature on one document, add a fake notary stamp, pay a small filing fee, and submit it to your local recorder's office. Just like that, your home title gets transferred out of your name. Once they have control, they can take out loans against your equity or even sell your property behind your back. The worst part?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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You might not discover anything is wrong until collection notices or foreclosure warnings start showing up in your mailbox. So when was the last time you checked your home title? If you're like most people, the answer is probably never. And that's exactly what these scammers are counting on. That's why so many people, including our senior video editor, Adam, trust Home Title Lock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Originally, it seemed as though there were some House Republicans who were going to object to the House budget bill and who are not going to get on board with it because they believe that it didn't cut enough. A lot of these were fiscal conservatives. And again, I agree with them on principle.

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Their million-dollar triple lock protection helps keep your home and equity safe. Here's what you get. Immediate 24-7 monitoring of your property. Urgent alerts if there are any changes. And if fraud should happen, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million dollars to fix the fraud and restore your title at no additional cost. Here's the best part.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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I've teamed with Home Title Lock to give you a free title history report. You can find out if you're already a victim and access your personal title expert, a $250 value just for signing up. Go to HomeTitleLock.com, use my promo code Shapiro250, or click on the link in the description. Make sure to check out the million-dollar triple lock protection details when you get there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2146 - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

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That's HomeTitleLock.com, promo code Shapiro250. Get the protection and peace of mind you deserve. The American people, and their elected Congress people always, forever, prefer to kick the can down the road on all this sort of stuff. And so recognizing that inherent reality and that you can yell as much as you want, but if you're not getting elected, you don't got the power to do anything.

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This budget is probably the best that you could do. Now, it goes to the Senate. The Senate has already voted for a couple of different bills that cover so much of this area. There's going to be a plan to reconcile the Senate with the House bills, try and come up with some sort of workable compromise, and then we'll have to go back to the houses, the respective houses, for a revote.

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But all the talk about how there was going to be an ineffective Republican majority in the House, Speaker Johnson has proved that wrong. He's played this about as well as you could possibly play an incredibly difficult hand.

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And in the Senate, I believe that the majority leader, Senator Thune, is going to do a good job of working with Speaker Johnson to come up with a bill that Donald Trump is then going to sign. And that is going to provide some quiescence to the markets.

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It is going to make people feel as though the tax regime is not going to change anytime in the near future, which is a good way of getting people to feel comfortable in their investments. The last thing you want to do, as somebody who invests a lot of money, the last thing you want to do is put your investment into something knowing the government could change the rules literally tomorrow.

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I also understand that the only way a bill gets done here where you have Republicans in purple districts and where you have such a slim margin. is with bigger spending than you would want. This was Mike Johnson's entire proposal as Speaker of the House.

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This bill is also, as we say, going to increase funding for border security. This bill is going to change some of the rules with regard to immigration, which are necessary. This bill is going to increase defense funding, not decrease defense funding, which is something that actually does need to be done.

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We live in a rough world with aggressive enemies, and America's defense budget is actually not in line with our obligations globally. And those are obligations that are good for the United States. I think there are plenty of places in the world where we ought to go hands-off and say, you know, do we have a real national interest here?

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However, there are also a lot of places where a significant American capacity to deter is absolutely necessary, and this bill does cover that stuff as well. So as I said from the very beginning, when it came to this budget bill, if you have one giant crap sandwich, there will be more sandwich, but there will also be more crap. However...

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It is a triumph for Johnson and for Trump to get this thing passed through such a narrowly divided Congress. Okay, meanwhile, President Trump has achieved another victory with regard to Ukraine. So apparently, Ukraine has now agreed to a mineral rights deal with the United States.

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Now, you'll recall the United States originally, reportedly, proposed a mineral rights deal in which pretty much all rare earths minerals projects by the Ukrainian government would be split 50-50 with the United States in terms of upside. The United States would invest in some sort of joint fund, and then all profits would be split 50-50.

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That's not precisely the deal that is now emerging out of Ukraine because Zelensky had rejected that deal. He said, that's unfair to our country. It takes $500 billion out of our economy and gives it back to the United States. The United States has only paid in at $160 billion, $170 billion in terms of aid to Ukraine.

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So even if you're trying to sort of redress the aid the United States has put into Ukraine, It's significantly more than that in terms of the mineral rights deal. This mineral rights deal is a little bit more perspective just in terms of content.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States actually dropped its previous demand for the right to $500 billion in potential revenue from the development of Ukraine's mineral resources.

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The Ukrainian president had said for months Ukraine's allies in the war against Russia could have access to the country's mineral resources, but he said he couldn't sign an agreement that did not include security guarantees for Ukraine. And originally, the United States had demanded the right to up to $500 billion in revenue from mineral development.

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Folks, tons of news to get to today. Obviously, the stock market has been jumping. It's been jumping because President Trump seems to be backing off of some of his actual trade war. We'll get to that in a moment. First, your reminder that the reason you are here at Daily Wire is because you want the facts. That's what we bring you. This is why the Daily Wire exists.

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Musk actually was asked about the trade war, and apparently he sighed deeply before addressing the Trump administration's policy. He said that he was advocating for lower tariffs. He said, I just want to emphasize that the tariff decision is entirely up to the president of the United States. Whether he will listen to my advice is up to him.

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Investors are presumably still sanguine about Tesla sales. The media are making a bigger deal out of this than it probably is. Again, the lower sales are based on the fact that Tesla is likely this year to bring out some less expensive models with better supply lines. With all that said, the media has been celebrating the downfall of Elon, even though there is no such downfall.

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So Vladimir Putin does not have tons of incentive to come to the table at this point. The offer that President Trump's team is putting forth right now is an offer that is very rich for Vladimir Putin. It's an offer that does not put a lot of restrictions on the Russians. It frees them of legitimately all economic sanctions.

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That is what the members of the media do. Speaking of people celebrating downfalls that are not yet occurring, So the media continue to call for the ouster of Pete Hegseth. And let's be very clear why they're doing this. The reason they're calling for the ouster of Pete Hegseth is because Pete Hegseth is, in fact, a peace through strength, hawkish voice inside the Trump administration.

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The dirty little secret of the sort of horseshoe theory of foreign policy on the right right now is that there are right wingers who sound exactly like Barack Obama. If you attributed quotes from many of the isolationist right wingers to Barack Obama, they would be absolutely indistinguishable.

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Pete Hegseth has always been a peace through strength advocate who believes that America needs to flex military might when absolutely necessary, should have a robust military capacity to be able to threaten military might, and should take a strong position in leading the world.

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This is one of the chief conflicts that led, presumably, to the ouster of Dan Caldwell, who is one of his top aides at the Pentagon. The suspicion is, and again, this is just suspicion, that Caldwell was leaking to some of his media buddies, presumably people like Tucker Carlson, about things that were going on inside the Department of Defense. And then that he was fired. Caldwell denies that.

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He says that he was not fired for leaking. Instead, he says he was framed. Here is Dan Caldwell appearing with Tucker Carlson. And this is after, about a month after, Tucker Carlson was tweeting out kind of strangely timed tweets about Iran. And then Caldwell, who is in fact very much aligned with Carlson, appears on Carlson's show to discuss how he was framed.

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So according to Caldwell, there was no investigation. He's being ousted by people who are framing him in some way. Well, Pete Hegseth talked about the leaks inside the Pentagon. Here's what he had to say.

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And in return, they basically stop the war where it currently stands, which means that they are able to de facto claim

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So he's right about all of those things. By the way, it is worth noting that in that interview between Caldwell and Carlson, Carlson kept asking, did you leak classified material? That's not the question. You can leak material that is also unclassified but damaging to, for example, the Secretary of Defense. That's still called a leak.

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It doesn't have to be classified material in order for you to be fired over it. So it's sort of an interesting distinction that was made even in the middle of that interview.

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entire eastern flank of ukraine they're able to in law like de jure recognize crimea as part of russia and not just that there'd be a ban on ukraine from seeking membership of nato which is very difficult for ukraine to accept because it's actually literally a part of their constitution they're supposed to seek membership in nato it's also part of their constitution that they're not supposed to just give away land even if that land is currently being occupied by the russians

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Again, one of the things that I think is an open battle inside the Trump administration that is yet to be sort of made clear is the battle between the sort of peace through strength crowd in the defense apparatus and the isolationist crowd in the defense apparatus. President Trump

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sometimes speaks like an isolationist, but in reality, Trump 1.0 foreign policy, the most successful aspect of his administration, by the way, ranging from the Abraham Accords to the deterrence of Russia to the attempts to box in China, all of those were rooted in peace through strength ideas.

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And there are a lot of very frustrated people who don't seem to actually want President Trump to follow the peace through strength ideas that got him elected in the first place and that he pursued with alacrity and success in his first administration. Now, meanwhile, speaking of the State Department,

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Marco Rubio is going through the State Department properly, and I think in excellent fashion, with a hatchet. According to the Free Press, the Trump administration has become an aggressive shakeup at the State Department that will close 132 agency offices, including those launched to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.

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What this really is, there are a lot of people who work at the State Department who are very much associated with sort of the John Kerry foreign policy. And Marco Rubio is going through there with a chainsaw. The plans to reorganize the leading foreign policy agency in the United States are outlined in internal documents obtained by the Free Press.

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They show how the State Department will eliminate or restructure hundreds of offices in Washington, D.C. The State Department is bringing its number of offices down from 734 to 602. Separately, undersecretaries at the State Department are also being instructed within 30 days to present plans to reduce their U.S.

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personnel in individual departments by 15%, according to a senior State Department official. These include six top offices employing thousands of people, The reorganization comes as the Trump administration seeks to drastically reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

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Secretary of State Rubio said, quote, in its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, unable to perform a central diplomatic mission in the new era of great power competition. That is why I'm announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the department into the 21st century.

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And again, all of this is very much in line with traditional Republican thinking on foreign policy. So Mike Pompeo, who for some unspecified reason became persona non grata inside the Trump administration 2.0, despite the fact that he was a highly successful secretary of state in Trump administration 1.0. He said the State Department is desperately in need of significant reorganization.

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There's much efficiency that can be gained there. So these planning documents are mostly about cutting jobs in Washington, D.C., Not cutting jobs sort of all over the world in places that the State Department is particularly necessary. The rest of the Trump administration is following suit. The EPA is also making similar moves.

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According to the Washington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency has informed more than 450 employees working on environmental justice and diversity, equity and inclusion. They will also be fired or reassigned, according to an agency spokesperson.

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So the EPA, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, making very similar moves to what's happening over at state, what's happening over at defense, what's been happening the rest of the Trump administration. Finding the employees who do not belong and then getting rid of them, which is what should have happened long ago inside the federal government.

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EPA Assistant Deputy Administrator Travis Voiles sent notices late Monday to staffers at agency headquarters who work in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which the administration plans to close. The reduction in force would cut 280 employees and reassign about 175 employees to other offices, according to the spokesman. Again, why precisely?

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There's a diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice arm of the EPA is beyond me on a logical level. What does that have to do with keeping the air clean and the water fresh precisely?

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The agency said this is the first step in a broader effort to ensure the EPA is best positioned to meet its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, empowering the great American comeback. So again, all of this is good. There are important things being done by the administration.

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That's why I'm glad to see the administration swiveling when it comes to some of the economic measures that were put in place on April 9th. I'm glad to see the State Department making cuts, the EPA making cuts as well. The Trump administration is also poised for another win at the Supreme Court.

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On Tuesday, there was a hearing in a case regarding the question of whether local school board members, parents, could ban LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign propaganda from the classroom, particularly for elementary schools. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Part four of the plan would see America offer recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. There are no serious security guarantees in the plan that's been put forth at this point. The security guarantees are vague. It's not a U.S. security guarantee. It's a possible European security guarantee. But the Europeans have not made clear what exactly that looks like at this point in time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, many fitness influencers offer minimal value at premium prices, but FitBod provides comprehensive workout planning and tracking tools designed to help you maintain consistency and achieve the kind of progress you want. You've heard me talk about FitBod before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Let me reiterate, it is a game changer when it comes to building muscle and creating workout routines that are ideal for you and your body. So just last week, I opened up the app before heading to the gym. Within seconds, it created a personalized workout based on my goals and available equipment. This, by the way, is great when you're traveling.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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The app noticed which muscle groups I'd been hitting harder. It automatically adjusted to focus on other muscle groups. Again, it's the We'll be right back. Innovative supersets, challenging circuits, eliminating that workout monotony for good. Level up your workout. Join FitBod today. Get your personalized workout plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Get 25% off your subscription or try the app free for seven days at FitBod.me slash Shapiro. That's F-I-T-B-O-D.me slash Shapiro. Also, Israel continues to endure relentless attack. Missile fire has now resumed from hostile forces terrorists who... continue to want the complete annihilation and devastation of the Jewish state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Here in America, it's nearly impossible to comprehend the reality of living under that kind of threat. For Israeli citizens, this terrifying situation is just called normality. It affects every moment of their existence. I urge you to stand with me in demonstrating your solidarity with the people of Israel during this period of aggression and profound uncertainty. Thank you.

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making a special contribution today to help safeguard the people of Israel in their time of need. You can make your donation at benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. Thanks for your generosity and may God bless you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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NBC News reports that members of the 6-3 conservative majority seemed sympathetic during a lively two and a half hour oral argument toward the parents' claims the Montgomery County Board of Education violated their religious rights by failing to provide an opt-out for their kids.

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Some justices indicated the board's refusal to provide an opt out might have been motivated by hostility toward religion, which, by the way, it certainly is.

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One of the funnier aspects of this particular hearing was that the justices were quite familiar with the books that were being referenced by the defendants in this case who wanted to stack a bunch of far left sexual agitprop in elementary schools.

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Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was one of several justices who raised comments made by a former member of the school board who had suggested that a student who objected to the books was parroting dogma passed on by her parents and compared their complaints to those white supremacists who opposed civil rights law. Again, that is very typical of the left.

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The basic idea on the left is that you cannot have a truly held religious belief. All truly held religious beliefs are just a guise for bigotry. They're really secretly just a bigot and are using the Bible as a cover for your bigotry. This is just another reason why the Trump administration has now launched a task force investigating anti-Christian bias.

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It was hosted by Attorney General Pamela Bondi yesterday. The inaugural meeting of the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in the federal government was joined by peaceful Christian Americans who were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration for their religious beliefs.

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Attorney General Bondi said, quote, as shown by our victim stories today, Biden's Department of Justice abused and targeted peaceful Christians while ignoring violent anti-Christian offenses. Thanks to President Trump, we've ended those abuses and we'll continue to work closely with every member of this task force to protect every American's right to speak and worship freely.

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And that, of course, is a very, very good thing. FBI Director Kash Patel stopped by to talk about the fact that the FBI under Joe Biden had targeted Catholics. Secretary of State Rubio raised concerning allegations of bias, including some against Christian Foreign Service officers who wanted to homeschool their kids.

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There's no question, by the way, that the sort of DEI and everything agenda of the Biden administration was, in essence, directed at white Christians. Because the basic idea of DEI is that white Christians represent the majority of the country, and therefore they are the sort of evil overlords of the American system and must be brought to heel.

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Nonetheless, the Ukrainians... in anticipation of the possibility of a deal, have, for a couple of weeks now, already accepted, in principle, a 30-day, zero-condition ceasefire, like to start right now. And Vladimir Putin has not taken them up on that. He has continued to fire drones into Ukraine. Yesterday, about 134 drones were fired over the border from Russia into Ukraine.

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The only way that you could possibly reverse that is to actually start ferreting out anti-Christian bias inside the federal government. It was, by the way, a meeting that included pretty much all of the secretaries, literally all of them. So this is something the administration is taking absolutely seriously, as it certainly should.

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Meanwhile, in the big media news of the day, 60 Minutes looks like it might be on its deathbed. This comes after Paramount owner Sherry Redstone said, has been policing 60-minute stories to find out about their bias.

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According to Semaphore, Ben Smith's organization, Paramount owner Sherry Redstone in recent days sought to know which upcoming 60-minute stories were about President Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation that triggered a series of events that ended with the Tuesday resignation of the show's longtime producer, Bill Owens.

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He resigned, complaining he no longer had the editorial independence to run the iconic Sunday evening news show. He said over the past few months, it's become clear I would not be allowed to run the shows. I've always run it to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes and right for the audience. I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward.

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Now, he provides no evidence that Sherry Redstone or any of the management were actually telling him to change the stories. They were just asking to see which stories were actually being pursued, which given the fact they are the owners of 60 Minutes is well within their remit. The claim they're making is that she's only doing that because of Trumpian pressure. But let's be clear about this.

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We don't wait for permission to bring you those facts. We're here to challenge the legacy media narrative every single day. We're making the kinds of movies others won't. We're investigating stories that they bury. We tell the truth, even when it costs us. This only works because our members have our back because we have your help. Join us now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

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If the Obama administration were bringing pressure on media outlets, which they routinely did to do their bidding, or the Biden administration was bringing pressure to, for example, ignore the fact that the man was brain dead for several years and the media did that work, there would be no coverage from the media about this sort of scandalous behavior and pressure.

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A spokesperson for Sherry Redstone, according to Semaphore, has denied that she saw or sought to see 60 Minutes pieces and emphasized to Semaphore Redstone and Paramount were not seeking to kill stories. One person familiar with the situation noted Redstone had both publicly and privately criticized 60 Minutes in recent months. Oh, no, you're not allowed to criticize a show that you're paying for?

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That'll come as a shock to Michael Knowles. And if I can't criticize shows that we pay for here at Daily Wire, what am I going to do with my life? My goodness. Owens' resignation comes as Paramount is hoping to close a merger with the entertainment company Skydance.

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Again, the media are speculating that the reason that Cherry Redstone is putting an eye on all of this is not because she's ticked off by the bias of 60 Minutes, which, by the way, she should be. 60 Minutes is a wildly leftist-oriented show.

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The real reason, they think, is because she's trying to essentially curtail the freedom of 60 Minutes in order to broker some sort of better deal with the FCC to allow the merger between Paramount and Skydance. Now, if that were the case, by the way, then CBS already would have settled with the Trump campaign. So Trump has sued CBS News and 60 Minutes, and they've not settled that out yet.

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So theoretically, they already would have settled that. They're not, in fact, doing that, which, again, I think this is an overread by the media in attempt to basically suggest, as always, that anytime the owner of a major media outlet says that a newspaper or a television show or station is too far to the left, that is a form of censorship.

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You remember that the media did the same exact thing when Jeff Bezos. said that he was going to redo the sort of editorial structure at the Washington Post. The idea was that he had somehow violated the compact, whereby, what, if you buy a media outlet, it has to be run according to the people who were running it before or according to the low-level staffers.

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That is not the way to run any sort of business in actuality. Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, you may have noticed that pretty much all headlines right now revolve around, you know, President Trump and the Republicans. It's almost as though the Democrats don't exist because they kind of don't at this point. They have lost Almost the will to resist.

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Obviously, we're at a very, very fraught point in the negotiations. After two long years of a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, at least 50,000 dead on the Ukrainian side, possibly up to 200,000 dead on the Russian side. Tremendous human cost, significant violations of basic rules of war, particularly by the Russians.

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Obviously, you have Bernie Sanders and AOC taking private jets to large venues. And, you know, that's a thing. But Democrats are kind of struggling for what their message ought to be. Now they have unleashed a new term. It is called Dark Woke, which is going to go about as well as Dark Brandon did. So you'll recall just a few years ago that in a NASCAR race, people started chanting F Joe Biden.

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And the anchor who was covering that NASCAR race then suggested the crowd was actually chanting Let's Go Brandon. So conservatives, Republicans, we started using the slogan, let's go Brandon to refer to F Joe Biden. And then the Biden administration trying to seize back the language, put out memes of old Joe Biden with laser eyes, calling him dark Brandon.

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Or they put out memes of him with his sunglasses grinning. They call it dark. It didn't go well because then he physically died in the middle of the race and then dropped out of the race. So it went very poorly. Well, now they are trying something new. They think that just by adding the word dark to things, it makes it cool. Which is really silly.

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And they're obviously copying right now the Elon Musk memory of dark MAGA. And so now they have dark woke. According to the New York Times, there was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool. Yeah, that was that was really, really a short period of time. And there was a point in time when I was. significantly closer to like 150 pounds. It was a moment. It was a moment.

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And then it went away. Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party's nominee for president in the waning days of Brat Summer. She went on the popular podcast, Call Her Daddy. Tim Walz's outdoorsy drip led to a Chapel Rowan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing. The party's mood was high.

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Now, you'll recall that even by the end of Brat Summer, it was pretty much over for Kamala Harris. The Call Her Daddy appearance was a giant fail and cost her a bunch of money. Tim Walz was never a bro. Nobody ever saw Tim Walz as a bro unless the bros were hanging out at a high school musical production with jazz hands. But now apparently Democrats are in search of a new memery.

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So, says the New York Times, as liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump's no-hold-bars version of politics. Online, it has a name, Dark Woke.

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According to Bhavik Lathia, a communications consultant and former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Republicans have essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison. There's an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to say stuff that really grabs voters' attention, but we're stuck saying boring pablum.

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I see this as a strategic shift within Democratic messaging. I'm a fan of dark woke. So what exactly is dark woke? Well, during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee last May, Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, you'll recall her from... Such hits as suggesting that Marjorie Taylor Greene had a bad butch body before shouting about her fake eyelashes. She is dark woke.

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She is dark woke. And that's because she's very meme friendly. Got her an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, by the way, when she said that Marjorie Taylor Greene had a, quote, bleach blonde, bad built butch body. Good times. And so. Presumably, Democrats are very in love with this sort of stuff. Well, good luck to them because this is not what's going to get you out of the morass.

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This is a crucial week in the negotiations to try to find an end to this war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. That's why my team and I actually went to Ukraine, to Kyiv. We flew in, took the 10-hour ride into Kyiv to get a look for ourselves and then sit down with the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and get the answers the American people deserve.

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You know what else isn't going to work? Calling Republicans Nazis. Believe it or not, the Democrats are still apparently going to trot out the line that Donald Trump is a Nazi. The latest iteration of this comes courtesy of Larry David, who used to be funny but apparently lost his sense of humor.

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I don't remember sitting Shiva for his sense of humor, but somebody should have because it's been dead for a while. In any case, he has a piece in the New York Times titled Larry David, my dinner with Adolf. And it's supposed to be making fun of the fact that Bill Maher actually went to the White House to meet the president of the United States, which is verboten.

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You're not supposed to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a human. It is not funny at all. There is literally not a laugh line in the entire piece by Larry David. Is there a laugh line anywhere in here? Also, please explain the similarity between Donald Trump and Hitler. Like, please explain. Has Donald Trump invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity?

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If so, please name them. Okay, but Larry David continues along these lines. He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on the back. I found the whole thing quite disarming.

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I joked I was surprised to see him in a tan suit, because if he wore that out, it was perceived as unfurl-like. That amused him to no end, and I realized I'd never seen him laugh before. Suddenly, he seemed so human. It just goes on in this vein for hundreds of words, and the conclusion is that at the very end of it, Larry David is now a Nazi. So apparently Bill Maher is also a Trumpy Nazi type.

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And if you weren't satisfied with that Nazi comparison, Al Gore is still wandering the landscape somewhere. You remember Al Gore. He was vice president of Bill Clinton. Then he ran against George W. Bush, and then he lost to George W. Bush. And then he spent like a decade claiming that all the polar bears were going to die and the entire earth had a fever. Remember that?

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Well, on Monday, he came back to declare that President Trump's administration was like Nazi Germany.

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Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco's Climate Week, according to Politico, Gore said the Trump administration was, quote, trying to create their own preferred version of reality to achieve sweeping objectives, just like, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, Hitler, quote, I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement.

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It was uniquely evil, full stop, I get it. But, but, there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil. Yes, this is just like that time that, Hitler signed an executive order to increase the flow on showerheads. It's exactly like that. I mean, man, the parallels are just eerie. Well, one of the problems for Democrats is, of course, that they ain't got nothing.

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And so if you are stuck, if you are down to dark, woke and Trump is a Nazi, you're in trouble. Even their thought leaders can't answer basic questions. Elizabeth Warren. The senator from Massachusetts, former Harvard Law School professor, well, she was asked over the course of the last couple of days, she's on a podcast, and she was asked about lying about Joe Biden's mental and physical health.

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Yes, all good. actions. I want to start by asking you about the meeting that you had in the Oval Office. How do you feel that you could have handled things better with the president and vice president?

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And this is something that the Democrats are not going to be able to live down for quite a while, is the fact they all were complicit in the cover-up of the fact that Joe Biden was brain dead. Here's Elizabeth Warren struggling with this question almost as much as she struggled with the question of her Native American ancestry.

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OK, that's the question is, what are they going to? Well, I mean, I think one of the questions is why you lied for so long about his health and mental acuity. But we know the answer to that. That's what the Democratic Party was definitely afraid that Kamala Harris was going to be the nominee, which, of course, she ended up being.

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So we now have a compendium of elderly white people lying to you and people calling Donald Trump a Nazi. And we have dark woke. Do any of these sound great to you? Like Americans, do we have any takers here? Well, maybe we have a hot new star. Apparently, there is a new mayor of Oakland. The new mayor of Oakland is a person named Barbara Lee.

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Now, remember, Barbara Lee is a human who was actively considered. For Joe Biden's vice presidential slot before it went to Kamala Harris, because again, don't worry, it wasn't the DEI administration in any way. Why would I say that Barbara Lee is sort of a DEI possibility when it comes to picking her for VP?

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You spent nearly $200 billion to the defense of Ukraine. There are lots of questions about where the money is going. There's nothing to hide. We are absolutely open. Wouldn't audit be possible by the United States of where those dollars are going?

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Because here she was fairly recently suggesting that a $50 minimum wage would solve inflation. Oh, the levels of genius, like an onion of genius. Every layer you uncover reveals yet another layer of genius. My goodness.

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Yes, yes, it was going to it was creating it was going to create affordability. A fifty dollar minimum wage was going to create affordability. Oh, the levels of why are Democrats having such a tough time? Again, it's target rich environment for them and they can't seem to hit on any of it. It's pretty incredible.

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Already, folks coming up, we are going to get into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Just remember, you actually have to be a member to view any of that or be part of the mailbag. Become a member right now. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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I want to get to Russia's intentions and the possibilities of a ceasefire. Americans have questions about things that are happening here. Our hour-long interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will be released on this show tomorrow and Friday in two parts with extra material to come only at Daily Wire+. So make sure you stay tuned. Okay, meanwhile, the markets have been going up.

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They went up yesterday. They are up today as well. The reason for that is because it seems that the Trump administration is finally swiveling away from the large-scale trade war they declared on the world. At least that's the signal that the markets are taking away. And it was necessitated by the fact that the markets really were tanking. They were in serious, serious trouble.

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The International Monetary Fund, for example, had suggested that a global economic slowdown was in the cards, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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The sharp rise in tariffs since the start of the year marks the onset of a new era that will see the most economies grow more slowly than previously expected, with the United States suffering one of the largest hits to its own prospects, according to the IMF. That's what they said on Tuesday.

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Pierre-Olivier Laurentias, who's the fund's economic counselor, said, quote, we're entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset. And the IMF said that the immediate impact would be slow economies around the world. It lowered its forecast for global economic growth this year a full half percent from 3.3 percent to 2.8 percent.

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So the big international news of the day is that the talks that were supposed to be held in London beginning today between Ukraine, the EU, and the United States have basically been downgraded. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was supposed to attend. So was Steve Witkoff.

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That is actually a larger downgrade than the downgrade in the forecast that happened after Russia invaded Ukraine, which shook up global markets tremendously. For 2026, it has also revised down global growth by about a third of a point. The United States economy, according to the IMF, was expected to suffer damage with growth in 2025 down from a forecasted 2.7% to 1.8%. and another 1.7% in 2026.

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So to mention the IMF forecast, the obvious question, which I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity, is how accurate have prior IMF predictions of annual economic growth been? And Perplexity tells us that the IMF is a prominent source of global and country-level economic growth forecasts.

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With this World Economic Outlook published twice a year, the accuracy of these forecasts has been subject to extensive evaluation. It's considered fairly accurate. Forecast errors are typically larger during periods of economic crisis or recession because, you know, the unpredictable is in fact unpredictable.

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It's just about as accurate as other private sector or World Bank forecasts, but they tend to be a little bit optimistic of anything. According to Perplexity, IMF forecasts are on average 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points less accurate and more optimistic than World Bank forecasts.

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IMS forecasts apparently systematically overpredict growth during global or regional recessions and in countries experiencing crises. So, I mean, if trend holds, then their actual downgrade of the possibility of economic growth could still be too optimistic. So again, these are serious economic slowdown projections from the IMF. Now, maybe it went the other way.

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Maybe it's possible that the IMF is wrong. That could certainly happen. However, those sorts of projections are a major problem for the future of President Trump's presidency. If you want a successful presidency, you must have a thriving economy. This is like the number one rule of all politics, forever and always.

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Global economic leaders, meanwhile, according to the New York Times, are gathering in Washington this week for the IMF and World Bank meetings. Recent debates over industrial policy and whether the world economy could achieve a soft landing have been replaced by anxiety over the trade war. Well, all of this reversed itself yesterday. The markets actually started to climb.

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So there are a couple of reasons for this. One, President Trump yesterday reversed a thing that he had been saying about Jerome Powell. So over the weekend, the president of the United States had suggested that he might fire Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was really, really pushing hard for Jerome Powell to lower the interest rates.

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This was supposed to compensate for the inflationary effect of the tariffs, but it would actually exacerbate the inflationary effect of the tariffs. The idea was if there was going to be an economic slowdown brought about by lower levels of trade, a market slowdown, maybe injection of more fuel into the economy would suddenly fix that problem. However,

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They were all going to talk together about a proposal they were then going to go to the Russians with to finally bring a ceasefire to the Russia-Ukraine war that's been ongoing since February of 2022. At the last minute, Secretary of State Rubio canceled his trip. That prompted other leaders, secretaries of state from Britain, France, Germany to then pull out as well.

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The tariff regime was likely to strain supply chains, creating consumer-based inflation. And if you cut the interest rates, that actually exacerbates that inflation. So President Trump was putting heavy, heavy pressure on Jerome Powell to cut interest rates again. And the markets weren't having it. They weren't liking it.

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They were saying the problem here is not Jerome Powell and the interest rates. The problem here is the tariff policy. Well, yesterday, President Trump openly said that he has no intention of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which is a good way to make the market sanguine. I've been saying this for a while.

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If you want the markets to go up, fire Peter Navarro, let Scott Besson talk, and the president should provide a level of stability in how he discusses the economy. He did that yesterday, and so the markets have been jumping.

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Okay, so that made the markets feel a lot better. And then the thing that really made the markets feel better is there was a story that broke from CNBC about Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Apparently, he had a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, and he told investors there will be a de-escalation. It's a direct quote.

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There will be a de-escalation in the Trump trade war with China in the, quote, very near future. Besson said, no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable with tariff rates at their current levels. This is a private investor summit in Washington, D.C. hosted by JPMorgan Chase.

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And then he said that he believed that the prospect of de-escalation between the economic superpowers, quote, should give the world the markets a sigh of relief. Besson insisted that despite the U.S. ratcheting up tariffs on Chinese imports to 145% and then China retaliating with 125% duties, the goal of Trump's policy is not, in fact, to decouple.

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He said that negotiating with China will be a slog, but the goal is not to sort of separate off. So the markets, because they do not believe that the tariff policy laid out by the president and the administration are actually well thought out or well calibrated, responded really aggressively. The markets jumped out a thousand points yesterday. They've been climbing all day today.

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Well, President Trump himself then said the same thing yesterday. He said tariffs on China are going to come down substantially.

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We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, the internet of the 90s promised a democratic virtual world where individuals, not governments or corporations held power. Today, That vision seems distant. Big tech dominates our digital lives with companies not just serving ads, but potentially influencing our political choices through controlled content delivery.

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Those would be the foreign ministers of those particular states. All of this is coming amidst heavy pressure from the Trump administration to come to some sort of deal. President Trump had warned last week that Washington, D.C. could walk away from the talks completely if there was no progress on a deal that was also reiterated by Vice President Vance yesterday.

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The original internet promised personal freedom and control over your information journey. There is a way to reclaim that control and freedom, ExpressVPN. When you browse the internet, your service provider tracks everything you do, building a profile that data brokers sell to advertisers and government agencies. This constant surveillance means we're being watched and manipulated online.

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With ExpressVPN, my entire online traffic flows through secure encrypted servers, preventing even my ISP from monitoring my activities. I can now browse freely without surveillance. I use ExpressVPN all the time, been on the road. for days at this point, barely sleeping, but using ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN also masks your IP address.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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That's the digital identifier that companies use to track and manipulate your online experience. It's simple to use, takes just one click. ExpressVPN works seamlessly across all your devices, laptops, phones, tablets, even smart TVs. Right now, you can get up to four months free if you go to expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben for an extra four months free.

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Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Also, you may have noticed the global economy is in a fair bit of chaos right now. Potential widespread inflation tied to supply chain disruptions. It's weighing heavily on everything, but there is a silver lining that most people missed. President Trump specifically exempted gold and silver bullion from these sweeping tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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While the new policies are triggering significant financial chaos and uncertainty, the administration preserved your ability to diversify into precious metals. If you're concerned about your savings, I encourage you to have a free consultation with a Birch Gold precious metal specialist. The first step, text Ben to 989898. Receive your free, no-obligation info kit on gold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Learn how to hold gold and silver in a tax-sheltered account. Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA for zero money out of pocket. With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of thankful customers, I recommend Birch Gold. to help protect your savings through gold investments. Just text my name, Ben, to the number 989898.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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There's a reason I use Birch Gold for my gold investments. And by the way, gold is now at all-time highs. Again, text Ben to 989898 to claim your free info kit right now in times of economic uncertainty. Precious metals are, in fact, a safe haven. Tax pen to 98 98 98 and claim your free info kit from my friends at Birch Gold right now. OK, so there will still be tariffs, but it'll be lower.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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And again, this approximates a better policy. As I've said before, fighting a trade war with China could theoretically be a good thing. But you actually have to fulfill certain preconditions in order to make that trade war successful, including drawing very close to your other trade allies, giving businesses time to reshore so that we don't have broken supply chains.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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finding new places to get crucial materials like rare earth minerals, building up our militaries that if China decides to take a stab at grabbing Taiwan, we actually can deter them. All those are things you need to do before you rash up a massive trade war with China that would likely cause them to get more aggressive.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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And certainly, if you're going to do that, you cannot then alienate all of your allies who are then going to triangulate between China and the United States, which is, by the way, what Europe was actually doing. They weren't caving to the United States and cutting off China. They were actually trying to flirt with both sides.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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Caroline Lovett yesterday at the White House, White House press secretary, she was grilled over the Trump trade war with China. What does it mean that President Trump wants to cut a deal with China?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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He said, quote, it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process. Well, for the Russians, that's actually fairly good news, because obviously, if the United States were to walk away from the process entirely. a crucial base of support for Ukrainian materiel would go away.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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The markets are eager for any piece of good news because, again, the underlying fundamentals of the economy are not in bad shape here. It's that President Trump took a stick and put it right in the spokes of the bicycle, of the economic bicycle. And now he's trying to withdraw that, which is, in fact, a good thing. Well, meanwhile, Tesla is getting just banged in the public market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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I mean, just absolutely knocked around in the public markets, not in terms of share price. but in terms of their earnings reports. So according to the Wall Street Journal, their net income slid 71% in the first quarter as the company struggled to overcome competitive pressure overseas and a reputational hit from CEOs Elon Musk's polarizing role in the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2184 - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

992.585

Musk did say that he will be spending less time, significantly less time, in his federal cost-cutting work at Doge starting next month. He said, I believe the right thing to do is to fight the waste and fraud and try to get the country back on the right track, which is good. It is also good for him to actually go back and run the company the way that it needs to be run.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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And I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State. I yield back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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That's just a flippant statement, Mr. Secretary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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You may.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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I'd be happy to, but then I can respond to his response.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Rubio has the floor. Mr. Chairman, he can't make unsubstantiated comments like that. Secretary Rubio has the floor. You've had your time. Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to the federal court of the United States because he hasn't done it under oath.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2204 - Rubio BLOWS UP Senate Democrats

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Simple as that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

Folks, you got a lot to get to today on the show. We are going to get into Cory Booker speaking for like 25 hours. Oh my gosh, Democrats are celebrating. And we're going to get into election results from Florida and Wisconsin. And we're going to talk in depth about the assassination of JFK. We can get into that like really in depth today on the show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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I thought that was the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Oh my goodness, these people. I do, I love that the best they can do is get Mr. Potato Head to jabber at you for 25 hours. This is how badly they are doing right now. They can't stop anything. They can't actually push an agenda that makes any sense to Americans. But what if we have a guy whose job it is to talk, talk for a super long time while standing there? Then will you be convinced?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Then will you be convinced? The reality is that the only hope for Democrats right now is for Trump to fall on his face. That's really the only thing that can save Democrats right now They, of course, are hoping very much for the economy to collapse. Later today, President Trump is scheduled to make his announcement about what exactly is going to happen with the Liberation Day tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Right now, investors seem, you know, kind of skittish. It's not clear exactly where their heads are at on what Trump is going to do. They seem a at this point. But according to the Wall Street Journal, stocks calm this week shows investors continue to bet that clarity on trade will bring stability to markets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Major indices have retreated since President Trump began hiking duties on the country's largest trading partners, not nearly as much as would be expected if investors thought the economy was barreling toward a recession. As of Tuesday afternoon, the S&P 500 was down around 8% from its all-time high reached in February.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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It has ticked up over the past couple of days, extending a rebound off its lows from just a few weeks ago. So what are the reasons for this? One, investors' continued confidence that Trump won't stick with any tariff policy that would cause a serious drag on growth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Again, I've made that case myself, that if President Trump starts to see negative effects of the tariffs that are affecting his presidency and the economy, then he's going to just back off of them. Two, their view that they need to see more signs the economy is actually in trouble before they bet on a recession.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Well, the answer in California, by the way, was that they would just continue to deny it, which is why Democrats have been losing nationally. This is a major issue, and Democrats have been disconnected from reality. That disconnect from reality doesn't mean they'll never win another election. Yesterday, there were some election results out of Florida and Wisconsin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And three, a belief that as we get more information, there will be more certainty in the markets. So we are going to find out

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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In recent days, according to the Wall Street Journal, analysts at Goldman Sachs forecast the effective US tariff rate would rise by 15 percentage points this year, subtracting a little more than a percentage point from economic growth, partly through its tax-like effect on consumers. That bank now sees a 35% chance of recession over the next 12 months, up from 20% previously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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But again, everything is sort of up in the air at this point. The White House continues to preach confidence about whatever tariffs are going to come out. And again, we have no idea. President Trump loves a surprise announcement. It is his M.O., Here was Caroline Lovett at the White House saying whatever he does is going to work, which of course is her job.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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So, again, that's her job. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, he says that the plan here is to get everybody else to lower their tariffs. Again, if this is the plan, I'm in. Sounds great. Everybody lowers their tariffs. Free trade for all. Great distribution of products. Excellent supply chains. Lower prices for American consumers. All the tariffs on us stop so we can actually start exporting more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Sounds great. Here's Chris Wright making this case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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So again, his mouth to God's ears. The problem is it could easily go the other way. So there are a couple of different paths that this could take. Israel is taking one path. The EU is taking another. So Israel is immediately ending all tariffs on all American products, which is great. That sounds awesome. That is a great way to get other countries to do that sort of thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And that's what I'm hoping that Trump is doing here. It's leverage to get everybody else to lower their tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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According to the Times of Israel, Finance Minister Batala Smotrich on Tuesday signed a directive to scrap all remaining tariffs on all imports from the United States with immediate effect in an apparent attempt to a reprieve from the Trump administration's levy of reciprocal duties expected to be announced on Wednesday. I guess the idea is ain't no reciprocal duties if we ain't got no duties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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The order was coordinated with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Economy Minister Nir Barkat. It's subject to final approval by the Knesset Finance Committee. That is one approach. The EU is taking a totally different approach, which is we're going to tariff the living crap out of the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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The election results out of Florida are good. The election results out of Wisconsin were not good. The election results out of Florida, there were two districts in which the Congress people either took another job or retired from their district. One was Matt Gaetz's district. Jimmy Petronas ended up winning that seat, holding it for Republicans. And then there was Mike Waltz's district.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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According to Politico, the EU is considering opening up a new battlefront as President Trump prepares to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on all of America's trading partners on Wednesday. Liberation Day, as Trump has called it, would mark the biggest escalation in the trade war he first launched against Canada, Mexico, and China following his January 20th inauguration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Universal tariffs soon followed on steel, aluminum, and then on cars. Brussels has so far played by the traditional trade war rule book, matching Trump's broader tariffs on industrial metals with equivalent levies on iconic American brands like Harley Davidson. The idea is to mirror the response.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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But now with Washington threatening to push the EU further, not only for its existing tariffs, but what it sees as non-tariff barriers like tech regulations, Brussels is preparing to up the ante. EEC President Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission, she said, we'll approach these negotiations from a position of strength. Europe holds a lot of cards.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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From trade to technology to the size of our market, this strength is also built on our readiness to take firm countermeasures. All instruments are on the table. So what exactly could that involve? Well, they could be thinking of putting tariffs on like JP Morgan or Bank of America or on X or on Google or on Amazon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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A senior EU official said, quote, we are certainly not excluding a bigger response, a better response, and even more creative response through services like intellectual property rights. So things could get heavy very, very quickly. It remains to be seen exactly what Trump is proposing or what is going to come down the line. So we will wait to see that come down later this afternoon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Meanwhile, controversy continues over President Trump's immigration plans. Trump can't stop and will not stop with regard to the deportations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has transferred 17 alleged gang members to El Salvador, the second such removal in two weeks, as the president pushes forward with his plan to send migrants to a notorious jail in Central America, despite mounting concern over whether he can lawfully do so. U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday a military plane flew the alleged Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members to El Salvador on Sunday evening in what he described as a counterterrorism operation. And those migrants included 10 Salvadoran and seven Venezuelan men who were previously being held at Gitmo.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Meanwhile, controversy again has broken out over the case of this supposed Maryland father. That's how he was described by The Atlantic. Was this guy actually a member of MS-13, an immigration judge? So there's credible evidence that he was some six years ago. Caroline Lovett was asked about this particular story, as we talked about yesterday in The Atlantic, about a supposedly innocent child.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Salvadoran immigrant who had a stay on his removal because theoretically he was going to be tortured in El Salvador if he went back. And the administration made an administrative error and deported him and now they can't get him back. Here's Caroline Leavitt saying, well, it's an administrative error. That doesn't mean the guy should be in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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He, of course, is the national security advisor, his district. Florida 6 is a R plus 30 district for President Trump. And Randy Fine, who's a state senator here, ended up winning. That was expected to be a pretty close race. It turned out not to be a particularly close race. I was involved in a tele town hall that we did just before the election. So...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Okay, and she is right about all of those things, presumably. You know, more evidence to show who this guy was would obviously help the administration's case. But as we mentioned yesterday, the Atlantic kind of ignored a huge part of the story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is ordering diplomats overseas to scrutinize social media of applicants for student and other types of visas, basically saying you don't get in the country if you hate the West, which seems, you know, pretty fair. Seems like a good way to screen out people who should not be in the United States in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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First, yesterday, our colleague Matt Walsh testified before the California Assembly on legislation to ban male students from competing in women's sports, which, of course, is just common sense. The fight is not over because of one bad day at the legislature because it turns out that California said no. Shocker, because that's California. But here's the thing. When we take on a cause, we go all in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Like if you're here spreading pro-terrorist content, what exactly are you doing in the United States? We don't need more of you. So Secretary of State Rubio is pursuing that. Meanwhile, Democrats taking the wrong side of an 80-20 issue, as always, Representative Jamie Raskin, he's demanding the return of illegal immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And this is gonna make an easy commercial for Republicans, Democrats claiming that we need more people who are suspected or have credible evidence of ties to MS-13 or Trandaragua reentering the United States to make Jimmy Raskin feel better about his life. Again, President Trump continues to operate on solid bases with the American public.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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The biggest threat to his administration, I will say it over and over and over again until I'm blue in the face, is bad economic policy that leads to a downturn. I'm very hopeful that the president today is going to announce tariffs that are less extraordinary in scope than the kinds of tariffs that he is talking about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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I'm also hopeful that there will come a point where the president of the United States, if it starts to have a negative effect on the economy in a serious way, starts to back off of some of those policies because what works works and what doesn't doesn't, and the proof is going to be in the pudding. Well, protecting your finances is important. Even more important is securing your family's future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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As somebody who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you, having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind. It's about making sure your family has options if, God forbid, something terrible should happen. That's why I need to tell you about PolicyGenius. They're not an insurance company themselves.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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They are the country's leading online insurance marketplace. They let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side-by-side completely free with absolutely no hidden fees. Their platform uses real licensed insurance experts who work for you, not the insurance companies, so you can find the best fit for your family.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $292 per year for a million dollars in coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid those unnecessary medical exams. The process is fast and simple. Their licensed support team handles everything, answering your questions, managing paperwork, advocating for you throughout the entire process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Don't just take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you are in, PolicyGenius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation. Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click that link in the description, get your free life insurance quotes, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. Also, were you ever so intimidated by the complexities of investing or felt you lacked sufficient knowledge about the financial markets, you found yourself continually postponing your first investment?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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I'm not going to say we put him over the finish line, but the reality is that he won by a relatively decent margin in Florida 6. So both of those are holds for Republicans. That is good news. The piece of bad news yesterday is that Wisconsin had the opportunity to elect to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin somebody who is going to be the balancing vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Well, April is Financial Literacy Month. I know you didn't know that. It made a whole month just reminding you to finally take control of your money. Good news, you don't need 30 days. Acorns makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future in just about five minutes. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And you don't need to be rich. Acorns will let you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is some spare change. Plus, Acorns has tons of videos, articles, tips to help you grow your financial literacy. Sign up right now. Join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Plus, Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment. Offer available at acorns.com. That's A-C-O-R-N-S.com to get your $20 bonus investment today. Okay, meanwhile. The House Committee Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held yet another proceeding on the JFK assassination. Now you ask yourself, why exactly is there another hearing on the JFK assassination?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And the answer is that the administration, put out a new tranche of 80,000 documents that basically added nothing to the case on the JFK assassination. Now, as you know, a couple of weeks ago, I got myself in hot water because I said I didn't care about the JFK assassination.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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What I meant by that, pretty obviously, to anyone who was actually listening and not taking me out of context deliberately, was that I know who shot JFK, and it's Lee Harvey Oswald. The truth is that I was very into conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination maybe 20 years ago, and I did an awful lot of reading about it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And then it turns out that there was no evidence for any of the most prominent conspiracy theories. So yesterday, the House Republicans decided they were going to have an Oliver Stone as an expert on the JFK assassination, which is an absurdity. It's an absurdity. JFK, the film. which is, in fact, an incredibly well-produced film because Oliver Stone is a terrific director. It's a load of tripe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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JFK, the movie, is just crap in terms of historical accuracy. It's absolute sheer nonsense. I know this because it was the JFK movie that got me into looking into this. I remember watching this in law school. And when I watched it in law school, I thought, wow, this is fascinating. What a great movie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And then I started reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on about the JFK assassination. And after reading all the evidence I could get my hands on, I came away with Lee Harvey Oswald did it and he did it alone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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which would have been really important because Wisconsin, under Governor Scott Walker years back, pushed forward things like right-to-work legislation that suggested that you actually did not have to be a member of a union to work in particular sectors of the economy and that those particular sectors could not simply remove union dues from you without your will. Scott Walker did that years ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And so now when people are trotting out new theories about JFK and the assassination, I have the same feeling about that that I have about somebody giving me a new theory about how that magician pulled a handkerchief out of his thumb. Once I know how the trick was done, then it's no longer an interesting trick.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And so the Oswald assassination of Kennedy takes on the same historic importance as the assassination of, say, Abraham Lincoln or the assassination of William McKinley or the assassination of James Garfield. Or the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford twice or the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan or the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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By the way, there's still more questions about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump than I have questions about the assassination of JFK at this point. And yet still the Republican members of Congress, many of whom seem to enjoy kind of swimming in the swamps of conspiracy theories. They went deep yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Here was Lauren Bober questioning Oliver Stone while thinking that he was another non-credible source on the JFK assassination, Roger Stone. Here's how it went yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Now, again, do I think that Oliver Stone should be your credible House committee source on the JFK assassination? I don't. I don't think that Oliver Stone should be a credible source on pretty much anything because I don't know his historical bona fides on these things. So here's the thing. I'll take a step back for a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Right now, conspiracy theories are running wild on X about virtually every possible topic. Now, there's a difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is a thing that actually exists in the real world. In fact, we have an entire statute devoted to uncovering conspiracies and prosecuting. That would be the RICO Act.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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It was an act directly tied to the idea of conspiracy connected to crime. And so there are lots of conspiracies. And the thing about a conspiracy is you can tell when it's happening because of the evidence, which is the thing that you actually should be taking a look at.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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So, for example, when you say that there was a conspiracy from Anthony Fauci and his buddies to silence people who did not take his viewpoint on, for example, the Wuhan virus, that is true because there are emails showing that Anthony Fauci did that exact thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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When you say, for example, that there was a conspiracy of silence around Joe Biden's health condition, that is obviously true, not just because of your eyes and you watching the media basically cover it up, but because we know from actual contemporaneous and now And now contemporaneous reporting that everyone around Joe Biden knew exactly what was happening.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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The evidence makes it not a conspiracy theory, but a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists, however, that's a different thing. And conspiracy theories are a different thing. Conspiracy theories aren't just creeping into the fringe anymore. They're staging a full-blown takeover in the public square. You've seen it pretty much everywhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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That could easily be reversed by a liberal Supreme Court. Also, that liberal Supreme Court is very likely to redraw the congressional boundaries in Wisconsin, thus adding a couple of Democratic seats to the Democratic minority in the House, which could be enough to put Democrats over the top in the next election cycle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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You know that we've reached peak absurdity when even Alex Jones, who himself has done a lot of this, is suddenly demanding evidence from certain malefactors. This isn't skepticism, conspiracy theories. They're not skepticism. Skepticism would be that you question a thing and look for the evidence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Not skepticism is where you question a thing and don't look for any evidence before you throw out a theory that is not backed by the evidence. This isn't skepticism. Conspiracy theorizing is not skepticism. It is usually intellectual cowardice dressed up as critical thinking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And if we don't torch the rhetorical playbook, we end up with a society where the facts are optional, where actual people who know things are mocked, where every basement-dwelling keyboard warrior thinks that fan fiction trumps reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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And again, there are people who are in the basement on the keyboards who are actually doing real hard, good work that's important if they're basing it on the evidence. But that's not happening right now. In order for us to have a functioning polity, you have to have a common set of facts. Conspiracy theories are directly tied to no facts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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So today, I want to talk about how we can tell the difference between a conspiracy, an actual conspiracy, and a conspiracy theory, and what are sort of the hallmarks of somebody who's retailing a conspiracy theory to you. This is what I call the QED of conspiracy thinking. It's a simple framework. Q is for fake questions, E is for fake evidence, and D is for fake defenses.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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So this framework is designed to expose the intellectual dishonesty at the core of conspiracy thinking. And once you see it, it's difficult to unsee it because you'll see these tactics almost everywhere with regards to people retailing particular narratives. So let's dive in. First, Q, fake questions. The fake questions are the foundation of conspiracy theories.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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The first pillar in the conspiracy theory playbook Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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All of this despite the fact that Elon Musk put gigantic tens of millions of dollars investments in that Wisconsin Supreme Court election. The liberal judge in this particular case, Judge Susan Crawford, Secured a victory, obviously. The state Supreme Court race was technically nonpartisan, but it set a spending record for a U.S. judicial contest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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Wisconsin awarded Trump his narrowest state margin in November, and the race was closely watched for how swing state voters have digested the 10 weeks since his inauguration. It's very difficult to tell, by the way, in special elections how people are actually going to vote in a presidential.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?

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You can't translate a special election into a good read on either congressional elections or on a presidential election in the future because they're weird. Usually only the base turns up and like the base of the base. Democrats are trying to suggest that this is the beginning of their comeback.

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Crawford said, I never could have imagined I'd be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won. Now, again, she was replacing a liberal justice in Wisconsin. Crawford's win means the court keeps that 4-3 liberal majority. Crawford won pretty handily with 98% of the expected vote counted. She was leading Schimel 55 to 44.

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The hallmark of pseudoscience, things that are not scientific. And again, there are many things in life that are not scientific. That's fine. You can't falsify love, for example. It's a personal feeling. But when it comes to claims about the world itself, you should have a falsifiable theory. As Karl Popper, pointing this out, the philosopher, conspiracy thinking is non-falsifiable.

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You structure a claim so it can never be proved false. A good theory makes predictions that could be disproven. I've asked this. You heard me ask this about the Derek Chauvin trial to, for example, Stephen A. Smith. I said, is there any evidence that could possibly change your mind about this? And he said, no. So, well, that's not a rational inquiry.

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Because if nothing can change your mind about a thing, it is now a religious belief. It is not a rational inquiry. And there's a place in life for religious beliefs. but that's not the place for unspooling a theory about like an assassination. Conspiracy theories rarely do this because their theories are designed to be immune to evidence. They don't want to actually provide a falsifiable thing.

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Brad Schimel was the Republican candidate for the judiciary there. In 2023, when the court first flipped to a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years, the liberal candidate won by about 11 percentage points. So again, yeah, I don't think you can read this as a broad national trend and Democrats still have an uphill battle.

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Then there's moving the goalpost. When it comes to global warming, for example, global warming, there are a couple of things you can say that are plausible and falsifiable. One, is the world getting warmer over time? Two, does it correlate with human activity with regard to carbon? The answer to both those is yes. What is the level of causation is still an open question.

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What is a conspiracy theory is where they said the world's going to end in 2012. And then it doesn't end in 2012, Greta Thunberg style. And then you're like, okay, well, and she's like, well, I really meant 2024. And then it doesn't end. And then it's like, well, what I really meant was 2036. You see this in Nostradamus a lot. Okay, we'll just move the timeline out. Just move the timeline out.

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Okay, well, usually in the real world, if you have a predictive fail, you have to revise your theory. In conspiracy thinking, you simply revise the prediction. One of the most common tactics here is circular reasoning. So what you say is we know that you're corrupt because you won't report on this conspiracy theory.

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And we know the conspiracy is real because you won't report on the conspiracy theory. It's a closed logical loop. No external information is possible. You're lying because the conspiracy theory is true. The conspiracy theory is true because you're lying. And around the circle you go. And at no point does evidence ever enter the equation at any point. Then there's the Kafka trap.

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The Kafka trap is named after Franz Kafka's short story, The Trial, where denial of guilt is taken as evidence of guilt. This is so common on X. So you'll say, no, I'm not involved in a conspiracy, nor do I think that that conspiracy is probable. Say that, ah, because you're involved in the conspiracy. That's why. So it goes directly, it's a character attack, essentially.

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It makes the accusation unfalsifiable because whether you deny or whether you confirm, both take it as confirmation. Denial, silence, and confirmation are all the same under the Kafka trap. If somebody accuses you of complicity, for example, in putting microchips in the blood of your enemies and you deny it, well, you're only denying it because it's true.

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And if you confirm it, it's because it's true. And if you stay silent, it's because you won't answer because it's probably true. That's the Kafka trap. There's information overload as well. So you see this a lot. One challenge for evidence, what you will get is a bunch of unrelated gobbledygook facts that are stacked on top of each other super fast.

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That sort of thing is very difficult to combat because it's sort of, The equivalent of a terrorist rocket barrage is a bunch of $50 rockets that are sent up. And then it requires $50,000 in Iron Dome to take down each one of those argumentative rockets. And by the time you've done that, they're already firing the next argumentative rocket.

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Speaking of which, they are lacking any sort of real leadership at the top of the Democratic Party. So, Cory Booker, who once ran for – I know you forgot about that. He actually did. He ran for president, and he totally flamed out because he's a big weirdo. And Cory Booker has been a big weirdo for a long time.

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That has nothing to do with the central argument, but is incredibly time consuming. And so people just sort of give up defending the truth because it's so tiring. Again, good tactic, bad logic. Another tactic here, weaponizing doubt. Conspiracy theorists excel at weaponizing doubt.

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So what they will do here is they find a minor error in the official account of an event, and then they're like, okay, well, the entire thing is wrong. So they'll say, well, you know, there were initial reports from the government. They got the time wrong by five minutes. That means the whole report is BS. The whole report is flawed. This usually comes right after an event.

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So right after a complex event is reported, there are usually errors. This is why the best thing you can do on X or anywhere else in social media when there's a controversial event, wait 48 hours. Wait 48 hours to comment on it because usually it takes a while for the truth to be established. But what usually happens is people jump to a conclusion.

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That conclusion is then used to discredit the actual truth because somebody made a mistake when they first reported the thing. And then there is false equivalence. Again, this is a defense mechanism for a bad conspiracy theory where you say all sources are equally biased.

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Sure, my evidence comes from some schlub in a YouTube video who doesn't know anything about the topic and has no credentials and hasn't studied anything, but also the legacy media lies. Okay, well, yes, the legacy media does lie. That does not mean that all people are equally dishonest or that all cases are equally verifiable or have equal veracity.

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You have to actually establish this by the evidence. The reality is that people say, after COVID, I don't trust my doctor. I promise you that if you break your leg, you trust your doctor much more than you trust the random guy on the internet who may have been right, by the way, about the COVID vaccine. Because the reality is that it depends what you're talking about. It depends on the topic.

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It depends on the level of expertise. Trying to equate everything, to flatten everything is a great way of making everything unfalsifiable. Another tactic, the no true Scotsman tactic. This is where somebody says no true conspiracy researcher would deny the moon landing was faked. Right. Which allows the community to maintain ideological purity. You just excluded a center.

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You say that person is not actually a member of our community. They're not they're not pure enough. And then there is the deep play in the mountain. Again, you see these tactics all the time. The deep play is really devious. This is where every debunking becomes evidence of a deeper conspiracy.

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So the fact that the legacy media is so intent on focusing on this theory, it shows that they're hiding something. The fact that they keep spending time on this thing that I'm bringing up, it shows that they, they are, they must be, they're part of it. And then there's the Mott and Bailey tactic.

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So this is usually where somebody will make a totally implausible claim, like the government is run by lizard people. And you're like, well, that's not true. The government is not run by lizard people. And then they will say that that would be the Bailey, like the outside of a castle. And then when that's overrun, they'll say, well, I'm just claiming that the government lies to us sometimes.

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As I've said before about Cory Booker, he is the least authentic politician perhaps I have ever seen. I call him Mr. Potato Head because in his back pocket, he has angry eyes. And every so often, in the middle of a speech, he will go, take out – Mr. Potato, take out your angry eyes. He'll take out his angry eyes and – And there was a lot of that yesterday because he spoke for 24 hours.

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OK, like I agree the government lies to us sometimes. That does not justify your main claim. Now, again, in all of this, I am not saying that questioning established narratives is bad. We have to do it. Skepticism is healthy, but a healthy skepticism is rooted in a request for evidence.

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There is a world of difference between evidence based skepticism and just stringing together random events or stretching the truth beyond what it can bear or speculation. These are not the same thing. Skepticism leads to better understanding through a search for actual truth and evidence.

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And if you're not doing that, then you're just entering an intellectual rabbit hole from which pretty much nobody returns. So that QED framework that I just outlined, fake questions, fake evidence, fake defenses, it's a great way to distinguish between legitimate inquiry and the just asking questions kind of conspiracy thinking. This is not about left versus right.

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You see this all across the political spectrum, like all across it. The difference is how we approach all of this. We need to approach all of this with an intellectual rigor. We need to actually be willing to change our minds based on actual evidence. You have to hold your own side to the same standards. And by the way, this is a great way of telling who exactly is lying to you and who is not.

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If people keep insisting they don't need to provide you evidence, they're just asking questions, or if they just retail theories without any evidence to support them, And then use any of the tactics that we've just discussed.

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We are going to continue fighting on this front. We've won nationally. Now it's time to win in the States. With your support, we can keep covering the issues that matter. We can keep making the content that shapes culture. We can keep making a difference. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. By the way, I may as well just lead off with this. Matt did an amazing job.

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It is an excellent way of telling who actually cares about the truth and who does not and who's making money off of you because this stuff tends to go viral, particularly things that confirm your preexisting bias. So the next time you hear somebody throw out a wild theory, Maybe the theory is true if they can provide you evidence, and this is what you should ask. Are they asking real questions?

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Is it a real, serious question? Are they presenting real, serious, credible, verifiable evidence? Are they open to real critiques that might actually correct the theory? If the answer to any of those is no, you might want to click somewhere else. So today I wanted to have on somebody to talk about the JFK assassination who literally wrote the book on the JFK assassination. It's Gerald Posner.

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He's the author of the book Case Closed, which is the first book that I read that really put to bed a lot of my questions about the JFK assassination and the various conspiracy theories. Again, I spent a lot of time on this when I was at Harvard Law School and came to the conclusion it was Oswald, which is why I no longer find this topic all that fascinating.

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But it's fascinating, obviously, to tens of millions of Americans. I sat down with Gerald Posner today to talk over the various conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination. Gerald, thank you so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ben. Good to be with you. So I'm really glad you're taking the time.

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So a few weeks ago, I got myself in very hot water because on my show, I said, I don't really care about the JFK assassination any more than any other historical American assassination. What I meant by that is that I actually know who killed JFK, and it was Lee Harvey Oswald. And the reason that I don't care about it so much right now is because I know the answer.

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I used to care a lot about the assassination in terms of these sorts of various conspiracy theories about who killed him. Because if I go all the way back to my law school days, it was dim and dark in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the winter. There was nothing to do. And so I used to go over to the local video store and just rent videos.

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And so I picked up a copy of JFK, Oliver Stone's JFK, which is a really well-made, insane conspiracy theory. And so I watched the movie. And like everybody else, I'm kind of taken in by the movie. And I proceed to read probably five, six books about the JFK assassination. And then I start going deeper and deeper. And then I read your book. case closed about the JFK assassination.

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And I read the Warren report and all the rest of it. And I came away with the conclusion that it was Lee Harvey Oswald. And so now I don't find it any more interesting or noteworthy than I would any other assassination in the same way that once you see a magician, how the magician does the trick, then the trick is no longer nearly as interesting.

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He spoke for 24, he wasn't filibustering anything, by the way. This isn't Mr. Smith goes to Washington where he's filibustering a bad piece of legislation. This is Mr. Potato Head goes to Washington where he decides to set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for jabbering for the longest period of time. Apparently, the question everybody was asking, of course, was,

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I wonder why you think that there is so much continued focus on the JFK assassination, given the fact that the actual evidentiary record is really, really clear, both on a physical evidence level as well as a documentary and witness level. And yet this stuff continues to persist.

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So let's talk about the evidence in the case and why it is that this thing continues to persist. So as you talk about in your book, you go through a wide variety of the various theories that are put forth. Obviously, there are new theories that now crop up all the time, shockingly, ones that were very fringe and now have become quite mainstream on X, on the Internet generally.

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I want to go through a couple of them. The one that seems to be hot at the moment is the idea that LBJ was behind it, that that was made hotter by a purported tape that was put out by Alex Jones and then pushed by Glenn Beck as well. That has an associate supposedly of LBJ talking openly to another associate of LBJ about how they had hired somebody to kill the president of the United States.

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What do you make of that tape and all this stuff?

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The Mike Mulligan question, how does he poop? The answer apparently is that he dehydrated himself. He talked about this, that he didn't eat for like a day before. And then he stopped drinking maybe 10 hours before. So he was totally dehydrated and somewhat deranged. And then he stood there and he spoke. And Democrats are like, this is amazing. It's just amazing.

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As you said earlier, I think that one of the reasons this is so live and people get animated is because it would, in fact, be incredibly relevant if, for example, LBJ had been behind the assassination of JFK or if the CIA had been involved because that would change your perception of what the CIA is and what it can do and who's still there and what are the sort of systemic problems inside the CIA.

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The CIA is, of course, another sort of target of the idea that they were behind the JFK assassination. Is there any evidence to that effect?

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That man stood there and he spoke for 24 hours. For 24 hours, he just stood there and he spoke. That's true heroism. And every human being on planet Earth went, well, I have like a friend of my spouse's who speaks like that. And they're really annoying. And that's really what it was. So here was Mr. Potato Head. He popped in those angry eyes and ranted about Trump for like 24 hours.

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So Oliver Stone actually appeared as a witness at a House committee this week to talk about the JFK assassination and talk about how there needed to be more material that was released. How much material has been released on the JFK assassination? Why is Oliver Stone non-credible for people who think he might be?

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So let's talk for a second about the brand new conspiracy theory that is now being aired, one that I didn't see coming. And again, I read a lot about this back in the early 2000s when I was in law school. And there are many theories that have been put out there. This is a new one. It's rare that you get a new sort of conspiracy theory about an event that happened 60 years ago.

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But there's a theory now that's being trafficked online that the Israelis were behind the murder of JFK, either because... JFK was going to list AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as a foreign institution and then somehow sanction it. Or because JFK wanted to shut down the nuclear reactor in Israel at Dimona, and therefore the Israelis must have done it.

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As far as I can see, zero evidence has been deduced to this proposition, like literally zero. And yet this has become the hot story. It's now taken as point of fact, actually, by many of the conspiracists online. It's remarkable.

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I think one of my favorite things is the trafficking round of a document that shows that redacted in the documents was the word Israel because Israeli intelligence had been helping American intelligence. As you point out, there's one factor that's missing there, among others.

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So let's talk about sort of the dispositive facts that stand behind the fact that it was, in fact, Lee Harvey Oswald. Because there are certain questions that the conspiracists simply can't answer. In fact, most of the questions are. are unanswerable because, as you say, the documentary and physical evidence record is overwhelming in this particular case.

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So why don't you talk about the things that you find the most convincing for people who are skeptical, that they still think it's conspiracy. What would you say to those people?

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So you've spent an enormous amount of time, obviously, looking into the most conspiracized event of the 20th century. But one of the things that's happened is that conspiracy theories have become more and more prominent in American life just generally. And we should differentiate here between actual conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

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Obviously, there are actual conspiracies in which people get together and they actually do things. And the way that you can tell the difference is the thing called evidence, where you actually look at the evidence of people getting together and doing the things as opposed to just theorizing that there was a motive to do it. And motive alone is evidence that who benefits.

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He was testifying before what appeared to be the world's tiniest committee room. It was very bizarre, but he was testifying about a bill that would have said that you actually should only be allowed in the ladies' locker room if you are, wait for it, a lady. Here was Matt doing what Matt does best yesterday.

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If somebody benefits, it must have been that person. Or if or you take a piece of evidence here that has nothing to do with the piece of evidence here and kind of string it through a variety of knots and somehow come up with with a theory. Conspiracies are provable. I mean, we have them all the time in court.

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We actually have an entire RICO Act that is designed to uncover conspiracies and prosecute them. But conspiracy theories themselves, wilder and wilder conspiracy theories, have sort of taken place over time in American life. And you can see it in the polling about the JFK assassination. At the very beginning, a majority of Americans thought that Oswald had had not shot the president.

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It was bare majority. It's like 53 percent. Then it drops a little bit. And then in the 70s, it starts to climb and climb really rapidly. And now some 80 percent of Americans think that it wasn't Oswald who was acting alone. So between 70 and 80 percent of Americans become sort of the common writ of American public life. And then if you do believe it, it means that you're a credulous dupe.

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Why do you think that's happening?

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Oh, good Lord. He went for a little over 25 hours. The reason he went for a little over 25 hours, again, like... Slow clap for that ridiculous performance by Cory Booker. A laughably bad performance by Cory Booker. It is like watching a horrifyingly bad high school version of Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington and then everybody cheers at the end.

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The reason he went for 25 plus hours, by the way, is because he wanted to actually outdo Strom Thurmond's 1957 filibuster against a civil rights bill. So he did do that. So I guess congratulations for talking for a super long time, politician who says nothing for a living. That's really inspiring stuff. By the way, Cory Booker, we should note, was an opponent of the filibuster.

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He's an opponent of the filibuster because he thinks the filibuster is a Jim Crow holdover. But now when he's doing it, when he's doing it, it's totally great. If that sort of thing is your bag, I suppose that, you know... Good for you. By the way, this is an amazing way for senators to actually make a name for themselves. Obviously, we've seen this in the past.

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Senator Rand Paul did a really long filibuster with regard to the droning of a terrorist who was also an American citizen years back. And Ted Cruz, of course, did a filibuster against Obamacare. And now you have Senator Cory Booker doing this because he, of course, has presidential aspirations to grab the leadership of the party. And there's nothing at the top of the Democratic Party.

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They're treating this as though this is some act of tremendous self-sacrifice that he didn't have to calf himself for 25 hours or something.

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According to the New York Times, Senator Cory Booker, his voice still booming after more than a day spent on the Senate floor railing against the Trump administration, on Tuesday night surpassed Ron Thurmond for the longest Senate speech on record in an act of astonishing stamina that he framed as a call to action. Astonishing stamina! Because he stood for 24 hours and yelled at the walls.

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Wow, good for him. I'd like to introduce him to my toddler daughter who can do precisely the same thing. I've seen her basically stay awake for 24 hours yelling at us. It's happened. So good for Cory Booker, equaling the achievement of every small child who won't go to bed at three o'clock in the morning and is caterwauling about missing her Barbie.

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Mr. Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and one-time presidential candidate, began his speech at 7 p.m. on Monday, vowing to speak as long as he was physically able. Oh, the heroism. Oh, oh, God bless America. In a show of physical and oratorical endurance, he lasted past sunset on Tuesday.

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Assailing President Trump's cuts to government agencies and crackdown on immigration, he ended his speech at 8.05 p.m., 46 minutes, after eclipsing Mr. Thurman's 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster of a civil rights bill in 1957. So congratulations to two Democrats on really, really long filibusters. He finished by quoting John Lewis, the civil rights hero and congressman.

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He said of Lewis, he said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble to redeem the soul of our nation. I want you to redeem the dream. Let's be bold in America. And then he said, to hate him is wrong. He's talking about Strom Thurmond. To hate him is wrong.

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Maybe my ego got too caught up that if I stood here, maybe, maybe, just maybe I could break this record of the man who tried to stop the rights upon which I stand. I'm not here, though, because of his speech. I'm here despite his speech. So, I mean, he clearly was aiming at like, oh, my gosh, Guinness Book of World Records. Here is your certificate, Mr. Booker.

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You can put it right there on your wall next to the guy who made the largest card house. Just really impressive, impressive stuff. Well, Cory Booker, it feels like he's been speaking since the 1990s and the internet of the 90s promised a democratic virtual world where individuals, not governments or corporations held power. Today, that vision seems distant.

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Right now, you can get up to four months free if you go to expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben for an extra four months for free. Also, the IRS is ramping up enforcement efforts in 2025. April 15th is approaching and time is now running out. If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds the problem.

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Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone can be a costly mistake. This is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart?

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Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels. This means they know exactly which agents can help resolve your case effectively. Whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million bucks, their team of attorneys and negotiators brings proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably.

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With over a billion dollars in tax that already resolved, they have the experience and the expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder. Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. It's a bad way to go.

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Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. And, of course, the Democrats looking for a moment of glory. Democrats looking for a moment. They are just beyond stunned by the bravery.

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Senator Adam Schiff, another gigantic intellect of towering proportions of California, he got up to call Booker a towering intellect, which, yeah, my dude. I'm going to go no on that one. It's a no from me, dog. Here's Adam Schiff.

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I have so many jokes right now. So many jokes, and I will not tell any of them. Chuck Schumer. So what they would do is every so often they would toss to one of the Democrats in the crowd to give him a round of applause. And in the meantime, according to the New York Times, Mr. Booker's staff members jumped into action. Kleenex for dabbing sweat from his brow was replenished. My God.

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I mean, it really is just impressive. Just so impressive. Like D-Day, basically. A fresh binder thick with printed material was placed on the podium. Printed material. Can you believe it? Representatives who had crossed the Capitol from the House, filtered in, drawn by the spectacle. They arrived, lingered, departed, each bearing witness to the endurance test unfolding.

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I love the New York Times writing here. Honest to God, whoever wrote, who wrote this totally crappy piece? Seriously. I want to name, this is a three-author article, so I just want to name all three authors of this poetic nonsense. Tim Balk, Mike Ives, and Matthew M. Polk Big. I would really like for you guys to take a bow. I'd like for you to take a bow. Really solid stuff.

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Mr. Thurman had sustained himself by sipping orange juice and munching on bits of beef and pumpernickel. It was not clear if Mr. Booker had eaten anything on Tuesday, but two glasses of water rested on his desk in front of his lectern. He had prepared for the speech by fasting for days, he told reporters on Tuesday night after the speech.

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Before he began on Monday, he had not had food since Friday or water since Sunday. The approach took its toll, said Mr. Booker, a vegan and former Stanford football player who has chronicled his efforts to stay fit and eat healthy. Instead of figuring out how to go to the bathroom, he said, I ended up, I think, really unfortunately dehydrating myself.

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During the speech, he recalled, he really started to cramp up. I'm sorry, he wasn't running a marathon, guys. It turns out this is the Senate. Sir, this is a Wendy's. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God. It's just... And the New York Times is cheering him on because, again, they are completely lacking. in anything like a heroic moment right now because Trump's just running roughshod over them.

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Senator Chris Murphy, another clown from Connecticut, he said it's a stunning biological feat. Okay, can we, like, a stunning, is he a triathlete? He stood there and he talked for 24 hours. Like, congrats to him. Really stunning biological. I understand that the average age in the United States Senate is 178 years old.

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And I understand that you had a president five minutes ago who couldn't even stand for like 30 seconds at a time without keeling over. A stunning biological feat. Truly stunning. Okay.

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Folks, America is in the middle of a great comeback, but the culture war is not over, which is why tomorrow we're releasing episode two of our five part series, The Case for Derek Chauvin, The Incident. In episode one, we analyze the criminal background of George Floyd and the professional record of Derek Chauvin.

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And this judge, Judge Theodore Chuang, has now ordered Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to immediately give USAID employees access to their email payments, security notification, and all other electronic systems. The basic notion here, apparently, is that they have a right to their jobs.

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The astronauts have said that they were actually prepared to stay longer, and they were eager to pitch in by conducting science experiments and maintenance aboard the orbiting laboratory. I'm sure they were. I mean, it probably gets pretty boring up there for a year. I hope that they at least liked each other.

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Now, presumably that right springs from the USAID enabling legislation, but USAID was originally set up by executive order, as in by the president. So in his ruling, he goes out of his way to suggest that then it was sort of recodified in the late 1990s by Congress, and that now USAID is almost untouchable by the president of the United States. Only Congress could change USAID.

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I think there's a very flawed interpretation of the history of USAID. It seems like not a particularly strong argument. This is another Obama judge who is, again, trying to intervene here. He also claims that Musk does not have the ability to fire people. But, of course, it's not Musk technically doing the firing.

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He's making recommendations via Doge to actual government actors who are approved by Congress who are actually doing the firing. That's particularly true in USAID. It's the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who's presiding over the dismantling of USAID, which, by the way, under the original executive order that established USAID, it was placed under the auspices of the State Department.

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Judge Chuang, again, tried to bash Musk, saying that he, quote, usurped the authority of the public's elected representatives in Congress to make decisions on whether, when, or how to eliminate a federal government agency and of officers of the United States duly appointed under the Constitution to exercise the authority entrusted to them.

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And this is a very flawed reading of the balance of powers. Basically, the case seems to be that if Congress sets up an executive branch agency and then creates sort of general rules and allocations to that agency, that is now untouchable by the executive branch.

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NASA officials said the decision about when and how to get them home was made based on safety and keeping the space station occupied, not politics. They were joined on their return trip by the NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russia's Alexander Gorbunov. So that is a very cool thing.

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And even the people inside the executive branch can't be fired by members of the executive branch, in which case you have now set up an unanswerable fourth branch of government. That branch of government firings and hirings can't be done by Congress. Cuts can be done by Congress. And meanwhile, the president apparently can't either cut or fire

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This, of course, is to maintain the size and scope of the federal government. The entire Trump administration is oriented against it, of course. Meanwhile, President Trump is challenging the legal order by firing two Democratic commissioners at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday.

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A White House official confirmed that Democratic commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter had been fired. The firings drew criticism from Democratic senators. The FTC has a bipartisan structure. No more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party. Both of these fired FTC members plan to sue to reverse the filings.

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The Supreme Court did rule in 1935 upholding a law allowing FTC commissioners to be fired only for good cause like neglecting their duties. So presumably, there will be some sort of case made by the Trump administration that these particular FCC commissioners did in fact neglect their duties, and then he will find some titular Democrats to fill the seats.

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FCC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Republican Commissioner Melissa Holyoak have said that they support the administration's legal position that the White House actually has the power to fire those agency officials. They say that legally speaking, the White House does in fact control government agencies.

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And so it'll be interesting to see whether the Supreme Court takes that up and then overturns that 1935 decision pointing out that the unitary executive is in fact a feature of the American government. Meanwhile, to economic news. So the greatest threat to the presidency is not, in fact, the judiciary. The Supreme Court, as I say, is going to hash out a lot of these questions.

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And I have faith that the Trump administration is not simply going to ignore the Supreme Court. It's one thing to say a district court judge does not have the power to enjoin action at the USAID. or that a district court judge can't magically turn airplanes around that are in international waters. It is another thing to ignore the Supreme Court of the United States wholesale.

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I do not think there's intent inside the Trump administration to do just that. The real threat to the Trump administration is not that. The real threat to the Trump administration, in the end, is the economy. If the economy should go south, the Trump administration will go south with it. This is true for literally every president. It is not unique to President Trump.

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The stock market has been bouncing around a lot lately. On Monday, the stock market jumped significantly. On Tuesday, the stock market dumped significantly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 260 points. Right now, investors are not quite sure what to do. And apparently, neither is the Federal Reserve. There's been a lot of talk about the Federal Reserve lowering those interest rates.

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Apparently, the reentry process is pretty rough because if you spend a lot of time in space, then that creates changes in your body. So it's not going to be there's a ticker ticker tape parade tomorrow or anything. So whenever I don't know something about a topic, the first place I go is to my friends over at Perplexity. This search, by the way, is sponsored by Perplexity.

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The problem is that the inflationary curve has not yet stopped. Stock prices still seem to be too high. The P.E. ratio at the Dow Jones Industrial Average remains significantly above historical averages. It remains at about 25. Normally, you want the P.E. ratios, the price to earnings ratio, to be down in the 16 to 18 range. Now it's unclear what the Federal Reserve is going to do.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, not long ago, it looked like Jerome Powell's final test as Federal Reserve Chair would be to stick the soft landing. Now, with about a year left in his term, he faces a serious complication, navigating a trade war that threatens to push prices up while simultaneously weakening the economy.

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During a seven-year tenure that included President Trump's first trade war, pandemic historic inflation, and high-profile bank failures, says the Wall Street Journal, Powell's final act also unfolds with an imperative to preserve the institution's apolitical DNA that protects its autonomy in setting interest rates. So President Trump is pushing him to lower those interest rates.

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But again, inflation continues to hover in the 2.8% to 3% range. Everybody is sort of holding their breath to see what the Fed does. I think it's very unlikely that the Federal Reserve is going to drop the interest rates. And if inflation were to accelerate, then officials would have to think about the idea of actually increasing those interest rates again.

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a lot of the sanguinity about the economy, sort of satisfaction with the economy, would return if there weren't such high levels of dyspepsia over President Trump's tariff plans, because nobody actually knows what's going to happen on April 2nd. President Trump has said that April 2nd, everything's going to change.

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His Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, has said the same, that a giant set of reciprocal tariffs are going to be put in place. Now some of the details are sort of being spelled out. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump administration officials are roiled in debate over how to implement the president's pledge to equalize U.S. tariffs with those charged by other nations.

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But tomorrow we're going moment by moment through the infamous videos of that fateful day. If you want to be a part of the movement fighting for truth and reason, it's time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. So, a very cool piece of news. Yesterday, after nine months on the International Space Station, 286 days in space, according to the Washington Post.

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Officials have recently weighed whether to simplify the complex task of devising new tariff rates for hundreds of U.S. trading partners by instead sorting nations into one of three tariff tiers. That proposal apparently was later ruled out, adding that the Trump team is still trying to figure out how to implement an individualized rate for every separate nation.

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And Trump has repeatedly said that reciprocal tariffs would mean what they charge us, we charge them. But the problem is that it's not just like the country has one giant tariff rate on the United States. There are different tariff rates on different goods from every single country. So it's not as easy as, oh, Canada just charges a blank at 5% rate. We'll charge them a 5% rate.

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Let's say that they tariff, for example, American lumber, which they do. Well, how do we respond in kind? If we tariff their lumber, that makes no difference to them since, again, they are importing our lumber and we're not importing their lumber, presumably. You have to find some sort of equivalent in the market and then tariff that. It's a very, very complicated procedure.

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I wanted to know what actual physical effects would a year long stint in space have on astronauts. And here is what my friend. Perplexity told me, quote, a year-long stint in space would have significant physical effects on astronauts due to the microgravity environment and other factors associated with space travel. Those effects include musculoskeletal changes like bone density loss.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said on Fox Business on April 2nd, each country will receive a number that we believe represents their tariffs. So for some countries, it will be quite low. For some countries, it will be quite high. And again, there's been talk about these sort of three-tier tariff proposal, which is really a blunt instrument.

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I mean, like there's a big difference between many of the countries that would end up in the same tier. Well, tariffs may be making the market a little bit uncomfortable, but you should be comfortable in your brand new boots. Anywhere worth going is worth going in good boots. Find your perfect pair with Takovas.

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The first time I put my Takovas boots on, it was like they were already broken in, which makes sense because every single pair goes through over 200 meticulous steps of hand crafting. I used to think Western boots were just for cowboys. I am not a cowboy, you may have noticed. But since these folks started in Texas back in 2015, they've been changing that story.

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Whether you're a lifelong rancher or you're just looking for your first pair of Western boots, Takovas makes it feel easy. You can wear them from sunup to sundown. They're built tough enough for long days, but stylish enough for a night out. They really are great on the feet, like really. You think the boots are going to... You're going to put them on. They're going to be awkward.

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They're going to feel... No, they're terrific. No matter your size or style, they've got the perfect boot waiting for you. Plus, with Tecova's Best in the West guarantee, you get free returns and exchanges for 30 days. Pretty hard to beat. Right now, get 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. When you sign up for email and text, that's 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. tecovas.com slash Shapiro.

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See site for details. Tecovas. Point your toes west. Also... Tax season is now upon us, and while we may be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention, like the $16.5 billion in IRS refunds flagged for potential identity fraud last year. Identity theft tax fraud surged by an alarming 20% in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Americans.

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There is some hope in these numbers as well. LifeLock vigilantly monitors 100 million data points every second, creating a shield around your financial identity when it matters most. Their sophisticated systems work tirelessly to protect your personal information.

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Should the worst happen, their dedicated US-based restoration specialists will make it right, backed by their comprehensive million-dollar protection package. They don't just promise help. They guarantee restoration or your money back, no questions asked. One of my producers, Jess, uses LifeLock.

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She's emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing that the experts are monitoring her information for suspicious activity. This tax season and beyond, do not face the growing threat of identity theft alone. Find peace of mind and unmatched security with LifeLock Identity Theft Protection because your financial identity deserves nothing less. Join now, save up to 40% your first year.

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Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code BEN or go to lifelock.com slash BEN for 40% off terms apply. Meanwhile, apparently, Vice President J.D. Vance is taking on a larger role in Trump's trade agenda. He's been helming policy discussions, according to people familiar with the matter.

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There were several lengthy meetings in recent weeks among top Trump aides, including an hours-long meeting at the Naval Observatory, which is, of course, where the vice president lives. The meetings have centered on how to create a comprehensive tariff policy that achieves Trump's goals, but also has some more flexibility.

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You can lose 1 to 1.5% of bone mineral density per month in space. Wow, that is like a lot, actually. Basically like you get osteoporosis. You have muscle atrophy because the muscles weaken and waste away because you're not using them all the time. It can cause fluids to shift upwards, so you'll have a puffy face and some chicken legs. You don't get amazingly great looking in space, actually.

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The reciprocal tariff plan is expected to be introduced April 2nd, along with additional 25% duties on a handful of industries like autos, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals. And again, one of the big questions here is what does the U.S. Trade Representative's office do? They have like 200 people. How do they handle all of this? All of this is a very complicating factor.

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The markets aren't quite sure whether this is going to be a rough Trump proposal where the edges get sanded down or whether it's going to be a blunderbuss that hits everybody. Vice President Vance. did an event yesterday in which he spoke about tariff policy and economic policy more generally. The vice president has sort of a foot in both camps.

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He obviously is a representative of the sort of MAGA protectionist position on some economic proposals. At the same exact time, Vice President Vance has a long history of warmth towards Silicon Valley. And tech bros do in fact rely on a wide variety of free trade and technological advancements. He's trying to square a circle that I'm not sure can be totally squared right here.

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Again, the vice president's a super smart guy, and this attempt is probably as good as an attempt can be. However, you're talking in some cases about mutually exclusive policies. If you're talking about radical increase in tariffs at the same time as you talk about the technological advancements to be made by the United States amid economic advancement, that is a tough road to hoe.

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So here is Vice President Vance standing up for tariffs as a quote-unquote necessary tool.

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Okay, well, I mean, let's be real about this. When he says, combined with the right policy, you end up with the jobs of the future and we bring everything back. Okay, here's what a tariff does. A tariff protects the industry that it is designed to protect and it taxes everybody else. That's what a tariff does. It raises prices for all the other people who are using inputs.

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that are covered by this area. It subsidizes some businesses at the expense of others. Now, if there are national security oriented businesses and we got to protect them because God forbid there's a war, you need to have all of that living in American shores. Totally agree. I've said this a thousand times.

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If the goal of a tariff war is to get everybody else to lower their tariffs so that you end up with a freer trade regime than when you started, that's great too. And again, I'm not sure exactly where the president stands on all this because he obviously is dedicated to a large portion of the sort of free trade agenda when it comes to, for example, freedom of the seas.

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This would be one of the reasons why we are currently bombing the Houthis in Yemen, who've been holding up free trade via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. However, when you say that tariffs, combined with the right technology, create the jobs of the future, I do not see how that is in any way, shape, or form correct.

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He says, when you erect a tariff wall around a critical industry like auto manufacturing, and you combine that with advanced robotics and lower energy costs and other tools that increase the productivity of you as labor, you give American workers a multiplying effect.

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Well, or you could not erect a tariff wall and you could combine the non-tariff wall with advanced robotics and lower energy costs and lower taxes and better tools to draw businesses to America. You could do that without, you know, taxing the American consumer, actually.

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I mean, one of the great sort of fibs that's been told about free trade is that free trade is the largest reason for the decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States. That is not real. It is not true. In fact, the reality is that increases in productivity via technology have been the largest contributor to job loss in the manufacturing industries in the United States.

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Apparently, you have significant arterial stiffness, like a 17 to 30% increase in arterial stiffness. You can also have eye structure changes, vision problems. You will get taller, so maybe I should try it. You know, I've been ripped a lot about my height, so, oh, worthwhile. I don't know, I'll have to talk to my wife. And space anemia, decreased production of red blood cells occurs in space.

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So when Vice President Vance yesterday suggested that globalization and its hunger for cheap labor, that's somehow preventing innovation.

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Well, I mean, to be fair, globalization is also the process whereby people trade good services and information so as to create significantly more sophisticated products, which is why the stuff that you have now is way, way, way better in quality and price than the stuff you had in, say, 1990.

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Okay, but the American car industry became the envy of the world before, before the imposition of, for example, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. In fact, large-scale tariffs, protectionism and subsidization of the American auto industry in the 1950s and 1960s meant that Toyota ended up out-competing the hell out of the American auto industries by the 1970s.

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There's this kind of – I understand what he's trying to do. He's trying to square a couple of different policies. One is a very robust tariff regime that President Trump seems entranced with, and the other is technological innovation. But if that were true, that tariff policy made for better innovation at home by artificially boosting the price of labor –

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and thus driving innovation to actually, what, make labor more productive and then lead to the ability to fire some of the laborers? That is a bit of a different argument, and I'm not sure it's an argument that really holds a lot of water, economically speaking. If that were the case, then we should put our tariffs at 100% everywhere, and boy, howdy, would we be innovating like nobody's business.

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Innovation is not merely a process of create pressure and wait for innovation. Innovation is a process of the free flow of information, the free flow of goods and services. That is how innovation happens. Innovation isn't some guy in a shower thinking up the flux capacitor. That's not how it works.

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And if the Trump administration continues down the sort of subsidization and tariff line as opposed to the deregulatory and tax cut line, then I think that they are in for some hurt on the economic front. That's not really a theory. That is proved out pretty strongly by past market indicators.

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And again, this is coming from a place of I want President Trump to succeed wildly on the economy because if he does not, then the agenda that I hold dear and that he holds dear are going to be an awful lot of trouble. Meanwhile, the president of the United States had for a long time promised that there would be additional documents coming in the JFK assassination. I know it happened in 1963.

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Here's the president a couple of days ago announcing that the documents were coming.

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So it requires extensive rehabilitation. In other words, just for these astronauts to sort of re-enter the Earth's gravitational pull and then be made healthy once more. But good for Elon Musk, good for SpaceX, and it's good to have these astronauts home. Meanwhile, the other big news of the day is that President Trump had his long-awaited two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin of Russia.

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So 80,000 or so pages of the JFK files were in fact released. It was all put together in something like 1,123 PDF documents. So people are combing through these in search of the detail, the smoking gun that shows that it was the Cubans or the Russians or the CIA or the Israelis or something. I'm just going to break it to you right now. It was Lee Harvey Oswald.

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Spoiler alert, it was Lee Harvey Oswald. It was always Lee Harvey Oswald. The most credible theory about Lee Harvey Oswald is that he was some sort of Soviet agent considering that he literally went to the Soviet Union and then he came back from the Soviet Union and he was at the Cuban embassy. Other than that, you know, not much is my expectation.

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There are going to be some pages here of people who showed up to law enforcement and then made statements about things that they thought had happened, people that they knew, which does not constitute any real sort of evidence. There's tons of documentation on this. Again, 99% of all JFK files had already been released.

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You're talking about literally millions of pages of documents that have been released before. These documents are not categorized or presented in any real organized way. It's possible some of them are not really new. David Garrow, who's a historian who's written a lot about intelligence agencies, he said this dump is profoundly more impenetrable than all the previous more annotated ones.

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Tim Naftali is a historian. He said he hadn't had much luck so far. He told the New York Times, I'm trying to find stuff that's been re-reviewed and re-released with new information because some of it's unredacted. Some documents have, some have not. Historians said that they really didn't expect anything earth-shattering. So, you know, it'll take some time to go through it.

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Every legit historian who has gone through the JFK files has come to the same conclusion, which is Lee Harvey Oswald did it. That is what the physics demonstrates. That is what the wounds show. That is what the tape shows. All the conspiracy theorizing around JFK, while entertaining... is, in my opinion, specious and not just specious, in some case, maliciously oriented.

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If you want to see a fuller breakdown of that, we have a series behind the paywall over at Daily Wire Plus called Debunked, in which I did a full episode about the JFK assassination, going through some of the most common accusations about the JFK assassination. In any case, I'm for more transparency. So I'm very happy that Trump did this.

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I think he should do exactly the same thing on the RFK assassination. I think he should do exactly the same thing on the MLK assassination. Let all of it come to light. I think the more that the public sees, the better. Now, is it going to shut up the conspiracy theorists? Of course not. Because then the answer will be, well, of course the government didn't take account of any of these files.

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I mean, it was the government that did it. Or there's probably a secret box of documents somewhere. A sort of conspiracy theorizing that's become incredibly popular on the right these days. It was popular on the left, and now it's become increasingly popular on the right. The kind of, let's just ask questions. Who really killed JFK? Wink, wink, nod, nod.

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And then you're like, well, do you have any evidence of the thing that you are presupposing? Well, no, I'm not. I'm not making any accusations. I just know I don't believe the story that I'm being told. I know not to trust the authorities. Well, that's fine. But do you have like any evidence, like evidence, not just supposition as well? You're part of it, aren't you? You, you, you. Yes, you.

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And the account from President Trump and the account from Putin, they don't quite match up. There's some good things that happened on this call. We can be hopeful that this is the first step toward a longer-lasting ceasefire. Let's just say that Putin is being extremely cagey about these negotiations and the United States really needs to take that under advisement.

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You're part of it. The reason that you're that you're so defensive about all this is I care to kill JFK. I mean, I do because it's really interesting. But I noticed that the calendar says 2025, and he was killed in 1963. And so my opinion about who killed JFK has about as much relevance as who killed William McKinley or James Garfield, which is to say not an enormous amount.

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It's not going to change the world in any real way, barring the revelation that many of those same people are still in the government today. But I don't expect that any of that is going to be in there. I would be, shall we say, rather shocked if that were the case. But it's not going to put conspiracies to bed because conspiracies have a life of their own.

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Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to just flail around. They have no idea what to do with President Trump. It is amazing to watch them flail. It truly is. Chuck Schumer, this is an amazing term of offense. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, who is quite awful, he wrote a book about anti-Semitism. As a Jew, and I don't do an as a Jew all that much actually, but as a Jew, no.

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The answer is no, Chuck Schumer. You do not get to speak as a Jew about how you're fighting anti-Semitism while you greenlit the Iran nuclear deal, made room for every anti-Israel, anti-Semitic person in your party, refused to condemn the worst excesses of your own party, The answer is no, absolutely not. Hey, so he actually had to cancel his book tour.

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Hilariously enough, he did not cancel his book tour because he really shouldn't be speaking about anti-Semitism.

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Ridiculously, the reason he had to cancel his book tour is because so many Democrats are ticked off at him over greenlighting the continuing resolution, which shows you where the violence is on the American spectrum these days when even the Senate minority leader can't face his own constituents in New York, afraid that they'll yell at him.

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According to Politico, he's postponing that book tour for security reasons as he faces intense backlash from the party base in the wake of last week's government funding vote. Again, that's pretty incredible. Right-wingers who are canceling events these days, Republican Congress people, they are doing so because of the violent left.

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And when Chuck Schumer cancels an event, it's because of, wait for it, the violent left. I wonder who's violent. I was told only the right was violent. The right has a violence problem. Schumer was expected to make several stops in coming days to promote his new book, Anti-Semitism in America, How I Did It. No, sorry, it's called Anti-Semitism in America, A Warning.

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Due to security concerns, Senator Schumer's book events are now being rescheduled, according to a spokesperson for Schumer. That didn't stop Schumer from appearing on The View. Now, again, I have to admit, I am jealous of Chuck Schumer for appearing on The View. It has been a lifelong... I don't have... I have a wonderful life.

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I've gotten so many things I want out of life, and I hope to get many more. And it's a great life. One of my unfulfilled aspirations as a human is to be on The View. I just... It would make some of the best TV ever. It would just be wonderful TV. I mean... kind of intellectually clubbing a baby seal, but amazing TV. Chuck Schumer was invited, not because he's a woman.

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So President Trump put out the following statement after the two-hour phone call, quote, my phone conversation with President Putin of Russia was a very good and productive one. We agreed to an immediate ceasefire on all energy and infrastructure with an understanding.

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I mean, I don't know the answer to that. Only he can identify, but he was invited to talk about all of this, where he then explained why he had not signed on to the filibuster of the continuing resolution.

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OK, so that's actually not a horrible explanation of why he voted in favor of the continuing resolution. If the government had shut down, Trump would have the ability to decide who the essential workers were and then fire a bunch of people. So that's actually a pretty good explanation. However, Sonny Hostin was having none of it. She ripped into Schumer.

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She's really mad because if Trump says black, you have to say white. If Trump says day, you say night. That's how it works.

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They'll be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and ultimately an end to this very horrible war between Russia and Ukraine. This war would never have started if I were president. Many elements of a contract for peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed and both President Putin and President Zelensky would like to see it end.

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to gut social security to gut medicare to gut medicaid why did you lead democratic senators to play by that book that the republicans are not playing by um all right so that's the battle inside the democratic party it's going great if you thought that chuck schumer however was the reasonable side of the democratic party i beg to differ here he was explaining that americans are stupid he was mocking americans who want to keep their money

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Oh, man. I mean, the fists of uniting. Wow. Go, go, Power Rangers. But let me just put out there that that's actually my viewpoint. We, not I, we, our team, built this entire company. The government did not help us. The government provided the basic law and order necessary to the preservation of private property in the United States and the protection of free speech. Those were the things.

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That's all the things. We built it, not Chuck Schumer. He is not entitled to our money. Chuck Schumer is not entitled to the money that I've earned on behalf of my family. He is not entitled, and I don't think many Americans believe that Chuck Schumer is entitled to that money or that he's likely to use it in good ways. So again, the Democrats, they cannot help themselves.

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Even the divide inside Chuck Schumer is pretty amusing. Meanwhile, the 2028 race is getting significantly more amusing on the Democratic side of the aisle, I do have to say. So Gavin Newsom is trying a sort of late turn in time to become a moderate. It's really funny. So he has his new podcast, and he had on my friend Charlie Kirk, and Charlie really kind of ripped him up.

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And then he had on Steve Bannon. And He played footsie with Bannon, and this caused him to be ripped up and down by the inflatable off the side of the freeway to use car lot, Tim Walls. You remember him. He ran for vice president that one time. He was real weird.

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Here was Tim Walls with Gavin Newsom, praising Steve Bannon as a person who he can talk with and who really reflects a lot of Democratic principles.

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That process is now in full force and effect and we will hopefully, for the sake of humanity, get the job done. Now, you will notice, first of all, that this is not a full ceasefire agreement by the Russians. So the Ukrainians have already said, President Zelensky has already said, that they are willing to engage in a full 30-day complete ceasefire.

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Oh, man, I'm up for these fights between Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz. Walz, by the way, is now walking around saying that he can kick Trump supporters asses, which... Which ones? Can we name them? Like, really? Like, you, sir? Okay.

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These are the 2028 candidates, guys. They're doing great. They're just doing amazing. Alrighty, coming up, we'll jump into President Trump now investigating the Joe Biden auto pen. First, you have to become a member. And we have tons of great stuff when you become a member. You haven't seen Pendragon yet. I've seen parts of Pendragon. It looks amazing. Really, truly amazing.

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We have things like Matt Walsh's movies, Am I Racist? What is a Woman? We have all access live. You can come hang out with us. The only way you get to do all this stuff is to join Daily Wire. Plus, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Not on energy, not on infrastructure, completely. Remember, energy and infrastructure, that's the sort of stuff that is generally civilian-oriented in places like Ukraine. However, what Putin does not want to do, apparently, is stop attacking the actual military of Ukraine, and he refuses to do so. Ukraine is saying, listen, we'll go weapons down right now. We will stop this moment.

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And Putin is saying, no, I don't think so. We're just going to keep pushing. That shows that he believes that he has the military momentum. He wants to keep killing as many Ukrainian soldiers as humanly possible. Meanwhile, there is a story that emerged originally from Russian sources and now has been picked up by the U.S. Sun.

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that President Putin kept Trump waiting for today's phone call and did not leave until one hour after the chat was actually set to begin. And apparently he even laughed off a warning that he was getting late for his phone call with the American president. The host of the event, a guy named Alexander Shokin, was actually looking at his watch, like openly on tape. And Putin laughed it off.

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So that is, in fact, a sign of disrespect to the United States and should be taken as such. If Zelensky was disrespectful in the Oval Office, which he was, then Vladimir Putin, being an hour late to talk to the most powerful person on planet Earth, is also a sign of disrespect. Putin has made this one of his tactics, it's sort of his negotiating tactic, is to keep world leaders waiting.

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The conference took place right before the high stakes call was scheduled with Trump between 4 and 6 p.m. Russian time. As the clock ticked past four, Putin's pal and the host of the event, Shokin, looked at his watch saying the call was scheduled for before 6 p.m. And Putin said, don't listen to him, that's his job. To which Shokin replied, now we need to see what Trump says about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then Putin said that he was referring to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Eventually, he arrived about 5 p.m. According to a variety of different reports, the Russian takeaway from the call was not the same as the American takeaway from the call.

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According to the White House readout, quote, the leaders agreed the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace. So there will be no full ceasefire until technical negotiations, which means that Putin can keep pushing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East, presumably Saudi Arabia. The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has actually been achieved. Now, again, I think that the takeaway from this

The Ben Shapiro Show

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the Russian side is not quite the same as the takeaway from the American side. And the reason that you can tell this is because while President Trump mentioned Russian commitment to an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, Moscow did not quite say the same thing.

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Instead, Moscow apparently was taking the opinion that the ceasefire would begin with energy and transportation and infrastructure when it began, because minutes after the announcement of all of this, There was, in fact, a Russian guided bomb that took out the power in the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk. Fox News has added that Kiev is already under drone attack.

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The NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Butch Wilmore splashed down in their SpaceX Dragon capsule off the coast of Florida just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday. So originally, that flight on the Boeing Starliner was supposed to last eight days, and they ended up up there for 286 days. Which has to suck, to be honest with you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is unclear if Russia violated the energy infrastructure ceasefire or the energy and infrastructure ceasefire, because maybe they're just attacking infrastructure as opposed to energy infrastructure. Whatever the case, it is clear that at this point, the Ukrainians are far more willing to come to the table than Vladimir Putin is. And the distinction between what the U.S.

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said and what the Russians said is that the U.S. said that the Russians had committed to an energy and infrastructure ceasefire. But the Kremlin talked of only energy infrastructure. In other words, they won't attack power stations, but they'll still attack roads. They will still attack freeways. They will still attack trains and all the rest of it. So Russia seems to be playing around.

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The one thing that they said they would not do was, again, agree to a full ceasefire because they feel like they have the momentum at this point. Apparently, Trump was, in fact, able to secure one element of the ceasefire proposal. The Kremlin announced that Russia and Ukraine would release 175 of each other's prisoners of war.

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And apparently Moscow would also free 23 seriously wounded Ukrainian servicemen to receive treatment in their home country. The Kremlin specified, again, that energy infrastructure would not be attacked, but then apparently they hit infrastructure within an hour, basically.

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The Ukrainian member of parliament, Inosov, said in post-attacks, Putin backed Trump's 30-day pause on energy strikes and then broke his word in less than an hour. So the president of the United States should hold Russia to its word. If they want to get to stage two of a ceasefire, then they need to stop attacking energy infrastructure.

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And we need to know what their conditions are for actually getting to a stage two, whatever the next step is. Because the conditions so far that Putin has actually articulated for a full-scale ceasefire or an armistice agreement are totally unpalatable. That's just the reality.

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Vladimir Putin, for example, is demanding that literally all Western arms supplies to Ukraine be halted for him to conclude a ceasefire agreement. That is not going to happen. That would be nuts for Ukraine to simply agree that they will receive no more weaponry from the outside in exchange for what a promise that maybe Russia will come to the table into a ceasefire would be totally insane.

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According to Bloomberg. Russia wants to stop all arms supplies to Ukraine. Its minimum goal is to cut off American aid. So Putin is hoping that these sort of baby steps are going to lead the United States to cut off the Ukrainian aid again. Again, that would be a mistake.

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The United States needs to ratchet up the pressure to get Putin to the table because he clearly is not taking this seriously enough. Unnamed European officials say it's unlikely Europe would agree to Russia's demand that allies block arms supplies to Ukraine during any truce. Because, obviously, Ukraine would then be left naked, and Russia would just rearm with help from the Chinese.

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So that is the current status. Obviously, Vladimir Putin believes that he has the upper hand in negotiations. It is up to the allies to demonstrate to Vladimir Putin that he does not, in fact, have the upper hand in the negotiations, and he needs to start making concessions. The Ukrainians are willing to come to the table. That's made very clear.

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Imagine that you're going to space and you tell your family that you're going to see them in a little over a week. And almost a year later, you're still up there. Now, depending on your family situation, maybe that's an unpaid vacation. But whatever it is, it's not great. And the failures of the Biden administration to work with Elon to actually get those people down is pretty astonishing.

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Now it's time for Vladimir Putin to do the same, if, in fact... He is telling President Trump the truth and would like to see an end to this war. Listen, there's a lot of uncertainty out there. Smart investors prepare ahead of time for that uncertainty, just like keeping a life jacket handy before you set sail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's why a lot of people are adding gold to their portfolios, leading to record gold prices in early 2025. Now there's still a great opportunity for you to diversify and strengthen your financial future amid the market volatility. When it comes to diversifying into physical gold, I personally trust Birch Gold. They're the people I turn to for my own gold investments.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Their specialty is helping you convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA backed by physical gold without any out-of-pocket costs. One five-star view says it perfectly. Knowledgeable, helpful, non-pressure. Well, those are the reasons why I've stood behind Birch Gold for years. They deliver what they promise.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And I tell you that when you call them up, you should actually ask all of your questions. Get informed answers. And then once you feel comfortable, then think about diversifying into precious metals. Get your free info kit on gold by texting the word BEN to the number 989898. There's no obligation, just useful information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and countless five-star reviews, text BEN to 989898. Let the experts at Birch Gold help you secure your future today with gold in uncertain times, precious metals. Always a good investment. Go check them out right now. Text Ben to 989898. Also, the IRS, they're getting ready to ramp up their enforcement efforts in 2025.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With April 15th approaching, time is now running out. If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds the problem. Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone can be a costly mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart? Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels. This means they know exactly which agents can help resolve your case effectively.

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Whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million bucks, their team of attorneys and negotiators brings proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably. With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is running into some headwinds with regard to the judiciary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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An enormous amount of what's happening with the judiciary will in fact be solved by the Supreme Court. It will be taken up eventually. Chief Justice Roberts felt the necessity to sort of wrap President Trump on the knuckles on Tuesday.

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The reason being President Trump demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who's been hearing a challenge to the removal of Trenda Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Now, I'm not sure why it's necessary for Chief Justice Roberts to sign into chat here and talk about this. President Trump says a lot of things.

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But he did put out a statement, quote, for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. Well, it was never going to happen. So I'm not sure precisely what the point of that is. And why is Roberts doing that?

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It really is. Because we are now... a couple months into the Trump administration, and Musk is sending SpaceX, the much maligned Elon Musk is sending SpaceX to, you know, rescue astronauts where they are stranded in space, which also probably is the beginning of an amazing rom-com that'll come out in a year or two.

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Obviously, I don't think that President Trump should be calling for the impeachment of judges based on decisions not going his way. That's why the appellate procedure exists. With that said, why is Roberts signing in here? Presumably to earn some sort of public credibility with a left that has already learned to despise Chief Justice John Roberts.

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Tuesday's statement was not the first time that Roberts had scolded politicians for disparaging the judiciary. Roberts did this back in 2018 after Trump attacked an Obama judge for ruling against him in an immigration case. And Roberts said, then we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.

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What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal rights to those appearing before them. which, of course, is very silly. Of course, you have Obama judges and Bush judges and Trump judges and Clinton judges. It's a fairly decent litmus test for precisely how they're going to view the Constitution of the United States. Trump was right at the time.

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He said, quote, sorry, Chief Justice Roberts, you do indeed have Obama judges. They have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. So again, Roberts is an institutionalist. He believes that somehow he's shoring up the credibility of the institution by sort of wrapping Trump over the knuckles on this sort of stuff.

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Instead, all he's doing is annoying everybody on the right who understands that Trump says a lot of things and know that he is not going to attempt to impeach these judges. Meanwhile, the DOJ continues to be at war with this particular judge, Judge Boasberg, who is in fact an Obama appointee.

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The Trump administration on Tuesday defended its deportation of those Tren del Agua members, saying that two of the three flights that supposedly had been held up by the judge had already left before the judge ordered them not to. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg initially ordered those flights to return to the United States.

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The administration argued that the planes were already in international waters and the ruling no longer applied. Robert Cerna, an acting field office director, according to Axios within ICE, said in a court filing, two of those three planes carrying migrants had departed for El Salvador before 7.25 p.m. Eastern time when the judge issued the order.

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A third plane departed after that, but its passengers were not removed solely based on Trump's executive order, Cerna said. A separate filing says the government maintains there is no justification to order the provision of additional information and that doing so would be inappropriate because even accepting plaintiff's accounts of the facts, there's no violation of the court's written order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So as of Tuesday, there are still 54 alleged Tren de Aragua gang members in detention. About 172 are on the non-detained docket. So that is going to be battled out in the courts. Meanwhile, another district court judge has now decided to basically enjoin the enforcement of the Trump cuts to USAID.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Folks, tons of news to get to today. We're gonna get to the Trump-Elon interview on Sean Hannity's show. We're also going to be talking about negotiations over Ukraine, which are getting quite fraught. And of course, Hamas has now announced that the Bibas family is dead, which many people had suspected, but is going to be a sort of earth-shattering piece of news over in Israel.

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This was suggested by the Azoria CEO and co-founder James Fishback, who said, we wanted to help make Doge real for millions of Americans. They deserve a portion of the savings Doge will deliver under President Trump's leadership. And again, smart politics. Now, the opposing side, people who don't like these sorts of cuts, they're looking for any point of opposition.

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So they have tried, as we have seen over the past few weeks, to blame, for example, air crashes on cuts to the FAA or Doge going into the FAA. They've yet to actually make that connection. See, here's the thing. There are certain areas where Americans have direct interface with the federal government.

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Those areas usually come in the form of direct payments like Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid. Those are the ways that people tend to interface with the federal government. Otherwise, in your daily life, you're really not interfacing with the federal government. If you're interfacing with the government, it's usually the local government, right?

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I remember after 2001, a whole new security boom happened in which people, particularly suburban moms who had traditionally voted Democrat, suddenly were voting Republican. And then COVID apparently shoved a bunch of young people to the right. Wokeness shoved a bunch of young people to the right.

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You're interfacing with the cops or maybe the post office, but you don't really go to the post office all that often anymore. So you just don't have that many sort of moments where you interface with the federal government and then are annoyed by a cut to the federal government. Because the reality is the vast majority of stuff that the federal government does is done indirectly.

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So, for example, if you're looking at the Department of Education, they're subsidizing loans that go through a whole series of machinations and then ends up with the universities in the form of paid off grants or in the form of indirect payments or all the rest. The sort of direct interface that you have on a daily basis with the feds is usually relatively limited.

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So given that fact, Democrats, if they're looking for kind of stories to focus in on, things they can say that are getting broken by the move fast and break things philosophy of the Trump administration. They have to focus in on parks and museums and that sort of thing. Because again, those are the only place where you might actually drive up and be told no by somebody who's a federal employee.

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You just don't have that many opportunities in your normal life. That is why there's been outsized focus over the course of the last 48 hours on the supposed shutdown of the national parks. So according to the Associated Press,

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The Trump administration has fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors, and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government.

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The firings, which weren't publicly announced, but were confirmed by Democratic senators and House members, come amid what has been a chaotic rollout of an aggressive program to eliminate thousands of federal jobs.

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Adding to the confusion, the Park Service now says it is reinstating about 5,000 seasonal jobs that were initially rescinded last month as part of a spending freeze ordered by President Trump. So, just to be clear... They are getting rid of 1,000 new employees who were just hired like a moment ago, but they are reinstating 5,000 seasonal employees.

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So you really should not have a staffing shortage at the national parks just on the basis of those numbers. Seasonal workers are routinely added during warm weather months to serve more than 325 million visitors who descend on the nation's 428 parks, historic sites, and other attractions every year.

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Parks advocates say that the permanent staff cuts will leave hundreds of national parks understaffed and facing tough decisions about operating hours, public safety, and resource protection. Okay, now, the sort of idea that the national parks are somehow going to be unworkable if they have a couple fewer employees, like 1,000 employees.

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You're talking about, on average, by the way, they just said 428. 428 national parks and areas under the governance of this particular agency. 1,000 employees cut. That's two. like two employees per national park. If you're just going to average it out,

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That is a good reminder to everyone in politics that while you think that the pendulum will never shift back over to the other side, it absolutely will. And so two things ought to be taken from that. One, you ought to be very careful in how you use your political power. That doesn't mean you shouldn't move fast and break things.

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So supposedly this is going to mean that trash will pile up and restrooms won't be cleaned and maintenance problems will grow and guided tours will be cut back or canceled. And they say public safety will be at risk. No, I'm sorry. No. So first of all, they do this every time there's a government shutdown. So there have been several government shutdowns over the course of the last decade.

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And every single time there is some dumb ass story about how you can't visit the World War Two Memorial because it's been shut down. Barack Obama famously would do this. Every time there was a government shutdown, he would put out a bunch of pylons around the World War II Memorial and say, you can't walk here because of the federal government shutdown. I'd be like, well, why can't I walk there?

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It's literally just statuary. Why can't I just walk through this area where there are statues? If I go visit the Vietnam War Memorial, which is a giant wall, why exactly do I need federal employees there? Why can't I just walk over there? What exactly is the problem?

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And by the way, if you are a regular visitor to national parks, and I've gone to several national parks with my kids and with my wife, when you go to a national park, the interface that you have with the employees at the national park, unless you're taking a guided tour, is typically you paying for parking at the opening. Producer Zach goes to the national parks.

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He says once every couple of months. And so I'm now going to ask producer Zach to tell me in my ear, how often do you interface with federal employees at the national parks? Or is it mostly like you arrive and then you have to pay for parking and maybe, maybe they have like a gift shop and then you basically just go explore the park on your own.

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It's the people who take the parking money. It's the people who take the parking money. So first of all, you can cut all those people by just having an automatic parking meter like every other parking lot in America, which has had an automatic parking meter since 1972. You don't actually need, I mean, like, I like those people. They're nice people.

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But you don't actually need those people standing there and telling you it's five bucks to enter the national park, to go to the Everglades or something.

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So this idea that you're talking about like a wildly staffed, like deeply staffed agency at the national parks and you must shut down the entire, you have to shut down hundreds of acres because you don't have the dude who's taking the parking ticket at the front. That's an absurdity. That is ridiculous. So what is this really? It's a mockery. It's just acting. It's just performative.

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It's, oh my God, we're going to shut down the one place you interface with the federal government in order to show you the cuts to the federal government can impact even you. In reality, could we run the national parks unless then we are currently running the national parks? I am sure that we could. Is it possible that all those people will be hired back or some of them will be hired back?

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I'm sure they will. But again, this is the sort of thing that happens every time. Every time there is any level of funding gap in the government, from a government shutdown to what Doge is doing, the left immediately claims millions will die. They're like, okay, how? Like, well, the FAA, like, no, that's not gonna do it. Well, probably, probably you won't be able to go to a national park.

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It means that you should be very careful that you don't set into motion a tripwire that is going to blow you up. And number two, it means that you actually do have to move with alacrity while I got to power because the left always does and the right rarely does. This is one of the differences between MAGA and prior conservative Republican movements.

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Well, why not? Why can't I just go to that national? Like it's trees. The trees have been there for literally billions of years at this point. Why should I not be able to walk through the trees? I don't even use a guide. Like why? Well, but you can't. You can't because there will be a fire probably. Will there be a fire probably? Will there be? And if so, won't they just hire back the fire?

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Like aren't the firefighters the first people that are going to get hired back after these cuts? The reason that you're seeing the outsides hysteria is because it is performative hysteria. Clearly performative hysteria. Well, people are going hysterical over the national parks. You know, they're worried about whether they can take their family to a national park. But here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you're worried about your family, worry less about the national parks. Worry more about death. Because securing your family's future is of the utmost importance in today's world. As someone who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you, having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's about giving your family options if the unexpected should occur. That's why I want to tell you about PolicyGenius. They're not an insurance company themselves. They are the country's leading online insurance marketplace. They let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side, completely free, absolutely no hidden fees.

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Their platform uses real licensed insurance experts who work for you, not the insurance companies. Thank you so much for joining us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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policy genius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today head on over to policygenius.com slash shapiro or click the link in the description get your free life insurance quote see how much you could save that's policygenius.com slash shapiro also when it comes to our business efficiency is like the most important thing we can do because you only have so much time and so many dollars in the bank account and on the clock and what that means is that can you afford to waste the time or the money

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When we launched Daily Wire, we knew the frustration of getting trapped in endless busy work and chasing down receipts, wrestling with those expense reports. As a business owner, if you feel like your finance software is not cutting it, you need to know about RAMP. It's really important. It's something that can completely transform how you and your business handle finances. So here's the reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Most finance teams spend about 80% of their time doing that busy work, chasing down expenses, reconciling statements. Only 20% is left for strategic thinking, which is the stuff that actually saves you time and money and fixes your business. Thank you so much for watching. which is why they were just named number one in spend management by G2.

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Prior Republican movements have taken that first bit of advice, move cautiously, don't break too many things, but they've neglected that if you don't break enough things, There's sort of a perfect mid point here that if you don't actually move fast enough and break enough things, well, then you don't get enough done. And the left comes back in.

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Now, for a limited time, listeners of this show can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro. That's ramp.com slash Shapiro, R-A-M-P dot com slash Shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Again, the goal of the Trump administration is not to create bad headlines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That means that when it comes to things like the firefighters, I guarantee you within two days, there'll be a rehiring of many of these firefighters. Because President Trump doesn't want the bad headlines on that sort of stuff. But the people who are like, oh my God, I can't visit Yellowstone anymore. They're only shutting down Yellowstone in order to make you say that.

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You want to talk about actual deep state and media intervention. That's what this is. I promise you they can open Yellowstone without the guy who's the ticket taker at the front. I promise you it's fine. And they're doing this with like everything. They're doing this with the FAA, preemptive panic over everything.

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So the Washington Post has a piece today, quote, a team from billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company will help envision ways to overhaul the nation's aging air traffic control systems, beginning with a visit to the Federal Aviation Administration's command center on Monday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. SpaceX rocket launches are regulated by the FAA.

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The agency has alleged the company violated safety rules in the past. Oh, you see. So now the bad guys are taking over the FAA. You see, SpaceX is bad because it's regulated by the FAA. Probably this is regulatory capture. Probably SpaceX is just going to randomly blow crap up on the tarmac, you know, because they can.

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Does anyone truly believe that it is worse for SpaceX, one of the most technologically sophisticated companies on planet Earth, to have its employees taking a look at the FAA, which is using computers that are like Apple computers from 1997? Ridiculous. By the way, The FAA has not laid off massive numbers of workers. It has laid off roughly 400 probationary employees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That represents a small fraction of the agency's workforce of almost 47,000. Frontline workers like air traffic controllers and radar technicians are spared. So they're all preemptively freaking out about cuts to the FAA that don't actually exist. This is why, again, what Trump and Musk are doing here is deeply, deeply important.

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And it is extending, by the way, over to the contracting rules for federal contracting. So one of the things that the Biden administration did is they said, if you wish to have a company that gets a grant from the federal government or does business with the federal government, you have to abide by DEI. The White House is now killing that. According to the Wall Street Journal,

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And when they get in power, they move fast and they break things. Barack Obama was not shy about using his power in 2009, 2010 in order to shove forward Obamacare and a vast expansion of the federal government. President Trump is doing precisely the opposite. So yesterday, President Trump set about issuing a number of new executive orders. Some of them are incredibly consequential.

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The Trump administration is directing federal agencies to no longer consider a company's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices when deciding whether to procure its goods or services, according to an announcement from the General Services Administration.

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But begin today with a fascinating realization by Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic, talking about the radical shift that has happened with young people in the United States as far as their voting patterns. What he finds is that COVID and BLM basically shoved an entire generation of people to the right. Quote, for decades, America's young voters have been deeply and famously progressive.

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That new policy reverses a Biden administration initiative that asked the government to weigh a company's internal DEI practices as one of many factors when considering whether to purchase that company's products or services.

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The GSA is also ending federal efforts to get rid of plastic straws in favor of the worst thing ever invented, paper straws which do not work, turn into pulp, and make your drink taste like trash. And all of this is going to be popular stuff.

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So the Trump administration thus far is finding that balance between being careful enough not to, for example, mass fire all the FAA employees and also moving fast enough to actually break many of the things that need to be broken. Now, the other big story of the day from the Trump administration is the ongoing negotiations over the end of the Ukraine war.

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And there are some slightly different messages that are emerging from Trump world over these negotiations. On the one hand, you have people like, for example, the special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who's now arrived in Kiev, who says, quote, we understand the need for security guarantees.

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We're very clear about the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the defense of this nation as well. which, of course, is a very pro-Ukraine message. And then there's some of the messaging that's being put out by President Trump himself. So according to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. and Russia agreed to appoint teams to negotiate a settlement of the war in Ukraine.

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Mike Walz, the national security advisor, he says, we are now talking to the Russians. We are also talking to the Ukrainians. Here he was yesterday. It's common sense.

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Mike Walz added that the goal here is to just get to the end of this war, like continue death and destruction. That's not in the interest of the United States or anybody else.

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Okay, that of course is true. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was there as well. So was the special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Here was Rubio explaining that, you know, the Europeans are complaining about not being part of the negotiations. Guys, you could have involved yourselves at any point over the last four years.

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As we discussed yesterday on the show, one of the goals of the Trump administration in this negotiation is to get the Europeans to actually involve themselves in the process. He wants the Europeans in. He wants the Europeans to pay more. He wants the Europeans to take care of peacekeeping. In fact, President Trump did a presser yesterday and he said this.

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One of them is just a reinstatement of his stated purpose, which is to create more governmental transparency. He put about an executive order titled Radical Transparency About Wasteful Spending, quote, the United States government spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.

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He said, listen, you want European peacekeepers there? Sounds great. You know, pony up. In other words, you want to be part of this negotiation. Anytime you want to put some skin in the game, guys, we're willing to hear it.

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Okay, so again, all this is part and parcel of a solid negotiation. And then there is the sort of public facing side of the negotiation. And here is where things get a little bit complicated. So yesterday, President Trump, in this particular press conference, went extraordinarily hard on Ukraine, much less hard on Russia.

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Now, you can make the case that pragmatically, what he is attempting to do is sort of wheedle Vladimir Putin into coming to the table. That basically what he's saying to Vladimir Putin is, listen, I'm not taking an antagonistic position toward you. I share some of your concerns. Let's just get to the end of this thing. That is a positive read.

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The negative read is that President Trump is getting some of this stuff wrong. And that includes some of the demands that he is now making on Ukraine, which are harsher than the demands that he is currently making on Russia. Now, again, from a pragmatic point of view, perhaps the idea here is that it's harder to bring Russia to the table than it is to bring Ukraine to the table after all.

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The United States has the ability to cudgel Ukraine. The United States is giving billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in aid. The United States has power over enormous swaths of the European continent. And it's hard to get Russia to come to the table, and so you have to make more – maybe that's the pragmatic concern here.

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However, negotiating from a position of weakness with regard to Putin is likely to result in a worse deal in the end, unless you think that basically the terms of the deal are already set and we're all just dancing to the tune until the clock runs out, essentially, at which point everybody knows what happens.

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There are security guarantees to Ukraine, including money flying to Ukraine, European peacekeepers in the region, Russia keeping Donbass and Crimea safe. And so here's President Trump saying some stuff about Ukraine. Again, I have some moral objections to the stuff that he is saying about Ukraine here, because I don't think that it is true.

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So for example, at one point during this press conference, he made the signally false statement that Ukraine started the war. This is not true. Ukraine absolutely did not start the war. You can argue with Ukrainian policy toward both Europe and Russia over the period 2013 to 2022, but Russia invaded a sovereign country

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For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest. The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest.

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tried to take Kyiv and has killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. Here's President Trump suggesting sort of the opposite, that somehow Ukraine is the problem here.

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So President Trump there saying Ukraine never should have started it. Ukraine did not, in fact, start it. You can blame them for not coming to the table sooner. You can say that a deal should have been taken sooner. I've said that myself. But Ukraine absolutely did not start the war and Russia should have stopped this war at any point.

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President Trump then continued by suggesting that he wants elections in Ukraine. This has been in demand of the Russians, mainly because the Russians wish to intervene in that election. It turns out it's very difficult to hold an election in wartime conditions where literally hundreds of thousands of fighting age men are still on the front lines in Ukraine.

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That is a situation rife for election manipulation by the Russians, who of course are bordering on Ukraine and many agents inside Ukraine as well.

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It is also noteworthy here that if you're going to call for new elections, perhaps Russia at some point should hold, you know, an actual decent election in which Vladimir Putin does not win 98% of the vote while throwing his opponents off third-story buildings. Here's President Trump.

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The American people have a right to see how the federal government has wasted their hard-earned wages. President Trump therefore directed the heads of the executive departments to take all appropriate actions to make public to the maximum extent permitted by law.

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OK, it is not coming from any other countries. I mean, the reality is, by the way, that Vladimir Zelensky's approval rating. And again, I think Zelensky has botched many things here, including his relationship with President Trump. But his approval rating is at 52 percent. It is not, in fact, at 4 percent. The election was due in May of 2024. They are currently under martial law.

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Again, it is very difficult to hold an election in the middle of a gigantic existential war with your much larger neighbor. And if he's talking about how the people should really sound off on whether or not they liked the war, You kind of have to have that on both sides. There needs to be an election in Russia as well. But Trump, I think that some of this is just personal peek at Zelensky.

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I think that President Trump does not like Zelensky's approach to him. He doesn't like Zelensky's approach to Joe Biden. And so he's sounding off about that. And again, I don't disagree with him on how Zelensky has approached both Biden and President Trump.

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But when he is ripping on Zelensky in the middle of the negotiation, that obviously is going to strengthen whatever hand Vladimir Putin thinks he has to play here. Here's Trump saying that Zelensky is not getting the job done.

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No, he doesn't.

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The complete details of every terminated program, canceled contract, terminated grant or any other discontinued obligation of federal funds. Again, this is all part and parcel of the sort of Doge approach to American government. As part of that, President Trump also issued an executive order yesterday, quote, ensuring accountability for all agencies.

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Again, this sort of... this sort of reversal of blame here that they've allowed a war that never should have happened. Again, why exactly is he doing this? Now, again, there are a couple of different reads here. One is the personal peak read. He doesn't like Vladimir Zelensky. He's going to say whatever he wants about Vladimir Zelensky.

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It makes no difference to the final status of negotiations because in the end, the United States' realist position in the world is that Russia should not take over Ukraine and we should pay for as little of that as possible. There's the sort of personality clash Now, that wouldn't be unprecedented either.

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And the fact is that we've actually seen something like that with regard to Joe Biden and Bibi Netanyahu in Israel. Joe Biden, in the middle of an existential war that Israel is fighting with its enemies, deployed all of his Democrats to basically call for a new election in Israel in which Netanyahu would be ousted. And Netanyahu used that as the basis for increasing his own popularity in Israel.

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So it's possible something like that could be going on, whether that is conscious or unconscious, between Trump and Zelenskyy. And then finally, there's the possibility, which is that everybody's just kind of saying things. And in the end, none of it's really going to matter very much. Whatever the reality. Vladimir Putin is, in fact, a cruel dictator.

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He's a vicious dictator who kills his political opponents domestically and internationally. He is, in fact, an expansionist. He's always been a territorial expansionist, whether you're talking about Georgia, whether you're talking about Ukraine, whether you're talking about Crimea. He likes territorial expansion because the history of Russia is a history of a territorially expansionist power.

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For President Trump to put the blame on Ukraine, again, I am not in favor of that. I don't think that that's a good thing. Is that going to sink negotiations? Is that going to have any real effect? I think the real effect of that is going to be to scare the hell.

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It might actually have one more counterintuitive impact, which would be salutary, which is that it might force the Europeans to actually step up. If they don't like all the stuff that Trump is saying, anytime in here, they can step up and say, listen, we're going to take the lead here. We're going to pay the money. We're going to provide the peacekeeping forces.

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You don't want to lead the way on this peace deal? Fine, don't lead the way on this peace deal. We'll do it. Maybe the Europeans will finally do the thing they should have done all along in this war. And again, the Europeans have been dilly-dallying around all this stuff for quite a long time. wild incompetence from Europe.

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According to Axios, Europe has experienced subpar economic growth for a generation and has underinvested in its own defense. Both problems are coming to a head with the Trump administration's hostility as the catalyst. European elites are increasingly acknowledging a lack of competitive fire in both the economic and national security arenas, which has resulted in over-dependence on both U.S.

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companies to drive innovation and the U.S. government to defend Europe from Russia. So if President Trump's language about Zelensky causes Europe to step into the gap, that is actually a very good thing for Europe, for Ukraine, and for the United States as well. All right, in just a moment, we'll get to the latest on the illegal immigration front.

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The goal here is to re-enshrine the unitary executive theory of the federal government. You go back to the Constitution, there is no unelected fourth branch of government that is sort of half run by Congress and half run by the executive.

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Plus, Hamas announces that they killed a couple of babies, which is, of course, not a shock at all. If you were with us for election night or the inauguration, You already know the Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over. Now we are headed back to D.C. to do that at CPAC.

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Join me, along with Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage live tomorrow night, February 20th. Check it out. No scripted talking points, no corporate-approved narratives, just real conversations that actually matter, streaming live on Daily Wire Plus. And we are taking your questions. Don't just watch CPAC, be part of it.

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Live tomorrow night, February 20th on Daily Wire Plus. Meanwhile, President Trump is moving forward with alacrity with regard to illegal immigration. And one of the things that has happened is that the signals sent by this administration... are very consistent and very strong. Do not come here illegally. You will not get in.

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Illegal border crossings have plummeted even further in the first weeks of the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Border Patrol made roughly 29,000 arrests in January, according to newly released government data that is down from 47,000 in December. Those arrest numbers continue to drop precipitously because no one is showing up at the southern border.

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President Trump calls it the Trump effect, and of course that is exactly right. The kind of notion that this is all a coincidence is clearly wrong. Meanwhile, Democrats are freaking out because it turns out that actually it's pretty popular for illegal immigrants not to mass immigrate to America.

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If Congress delegates power to the executive, it is now the job of the executive to perform those powers, which means that if you have an executive branch agency, that executive branch agency is headed by the president of the United States. This, of course, is the point of this particular executive order. Quote,

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According to Politico, the close relationship between congressional Democrats and immigration advocacy groups has grown strained since last year's election as lawmakers shift rightward on border issues. Now those groups are asserting themselves as Republicans prepare to pursue a crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities.

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Failing to rally together in opposition to planned GOP legislation, they say, would risk a more profound break between the Democratic Party and its progressive base. So it's fun to watch Democrats.

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They're now caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock of reality in which Americans really do not like illegal immigration and the hard place of all of these interest advocacy groups that they have been feeding for literally decades who now are angry at them. Again, this administration continues to be incredibly aggressive about its approach to all of these issues.

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Meanwhile, in other international news, horrifying news, Hamas has now announced, as was suspected, that that it would release dead bodies, four dead bodies. In exchange for these four dead bodies, Israel is going to release all Palestinian women and minors under the age of 19 who were detained in Gaza after October 8th and who, quote unquote, weren't involved in the fighting.

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But again, those are detentions. When they say under 19, you're talking about 16, 17, 18-year-old people and recognized. And in the Gaza Strip for Hamas, those are like military age recruits. Many women are also involved militarily with Hamas.

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The bodies that are being released include the bodies of Shiri Bibas, who's 33, and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years old and nine months old when they were kidnapped, not by Hamas. Okay, this is important. They were not kidnapped by Hamas. They were kidnapped by Palestinian civilians who joined in on the murder spree of October 7th.

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The reason this is important is because the great lie that there is a vast gap between the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and Hamas, that has always been a lie. It remains a lie. That does not mean that Israel and any other military power shouldn't attempt to distinguish between members of Hamas and civilians.

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Israel has expended hundreds of its own soldiers in efforts to do precisely that, which is why it's achieved such a signally successful kill ratio in terms of terrorists killed to civilians killed in battle. With that said, the civilians in the Gaza Strip supported Hamas. They supported the agenda of Hamas for a year, for a year.

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The bodies of a mother, a toddler, and a baby were held as hostages in the Gaza Strip, and not one Palestinian turned over information to the Israelis. While these people were alive, they were taken alive into Gaza. They were coming out dead. While they were alive, there was no attempt by any Palestinian to achieve their liberty. There was no attempt to shield them from the predations.

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In fact, they were held by civilians, as we know. Many of the hostages were, in fact, held in civilian homes. Just so you remember who these people are, here is a video of the kidnapping of Shiri Bibas and her toddlers. This is what Hamas is. This is who the people who celebrate Hamas and have sided with Hamas are. Human trash.

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The people who do this kind of stuff and who support this kind of stuff. Here's the imagery from October 7th. There's a mother, a terrified mother, who is now dead, who's been murdered, carrying a toddler and a baby. She's being kidnapped by, again, these are people in civilian garb. These are not people in Hamas terrorist garb. Those children are dead. The mother is dead.

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Anybody who suggested Israel's war in Gaza is not, in fact, justified. is morally blind at best and complicit in evil, much more likely. Now, there are still hostages who are being released, apparent live hostages. Some six hostages are supposed to be released on Saturday. That includes Ethiopian-born Israeli Avera Menjistu and Bedouin Israeli Hisham Al-Sayed.

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Okay, that's an Arab and an Ethiopian. So for all of those who claim that Israel is sort of homogenous, that of course is not true. Hamas is famous for staging these celebratory releases of hostages and hostage bodies. Just horrifying, horrifying stuff. And by the way, there's still an American being held hostage.

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The last American being held hostage is a young man, 20 years old named Don Alexander. I know his family. His family lives in Tenafly, New Jersey. I introduced them to President Trump on the anniversary of October 7th. And they're still waiting for their son to come home. Hamas is evil. Hamas needs to be extirpated. That is something that President Trump full well understands.

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And President Trump also understands that the great lie that there will ever be a two-state solution involving the sorts of people who kidnap babies and celebrate their kidnapping and cheer in the streets is the body of Shani Luke. The broken, murdered body of Shani Luke is paraded through the streets of Gaza City.

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Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the president.

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that that is not going to be a peaceful two-state solution in any way, shape, or form, because one side is interested in peace and the other side is interested in murdering every Jew they can find and extirpating the state of Israel utterly. Meanwhile, some clouds on the horizon with regard to the economy. So inflation continues to hover around 3%.

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There are significant worries that it might go the wrong way. President Trump did, in fact, address this a little bit yesterday. He was talking about inflation during his interview with Elon Musk. And he suggested... that inflation is in fact back, but he also suggested that it would militate and that he had nothing to do with that. Now that's true. He suggested during this interview,

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that we inherited the inflation. Inflation is back. I'm only here for two and a half weeks. Inflation is back. They said, oh, Trump, I had nothing to do with it. These people have run the country. They spent money like nobody's ever spent. That is true. That is 100% true. But moving forward, it's going to be on his permanent record. So obviously inflation is going to be an issue.

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Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials' accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch. And again, this is a restatement of the constitutional principle that the president runs the executive branch.

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There are a couple of ways of bringing down inflation. One way is through productivity growth. When you have brand new products and services and more competition, the prices are going to come down. That is something that President Trump is trying to do by having more companies founded in the United States, deregulating. Tariffs are probably not going to help that purpose.

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Tariffs at the best are going to be neutral in terms of pricing. They're certainly not going to lower prices. So when President Trump says that tariffs are somehow going to lead to an economic boon that somehow lowers inflation, he's playing a little bit with fire here economically speaking, just in terms of the basic doctrine.

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Here's President Trump saying companies want to return to the United States specifically because of tariffs.

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And by the way, it is true that as we become a more deregulatory environment with lower taxes, businesses will want to come back here. But if the idea is that we were short business because of tariffs, that also means that there is limited supply. Limited supply with retained demand tends to increase prices over time.

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So when President Trump is pledging more reciprocal tariffs, again, if he's doing this as a tactic, I've said this all along, tariffs as a tactic to get other countries to lower their tariffs, not a bad idea. Tariffs is sort of a panacea that that is not a great idea. Here's President Trump on tariffs.

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Again, not a bad idea to get them to lower their tariffs. If the idea is that somehow makes us stronger, economically speaking, that tends not to be true, which is why many Republicans are trying to curb Trump of some of the tariff talk. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Trade Representative nominee Jameson Greer still doesn't have a slot for confirmation before the full Senate.

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Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick was confirmed last night. But in their absence, a singular figure has risen as leader of the trade agenda. You'll remember him from Trump at number one. That would be Peter Navarro, the president's special counselor on trade and manufacturing, known for his pugnacious personality and maximalist approach to tariffs.

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And so all of these sort of pseudo shock that you are seeing from Democrats on this particular point is because they had always assumed that an independent agency means it's run by Democrats. They'd always assumed the career bureaucrat means Democrat. There was, in fact, a deep state.

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Now, again, I think that the influence of Navarro is, in fact, going to be sort of washed out in terms of the rest of the cabinet. The rest of Trump's cabinet understands that meritless tariffs only increase prices in the United States and make things significantly less expensive. affordable and efficient.

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However, we'll have to make sure that we keep an eye on that because the last thing we want is some sort of economic downturn under President Trump. Joy Behar, who is entirely an idiot, she is making a case about inflation. And right now it's a stupid case. But if the inflation remains this way for another year, then it's going to be hung around Trump's neck whether he likes it or not.

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Okay, now again, that's a stupid take because the airplanes are not coming down because of President Trump, and the egg prices are up because of Joe Biden. But... Inflation is an all-purpose acid that eats through everything. Everything. It is the single biggest factor in Joe Biden losing his re-elect. So that does need to come down and come down quickly.

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All right, coming up, we'll get to Democratic responses. Their desperation is setting in at pretty much every level. First, you need to head on over to Daily Wire Plus and subscribe. And we've got so much great stuff over there. Everything from Run, Hide, Fight to Lady Ballers. Everything from Matt Walsh's hit movies to all access with me. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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I check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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It was permanent political appointees who were supposedly insulated from any Republican president who would take power, and Trump is saying, nope, that's not the way this is going to work. As part and parcel of that, President Trump announced on Truth Social last night, quote, over the past four years, the Department of Justice has been politicized like never before.

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Therefore, I've instructed the termination of all remaining Biden-era U.S. attorneys. We must clean house immediately and restore confidence. America's golden age must have a fair justice system. That begins today. And again, there's a lot of hue and cry over this, but this is not, in fact, a rarity.

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Barack Obama, when he came into office, cleared out the justice system of a bunch of people who were appointed by George W. Bush. The sort of changeover of career bureaucrats in these particular agencies, including the DOJ, is not a rarity. It is a regular part of American government. It's only Republicans who are chided about this.

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Well, one of the driving forces behind the sort of radical transparency slash and burn approach that Trump has taken so far is, of course, Elon Musk. Elon has really contributed a huge amount to the government so far, again, with zero pay.

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In 2008, a youth quake sent Barack Obama to the White House. In 2016, voters ages 18 to 29 broke for Hillary Clinton by 18 points. In 2020, they voted for Biden by 24 points. But in 2024, Donald Trump closed most of the gap, losing voters under 30 by a 51 to 47 margin. In one recent CBS poll, Americans under 30 weren't just evenly split between the parties.

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And he has done so because he feels that it is necessary, presumably, to cut the regulatory burdens on the American people and on business, to get rid of the wasteful spending, the waste, fraud, and abuse, and to reorient the American people toward the idea that they don't actually need the government to take care of all of their problems. And President Trump, to his great credit as a human being,

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has allowed Elon to take sort of a front-leading role in doing all this. Now, that is smart politics by President Trump, because it means that Elon is both going to get the credit and also mostly take the slings and arrows, which is what has happened so far. Also, President Trump does not actually have to fear for any reason, that Elon Musk is a threat to him.

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Because Elon, of course, can't run for president. He wasn't born in the United States. Elon's the most successful businessman of our age, which means he's actually not dependent on President Trump for anything. Keeping Elon as part of the system is much better than having Elon outside the tent peeing in.

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While President Trump says Elon Musk is smart, and of course that is correct, you should be smart as well. Smart investors prepare ahead of time, just like keeping a life jacket handy before setting sail. That's why many people are adding gold to their portfolios, leading to record gold prices in early 2025.

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There's still a great opportunity for you to diversify and strengthen your financial future. When it comes to diversifying into physical gold, I personally trust Birch Gold. They're who I turn to for my own gold investments. Their specialty, helping you convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA backed by physical gold without any out-of-pocket costs.

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One five-star review says it perfectly. Knowledgeable, helpful, non-pressure. That's exactly why I've stood behind Birch Gold for years. They deliver exactly what they promise. Get your free info kit on gold by texting the word BEN to the number 989898. There's no obligation, just useful information.

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With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, text BEN to 989898. Let the experts at Birch Gold help you secure your future today with gold. Again, I've been working with Birch Gold for years and in uncertain economic times, and let's be real. All times are economically uncertain. Even ones that look good can turn bad before you know it.

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You need to at least diversify a little bit into precious metals. Go ask all your questions. Text Ben to 989898 and contact my friends at Birch Gold. Also, the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts in 2025. April 15th is approaching and time is running out. If you're facing back taxes, unfiled returns, delaying action will only compound the problem.

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Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS by yourself, that would be a very large-scale mistake. This is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart?

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With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder. Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Instead, call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

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April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. So yesterday, President Trump and Elon Musk did a joint interview on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News. And it's sort of fascinating, the dynamic between the two of them and some of the statements they were making. So obviously, Trump's admiration for Elon Musk is quite real.

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Here was President Trump talking about Elon's hope to go to Mars.

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They were even more pro-Trump than boomers over the age of 65. So what exactly is happening? Well, Derek Thompson suggests that essentially this is a reaction to the government overreach during COVID.

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Okay, so again, you can see that they have a pretty good dynamic between the two of them. They're very friendly. They get along. President Trump says, I couldn't find anyone smarter than Elon to help me out here, which again, makes sense since Elon is pretty smart.

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So again, the dynamic is pretty important here because President Trump likes to get along with the people that he works with. And one of the things about Musk is that Musk isn't a Trump sycophant. So one thing that President Trump actually does not like is people who are too sycophantic toward him. And you can see this with a number of his former staffers.

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There's sort of a fine line with President Trump between not offending President Trump. President Trump does not like to be insulted, for example, but also not just bending the knee to him at every possible turn. He likes a little bit of independence. So that dynamic is good between Trump and Musk, despite all the attempts to divide them.

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Here was Elon Musk talking about Trump derangement syndrome in one of the more colorful moments of the interview.

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Now, hilariously, many members of the left took this particular clip and went nuts on it. Why is Elon making weird hand motions again? Guys, stop focusing on Elon's hand motions and start focusing on the fact that he's going into every government agency and finding hundreds of millions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse. That seems a little more important

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that the bizarre institutional failures during COVID, ranging from the suggestion that you got to riot in the streets if you had the proper political credentials and COVID wouldn't attack you, to the idea that kids had to be locked out of schools, shoved an entire generation of young people to the right and radicalized them. And this, of course, is true.

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then these sort of bizarre hand motions that he makes when he is talking about Trump derangement syndrome. Musk and Trump did talk about the media's attempts to divide them one from the other. Here they were.

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Elon himself obviously went out of his way to point out that he and Trump were friendly. He was very praiseworthy of President Trump and Trump was praiseworthy of him.

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This dynamic is the thing that the media are having a very difficult time with because historically speaking, the best way to divide Trump from his advisors is to basically suggest that they have ambitions on the presidency or on controlling Trump. But Trump clearly does not feel controlled by Elon.

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And Trump feels like they're working in tandem together and that he is, in fact, Elon's superior, which is a pretty good feeling, right?

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If you're the president of the United States and you're direct inferior, the person who reports to you is the richest person on Earth who launches things into space and owns the most lucrative car company in existence, that seems like that's pretty flattering to President Trump, actually. So here is Elon talking about Trump.

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OK, so again, is Elon laying it on maybe a little thick there? Sure. But you know what? This working relationship is the most important working relationship in possibly modern political history. So, you know, it probably merits that. Here is Elon talking about Doge specifically. And he says, look, the goal here is to carry out the president's will.

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This is not an independent agency operating outside the purview of President Trump. This is working for President Trump.

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But this does demonstrate, again, this is the warning, that people are incredibly variable and vacillating when it comes to their politics. Exogenous events can shove entire generations of people one way or another. And this has happened several times over the course of my lifetime.

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Okay, so President Trump yesterday, he did another separate press conference in which he talked about some of the idiotic spending that he was targeting. Here he was yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2141 - The Trump-Musk Show ROLLS ON

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Okay, so one of the things that Trump and Musk are now proposing is the possibility of what they call Doge rebate checks, which is all the money that they are saving, goes back to the taxpayer in the form of actual direct payments. That's something that Elon posted yesterday on X, that he would check with the president on the possibility of sending out Doge dividend checks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

Well, folks, as always, tons in the news. We're going to get to all of it first. Quick shout out to everybody in the live chat right now at dailywire.com and the Daily Wire Plus app. We see you. I appreciate your comments. Thank you for being here. If you're not in the chat, what exactly are you doing with your life? Join the conversation, real-time, unfiltered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What the hell is wrong with you people? You won't get up at the State of the Union and applaud for the family of Jocelyn Nungeri, who was a child murdered by illegal immigrants when a national park was named after her. But you will go out of your way to fly all the way down to El Salvador just to do a photo op with people the vast majority of whom we know are gang members. This is your move?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Like seriously, this is your move? It's so politically incompetent as to boggle the mind. Truly, President Trump has the best of luck in his opponents. It's really amazing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Like if Democrats really wanted to make this an issue, what they really should do is they should stand outside the Supreme Court and they should say, this president refuses to abide by the orders of the Supreme Court that threatens due process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, it wouldn't be like an amazing political argument, but it's certainly better than flying down to an El Salvadoran prison to hang out with the world's worst criminals on the basis that America somehow owes them more. That's just a political fail on every possible level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Chris Van Hollen, speaking of political fails, Senator from Maryland, here he was getting on a plane going down to El Salvador.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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God, they picked the worst, the worst friends. It's truly incredible. It's truly incredible. So it's not just that he wants this person to receive due process, which again, that's a fair argument. He's making the argument he wants to bring this guy home. He wants to take this guy, get him out of prison and bring him back to Maryland.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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An illegal immigrant who is credibly accused of being a gang member. We need more of that in our country, according to Chris Van Hollen. Again, they can't stop themselves. They have to go the whole hog. They can't just make the case that the Trump administration is pushing on the bounds of legality in a wide variety of areas. Again, a case that you could at least facially make.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But instead, they are pushing on the idea that this person needs to be freed and brought back to the United States where he can live in Maryland. We're going to bring him home. And I'd love to see the same sort of enthusiasm from Chris Van Hollen for, you know, bringing home American citizen Idan Alexander, who's currently sitting in a tunnel thanks to Hamas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He just doesn't have the same enthusiasm for that. He certainly doesn't have the same enthusiasm for victims of illegal immigrant crime in the United States. But he has a lot of sympathy on a personal level for this person, an illegal immigrant who was deported. And again, by the way, this person is not going to end up in the United States. He's appointed Stephen Miller, the deputy commissioner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Due to the administrative state issued by the chief justice, the deadline imposed by the district court has now passed. To that extent, the government's emergency application is effectively granted in part and the deadline in the challenged order is no longer effective.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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special advisor to the president was making the other day, which is that there's no situation in which this person ends up back in the United States permanently. It's not going to happen. But they have to make a hero. The left cannot help it. They must make a hero out of everyone targeted by the right, even if that person is not a good person or a person who should not be in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it's not just Chris Van Hollen. Democrats are such idiots on this. Man, it's just political malpractice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Axios reported on Tuesday, Representatives Robert Garcia of California and Maxwell Frost of Florida sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requesting an official congressional delegation to conduct a welfare check of deported El Salvadoran and alleged MS-13 gang member Kimo Abrego Garcia. This is just ridiculous. I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. I hope that Comer says yes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, seriously, do it. Let the Democrats go. Let them go hang out with the illegal immigrants, many of whom are gang members down in El Salvador, and say that those people deserve more from the United States. Really, truly high-level political malpractice from the Democrats. Again, two things true at once.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The legal stance being taken by the Trump administration, I think is counterproductive in the end. I think it's going to tick off the courts, and I think it's going to make it harder for them to do the things they need to do. At the same time,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The politics of the situation plays strongly in favor of Republicans because most Americans are not interested in arguments over whether suspected MS-13 gang members ought to be in the United States. And again, one of the reasons I'm saying that the Trump administration should get out of its own way legally here is just bring him back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They should do whatever hearing they have to do, send him out again. The reason I'm saying that is because actual important things are happening on the immigration front, according to the Washington Post.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Trump administration is now using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find illegal immigrants where they work, study, and live, off with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been properly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term effectuate in the district court's order is, however, unclear and may exceed the district court's authority.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households, in which some families have legal status and others don't, from public housing. Affiliates from the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Doge Service are also looking to kick out existing mixed-status households, vowing to ensure undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public programs, even if they live with citizens or other eligible family members. The push extends across agencies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Last week, Social Security Administration entered the names and social security numbers of more than 6,000 mostly Latino immigrants into a database it uses to track dead people, effectively slashing their ability to receive benefits or work legally in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In other words, they're looking for fake social security numbers so they can bar people from illegally working in the United States. All of this is good and all of this is necessary. Doge is doing a great job of tracking down the misuse of American resources. And by the way, there are other legal fights that the Trump administration could be taking on that are going to be winners.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So for example, a federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Joe Biden's migration program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. A U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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District Court judge in Boston issued a stay of an executive order saying the early termination without any case by case justification of legal status for noncitizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law. But that, of course, is ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Joe Biden unilaterally declared widespread migration, temporary protected status for entire countries. And the Trump administration is reversing it. Somehow Biden can do it with the stroke of a pen, but Trump can't undo it with the stroke of a pen. That is one that should go to the Supreme Court and Trump will win. So lots of wins on the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It just seems to me that fighting the due process considerations for Abrego Garcia should not take precedence over the rest of the Trump agenda on all of this stuff. And again, it does play into a narrative that the left is currently trying to build about the Trump administration, that they are lawless. They're attempting to violate the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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One of those issues is, for example, the Trump administration, President Trump directing the DOJ to look into Chris Krebs, who was the person who oversaw cybersecurity during the 2020 presidential election, an appointee of President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, you'll remember just a few days ago, President Trump signed an executive order basically not only revoking his security clearance, but ordering a DOJ review of his activities as a government employee. Because Krebs said that he lost the election fair and square in 2020.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Jonathan Swan, who is in fact a very good reporter, he asked Caroline Leavitt, doesn't this appear to be an abuse of power? Like you don't want the DOJ directing, being directed to target President Trump. Why are you using the DOJ to attack President Trump's political opponents?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The district court should clarify its directive with any due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it has, what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps. If that sounds vague to you, that's because it's incredibly vague.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With me, the team behind the show, and thousands of people just like you. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to become a Daily Wire Plus member right now and chat with us. Alrighty, so the Trump administration is in the middle of a very hot fight with regards to this deported Salvadoran migrant. The deported Salvadoran migrant, whose name is...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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Well, you know, the media have questions of President Trump, but you have questions about employment. According to a recent ZipRecruiter survey, 76% of employers plan to expand their headcount for 2025. That is a lot of time spent hiring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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So if you're the owner of a growing business, the way I am here at Daily Wire, it's essential to find a platform that provides an efficient format that allows you to connect with several pre-screened, interested applicants all at once to streamline the recruitment process. Luckily, ZipRecruiter does just that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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So if you're one of these employers who's ramping up hiring this year, don't miss out on this advice. Add ZipRecruiter's latest feature, Zip Intro, to your hiring plan. It lets you post jobs today and talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Best of all, it does most of the work for you, so you save time. Right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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Zip Intro gives you the power to quickly assess excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls. You simply pick a time. Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. And then you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the next day. Save time hiring for 2025 with the new Zip Intro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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Just go to ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire right now and try Zip Intro for free. Again, at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire Zip Intro. Post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Also, dudes, have you heard of Rose Sparks? This dual action prescription merges the powerhouse ingredients found in generic Viagra and Cialis, sildenafil and tadalafil into one formidable treatment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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But it's not merely about the ingredients in the medication. It's about how you're taking it. Rose Sparks leverages the benefits of sublingual administration, meaning the tablet dissolves under your tongue. This method allows for fast absorption directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive system. The result?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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Quicker onset of action, reducing the wait time typically associated with traditional pills. Plus, Tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis, lasts in the system for up to 36 hours. Find out if Prescription Rose Sparks is right for you. To get 15 bucks off your first order and find out if Prescription Rose Sparks are right for you, connect with the provider at ro.co slash ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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That's roe.co slash ben for 15 bucks off your very first order. Compounded drugs are permitted to be prescribed under federal law. They're not FDA approved. Do not undergo FDA safety, effectiveness, or manufacturing review. Only available if prescribed after an online consultation with a provider. Go check them out right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the government apparently under the Supreme Court order has a duty to facilitate his release from custody. But how exactly it's effectuated. how that doesn't infringe on the executive branch's ability to do deportations, that part is unclear.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's roe.co slash ben again, roe.co slash ben for 15 bucks off your very first order. Again, like this sort of attack angle by the Trump administration gets in the way of real agenda items because some of what they're doing is amazing. Like, for example, you have to just admire what President Trump is doing with the IRS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So according to the Washington Post, the Trump administration on Tuesday named a political ally who raised concerns about Hunter Biden's taxes as the new acting commissioner of the IRS. This is just awesome. Like, this is great. Gary Shapley was elevated in March to become deputy chief of IRS criminal investigations and a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Soon after his promotion, the IRS acting commissioner, a person named Melanie Krause, announced plans to leave the agency, making her the third IRS leader to step down since Trump took office. Well, now Shapley is taking over the IRS, and Shapley is one of the people who testified to Congress that prosecutors were slow walking the prosecution of Hunter Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And he was basically retaliated against by the IRS. And now in a thing that President Trump loves to do, and it's one of my favorite things that he does, President Trump is now elevating a person targeted by an agency to head up the agency. He did this with Jay Bhattacharya at NIH, and now he is doing it with Gary Shapley at IRS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Shapley's swift elevation alarmed some current and former IRS officials who told The Washington Post they were concerned his roles within criminal investigations and atop the agencies could consolidate Trump's power both over criminal and civil tax investigations and audits for the first time since Richard Nixon's presidency. But I have a question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What's what's wrong with Gary Shapley that you are afraid that he's going to violate the law? He will serve as commissioner until Trump's nominee to run the agency, Billy Long, is confirmed by the Senate. So good for President Trump. I love this. Like there's good stuff happening under President Trump. That includes, by the way, President Trump's efforts to target Harvard University.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Harvard is not just now being targeted on the basis of its violations of Civil Rights Act Title VI, which says anti-discrimination law applies to those who receive federal funding. Now President Trump is threatening to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He posted on Truth Social, quote, perhaps Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired supporting sickness. Remember, tax-exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest. Now, there is precedent for this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So that's left the door open to the administration claiming, well, when you say that we need to facilitate, we asked the Salvadorans and they said no, so I guess that's us facilitating. And the opposite case would be, well, you do have a contract with the Salvadoran government to keep these prisons filled with illegal immigrants being deported there, criminally illegal immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In 1983, Bob Jones University had its tax-exempt status removed because it opposed, for example, interracial marriage. And the IRS said that is against public policy. Your tax-exempt status is gone now. Well, the idea of going after Harvard in this way is not only perfectly appropriate, it is a use of the Trump administration, of the laws and the systems created by the left.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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One of the things that the left is really objecting to is that they created really terrible, censorious and ugly systems. And now all those systems are being turned against them. The answer to that, of course, to the left would be, well, maybe you shouldn't have built those systems in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Here is Caroline Leavitt at the White House saying that all Trump is saying is that Harvard has to abide by the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That, of course, is exactly right. She's exactly right about all this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, that's not stopping Chris Van Hollen, who apparently just had he was he was the leader of Idiot Day yesterday between flying to El Salvador to explain that he wanted to bring back an illegal immigrant, bring him home, a person who's a suspected gang member, and then suggesting that somehow it's a violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights to tell them to abide by the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Man, Van Hollen outdid himself yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So it's not about First Amendment rights. It's about violating the actual law. This is the thing that people seem to avoid on the left. They understand it immediately. If you talked about black people in the way that Jews were talked about on college campuses, it would be in violation of Title VI. Now, again, you can not like Title VI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In fact, I've had serious objections my entire lifetime to certain aspects, not all aspects, certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act, particularly its intervention into private markets, for example. But the idea that it only applies to certain groups of people, but not other groups of people, is obviously violative of the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the fact that Chris Van Hollen and company continue to defend Harvard. You want to defend Harvard University right now? Really? So your choice of people you are defending does not include the hostages who are American being held in tunnels. And it does not include Americans being killed by illegal immigrants. It does include illegal immigrants in Harvard University.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Slow clap for these geniuses. They're really, really great at this. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to struggle because it's not just that they are picking the world's least sympathetic people to defend. The Democrats also have no leadership, like no leadership at all. Joe Biden is off the stage, but yesterday he decided that he would actually come back on the stage, talk about Social Security.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so you could do more than ask. You could basically demand, and the Salvadoran government, under the terms of the contract, would have to return this person to the United States, not permanently, but while this person had a hearing before presumably that person was then deported again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It did not go well. I can't imagine why Joe Biden was ousted for Kamala Harris and then lost to President Trump. So he was speaking in Chicago, and he proceeded to call black people colored kids, which, I mean, my dude, just, ugh, ugh, like, wow. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Good story, Joe. So I can't remember. This is the person Democrats thought needed to run up until the point where he actually did this live in a debate with President Trump, looked staring into the maw of death. He didn't stop there. He then said that he wants to meet 300 year olds on Social Security. I mean, he's 300 and he's on Social Security. So it's not that implausible. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Yeah, man. And then he said that President Trump has taken a hatchet to Social Security, which is weird because literally no one has missed their Social Security check.

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Well, now things are getting very hot because, as the case you heard was remanded back to district court for clarification, that very often happens. The higher court will say the district court, the lower court needs to look at it again and clarify what exactly they meant before we decide whether it was right or whether it was wrong. Well, now that case, which has been remanded back to a U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So I asked our sponsors at Perplexity if there have actually been any actual cuts to Social Security under President Trump. The answer, of course, is no. There have been no direct cuts to Social Security benefit amounts under President Trump. Throughout both his campaigns and during his administration, Trump has repeatedly pledged not to reduce Social Security benefits.

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There's no evidence of legislation or executive action that has cut the monthly payments to beneficiaries. Official statements from the White House and Social Security Administration of reinforced benefit levels remain unchanged. Now, perplexity does point out that President Trump and Doge have been attempting to cut staff. Apparently about 7,000 people are going to be cut out of 57,000 people.

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So again, this idea that no one is working at the Social Security Administration, that this is somehow the end of the world is ridiculous. Yes, the number of beneficiaries continues to rise. Yes, staffing is at a quote 50 year low, but presumably one of the things Doge is going to actually be doing

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is increasing efficiency at SSA by, for example, not processing forms underneath a mountain using paper. So Joe Biden is not their leader. He's not. So who is? Representative Ro Khanna of California said, we have no idea. I don't know. Which is the correct answer, by the way.

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Like, is that who the Democrats should be rallying around, pushing forward? That's who should be driving the message?

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OK, well, it's not going to be Ro Khanna, but you know who it might be. I've been saying this for a while. AOC is the most formidable Democrat out there. This sort of right wing dismissal of AOC very much feels to me like when Republicans were dismissing Barack Obama circa about 2007. They're like, no way. This guy's got no background. He's been in the Senate for like five seconds.

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He's kind of a he's kind of an empty suit. There's nothing there. He gave one good speech at a convention and suddenly he's going to be president of the United States. And I was saying I'd read his book. This guy is going to win and he's going to be unbelievably radical. Stop it. So that's what I'm saying to you about AOC. AOC is a good actress. AOC is charismatic.

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She obviously is a good looking person. And so those are all qualities that play onto you. Now, she also happens to be, you know, a dunce. But that is no longer an obstacle to higher office in the United States. It just didn't. I wish it were. It obviously is not. So AOC, she is now, this is a new Democratic primary poll. I've been saying it. You think I was just making this up?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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district court judge, Impala Gines. That case is again in the news because Gines ran out of patience with attorneys for the DOJ at a hearing on Tuesday regarding the deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.

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AOC, primary poll from Yale. Kamala Harris, 28%. AOC, 21%. That means she's the leader, gang, because Kamala Harris ain't going to be the nominee. Every day that goes by, Kamala Harris is more in the Democrats' rearview mirror. She's going to continue to drop. AOC is at 21 percent. Pete Buttigieg is at 14. He ain't going nowhere. Gavin Newsom is at six. He ain't going nowhere.

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Josh Shapiro is at five, the governor of Pennsylvania. But he's a Jew, so he's going nowhere inside the Democratic Party. And it's just that simple. So that means that AOC right now is the leader in the clubhouse. That's just the way this works. And by the way, she is raising money like nobody's business. According to Politico, she raised almost $10 million in the first three months of the year.

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That is more than double her second highest quarter. She spent recent weeks barnstorming the country with Bernie Sanders. And again, she is his sort of pick. She said in a post on X, the average campaign donation was $21. Apparently 64% of contributions came from first-time donors. So pretending her way is not going to do it for Republicans.

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This is why President Trump's agenda better succeed, because if he fails, the progressive left and their sort of economic populism is the next wave. Now, could AOC shoot herself in the foot? Sure. I mean, she's trotting out new accents every day. She was in Idaho the other day and she was trotting out. She's trying out some trying out something with her voice here. I don't know what's going on.

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This sort of stuff gets Democrats very excited. I don't know what accent she's trying to do here. It seems to live somewhere between Cockney and, like, Lower East Side New York. I just don't know exactly what she's going for there. But is that going to be an obstacle to her success inside the Democratic Party? Absolutely not. And AOC is smarter than people give her credit for.

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eviscerating their efforts to redefine the word facilitate from a Supreme Court ruling and instructing them to cancel their vacations to comply with a two-week inquiry into the matter. This is according to Mediaite. Abrego Garcia came to the United States illegally as a minor around 2011. His legal team says he was fleeing gang violence. He was living in Maryland with his wife and three children.

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She, for example, like, you know, listen, I think she's a dummy, but she's smarter politically than people give her credit for. She sort of kept Nancy Pelosi on side, for example. Nancy Pelosi thinks she's a moron, but she hasn't overtly gone to war with Nancy Pelosi in a while.

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And AOC is going to make the case to people in the sort of mainstream of the Democratic Party that she has moderated somewhat. She's de-elevating issues like trans issues and the sort of woke issues. She's putting those secondary to her economic populace, the Bernie Sanders message. So she is, again, the emerging leader of the Democratic Party and Republicans.

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This is why Republicans need to do a good job of running the country, because if they do not, what comes around the bend next is going to be something particularly ugly. Speaking of which, the Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to sort of futz around. It isn't really rising. It isn't really falling. Nobody knows what's coming. And this is all just investor uncertainty.

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It's all just investor uncertainty. The U.S. dollar has been weakening. It's lost about 10% of its value since Inauguration Day. More than half that decline came this month after the new tariffs were unveiled. The weaker dollar could have some upward impact on inflation. Meanwhile, President Trump is now unleashing more tariffs on China.

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He apparently is going to impose on China tariffs up to 245% as a result of Chinese retaliatory action. At a certain point, by the way, these percentages mean nothing because beyond a certain point, nobody's going to import paying those tariffs. It's just not going to happen. If you are talking about a product that was $3 now going for 245% that, A $3 product now goes for $7.35 after tariffs.

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People are just going to stop importing from China. And so you can say it's 1,000% or 2,000%. And at a certain point, you've now moved beyond the realm where the imports are actually going to happen. The problem, of course, is whether other countries are going to participate in our trade war on China. So Ursula von der Leyen at the EU, she seems to be triangulating.

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She said yesterday that there was a positive side effect to the tariff uncertainty created by the United States. More world leaders now want to do trade deals with the EU. She was talking to a German newspaper. She said, I'm currently having countless talks with heads of states and governments around the world who want to work together with us on the new order.

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Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe. And it's not just about economic ties. It's about establishing common rules. It's about predictability. Europe can deliver that. So the EU is already seeking new ways to diversify trade partnerships, and they're exploring opportunities to deepen ties with China.

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So if the Trump administration's goal was to militarize the rest of the world against Chinese economic dominance, then it seems like just slapping really high tariffs on China, driving holes through the middle of tariffs on semiconductors and autos, and meanwhile alienating the people that you need to woo, that strategy needs to be reversed and quick.

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He was then sent to that maximum security prison in El Salvador. In at least three court filings, Trump administration officials have concluded that he was mistakenly deported. Now, the DOJ officials who said that have now been fired. So the Trump administration didn't like that they admitted in court filings that it was a mistake to send him back to El Salvador.

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I'll tell you something else that needs to be reversed. There's a lot of talk right now, properly, and I hope expeditiously about deregulatory action by the Trump administration. We need radical deregulation. I wish, frankly, the Doge had been unleashed on that rather than employment. I think the Doge being unleashed on the sort of waste, fraud, and abuse front

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You can get some money out of that, but the thing where you really can unleash the American economy is if you had Doge actually analyze various executive branch regulations for the economic cost of those regulations and then just take a hatchet to them. Because those regulations, once they're gone, they're actually harder to put back in place.

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If you fire somebody, then the minute, God forbid, a Democrat gets elected, all those people get rehired. If you get rid of regulatory thickets, it's much harder to put those back into place. And so Doge is turning there next. I have to say, I am concerned about the direction that's being taken by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. So Mark Zuckerberg's meta is now being sued in federal court.

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They're suggesting that he might have to sell off, for example, Instagram. Why? Why would he have to sell off Instagram? They're claiming that when he acquired Instagram a decade ago for a billion dollars, It was illegally anti-competitive. What's the case that it was illegally anti-competitive? So there are a couple of different theories of antitrust.

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One theory of antitrust is that if you have a total market monopoly, that should be broken up because otherwise competitors can't rise. And presumably that sort of theory of antitrust is consumer directed. If it's bad for the consumer, then antitrust should step in. Then there is the sort of market dominant position, which is we just shouldn't have big companies. And those big companies are scary.

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And so we should break them up. That particular view is, was most famously mirrored by Lina Khan at the FTC, who's constantly stopping mergers and acquisitions on the basis that she didn't want big companies to be able to get bigger or to merge with other companies. And she was constantly stopping all sorts of action in the business sphere that would have been actually quite good for the consumer.

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I don't understand the theory behind trying to break up Meta as far as Instagram and WhatsApp. They're trying to make them divest of those things. Are either of those services going to get better if they are broken out? Famously, the federal government did this to Microsoft.

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They forced Microsoft to break into a series of companies, and it made Microsoft's product significantly worse for consumers. The U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg is the person in charge here. Boasberg, of course, you will remember from being the same judge who's going after President Trump on immigration.

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Boasberg could theoretically side with the FTC and that would force Meta to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp. There is an anti-tech segment of the right, a sort of a bizarrely anti-business sector of the right that could be hampering economic growth. And that, of course, is not going to be good for the Trump administration either. OK, in other news. A piece of good news.

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So I criticized Steve Witkoff pretty heavily yesterday because Witkoff had said openly that he was sort of embracing the Barack Obama view of negotiations with Iran. Well, now he's backtracking on that. That is the special envoy. He's backtracking. He said a deal with Iran would only be completed if it is a Trump deal.

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Junius had ordered the administration to arrange his return. The Supreme Court ruling then said what we said it said, that they had to facilitate. But what did it mean by facilitate? Well, now the White House is insisting that Abrego Garcia's arrest, deportation, and imprisonment were justified.

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Adding, quote, Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program. That is a contradiction to what he said a couple of days ago. And that is a good contradiction. That is significantly more in line with everything that President Trump has said historically.

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Again, Witkoff does not understand these issues, and Witkoff is really not the person who should be running negotiations. This requires a level of sophistication and understanding that I just don't see in evidence with Steve Witkoff.

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Maybe a fine fellow, maybe aligned with what President Trump wants, but I'm having a hard time seeing how President Trump's agenda with Iran is squares with what Witkoff said the other night, which is presumably why Witkoff changed his position. which is good. Meanwhile, Putin is not actually moving. There's been all this talk about how Witkoff is going to move Putin to the table.

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And again, I'm not seeing any evidence of that at this point. The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out Trump and his chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, keeps saying Putin wants peace. President Trump's 30-day ceasefire proposal has now been on the table for longer than the ceasefire would have lasted. Is there any evidence that Putin actually wants peace at this point? It seems not.

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Meanwhile, in kind of a shocking story, a top advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Dan Caldwell, who is widely seen as one of the isolationists inside the administration. And I've said before, there are a lot of different foreign policy views inside the administration. There's sort of the J.D.

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Vance view, which is that the United States should not be involved in pretty much any world affairs so far as he can see. And then there is the peace through strength view, which is that the United States should only be involved where real interest is at stake. and where there is, the United States should put its resources. Well, Dan Caldwell was sort of of the former group.

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Well, he was actually escorted from the Pentagon on Tuesday after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Defense Department. He was placed on administrative leave for an unauthorized disclosure. What exactly was that disclosure? Well, presumably, the rumor is that that disclosure was

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That there were people who had talked to the New York Times suggesting that these strikes on the Houthis were somehow less successful than they were, which would make sense. Again, Caldwell's position, politically speaking, has been very much the J.D. Vance, we shouldn't be involved in foreign affairs position.

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They called him a gang member and a terrorist, and they say that they have no power to actually get him back from that Salvadoran prison. Well, Gina said that you're not doing anything to facilitate. They said, you're not even giving us answers. Quote, to date, what the record shows that nothing has been done, said the judge, nothing.

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So it'll be interesting to see if these accusations are substantiated, who he leaked to, and all the rest. And President Trump's agenda when it comes to foreign policy has actually been fairly consistent for his entire career.

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And people who are trying to undermine that agenda by staffing people who oppose it, I'm not sure why they would do that, but it doesn't seem to benefit what the Trump administration is trying to do. All right, coming up. We'll get into a seminal change when it comes to the trans issue in the UK. Plus, we'll get to the mailbag. But again, you have to be a member in order to watch.

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use Code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She then added the court would have no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding to thwart getting the answers it sought and scolded the lawyers to clear their schedules. She said, quote, we're going to move. There are no business hours while we do this. Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about things like this in my court, but not this time.

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I expect all hands on deck. The judge then granted the attorneys for the illegal immigrant the ability to subpoena documents, send interrogatory requests and subpoena up to two additional people to collect evidence about where exactly this guy is, what the government has done to secure his immediate return for more due process to the United States, and the rest. And then in the order...

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There's a specific section talking about what facilitate means, quote, notably to facilitate means to make the occurrence of something easier to render less difficult. Merriam-Webster defines the term as to make easier or less difficult to free from difficulty or impediment.

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, you'll recall, had a deportation order on him. He was an illegal immigrant. And then there was a withholding order that suggested that he could not be sent back to El Salvador because he claimed that he had fear for his life, that he'd be killed in El Salvador because he's a Salvadoran migrant. And maybe he had gang ties and maybe he didn't.

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Defendants remain obligated at a minimum to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and resuming his status quo ante. The record reflects defendants have done nothing at all.

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Instead, defendants obliquely suggest facilitate is limited to taking all available steps to remove domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien's ability to return here. The fallacy in the defendant's argument is twofold. First, in the immigration context, facilitating return of those wrongly deported can and has included more governmental efforts.

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Thus, the court can't credit that facilitating the order relief as limited to just domestic action. Second, defendants appear to have done nothing to aid his release from custody. So this raises a couple of questions. One is sort of the legal question and one is the political question. So the vice president of the United States, J.D.

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Vance, went on X and put out the following statement related to due process, because there are people right, left and center who are saying, listen, this guy isn't going to end up in the country, nor should he end up in the country. But you do have to go through a process. And if you do the process wrong and the court says you did the process wrong.

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You do actually have to facilitate his release back to the United States, not into the general population, but back to the authorities of the United States for more due process so we can check the boxes and then the guy can be deported again. And again, that's not a political thing.

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There are people who are right and left and center who are all saying, yeah, this guy has to go, but you do have to actually fill out the boxes. You can't just randomly deport people. And then if you admit you made a mistake, then go, oh, well, no harm, no foul, whoopsie daisy. So Vice President Vance,

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is taking the position that the administration is totally right not to facilitate due process in this particular case, essentially due to hardship. And this is one arena where I think that the administration would be – two things can be true at once. One, the administration should, in fact, deport this guy.

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They should deport anybody who's connected with MS-13, anybody who does not have American citizenship, who's engaged in sympathy for anti-American views, engaged in action that is anti-American. The administration should absolutely deport all those people. We don't need more of those in our country. It doesn't matter your ethnicity. It matters your belief system and your activity.

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Those are the things that matter when it comes to deporting people. And this administration has pledged to deport vast numbers of illegal immigrants on the basis that they're not here legally. That does not mean, on the other hand, that there shouldn't be due process because due process is something that is spelled out by the judiciary.

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And the argument that's being made on the sort of legalistic right is, well, if due process can be curbed for non-citizens, then due process can be curbed for citizens as well. And maybe that's not true. Maybe that's something the administration is not interested in doing.

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It doesn't help when the president says that he'd love to deport Americans to El Salvador because that is giving, I know he's trolling, I get it. And the president loves to troll.

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But if you're making the argument that, sure, due process might be able to be a bridge for cases of necessity by the executive branch for non-American citizens, then you really should draw a hard line between American citizens and non-American citizens. Here's President Trump talking about the idea of sending Americans to El Salvador to go to prison there.

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Well, again, if you're going to make that case, that you actually want to do that, what you'd have to say is they would remain under our jurisdiction such that we could get them back if a mistake was made.

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The court said that the executive branch of the United States government had good cause to believe that he might in fact be a gang member, a member of MS-13. President Trump then declared MS-13 a terrorist organization. And so the idea now is that sort of retroactively, he becomes a terrorist because he was suspected of being a member of MS-13. Well, he was sort of accidentally deported.

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What you don't want is the situation of this Abrego Garcia fellow now applied to, say, an American criminal who ends up in El Salvador and we quote unquote can't get him back because the Salvadoran government says no. Anyway, here's President Trump.

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Now, again, is that trolling? It for sure is trolling. Caroline Leavitt at the White House, though, has a rule. And that rule is the president is never trolling. Take what he says completely seriously from her position. And that's her position. It's what she's there to do. Here she was explaining that she's looking at ways to maybe jail Americans in El Salvador.

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OK, now, in reality, that's not going to happen, obviously. What's she going to say? She's not going to reject what Trump is saying out of hand. The reality is there's no legal basis for taking Americans and shipping them down to El Salvador if we don't have control of the prison system in El Salvador, at least contractually in some way. Now, that's the legal side of this.

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And the question here is whether that legal fight is the fight that the administration wants to have. Maybe this goes back up to the Supreme Court and maybe the Supreme Court says, you know what? It's quite possible that the executive branch does have the power to curb due process here.

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But by continuing to fight the judiciary sort of every step of the way, as opposed to facility, I mean, this is very easy. Just tell Bukele in El Salvador to return the guy, give him his day in court and ship him out again. But the administration takes the view. I get it. I get it.

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This administration and the entire right has been conditioned to take the view that ever admitting a mistake or a course correcting is some sign of weakness. And I get it because the legacy media are willing to attack on any basis. Listen, I get why President Trump and his team don't want to admit any mistakes. I'll tell you what would be a mistake.

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would be to rely on a new sort of stability in the markets. I mean, I just don't think that's what's going to come over the next few weeks. President Trump specifically exempted gold and silver bullion from these sweeping tariffs. While these new policies are triggering significant financial chaos and uncertainty, the administration preserved your ability to diversify into precious metals.

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I'm not saying liquidate all your holdings and just buy bars of gold. I'm saying diversification. Every good investor does it. Check out my friends over at Birch Gold. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898 right now. Also, you know what's funny? When I started Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the excellent content.

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Turned out that dealing with the behind-the-scenes stuff like hiring, HR policies, employee issues, that's the stuff that eats up enormous amounts of time. I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable. So don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time-sucking payroll issues and HR infractions. Focus on the things that matter most.

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He was not supposed to be on the plane because of that withholding order that said he was not supposed to be sent back to El Salvador. He was sent back to El Salvador. A district court found that the government had to facilitate his return from El Salvador back to the United States so he could have due process before we deported him again. That case ended up going to the Supreme Court.

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Instead of getting bogged down with paperwork, compliance issues, I could have focused on growing the show, connecting with my audience. With Bambi's HR autopilot, you'll never have to waste your valuable time getting into the weeds of HR policies. Plus, Bambi is month-to-month, no hidden fees, and you can cancel anytime. Right now, get one month of Bambi for just $1. Go to Bambi.com.

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Type in Ben Shapiro under podcast to schedule your first call with an HR manager right now. That's one month of Bambi for just $1. At B-A-M-B-E-E.com, type in Ben Shapiro under podcast. Sometimes it is better to just do the quick and easy thing and then move on to the actual priorities, because especially with regard to immigration, there are actual priorities.

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However, here's what the vice president said on X. Quote, consider that Joe Biden allowed approximately 20 million illegal aliens into our country. This placed extraordinary burdens on our country. Our schools, hospitals, housing and other essential services were overwhelmed. On top of that, many of these illegal aliens committed violent crimes or facilitated fentanyl and sex trafficking.

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Okay, now again, I agree with every word of that, every single word. He continues, Again, all of that is legally true. He says, when the media and the far left obsess over an MS-13 gang member in demand, he'd be returned to the United States for a third deportation hearing. What they're really saying is they want the vast majority of illegal aliens to stay here permanently.

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And here is where things start to go awry. Okay, he is right on the politics of this. He is right on the politics of this. And again, that's a separate question. Two things can be true at once. The administration can be taking a legally dicey position and also a politically popular position. Those two things can live in perfect harmony, legally dicey and politically popular.

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are constant aspects of many of the policy decisions made by leaders on both sides. And as we'll get to in a moment, it's a political winner for the Trump administration to say we wanted to deport all these people and force the Democrats into the position of defending illegal alien gang members or suspected gang members. That is a politically winning position.

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However, if you're setting up a predicate where you actually want to get things done, you should be doing things the right way because it's faster and easier to do it the right way than it is to do it the wrong way and then fight it out in the courts every step of the way. Vice President Vance continues, here's a useful test.

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Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year? If the answer is no, they've given the game away. They don't want border security.

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Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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They don't want us to deport the people who have come into our country illegally. They want to accomplish through fake legal process what they failed to accomplish politically, the ratification of Biden's illegal migrant invasion. President Trump and I will not stand for it. Well, that's actually not the claim.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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This particular human had a withholding order, meaning that he was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants do not, in fact, have such an order. And you could effectuate the law on them quickly and easily without some sort of subsequent hearing because there's no paperwork on them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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The whole problem with this particular guy is you picked a bad example and you should just fix it. and then send him out of the country again, and then continue deporting hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants. Remember, with Abrego Garcia, same plane.

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Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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And in a 9-0 order, the Supreme Court stated that the district court had the power to say that the United States government, the White House, ought to facilitate his return to the United States, but they didn't define the term facilitate. So here is what the actual court order said. It said, quote, the application is granted in part and denied in part subject to the direction of this order.

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Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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There were hundreds of illegal immigrants who are not subject to any of this controversy because none of them had any sort of withholding order put in place by a court. So you can have both and is sort of the argument that I'm making. You can win legally.

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Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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You can do the right legal thing, which continues to give people the assurance that due process is carried out, gives the courts the assurance due process is carried out, and also win the political fight. Now, Democrats, fortunately for Republicans, are willing to Leroy Jenkins pretty much every political fight, just run directly into the heart of danger.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?

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So the Democrats have decided they are now going to visit an El Salvadoran prison. And this, of course, leads to the very wide open political argument. You guys won't even stand and clap for the family of Lake and Riley at the State of the Union address. But you will fly down to an El Salvadoran prison to meet with illegal immigrant gang members to grant them some sort of American sympathy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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All righty, folks, tons to get to on today's show. President Trump's triumphant visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Plus, he heads on over to Qatar. We examine negotiations in Ukraine and the state of the economy. But first, the news is moving faster than ever. People have been telling us they can't make sense of it all. So we are giving you more Ben Shapiro show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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It's saying that President Trump is a realist. He wants to be involved where it is in the interest of the United States to in fact be involved. He doesn't want to dictate to the Sauds that what they have to do is take counterproductive measures that will undermine their capacity to actually run the country because that's not how deals get done. And President Trump was there to get deals done.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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I mean, that's what he is there to do. President Trump's signal contribution to foreign policy thought in the Middle East, his biggest contribution is the idea that commerce trumps ideology. And this was considered a fool's errand when President Trump first took this on during his first term. The kind of basic idea was that no matter what commerce you offer to various nations,

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that commerce will never trump the ideology. And President Trump basically said, no, the commerce can, in fact, trump the ideology. Now, in order for that to happen, there have to be strings attached. And here is where things get a little bit complicated for what President Trump was doing in Saudi Arabia yesterday. He gave them an enormous number of benefits.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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He's completely shifted the direction of Saudi Arabia away from sort of a Wahhabi version of Islam that was spreading terror tentacles all over the planet. That's what we all grew up with in the early 2000s and the 1990s and toward a regime of modernization. That, of course, is very difficult to do in the Middle East. And MBZ, as he's called, requires credit for that.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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The Saudis are spending an enormous amount of money in the United States or pledging to do so. We'll get into how much they're actually spending in the United States in a moment.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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The question is whether enough strings are attached because just giving the Saudis or the Syrians, as we'll see, benefits from the United States without strings attached in the hope that they will, through their own goodwill, then do something nice and integrate further into the world system, that seems to be a mistake.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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You have to make this stuff conditional on them doing something that we want them to do. Now, I understand there are many things that the United States is getting here, including, for example, a bunch of Saudi oil money that is going to pour into the American economy. To be realistic, however, that Saudi oil money was already pouring into the American economies. That is a reality.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Many of the firms that were there negotiating with the Saudis while President Trump was there were already in deals with the Saudi Arabian government. However, President Trump did say yesterday that there was going to be a $600 billion deal with the Saudi, according to the New York Times.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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The White House on Tuesday said that President Trump, while in Saudi, had secured $600 billion in deals with the Saudi government and firms. But the details the White House provided are still vague. They totaled less than half that number. Many of the projects were already in the works before President Trump took office.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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As I say, the Saudis are not shy on the spending on American companies and American product. They own enormous amounts of American companies and American product already.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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President Trump mentioned, of course, that the biggest deal would be a $142 billion agreement to provide the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen American defense industry companies. Presumably, Saudi wants that mainly to fend off the threat of Iran in their north. Here's President Trump announcing this yesterday.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Again, all that's great. All that is terrific. You want the Saudis to invest. I mean, you want more money in America, obviously. So that is a very good thing. And President Trump, again, is tying all of this to an overall vision of the Middle East in which commerce dominates rather than chaos. Here is President Trump talking about it being time for commerce rather than chaos.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Now, again, if I have one ask of the Trump administration, it's that when this stuff is actually effectuated, there should be pressure on the Saudi royal government to actually engage in things like the Abraham Accords, because otherwise what you could see, and this is the big danger in doing business with dictatorships, what you could see is something akin to what China has done, which is

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make bank on capitalism while still opposing the agenda of the United States. So attaching strings is actually quite a good thing. We'll see the same sort of attitude prevail when it comes to Syria in President Trump's Saudi visit. But here is President Trump's overall vision for the region, which of course is correct, that it's time for commerce.

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And the reality is that modernizing the kingdom of Saudi Arabia so as to be more pro-Western, so as to be more modern, It's changed the entire Middle East.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And then President Trump said that he wants the Abraham Accords to happen. He said it'd be an honor to him if the Abraham Accords happen. Now, again, I wish that some of the stuff that he's giving to the Saudis had been tied to the Abraham Accords, because if he is going to broaden out his Nobel Peace Prize worthy accomplishments in term one, which that's what the Abraham Accords are.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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It seems to me that using leverage is a better plan than simply giving people things and then hoping on the back end they'll do the right thing. But here's President Trump yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Now, again, my hope is that it goes beyond hope, and it's made a condition of some of the things that we are doing for Saudi Arabia, since if the United States is to use its leverage in order to get countries to do more of the things that we want them to do, we should use leverage rather than simply giving them the things that they want and then hoping on the back end that they are going to give us what we want.

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Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff was speaking with Breitbart yesterday on specifically this topic, and he suggested that he believes that there will be a bunch of countries that come into the Abraham Accords under President Trump's administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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It's one of the reasons why President Trump's major accomplishment during his first term, the Abraham Accords, everybody is sort of waiting on tenterhooks for Saudi Arabia to integrate with Israel because that would sort of be the final sign that Saudi Arabia is now orienting away from radical Wahhabist Islam and towards something that provides a better future for his people.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And the countries that he was mentioning there include, as we will see, Syria, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and he hopes Saudi Arabia. Now, President Trump did speak about the issue of what goes on in Gaza. Sort of the precondition to the Abraham Accords being expanded is the ending of the war in Gaza. And Trump said Gaza's leadership has to go, meaning Hamas has to go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Now, speaking of a nation that he's attempting to bring into the fold, President Trump, he made a huge announcement with regard to Syria. So Syria, as we know, fell to HTS, which is, in fact, a terror group sponsored by the Turks. HCS is run by a man who now calls himself Ahmed al-Sharaa. Again, he switches his name all the time. His name used to be al-Jalani.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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You know him as al-Jalani, but he switches his name sort of like Prince switches his name. So now he's the terror leader formerly known as al-Jalani, and he's now the Syrian president sponsored by the Turks. President Trump actually met with him yesterday. There's a picture of him shaking hands with a person who had a $10 million bounty on him as of about two weeks ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Because he was a member of Al-Qaeda, and then he was a member of ISIS, and then he was a member of HTS. Well, yesterday in Saudi Arabia, President Trump announced that he would be ending sanctions against Syria at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Okay, so big applause in the room in Saudi Arabia. Of course, Saudi Arabia wants the sanctions ended on Syria because they're hoping to forge some sort of common agreement with Syria HTS is opposed to Iran. So there's this kind of Sunni-Shia split, obviously, in the Middle East, Iran representing the Shia.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So why exactly does President Trump have such a warm relationship with Saudi in a way that Joe Biden did not? Because if you'll recall, Joe Biden really, tried to alienate the Saudis. He came into office ripping on Mohammed bin Salman, ripping on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, putting pressure on Saudi Arabia not to fight, for example, the Houthis in Yemen. That did not work out well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Sunni powers include Saudi Arabia, as well as Turkey, and now HTS, which is, in fact, a Sunni regime in Syria. President Trump apparently told al-Jalani, who he met today, that he wants to see Syria enter the Abraham Accords, clear out all Palestinian terrorists from Syria, and all of the rest. Well, again, all I will say here is that I don't think that President Trump's orientation here is wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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I think the possibility of ending sanctions on Syria in order to get them to do things that are good for the West, good for the United States, and good for Middle Eastern peace, that's fine. But it better be a string attached, not a hope for a gift at the end of that process. Because otherwise, let's remember, okay, it was three weeks ago that al-Jalani and his team were murdering Druze.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And they're murdering Druze wholesale in southern Syria to the point that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, had to deploy in southern Syria to save the Druze from al-Jalani's terrorist thugs. And by the way, they were killing the odd Christian as well. So before we all cheer the removal of the sanctions, we should recognize that al-Jalani is not, in fact, a friend to minorities in Syria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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More facts, more analysis, more clarity. Same time every day in a new, longer format. So tune in on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plus, brace yourselves. Ben After Dark returns this Friday night. Somehow, we're still being allowed to make this show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Also, there ought to be strings attached. So trust but verify would be the order of the day with both Saudi and with Syria and with everybody in the Middle East. Trust but verify. Strings attached should be the way that we approach our foreign policy in these areas. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, I'd like to change gears for a moment and talk about Israel. It is now May.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Exactly 80 years ago this month, the horrors of the Holocaust finally came to an end. But did you know half of all Holocaust survivors actually still live in Israel? Think about that for just a moment. These elderly survivors who already endured unimaginable trauma decades ago, they're now facing renewed pain from the October 7th attacks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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What makes this even more heartbreaking is that thousands of elderly Jewish survivors in Israel are living below the poverty line. There's simply not enough of a safety net for them, which is why I support the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. The fellowship provides a real lifeline to these precious individuals through hot meals and boxes filled with nutritious food.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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For just 25 bucks, about the cost of a nice lunch, you can help provide a food box for somebody who desperately needs it. Or if you're able to give more generously, 335 bucks provides hot meals for an entire year. If you're moved to help, it's easy to make a difference. Just head on over to benforthefellowship.org. That's all one word.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Your contribution will directly impact the lives of these survivors who've already been through so much. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org to make a donation today. benforthefellowship.org. Also... I've been traveling a lot. That means it's hard to maintain my health. Now I gotta head to the gym, gotta spend time with the family.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power right through on willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition and that means eating veggies. But I hate veggies, so I'm thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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That sounds miserable and time-consuming, but balance of nature, fruits and veggies, There's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they stuff them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, which means I can pop it right into that protein smoothie and keep the gun show going strong. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, Get a free bottle of fiber and spice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. And get 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and that free bottle of fiber and spice. Check them out right now, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Now, meanwhile, President Trump has also rejected the soft Biden-Obama approach to Iran.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Putting pressure on Saudi Arabia with regard to democracy and human rights, while ignoring American interests in the Middle East, trying to make friends with Iran. Well, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who were really part of the same hole when it came to their foreign policy vision, made a bunch of big mistakes in the Middle East, particularly with regard to nations like Saudi Arabia. First,

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So yesterday in Saudi Arabia, he said that he wouldn't hesitate to wield American power.

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And so then he slammed Iran and he said, listen, the choices for Iran to make, he said he slammed Iran. He said they're a terror spreading entity. Saudi, of course, agrees with this. This is a popular perspective in Saudi Arabia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so again, his views on Iran are correct. He said the choices for Iran to make. He said that if Iran doesn't get off the nuclear train, then there will be consequences.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So again, that's fine. He talked about maximum pressure there. You'll notice that some of the language that has disappeared is the possibility of military action in that particular speech. We'll see what President Trump means by that. He also spoke about the Houthis.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Now, again, the American take on the Houthis, which is that the Houthis are no longer attacking American shipping in the Red Sea, and therefore the United States no longer has an interest. First of all, the shipping in the Red Sea has not returned. OK, the people are not sending their ships through the Red Sea because they don't trust that the Houthis aren't going to attack it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Number two, the Houthis, while President Trump was in Saudi Arabia, fired multiple missiles over Saudi territory in order to fire them at Israel. So, again, the Houthis have not, in fact, been defanged in any really serious way. But President Trump, again, this is sort of the balancing point that President Trump is at.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They kept saying words like democracy and human rights, and those would then trump American interests. So you'd have Joe Biden going out of his way during the 2020 campaign to talk about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a Muslim Brotherhood media member who was murdered by the Saudi regime in a Turkish embassy. And he made this like a big point of his foreign policy.

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And it's sort of an inflection point for what Trump means by realism, because there are more interventionist strands of realism, more hawkish strands and more dovish strands of realism. unclear how President Trump comes down on that question. Here he was with regard to the Houthis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So again, he said he doesn't want them shooting at Saudi Arabia. They literally fired missiles over Saudi Arabia. I think the hope here is that by arming Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia will then be given the capacity to go back into Yemen and push the Houthis out. That would be part of the goal here in all of this. Bottom line is that this is a triumphant trip from President Trump.

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He ends up with a bunch of committed Saudi money into the United States, a warmer relationship with the Saudi government, which of course is quite good, better tech relations with the Saudis.

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What I would love to see from President Trump and the American administration more generally, just the entire American government, if we are going to be doing these sorts of things with Saudi Arabia or relieving sanctions on Syria or making deals in the Middle East, make the strings attach. Make the strings attach. That's what President Trump did in his first term.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the reason UAE, Bahrain, Morocco ended up in the Abraham Accords is not because of pure goodwill for the United States or for Israel. It's because the United States made strings attached to the joining of all of those things. And that doesn't mean the United States has to act on behalf of Israel, obviously. The United States should pursue its own interests.

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But one of those interests would be a greater integration in the region because that means more commerce. It means less conflict. It means less military funding. It means less weaponry in the region. It means less... proliferation in the region. If you want a peaceful Middle East, the United States has always had a thumb on the scale.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Only President Trump has properly used that thumb in order to achieve peace in the Middle East. He's the only president in my lifetime who truly did that. And I'd love to see him pursue that same sort of policy in Saudi. Meanwhile, President Trump headed on from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. And again, here you get into some very dicey territory because Qatar is in fact a state sponsor of terrorism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Qatar is the number one funder of Hamas. The dirty little secret about the release of Idan Alexander, which was done at the behest of the Qataris, is that if the Qataris wanted all hostages released, they could make that happen. The thing the United States should have done under Joe Biden and should still do under President Trump is not engage in this warm, cozy relationship with the Qataris.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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What the United States should say is all hostages out, Hamas gone, or the airbase goes away. The United States used to have its major Middle Eastern airbase in Saudi Arabia. The United States could do that again. The Qataris have basically used the giant airbase that they pay for in Qatar as a way of getting the United States to treat

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Their support for terrorism, for anti-American hatred via Al Jazeera and the Muslim Brotherhood with a wink and a nod. The Qataris play both sides. There is a fascinating piece from the Free Press. It's a very deep, deeply researched piece called How Qatar Bought America.

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pointing out that Qatar, which is a tiny little nation, it's a postage stamp, has spent almost $100 billion to establish influence in Congress, universities, newsrooms, think tanks, and corporations. They are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. And they have honeycombed both parties with their cash. They've just slathered their cash over people in both parties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, the reality is the Middle East is a place filled with terrible regimes. The only truly democratic regime in the entire Middle East is Israel. Everybody else is a tyrannical dictatorship.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the free press, That airplane deal, which I've criticized on the show, is giving of a $400 million Air Force One ready airplane. It's not Air Force One ready, by the way. We have to completely remake it. We have to check it for Chinese tech. We have to make sure there are no bugs in it. It'll take years to retrofit that particular plane.

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Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And then it will be in use for a fairly short period of time before it is given to the Trump presidential library, where presumably President Trump, I know he says he's not going to fly around on it. It's not going to sit there. It just it isn't. According to the Free Press, the airplane deal was signed off on by Attorney General Pam Bondi. She used to work at a Washington, D.C.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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lobbying firm that received $115,000 a month from Qatar to fight human trafficking, according to a 2019 contract reviewed by the Free Press, which, by the way, that is that it's an absurdity. Qatar engages in slave labor. The idea that Qatar is an opponent of human trafficking. Who do you think built the World Cup stadium is a major issue in Doha.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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But it's not just the attorney general who's being paid over a million dollars a year to fight trafficking by Qatar. President Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, led a lobbying firm called Mercury Public Affairs when it was representing Qatar's embassy in Washington. The FBI director, Kash Patel, worked as a consultant for Qatar, though he didn't register as a foreign agent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We've already talked about Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, who has nothing but warm words for the Qataris. And so he should, because in 2023, they bailed him out of a crappy real estate deal by buying out Park Lane Hotel for $623 million. Meanwhile, as I've mentioned, the Trump organization is planning a luxury golf resort

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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near Doha, in partnership with a Qatari government-backed company. As I mentioned, the president's son, Donald Jr., is speaking next week at a Qatar economic forum. Originally, the session was called Monetizing MAGA. Omid Malik of 1789 Capital, who's his partner at 1789 Capital, was also supposed to speak there. Qatar, of course, is a terror supporter, as I mentioned yesterday.

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And the question is whether those tyrannical dictatorships are going to move in the direction of the West toward a gradual accommodation with modern modernity or whether those tyrannical regimes are just going to oppose the United States wholesale. President Obama and President Biden kept pretending that words like democracy and human rights trumped American interests.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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They support the Muslim Brotherhood. They support Hamas. They used to support the Taliban. They've cheer-led pretty much every form of radical Islamic terrorism in the entire region. So where did they spend the money? They spend the money everywhere. If you don't like what Qatar is doing in American universities, and they are literally the number one spender at American universities. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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You tell me. Why is a tiny Middle Eastern dictatorship that is rich in oil expending tens of billions of dollars on American college campuses? Explain. The only reason is for propaganda purposes and to infiltrate these universities and put their messages out there. According to the free press,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Qatar has spent, over the course of the last few years in the United States, $29 billion on weapons purchases, $30 billion on business investments, $20 billion on energy plants and export facilities, $6.3 billion on colleges and universities, $224 million on lobbying and public relations. The influence built by Qatar in the United States as the free press has no modern parallel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whether compared with large American companies seeking to influence antitrust policy, energy firms trying to win new drilling rights, or other foreign governments aiming to shape US policy or shield themselves from it. For comparison, Qatar spent three times more in the United States than Israel did on lobbyist public relations advisors and other foreign agents in 2021.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Qatar spent almost two thirds as much as China. Qatar is a country with a population of 2.6 million people. China is a country with a population over a billion people, and they spent two-thirds as much as China. Why? Because they are a stand-in for terrorists all over the region. They're a clearinghouse for terrorism all over the region. Qatar is not doing this for free.

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And just as the president should be attaching strings to things the United States does for other countries, if you think Qatar is not attaching strings and they are doing stuff for just the bleeps and the giggles of it, they're doing it out of the kindness of their heart. That's a ridiculous notion. Of course, Qatar is not doing it that way. By the way, you know who knows that? Other Arab states.

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In 2017, according to the free press, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Arab states launched a formal economic siege of Qatar. accusing the country of supporting terrorism and extremism and threatening the stability of their own regimes. They demanded that Doha ended support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera.

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The Alfani family, which runs Qatar, saw the siege as an existential threat to their rule. The operation included attempts to sever Doha's external sea and air routes. There were rumblings of a Saudi cross-border ground invasion. Qatari nationals worried about food shortages, necessitating emergency supplies from Iran at one point. So what did the Alfani's do?

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They started spraying the cash everywhere. The US government found that in 2021 alone, Qatar employed 35 registered lobbyists and public relations firm at a total cost of more than $51 million. In comparison, the total expenditures for the UAE were $35 million for Saudi, $25 million.

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So the free press sifted through every single filing it could find since 2017 by lobbyists and public relations firms. Qatar has spent $225 million since then. And that's just part of the picture. Because according to lawyers, governments are not required to tell the DOJ how much they spend on things like think tanks or hosting US political and congressional delegations.

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That's how you ended up during the Obama era with the Arab Spring, which is the idea that you need, quote-unquote, democracy in the Middle East, which was going to fix everything. And it resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood initially in power in Egypt. It resulted in the rise of terror groups all over the region, the complete decay of Libya, for example.

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In 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Qatar targeted a list of 250 people close to Trump aimed at, quote, getting into his head as much as possible in the words of a lobbyist involved in the effort. And let's be clear. I mean, President Trump is very, very warm toward Qatar these days, for sure. Here is President Trump just yesterday. He refuses to give up on this idea of the Qatar.

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He's giving them 400 million. OK, they say that he's giving it to the Air Force. If it goes to your presidential library after and that's a condition of the transfer of the jet. Yes, it has something to do with you. It's not just a magical gift to the DOD.

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So the answer is you wouldn't accept a gift if it is a Trojan horse and inside of it are enemy soldiers. And that is what Qatar is doing with all of its money. That's what it is doing. Great example of how Qatar pays people off, according to the free press. Over the past decade, there's a man named Elliot Broidy. He used to be the finance chair of the Republican National Committee.

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Broidy used his connections to try to expose Qatar. He helped pay for conferences at think tanks like Hudson Institute and Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And he solicited anti-Qatar opinion articles from American diplomats and scholars. In 2018, he accused Qatar of engineering a computer hack of his devices.

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So Broidy spent a bunch of money targeting Qatar, and then he went completely quiet. After secret talks in Qatar and Europe that included Broidy and senior aides to Qatar's ruling Alfani family, he agreed last year to a settlement that paid him more than $150 million, according to people intimately familiar with the deal.

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He agreed to abandon his legal fight and any funding of efforts aimed at tarnishing Qatar. This sort of stuff apparently is very common. Actually, the free press name checks Lindsey Graham as a person who may be associated with Qatar. Qatar, his perspective on Qatar shifted.

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So for example, he had ripped into radical Islam for a long time, but in December, 2023, a couple of months after Hamas invaded Israel, he showed nothing but admiration and respect to Qatar.

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So the free press says back in 2018, when Graham was known more for his vigorous support of the Iraq war and friendship with John McCain, Qatar began investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Graham's home state of South Carolina, including via Boeing,

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Graham and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster met with leaders of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to discuss additional investments in the state. Charleston and Doha became sister cities. Qatar's embassy donated $100,000 to Charleston for COVID aid relief. Qatar, by the way, says it has invested more than $21 billion in Texas and $8 billion along the Gulf Coast.

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It turns out the Arab Spring was actually an Arab winter. And then... powerful people took over in these places and had to quash all of these sort of Muslim Brotherhood-led rebellions in a wide variety of these countries. So, well, Barack Obama and Joe Biden preached democracy and human rights.

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On the day of the 2023 Hamas attack, Graham took a phone call from Andrew King, a former deputy chief of staff to Graham, whose firm earns 50 grand a month as a lobbyist for Qatar's embassy in Washington. And then they met seven more times by the end of December. Al Jazeera is a massive influence campaign that is run by Qatar.

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And they pay an enormous number of big name people in the United States in order to push their propaganda. Those people include, for example, apparently, Ali Velshi.

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In May 2024, Ali Velshi interviewed America's ambassador to Qatar, Timmy Davis, at the Global Security Forum, co-hosted by the Qatari government and the Soufan Center, a global research and events organization headed by a former FBI counterterrorism expert, Ali Soufan.

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Belshi, who used to be at Al Jazeera America, told the room of journalists, diplomats, and policy professionals, quote, I would argue everybody in this room understands the role Qatar is trying to play and is playing in this very serious issue we've got in the Middle East right now. The Global Security Forum paid for Belshi's travel and hotel costs.

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Again, this sort of stuff is really, when I said skeezy earlier this week, this sort of stuff is more than skeezy. Qatar is doing this sort of stuff because they want influence. That is why Qatar has funded universities and colleges in the United States to the tune of $6.3 billion, the highest number for any nation, not close. You think they're doing this out of the goodness of their heart?

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They're a terror supporting country, obviously. And the fact that the United States, the Trump administration continues to treat them as an honest broker is wrong. It is not true. And it's from people on both sides. Again, Democrats are jumping on the jet question, but that's not really the question. The question here is what is Qatar doing at the universe?

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You can't say it's good for Qatar to fund our universities, but bad for them to give president Trump a jet. Both things are not good. Both things are very bad. Qatar is a cancer from within the Western coalition. That is what they are. And pretending otherwise is a mistake. Meanwhile, again, as I've said, it does not benefit President Trump to continue to take this jet. It just doesn't.

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It's not just people like me saying this. Obviously, the Republican senators who are going to be up for reelection, who are going to be asked questions about all of this. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that there are lots of issues associated with that offer I think need to be further talked about. Senator Rand Paul said, I think the jet probably sends the wrong signal to people.

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I don't like the look or the appearance of it. I would hope he rejects it. Senator Cruz noted Qatar's financial support for Hamas and also that Qatar backed Hezbollah. He said, I think the plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems. We'll see how it plays out. Again, this is going to be a problem. It will. And Democrats are going to make hay out of it.

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Apparently, Democrats are planning to fly some flags in Florida near Mar-a-Lago, calling it Qatar-a-Lago. I mean, honestly, it'd be political malpractice for them not to jump on this, considering they basically have no other ground to attack President Trump. Hakeem Jeffries is hopefully, like with stars in his eyes, attacking the $400 million jet quote-unquote gift.

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Less democracy and fewer human rights were the result of the Obama-Biden matrix with regard to the Middle East. The second thing that Obama and Biden did was create daylight with our actual allies in the Middle East in favor of our enemies like Iran. So as I say, Joe Biden drew tremendous contrast with Saudi Arabia and also with Israel. Same thing with Barack Obama.

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Okay, so by the way, that is a thing that actually happened with the Statue of Liberty. So people saying this is like the Statue of Liberty, a few differences. One, the president couldn't personally fly the Statue of Liberty. Two, it actually did have to be approved by Congress. Three, it was from an allied country, France, not a country that supports terrorism, Qatar. So a few differences.

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Also, the Statue of Liberty did not have surveillance technology, probably honeycombed throughout the technology on the most sensitive security site in America. So there are a few differences that I will note there. Chuck Schumer is using this as an opportunity to hold up President Trump's Justice Department nominees.

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According to The New York Times, Senator Schumer, who is the Democratic minority leader, intends on Tuesday to put a hold on all Justice Department political appointees awaiting Senate confirmation until he gets more information on plans by President Trump to accept a luxury airliner from Qatar.

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Schumer said on the Senate floor, it's not just naked corruption, it's a grave national security threat. And he's expected to call on the Justice Department's Foreign Agents Registration Act unit to report on any activities by Qatari agents in the United States that could benefit the president or any of his family's businesses.

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This is why, again, you got to stay away from the shady activity because Democrats are going to make hay out of it for no other reason. Now, I have moral objections, but put aside the moral objections just for practicality sake. If you want President Trump to succeed, this is not helpful in doing all of that. Democrats, meanwhile, also jumping on the Trump family's crypto investments.

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According to Axios, Senate Democrats are asking President Trump to divest from his own cryptocurrency empire as he embarks on a Middle East trip this week. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen urged Trump on Monday to divest from his stable coin before reaching any agreements with foreign governments on his trip abroad. Why?

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Well, because the New York Times reported earlier this month that the Trump family members could profit from $2 billion worth of their stable coins that would be used for a foreign transaction involving an Abu Dhabi investment fund.

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Again, there are all sorts of questions about crypto and world liberty financial and the Trump family and foreigners being able to buy that sort of crypto, influence operations and all the rest. Democrats are gonna make hay out of this because again, it would be political malpractice for them not to do so.

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Okay, meanwhile, in other news from the Middle East, yesterday it appeared that Israel killed Yahya Sinwar's brother. Sinwar, of course, was the leader of Hamas. After Israel assassinated Yahya Sinwar, They apparently took out Mohamed Sinwar, who is the new leader of Hamas. It was all running in the family. According to the Wall Street Journal, they launched a strike.

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It hit an underground site near a European hospital. It's called European Hospital in Khan Yunis because this is where terrorists hide. This again is why it is so absurd for the French government to yell at the Israelis about, oh my God, you're attacking your civilians. They're not civilian sites when you use them as terror bases.

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What started as a modest segment has now spiraled into a full-length member-exclusive fever dream, and frankly, we're too far gone to turn back right now. Airing exclusively at DailyWare+, Ben After Dark gives you more of what no one has ever asked for.

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If you use a hospital as a terror base, it is now a terror base, not a hospital. This is why Mohammed Sinwar hid there. The unspoken acknowledgement, by the way, that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, are actually targeted and moral lies in the fact that the Palestinians are constantly hiding beneath civilian sites. You know who doesn't care about hiding beneath civilian sites?

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Lots of overtures to Iran, lots of sort of pushing our actual allies in the region off into the corner. Third, the Obama-Biden matrix took at face value the idea that in order for any progress on anything to happen in the Middle East, Israel had to make all sorts of concessions to the Palestinians. And President Trump in his first term said that that is not a thing.

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Terrorists in Chechnya. You know why? Because they know that Vladimir Putin is just going to blow away their families, everybody around them. They don't care. Vladimir Putin does not care. So if terrorists in Chechnya hide behind their kids, Putin just blows away the kids. The reason that terrorists in Gaza hide behind children is because they know that Israel is reluctant to kill children.

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They know that Israel is reluctant to hit so-called civilian sites. That is the specific reason they do it. Acknowledging the innate morality of the IDF is the key to understanding why Hamas is hiding in these places, obviously. So footage is available of the strike.

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It could take days for Israel to determine whether the strike was successful in killing Sinwar, but it's very likely that Sinwar is dead. They blew a crater in the middle of the street. They targeted the tunnel.

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This could lead presumably to a broader conversation because if you've defenestrated the entire leadership of Hamas, then basically there's no chance that Hamas is going to lead the Gaza Strip. So hopefully this leads to a faster off-ramp. including the complete destruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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Meanwhile, in other foreign policy news, direct talks have now been set in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine. Now, originally, Vladimir Putin said that he was going to go to Turkey and negotiate with Vladimir Zelensky. That was something that he had said he was going to do. President Trump then encouraged Zelensky to put aside his demands for a 30-day ceasefire in order to have those direct talks.

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Zelensky said yes, and now it appears that Putin is not actually going to show up. So, Shock of shocks. It turns out that Putin is slow playing this thing, figuring that President Trump is going to withdraw support from Ukraine and then he'll just be able to roll the tanks right through Kiev. That is the game. It is a it is a slow play.

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And again, this is something the Trump administration needs to watch out for. because there are a few different things that help America's enemies. One of them is just slow-playing America. This is what Iran is doing. Iran has no intentions of giving up its nuclear programs. None, zero, zip, zilch.

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They are slow-playing Special Envoy Steve Witkoff right now to give them time to rebuild their air defenses, to give themselves time to rebuild their ballistic missile supply, and to allow them to move closer to the development of a nuclear weapon. That is what they are doing. Iran can win in two ways. One, a bad deal cut with the United States.

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And two, no deal cut with the United States, but a lengthening of the time period for their nuclear program to gain steam. Putin seems to be doing the same thing with regard to Ukraine. He's slow playing the negotiations in the hope that President Trump and the administration will basically get bored and walk away. And here's the problem in Ukraine.

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The Europeans are ready to pick up the ball, spend more money, give more military weaponry. I've been in Ukraine. I've talked to people who have fought in the army over there. The Ukrainian weaponry is largely reliant on American munitions. You can't just switch those over overnight to European munitions. It takes a period of time to switch those over to European-made armaments.

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If the United States stops supplying, there will be a gap in the armaments. If there's a gap in the armaments, Russia can steamroll. That is what Putin presumably is hoping for. So going to Turkey will be Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg. Putin apparently will not be going. Zelensky will be going.

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So again, Putin had offered direct negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Turkey for Thursday. He made the move, even though Russian pundits have been pushing a narrative for weeks that talks with Kiev are not possible because of Zelensky's supposed lack of legitimacy. It'll be interesting to see whether or not anything comes of these talks.

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President Trump in his first term said, hey, look, that issue is unsolvable. The Palestinians don't want peace with the Israelis. And so actually there can be commerce and cooperation outside of that particular issue. And that is still something that President Trump deeply believes. And then fourth, the Obama-Biden matrix tried to make overtures to Iran without any prospective consequences.

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Again, I think that it is highly unlikely that anything comes to these talks because given the fact that Russia's innate goal is the destruction of the Ukrainians as an independent polity, that their goal at the very least is to set up some sort of puppet regime, I say Belarus, in this region, that the notion that you're going to be able, I think, to negotiate a deal there is lackluster.

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With that said, obviously the United States has an interest in trying to promote that as much as humanly possible.

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Okay, meanwhile, when it comes to the economy, obviously, President Trump getting off the schneid with regard to the tariff war, moving away from the 145% tariffs that the Treasury Secretary said were unsustainable on China, moving toward what will be probably a 30% tariff, moving the rest of the world to a 10%. That's better than it was. It's not as good as it could be.

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It is still the truth that the overall tariff rate, the average tariff rate after all of this is still going to be significantly higher than it was before. The tariff framework in the United States remains as high as it has been since the 1930s. And the current tariff rate on average will remain somewhere in the 13% range.

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Now, the average tariff rate until all this happened was much closer to zero. So this is why people are still worried about inflation. This, despite the fact that the CPI came in lower than expected, people are still waiting for the inflationary policies to actually hit. So basically the tariff war was the old Yiddish joke. There's an old Yiddish joke about a man and his wife.

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He's not getting along with his wife. So he goes to the rabbi and he says, rabbi, I'm not getting along with my wife. It's just loud in my house. It's dirty in my house. I can't deal with it. And so the rabbi says, I want you to take a chicken and put it in your house, a live chicken and put it in your house. And it says, okay. I mean, it doesn't seem great, but okay. He's the rabbi.

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He takes a chicken, puts it in his house. Week later, he goes back to the rabbi. He says, rabbi, it's unthinkably bad in my house. I've got problems with my wife. It's dirty. It's loud. And now I've got a chicken in there. The rabbi says, I need you to take two goats into your house. So the man takes two goats and puts them in his house. And he comes back a week later.

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He says, rabbi, I can't deal with this. I'm going to lose my mind. This is crazy. I've got a chicken and two goats and my wife and it's dirty and it's just terrible and loud and awful in the house. And the rabbi says, I need you to take a cow and put it in the house. And so the man says, all right, he puts the cow in the house. Comes back a week later, he says, rabbi, it's awful.

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I can't handle this at all. I'm committing suicide. This is awful. The rabbi says, okay, now it's time. Take all the animals out of your house. The chicken, the two goats, the cow, take them all out of your house. The man does. A week later, he comes to the rabbi. He says, rabbi, I gotta tell you, it's so quiet in my house. It's amazing in my house.

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My wife and I are getting along for the first... That's basically Trump's tariff war. But Trump decided to stack... on what was a good economy that he himself was building a giant tariff for, and then he removed most of it. The difference is the chicken's still in the house. So the chicken still being in the house means that inflation is not yet dead. It is still a serious concern.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Inflation was relatively mild in April, but economists said tariffs will end a recent lull and push up prices in the coming months. The Consumer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in April, according to the Labor Department. Analysts said this was good news because it didn't reveal bad news.

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It was, we will make you a deal, and there will be no consequences. And we will make you a deal, and there will be no consequences. Well, Donald Trump has reversed all of those things. And that is the reason why he's being more successful in the Middle East. He acknowledges that different countries are going to govern differently.

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And by the way, this seems to be the sort of way that we are now viewing how the markets work, is that if it's not bad news, it's good news. Well, actually, if it's not bad news, it's just news. Hey, there's a difference between good news and bad news. And just to point out the obvious, when President Trump took office, the stock market was at 45,000.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 45,000 or so, 44,600. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 42,220. Okay, so that is not growth. It's not a massive dump, but it's not growth. And what you would like to see is actual growth. You want to see that number going up and to the right.

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If you had said to me, when President Trump took office, at five months into his administration, the stock market would essentially be flat, I'd say that's kind of weird. I mean, President Trump is a better president economically than Joe Biden. Really, it should be going up and to the right. So removing most of the bad policy, but leaving some of the bad policy is actually not going to be

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I think, enough to forestall the possibility of some sort of stagnation, which is why the tax plan becomes so important. By the way, I think the tax plan is still baked into the stock market. I think that the stocks are already assuming the tax plan will get done. So I don't think after the tax plan gets done, there'll be a major stock market increase.

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We need a bunch of things to happen economically. We need massive deregulation. We need true AI breakthroughs. And we need better free trade agreements with all these countries that we are currently slamming with 10% tariffs when we were at close to zero with most of them a moment ago. So we are not out of the woods yet.

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And the sort of early triumphalism, again, just I'm going to warn, there's a difference between avoiding the really, really bad thing. There's a big difference between not having the cow, two goats and a chicken in your house and having nothing in your house. Right now, we still have a chicken. The chicken's still making trouble. That's not wonderful. We need to fix that.

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Well, joining us online to discuss President Trump's latest economic move with regard to big pharma is Tevi Troy. He is a best-selling presidential historian and former White House aide, as well as the Deputy Secretary of Health.

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And of course, he has a brand new book out called The Power and the Money, The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders-in-Chief, which is a fascinating read, especially given the close relationship between President Trump and business leaders today. Tevi Troy, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

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The idea that democracy in Saudi Arabia is going to be a boon is a ridiculous notion on its face. First of all, we should recognize that democracy in the West took a couple of thousand years in order to actually take root.

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So let's talk about President Trump's announcement with regard to big pharma. So he had said this was sort of the biggest announcement of his presidency so far. It is a unilateral attempt to lower pharmaceutical prices by doing what he calls most favored nation status.

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The idea being that Medicaid should basically pay the lowest price that anyone is paying for pharmaceutical products used by Medicaid and by foreign countries.

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The case that I've been making is that that is the wrong way to approach this issue, that the reality is that if you actually want big pharma to charge lower prices to Americans, what you actually ought to do is use the kind of tariff measures that President Trump is using on foreign countries to get those foreign countries to pay their fair share.

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Basically, all of these nationalized health care systems are ripping off Americans by paying artificially low rates for American pharmaceutical drugs. And then we pick up the bill for that specifically because of their negotiating position, cramming down more of that on the pharma companies just kills R&D.

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So, Dr. Troy, one of the things that I'm worried about is when you look at Make America Healthy Again, which has a lot of great things attached to it, the idea that we should look at our food supply or that we should be more careful about our own nutrition.

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One of the problems with Maha is its sort of orientation against pharma in general, this idea that big pharma is the enemy and therefore actually trial and error. lawsuits are good, that it is an act of good to basically sue pharma all the time or make it more difficult to bring drugs to market, not make it easier to bring drugs to market.

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In places like Great Britain, which we consider sort of the great Western democracy, the powers of parliament were not fully effectuated until at the very least the glorious revolution of 1688. So you're talking about full on hundreds of years of monarchy and oligarchy in Great Britain.

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I think people don't understand as a general rule, why are pharmaceuticals so expensive in general? Non-generics, generics in the United States are actually cheaper than they are anywhere else in the world. But non-generics in the United States, brand new drugs that are produced are extremely expensive.

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Can you explain the process for why it is so darned expensive for a new treatment to be provided to the market?

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I think one of the things people need to keep in mind is that it costs billions of dollars to successfully bring a drug to market. That is not counting the hundreds of billions of dollars that are spent on drugs that never make it to market.

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A huge percentage of R&D is done on pharmaceutical products and drugs and biotech that will never make it all the way into a patient because there's so many things that are tried and you have to follow every pathway when you're doing that. in order to determine whether the thing is even going to be effective or not. You have to go through multiple rounds of trials.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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You have to get through four phases from the FDA in order to get actual FDA approval. Most drugs fail out at phase one or phase two. And it's basically a winnowing process, which is why so few drugs actually... How many drugs actually make it to market? New drugs or new pharmaceutical products make it to market every year in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And the other thing that people ought to keep in mind is that the original price of these pharmaceuticals when they're brought onto market is really, really high. But the whole point is that over time, as they move toward generic status, the price decreases.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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There's competition because the price is so high to undercut the people who did the R&D by bringing in competitive drugs that might be changed in a way that doesn't infringe on the patent. And then how long is the patent period for brand new drugs in the United States?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Okay, well, the same thing is gonna hold true in the Middle East, particularly because the Judeo-Christian West and the biblical values upon which it relies have some strains of democracy. There's nothing in the Quran that tends towards democracy. And so that, of course, is going to be sort of a problem in a lot of Islamic nations. So what does that mean in terms of governance?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So we're speaking with Dr. Tevi Troy, Senior Fellow at Bipartisan Policy Center and the former Deputy Secretary of Health. So how effective is President Trump's EO actually going to be? Presumably it would take some congressional action to actually effectuate something like this. Can Medicaid, just because the president says so, start using MFN status?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And also what will be the result for patients? Because I would assume that many pharma companies if they are forced to deliver these drugs at below market prices to Medicaid, are just going to stop delivering the drugs in the same way that many doctors no longer take Medicaid if the reimbursement rates are too low.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Well, that is Dr. Tevi Troi. You can check out his brand new book, The Power and the Money, The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders-in-Chief that's available right now. Dr. Troi, really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Meanwhile, in the other big news that, again, it's amazing this is news, but Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson from Axios have a brand new book called Original Sin. I plan on having Jake on the show to talk about it. This book reveals everything that we all knew.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And so I understand the upset and the dyspepsia and the heartburn and all the rest, the indigestion that many of us on the right have toward the existence of a book like this because we all knew, everybody knew in 2020 that Joe Biden was feeble mentally, that he was ailing already. And so this idea that, oh my gosh, we were bamboozled.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Okay, but to be fair to the authors, to be fair, I'm doing my best here. To be fair to the authors, I will say that there is a difference between generically knowing there is a problem with the president of the United States and the stories in this book, which are astonishingly bad, truly, truly bad. Now, should the media have been more skeptical of the administration? Absolutely. Absolutely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And I would bet that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson would admit as much that they themselves should have been more skeptical of the White House's claims with regard to the health of the president of the United States. Again, giving everybody the benefit of the doubt. But The stories here are really, really amazing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Apparently, according to the book, Biden's aides were so concerned by his perceived decline, they started scrambling for ideas. Apparently, his spine was in particular decline. He couldn't basically walk. So aides discussed the possibility of putting him in a wheelchair after the election. They knew that they couldn't do it before the election.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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It means that if you wish to do business with any of these places, if you wish to actually move these countries towards some level of moderation, democracy is not going to be the number one answer in these places. If there were democracy overnight in Jordan, there'd be a terror state. If there were democracy in the UAE, there'd be a terror state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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They thought maybe if he wins, we'll put him in a wheelchair. And there are a bunch of other revelations in this new book, Original Sin. First, Biden's top aides tried to hide him from their own staff. They didn't want it getting out that Joe Biden was as bad as he was.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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One person identified by Tapper and Thompson is a senior aide who quit the White House, according to Mediaite, told the authors, quote, we attempted to shield him from his own staff. So many people didn't realize the extent of the decline beginning in twenty twenty three. Now, again, we all knew.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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With that said, I still think that most people were at least a little shocked by the extent of the fact that his brain was gone in that debate with President Trump, which is why he had to drop out of the race. The unnamed aide said, I love Joe Biden. When it comes to decency, there are few in politics like him still.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

4136.481

It was a disservice to the country and to the family and to the party for his family and advisors to allow him to run again. Now, the dirty secret behind all of this, obviously, is that the Democratic Party did not want for any reason whatsoever to leave Kamala Harris as the nominee. That is the actual real buried story. That's the buried lead here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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The reason that you prop up a dead person is because you know the person who's behind the dead person is even worse than the dead guy. The reason you pop El Cid on that horse is because he ain't got nobody else out there. And that is the dirty secret. Everyone knew Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate and that she was a joke, which, of course, she ended up being.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

4171.974

David Plouffe was a top Kamala Harris campaign advisor. He said, we got so screwed by Biden as a party. He said the truncated campaign was an effing nightmare. And he said, it's all Biden. He totally effed us. But that's not true. If that campaign had lasted longer, it would have been worse for Kamala Harris, not better. It was only the extreme brevity of the campaign that gave her a shot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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If the campaign had been two weeks long, she might be president. Because in those first two weeks, you remember the vibes? Remember the vibe shift? You remember how brat Kamala Harris was? And the question was, would she ever come down to Earth? And the answer was, absolutely. Like a freaking stone, she came down to Earth. At the beginning, it was like, oh, she's a hot air balloon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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More unscripted opinions, more pop culture recklessness, more questions from celebrities with questionable judgment, and more segments that walk the fine line between genius and massive HR liability. This week on the show, I confront Ambassador Mike Huckabee with the question no one has dared to ask. Does he know about Bill Belichick's new girlfriend?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And then it turns out there was no air in the balloon. And that wasn't her descending. It was just her falling, plummeting like Wile E. Coyote. Basically, her campaign was Wile E. Coyote over the edge of the cliff. You know, before he looks down at the beginning, he's kind of like, and you're like, wow, maybe Wile E. Coyote can fly. And then he looks down and That was her campaign.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And they all knew it, which is why they propped up the dead guy. According to the book, Barack Obama had to rescue Joe Biden numerous times during that star-studded fundraiser. This one is amazing. Now, we all know this. We played the tape. We played the tape. You remember, there was this star-studded fundraiser, June 15th, 2024. That was the one where Biden froze on stage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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If there were democracy in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood would probably run the place. So all of those big fancy words, those are those big idealistic words that Joe Biden and Barack Obama like to use in the Middle East. They're sort of liberal universalism does not apply there. And this is something that President Trump really does understand.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And then we were told it was a cheap fake. That's what the White House said. It was a cheap fake. Joe Biden had to be guided offstage like Barack Obama was working for visiting angels. And that's what it looked like in the video. And the entire media pretended it was a cheap fake. But apparently that wasn't the only time that night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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According to the book, at one point in a small group of a few dozen top donors, Biden began speaking barely audibly and trailed off incoherently. Obama had to jump in and preside. At other moments during photos, Obama would hop in and finish sentences for him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Another revelation from the book, and this one, I kind of love this one because it is both Joe Biden being senile and gone and George Clooney being the arrogant jackass that he is. Apparently, George Clooney attended an earlier June fundraiser And an assisting aide told Biden, you know, George. And Biden said, yeah, yeah. Thank you for being here. And Clooney said, hi, Mr. President.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And the president said, how are you? And Clooney said, how was your trip? And the president said it was fine. It seemed clear the president had not recognized Clooney. It was not OK, recalled a Hollywood VIP who witnessed the moment. That thing, the moment where you recognize someone, you know, especially a famous person who's doing a fundraiser for you. It was delayed. It was uncomfortable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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George Clooney, the aide clarified for the president. Oh, yeah. Hi, George, said Biden. Clooney was shaken to the core. The president had not recognized him. So first of all, I love the arrogance of being like, he didn't recognize me. I'm George Clooney. I'm George. I was on E.R. I haven't made a good movie in 20. I was on E.R., So I love that. But also, yeah, Joe Biden was completely senile.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So yeah, everything you thought was true. The scandal that the media brought upon itself by covering up Joe Biden's health, I'm not sure they're ever going to heal from it. I think it completely destroyed the media, probably for all time, the legacy media. Alrighty, coming up on the Ben Shapiro show, we'll get to.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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MLB now declaring that Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe are off the band list for the Hall of Fame. We'll get to what I feel about that as a baseball fan. Plus, David Hogg, they're going hog wild on him over at the DNC. He might be ousted. So he lasted about seven Scaramucci's. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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On the other hand, what President Trump also understands is that isolationism is not a real perspective in the Middle East. Now, I know yesterday there were a lot of people on the sort of isolationist right who are championing what President Trump was saying in Saudi Arabia. And I want to be clear, President Trump is not an isolationist. He's never been an isolationist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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I'll tell you what isolationists don't do. Sell $150 billion worth of military weaponry to the Saudis. You know what isolationists don't do? Fly to Saudi Arabia and Qatar to cut Billions of dollars worth of business deals. You know what isolationists don't do? Try to broker accords between Syria and the Saudis and Qatar and the Turks and Israel. None of that's isolationism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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What President Trump is not is one, an isolationist. Number two, he is not a Wilsonian interventionist. And those are not the only two options. Wilsonian interventionism, what people like to call the sort of neocon idea. And again, that's a misnomer because the neocons were a specific group of people who were very hawkish on foreign policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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In the 1960s and 70s, there were liberals who were mugged by reality, became hawkish on foreign policy and turned against the welfare state. And then that was sort of associated with Wilsonian interventionism in the early 2000s. But today there are no neocons. The number of Wilsonian interventionists who believe in quote unquote nation building in Iraq or Afghanistan, like who are those people?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Please name them. Okay, so that is also obviously not the president's perspective. The president is a realist. What is a realist? A realist is somebody who understands that different nations have different interests, have different cultures, and that there's different nations with different cultures actually have to be negotiated with on their own level. We get some more on this in moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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First, this July, there is a global summit of BRICS nations in Rio de Janeiro. The bloc of emerging superpowers, including China, Russia, India, Iran, are meeting with the goal of displacing the US dollar as the global currency. They're calling this the Rio Reset.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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As BRICS nations push forward with their plans, global demand for US dollars will decrease, bringing down the value of the dollars in your savings. While this transition will not happen overnight, the Rio Reset in July marks a pivotal moment when BRICS objectives are Thank you so much for having me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Also, we field an unfiltered query from a mystery guest in our brand new segment, Friends with Ben Offits. Yes, we have writers for this show. I judge whether America truly has talent, including a singer with a voice so deep it might be tunneling into the earth's core.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Let Birch Gold arm you with a free no-obligation info kit on owning gold before July and the real reset. Text Ben to 989898 today. You may have noticed that gold is doing pretty well in uncertain markets. Well, it's an uncertain market. Gold's doing pretty well. Text Ben to 989898 today to take a look at diversifying. Also, if you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Did you know that somebody can actually literally steal your home? Well, I don't mean they're going to come to your house and like jack it up on a truck or something, but they can steal the value in your home. A scammer can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp and spend about 40 bucks to file it at the counter recorder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Then they can take out loans using your home as collateral. You won't even know it's happening until you start getting collection and foreclosure notices in the mail. Can you imagine if you or someone you cared about became a victim of these scams?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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That would be incredibly sad and frustrating, especially knowing there are people out there like Home Title Lock who can help keep an eye on your title. Most people never check on their home title once escrow closes. That's why it's critical to find out right now if you're already a victim by going to hometitlelock.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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It'll give you a free title history report and provide you with million dollar triple lock protection to help keep your home and equity safe. That's why I recommend and I'm proud to partner with Home Title Lock. Many people at The Daily Wire, including people on my own team, trust Home Title Lock to protect what is likely your biggest asset.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Again, most of your asset value is probably locked up in your home. If you don't protect that, bad things can happen. Get 24-7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts if there are any changes, and if fraud does happen, their US-based restoration team will spend up to a million bucks to fix the fraud and restore your title.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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When you go to hometitlelock.com right now and use promo code Shapiro, you can get a free 14-day trial and title history report to find out if you're already a victim. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code Shapiro. So President Trump goes to Saudi Arabia and he praised MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who really is the power over there in pretty glowing terms.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And of course, there's a fresh installment of Ben Destroys where I metaphorically set fire to the week's dumbest idea and then roast marshmallows in the flames. It's late night, but significantly worse. It's smart, but also stupid. It's the show that proves when you lower expectations far enough, anything can be entertainment. Ben After Dark, Friday night, dailywireplus.com, only for members.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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So, again, that sort of praise, not rare. President Trump likes to butter up the people with whom he is making deals. This, of course, is true for pretty much everybody. But he does have a warm relationship with Mohammed bin Salman, specifically because he believes that Mohammed bin Salman is driven by commerce rather than being driven by Wahhabist ideology.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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And then President Trump started speaking in sort of broad terms about his vision for the Middle East. And here's where some of the isolationists on the right were chanting triumphant slogans yesterday. That's not what he's saying. I'll explain in a moment. Here's President Trump in sort of the core of the speech.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Okay, so he's saying a few different things here. And in order to really understand what he's saying, we have to play the next clip of him talking about how he approaches the Middle East, where he says that a lot of presidents are worried about big words like democracy or looking into the souls of the people they're dealing with. That's not how you do this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Now, again, what he's saying there is the sort of Wilsonian interventionism, right? Big words like democracy, human rights. Sure, that stuff matters, but it's his job as president of the United States to preserve America's interests. So what does that mean? Well, he's mixing up a few things here in this part of the speech. One, he's suggesting interventionism is bad. Nation building is bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Let's be clear. Saudi Arabia was in large part nation built by the United States. And there what I mean is the entire Saudi economy is reliant on Western drilling for oil. But when he says that you guys created this domestically, that is not true. I'm sorry, it isn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Come for the chaos. Stay because you're too confused to click away. So yesterday was a huge day for President Trump in Saudi Arabia. He arrived in Riyadh. He was greeted on the tarmac by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is so-called, is obviously a signal figure in the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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I mean, the flattery is fine, but the idea that the Saudis on their own without Western involvement in their economy particularly would be sitting on trillions of dollars in wealth, it's not true. A Saudi Arabia would look like most other countries in the Middle East, namely incredibly poor and fraught with peril, were it not for the fact that the West basically drilled their oil for them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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Standard Oil of California created the entire Saudi oil industry in 1933. In 1938, what was called SoCal at the time succeeded in deep mining that uncovered Saudi's seas of oil. That company, SoCal, would later be named Aramco, which, of course, you now know. Texaco joined as a partner in 1937. It was American know-how, Western know-how that built the Saudi economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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In 1980, the Saudi government nationalized Aramco. By the way, I think if President Trump had been president at the time, he probably would have done something about that because the idea of foreign countries nationalizing assets that were built by the West, that's not something President Trump typically likes. Ask him about the Panama Canal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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American and European firms are largely responsible for Riyadh skyline. If you go to Riyadh, it is filled with Western stores. It's not filled with Arabic stores. It is filled with Western chain stores. The United States has basically been providing security for the Saudi regime since the end of World War II.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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FDR and the king then, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, established strategic cooperation together in 1945. And we signed a mutual defense assistance agreement with the Saudis in 1951. This idea that non-interventionism in the Middle East was actually the way the Middle East was done, that's not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2199 - Trump’s Saudi TRIUMPH

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The reason that the United States pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait is because the Saudis were afraid Saddam Hussein was going to continue pushing into Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime is, in fact, reliant on the United States and has been, in fact, reliant on the United States for 80 years or so. So again, this is not saying that President Trump is wrong about his approach to the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

Folks, as you know, tons going on in the news. Everything from tariff wars to the Department of Education being slashed and burned first. You've seen the headlines, I'm sure. The Daily Wire has stirred up the usual nutjob leftist voices on CNN and MSNBC talking about our new effort to attain a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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I've noticed on the right it includes many people who are deeply exercised over H-1B visas for Indians coming here to, you know, do tech. But they really don't want the Indians coming here to do tech, but they must, they must maintain the rights of a green card holder who supports terrorism. Very important, so long as that person's attitude is anti-Jewish. I noticed that. Just the thing I noticed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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If you look at the Department of Education by subcomponent for fiscal year 2025, what you find is by far, by far, the largest outlay is the Office of Federal Student Aid. You can see that their total budgetary obligations, $68.77 billion just on that federal student loan aid. Remember, Joe Biden wanted to radically expand that. Why? Because those are all his friends. They're all his friends.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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Very strange juxtaposition. We hate all immigrants and they should be out of here, except for this guy who really, really hates Jews. Notice, it's weird. It's a little weird. In any case, this is not a free speech case, as Andy McCarthy over at National Review points out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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When you openly support terrorism and when you take over buildings to openly support terrorism in a way that amounts to a threat, which is what he actually did as the head of this organization at Columbia University, you have now violated the law. Andy McCarthy has a good rundown on this over at National Review. He says, it's not clear how old Khalil is or when he began matriculating at Columbia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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He came to the United States to study at Columbia after receiving his undergrad degree in computer science at the American University of Beirut. Apparently, he worked for the British government as an intern at its embassy in Beirut and for an NGO called Jasur, which is Arabic for bridges.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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But apparently, he also worked as a public affairs officer for the UNRWA, which is basically a terrorist front group for Hamas. Last spring, at the apex of the pro-Khamas agitation in Colombia that followed the October 7th atrocities, Khalil reportedly told The Verge, quote, I am here on a foreign visa. That's why for the past six months I barely appeared on the media.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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That's why I'm not suspended. I did not participate, fearing I will be arrested and ultimately deported from the country. So, does he have a student visa? Does he have a green card? Not totally clear at this point. But, again, a permanent green card holder can be deported if that person espouses terrorist activities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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Section 1182 of federal immigration law controls the categories of aliens who may be excluded from the United States. In the category of national security, the statute mainly targets aliens who have engaged in terrorist activities, but there's additional latitude. An alien may be excluded if he has endorsed or espoused terrorist activity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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That includes violent attacks and the planning of such attacks. So if you support Hamas, you have now violated that under the law. Once an alien has entered the United States and then has residential status, then they have some additional rights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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However, the claims should fail because when it comes to support for terrorism, our law does not privilege green card holders over other classes of aliens. So, yeah, again, the reality is that Secretary Rubio is correct. An alien, even a green card holder, has no right while in the United States to join with groups that endorse or espouse terrorist activity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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So all the government has to do is show that Khalil was in a campus group that endorsed or espoused Hamas atrocities. And as we talked about yesterday on the show, he did that like a lot, like a lot, and he didn't hide it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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And yet you see people who are out there defending Mahmoud Khalil on, again, the bizarre right and the entire left, the Senate Judiciary Democrats, put out a tweet yesterday saying, free Mahmoud Khalil. I noticed they didn't have a similar tweet saying, free Idan Alexander, the actual American hostage still being held by Hamas in terror tunnels.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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In any case, Caroline Lovett was asked about this, and here was her answer yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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Okay, so again, you want to defend that? Go for it. Seriously, it's all you. And we all know, by the way, that if this person had been on campus as an immigrant, handing out Ku Klux Klan flyers, that person would be deported and there wouldn't be anybody batting an eye. We all know this to be the fact.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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It is only that there are certain subgroups in the United States, particularly on the left, who are seen as too successful to be determined as quote unquote minority groups. That's what's going on here. So another win for the Trump administration. Speaking of wins for the Trump administration, obviously the talks between Ukraine and Russia have been incredibly fraught.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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When you talk about the pipeline of dollars flowing from permanent employees in the federal government to permanent staffers in the blue infrastructure around America, the number one place this happens is in higher education, which is in fact subsidized by the American taxpayer. It should not be. This could all be done privately. All of it. And it would be better if it were done privately.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!

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There are no direct talks between Ukraine and Russia. Yesterday, there was a meeting in Saudi Arabia between representatives of the United States government, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, both of whom are excellent diplomats. at their jobs, both terrific appointees by President Trump. And they met with the Ukrainians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They then put out a joint statement. The joint statement said, suggested, one, that Ukraine would agree to a 30-day ceasefire, conditional on Russia's reciprocal implementation. The U.S. would resume intelligence sharing and security assistance. During the ceasefire, Ukraine would propose a prisoner exchange, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of Ukrainian children.

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Delegations would establish negotiation teams to work toward a lasting peace. Ukraine wanted Europe involved in the process, and the president's agreed to move quickly on a critical minerals deal to strengthen Ukraine's economy. So, This is a win. It is a win for the United States. It's also a win for Ukraine because now the ball is in Russia's court.

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Because Ukraine has now agreed to a ceasefire without any other preconditions. The restoration of aid and intelligence is good because, again, this is what Ukraine needs. They need American support so that if Russia does not come to the table, Ukraine doesn't collapse. Here are Rubio and Waltz explaining yesterday.

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And yeah, again, this is a good move by Ukraine. It's a good move by the United States. The ball is in Russia's court. And Russia needs to be held accountable for not coming to the table now because Ukraine is at the table. And it took some cuddling. It took some pushing. It took some shots. Ukraine is at the table. That's all. They've accepted the ceasefire deal. Now Russia needs to do the same.

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Early indicators, by the way, say that Russia is not going to do the same, that Russia is too interested in pushing forward. According to the Wall Street Journal, the ceasefire plan, which is contingent on Russian acceptance, envisions opening negotiations between Kiev and Moscow on halting the war. According to that joint statement, President Trump reinforced that message at the White House.

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He said, now we have to go to Russia and hopefully President Putin will agree to that and we can get the show on the road. We want to get that war over with. Now, it'll be interesting to see whether Vladimir Putin actually comes to the table, whether he futzes around, whether he lies. President Putin is not famous for being particularly truthful in his foreign negotiations.

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The National Security Advisor, Mike Walsh, said that his talks with the Ukrainians did involve discussions on, quote, how this war is going to permanently end, what type of guarantees they're going to have for their long-term security and prosperity. He said, we're going to really look at what it's going to finally take to end this horrific fighting.

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So it's unclear exactly what the United States' role in that is going to be, which is presumably why the Europeans want to be involved and Zelensky wants the Europeans involved. Zelensky, for his part, said yesterday that the conversations in Saudi Arabia were good and productive.

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I've made this case before. The reason it would be better is because then you would actually be forced to consider whether you need a degree in lesbian dance studies as opposed to simply taking the money from the federal government subsidized over the course of 30 years to go get a degree in lesbian dance studies. We have artificially inflated. the necessity for a degree in this country.

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Ukraine has been seeking peace from the very first second of the war. And we want to do everything to ensure that that peace is lasting. And that is Zelensky's take. So again, the administration has moved the Ukrainians. Now it's up to the Russians to move the other way. Folks, earlier on the show, we talked about failing educational institutions.

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Let me give you one that actually is not one of those institutions. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, they believe were endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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gcu believes in equal opportunity and that the american dream starts with purpose gcu equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come by honoring your career calling you impact your family your friends and your community change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify god whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's master's or doctoral degree gcu's online on campus and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic personal and professional goals

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With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others, that's yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. That's gcu.edu again. This is actually a college that is worth your time. gcu.edu.

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Also, the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts in 2025. April 15th is approaching and time is running out. If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds that problem. Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by.

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While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone can be a costly mistake. This is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart? Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels.

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This means they know exactly which agents can help resolve your case effectively. Whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million bucks, their team of attorneys and negotiators bring proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably. With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free.

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Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder. Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. Meanwhile, Democrats are distracted with the most bizarre issues.

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So yesterday, the biggest blow up of the day happened in the House of Representatives.

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where there was a House committee that was meeting, one of the members of that House committee, where a person formerly known as Tim McBride, who is a biological male, who says he is a female, and calls himself Sarah McBride, Representative Keith Self of Texas, referred to McBride as Mr. McBride, because of course, Sarah McBride is a man, and all hell broke loose.

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There are many, many jobs in this country that now require a degree that didn't before. Why? Because when you increase the number of people going to college, well, then you increase the expectation that people will have gone to college. There is a signal category error in higher education in the United States that was made back in the 1960s.

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No matter how much the new Trump administration works to undo the damage caused by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over the last four years, the woke movement in American politics won't be over truly until this injustice is righted. Derek Chauvin was railroaded to appease a mob.

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OK, so I will notice here that the Congress member who is chiding Keith Self right there and Representative Bill Keating, the one who's losing it on him from Massachusetts, when he says, have you no decency, sir? That is a paraphrase of something that was said by a Boston lawyer back in the McCarthy era to Joseph McCarthy when McCarthy was going after people for supposedly being communists.

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He said, have you no sense of decency? So just to come right now, the thing that Democrats are most concerned about is that a man must be called a woman, even if he is not a woman. You geniuses, you. Slow clap for you guys. You're really on the ball these days, really doing great.

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Meanwhile, Alyssa Slotkin, who for some reason, the Senator from Michigan, is being promoted as a sort of new hot face of the Democrats. I'm not sure what the supposed skill set is that elevates her to this position, but she appeared on that great presidential testing ground, The View, Total IQ, 72. I mean, total, like for all of the members.

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And there, she proceeded to insult Americans, which is always a great idea.

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No, no, no. It doesn't feel like... We're just a bunch of angry Americans. Angry teenagers. Angry teenagers. And we don't know what's coming next. Just... Great. I'm so glad that you've characterized the American people this way. This is definitely the way to win them back.

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Now, meanwhile, the reality is, I've been saying for a while here, is that the only way Democrats are able to get back into power, given their dedication to some of the world's worst causes, truly some of the worst causes, from the pro-Homasnics to the idea that men are women, The only way for them to gain power again is if the economy slows or goes into recession.

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That is the only way for them to regain power, which is why I am quite wary of what has been going on in this ongoing sort of tariff war that President Trump has now declared. So President Trump yesterday was asked about the tariff war. And again, the tariff war is escalating, according to the Associated Press.

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the dunderheads in the federal government looked at the stats, and what they saw is that college grads made more than high school grads. Their conclusion was not that college grads make more than high school grads because they were going into professions that made more money.

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The European Union on Wednesday announced retaliatory trade action with new duties on U.S. industrial and farm products, responding within hours to the Trump administration's increase in tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25%. The EU measures will cover goods from the United States worth about $28 billion.

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They're not just targeting steel and aluminum products, but also textiles, home appliances, and agricultural goods. Motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter, and jeans will be hit. Now, of course, this also happened during President Trump's first term. This is more an early indicator. It's not like these tariffs in and of themselves are going to destroy the American capacity to export or something.

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These are relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but they're sort of a shot across the bow. According to the AP, the EU duties aim for pressure points in the United States while minimizing additional damage to Europe.

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The tariffs primarily target Republican-held states, hitting soybeans in House Speaker Mike Johnson's Louisiana, but also beef and poultry in Kansas and Nebraska, as well as Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. Ursula von der Leyen put out a statement saying that they will always remain open to negotiation. She said, as the U.S.

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are applying tariffs worth $28 billion, we're responding with countermeasures worth 26 billion euros, which is the same amount. She said, we firmly believe in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties. It is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs. And she said jobs are at stake. Prices will go up in Europe and in the United States.

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President Trump tried to lay out his defense of the sort of tariff wars that he is now declaring. Here he was yesterday.

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Their conclusion was that this was a lack of opportunity in general for high school grads, and that if we could artificially boost the number of high school grads who are going into college, that that would somehow boost overall income in the United States. Well, all it did was it pushed everybody up one level.

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Okay, I should just point out at this point that actually manufacturing in the United States, in terms of its actual GDP, in terms of its actual output, has risen dramatically, dramatically from its low point in about 2010. So manufacturing, employment has dropped. It's been rising steadily since 2010, actually, manufacturing employment. However, The output has risen dramatically.

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What does that mean? It means manufacturing got more efficient. One of the things nobody wants to talk about in manufacturing is that the reason we lose jobs in manufacturing or are not generating more jobs in manufacturing is because manufacturing in the United States via union employees is so expensive that people simply replace the employees with capital machinery, with robots, in other words.

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Hey, the real reason why manufacturing is not more of a thing in the United States than it currently is is because of the high cost of doing business in the United States in the manufacturing arena. It is cheaper to do business elsewhere. You can relieve all that.

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You can fix all of that through tax cuts and deregulation as opposed to tariff regimes that really kind of subsidize bloated industries. Now, the actual thing that is happening is manufacturing as a share of America's employment has dropped. But in absolute numbers, the number of manufacturing employees actually has risen somewhat substantially over the course of the last 10 years or so.

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So this kind of notion that we need to re-industrialize and the way to do that is tariffs. You can reindustrialize and have more factories, but it's going to cost you. It's going to cost the consumer. It's going to take money from certain parts of the economy to subsidize those parts of the economy. Again, if you want to do that for national security purposes, I get it.

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But if this is just a redistributive mechanism that harms the American economy, forces investors not to invest, rips away people's 401ks. That is not going to be a good, that is not going to be a good and beneficial thing for the American consumer or for Trump's agenda because of the economy tanks. Now, President Trump may have a long-term vision of what he wants the economy to look like.

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But it turns out that the American electoral cycle is two years. And whichever party is in power when a recession happens gets absolutely hammered. If you want to see Trump's agenda actually win, what you need is for the Republicans to retain power and actually grow their power in the next round of elections in 2026.

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Again, one of the indicators I think that the market is taking away from what President Trump is doing is that he just likes tariffs in general. And this has been the big question for the market.

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When it comes to President Trump's economic policy, and my take for a very long time has been that he uses tariffs as leverage, that he uses tariffs as a way to get other countries to do things, that he might want to protect certain national security-based industries, and all that is fine and dandy.

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So now grad students make a lot more money than college students who make a lot more money than high school grads who just prolonged the time before entering into the workforce. So a bunch of people who don't need a college degree to do the job they are currently doing spend four years incurring $100,000, $200,000 in debt.

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But if the market takes away, one, high levels of uncertainty, right, people switching their mind every moment, or two, that President Trump has a generalized actual like for tariffs, and he's willing to undergo quote-unquote pain in order to enforce those tariffs, that could be a problem.

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The reason that the rubber has hit the road when it comes to Canada is because everybody looks at Canada and they say, what in the, like, why Canada? Seriously. So I asked our friends at Perplexity, prior to the current tariff war, what was Canada's average applied tariff rate to U.S. goods under the USMCA? Again, The search was sponsored by our friends over at Perplexity.

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Perplexity is a great service. You should use it. Here is what they say. Prior to the current tariff war, Canada's average applied tariff rate to U.S. goods under the USMCA, again, that is a deal negotiated by President Trump, was relatively low. According to World Bank data, Canada's trade-weighted average tariff rate in 2022 was 1.37%.

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This rate was actually lower than the United States' average tariff rate of 1.49% for the same year. It's important to note that while Canada did have some higher tariffs on specific products, particularly those protected under its supply management system, those were the exceptions rather than the norms.

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When you hear, for example, that dairy products faced huge tariffs ranging from 200 to 300%, or poultry and eggs had high tariffs, these were on specific products that really did not impact the overall tariff rate. In fact, among the 137 nations analyzed by the World Bank for trade-weighted tariff averages, Canada ranked 102nd

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indicating its own tariff regime was relatively open compared to many other countries. And again, there were a lot of goods that were traded under the USMCA duty-free between the United States and Canada. So basically, we're banging on one of the countries we had already the lowest tariff rate with. Also worth noting, we had a trade surplus with Canada, okay?

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The only area where you did not have a trade surplus with Canada was in oil. That's it. That is the only area. Other than that, we have a trade surplus with Canada. So why are we banging on the Canadians other than they're kind of annoying and say eh a lot? It's bizarre to smack Canada. They're our number one trading partner. They are peaceful.

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They're a bunch of people who can't spell the word color, but we like them generally. They are not exactly a wartime threat. So all the talk about, listen, I'm amused as well, but my amusement turns to bemusement when it turns out that all of this sort of talk sends the Dow Jones Industrial Average spiraling. Then the fun and games come to a bit of an end.

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Yesterday, the White House Press Secretary, Caroline Lovett, she again suggested that Canada should be the 51st state. When we keep saying this, okay, we start off as a joke. I'm in. I like jokes about Canada the same as anyone else. They would make a fine 51st state, although frankly, I think that we could leave certain parts of Canada in Canada.

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on the tax paradigm, subsidized, before they get to go to a job they certainly could have done when they were 18 years old and they could have just gone into the workforce. It is a scam. It is a massive, massive scam. That doesn't mean everything at our universities is a scam. As I've talked about before, when you are talking about specific career paths, university can be great.

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I don't think, for example, that we necessarily need Vancouver or Toronto. But in any case, the question of should they be the 51st state is driving liberals at the ballot box in Canada. As I mentioned, Pierre Poliev needs to be the next prime minister of Canada because he's great.

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We don't want the leader of the Liberal Party to be the next Prime Minister of Canada, to just replace one Justin Trudeau with a slightly less good-looking Justin Trudeau. And yet when you repeat this kind of stuff, sure, it's kind of fun and games for the online trollery of it. Does anyone actually think that Canada is going to be the 51st state? Like, really, really? Again, the memory is fine.

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The jokes are fine. I like a J.D. Vance weird face morphing meme on X as much as the next guy. I just don't understand why is this actually like what what's what's the goal here? What's the goal?

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So why? Like, just why? OK, like at a certain point, the joke starts to actually have real world consequences. And so I'm just I don't understand. Like, what is the goal? What is the goal? So yesterday, this all broke out into the open because the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who is not actually like a far left winger, Doug Ford.

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I mean, he's the leader of Canada's most popular province, told reporters in Toronto that he was going to be issuing an export tax on electricity. He was going to do that in retaliation for the tariffs that are being levied against Canada. So here he was yesterday saying, listen, we love America, but could you please stop attacking us with tariffs?

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And if you do, then I'm going to start increasing the price of electricity shipped down into the northeastern United States.

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If you're talking about science, technology, engineering, math, the STEM fields, all that stuff, you are going to need a degree because it is preparing you for a higher level job that requires higher levels of training. And I know that there are a lot of people who believe that colleges and universities should be a sort of prereq to entry into public life because somehow they create good citizens.

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OK, so he says that President Trump then retaliates by bashing Canada for denying America electricity. He put out a statement saying, why would our country allow another country to supply us with electricity, even for a small area? Who made these decisions and why?

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Can you imagine Canada stooping so low as to use electricity that so affects the life of innocent people as a bargaining chip and threat? They'll pay a financial price for this so big you'll be read about in history books for many years to come. OK, so then he escalates and he says that he is going to increase electricity. the tariff on Canadian metals from 25 to 50%.

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Doug Ford then held a call with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, during which they agreed to scrap the electricity surcharge in exchange for relaxation of the steel and aluminum tariffs. That's the United States basically saying, okay, fine, you know, we don't want to pay more for electricity. We're going to back off some of these tariffs. What is the goal of all of this?

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Seriously, I don't understand. What is the goal that I want President Trump to succeed? If President Trump is to succeed, we need a thriving economy. Declaring a trade war on Canada under the terms of the USMCA, which he himself negotiated in Trump term one, is not going to be a productive move for his administration. And there's more to come, by the way.

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I mean, President Trump is expected to issue a bunch of new tariffs come April 2nd. I mean, he openly said that in the State of the Union address. If there is a plan here, the markets would love to hear it. Because, again, the markets are simply looking for some sort of predictability here.

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The markets are simply looking for some sort of understanding of what's coming next and why it's coming next and what the plan is. Caroline Leavitt was asked about this a lot at the White House yesterday. Here she was defending President Trump's tariffs.

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Again, I'm going to need some clarification as to how this is actually going to, in the short term, medium and long term, benefit Americans. We can talk about other countries ripping us off as much as we want. And again, if the goal here is to lower the tariffs by getting other countries to lower their tariffs, then great. I'm all in. Makes sense.

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But if the idea is the tariffs themselves enrich the American people, that is against pretty much all economic knowledge. for the last couple of centuries or so. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll turn out to be great. Or maybe the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been speaking over the course of the last couple of months and it disagrees.

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That died long ago. The argument for liberal arts colleges died with the takeover of those liberal arts colleges by the left. It used to be that universities and colleges in the United States inculcated a sense of virtue and citizenship. You still see the occasional college or university that does that. Some of them are sponsors of the show. Others are startup universities.

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The reason this matters, again, the reason this matters is because what President Trump is actually trying to do in so many areas is so important. We cannot have the agenda founder on the rocks

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of misbegotten tariff wars and there's so many other areas where the economy is opening up so for example the new federal trade commission chair andrew ferguson held a meeting with a group of big business ceos on tuesday and he said he's no longer going to let proposed deals die on the vine he said that if a merger is going to hurt the american consumer then he would stop it but if we don't believe that it's going to hurt consumers we'll get the hell out of the way

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I mean, that is a complete reversal of the way that the FTC was working under the ex-grubble Lena Kahn, who basically got in the way of any merger, any deal that she could in the name of social justice. Not in the name of consumers, but in the name of her perverse views about how businesses should run. Now, President Trump is doing a number of wonderful things.

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Again, it's really important that he succeed. And the number one obstacle to success is an economic downturn. It is by far the number one obstacle. And I think President Trump knows this, which is why, of course, the Republicans last night and another, Speaker Johnson has been much maligned He has been ripped up and down.

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He has been told by the right wing of his contingent that he's not strong enough. He's been told by the media that he's incapable of holding together such a narrow coalition. But time after time, he seems to somehow emerge with a political victory. Yesterday, the House did pass with only one Republican vote lost. That would be, of course, Thomas Massey, who votes no on everything.

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Did pass a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown. That is a good thing. It is a good thing for President Trump. It is a good thing for Speaker Johnson. It is a good thing for the Republican agenda. Because if the continuing resolution did not pass and you got a government shutdown, Democrats would make hay. They would look properly at the Republicans and say, you're the majority.

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So what are you doing? So good for Speaker Johnson. Again, there's so many good things happening. Don't get in the way. Don't get in your own way here. Do not get in your own way.

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Meanwhile, the big photo op of the day was President Trump did a photo op with Elon Musk featuring Tesla at the White House, presumably that has something to do with the fact that that Elon Musk's company has taken some major hits.

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since he signed on to do all the work that he's been doing at doge again i'm a big fan of what he's been doing at doge tesla stock was trading at a high of like 480 bucks a share almost in december of 2024 is now trading at approximately half that so it's been a pretty major knockoff and tesla is an amazing company i own a tesla i think tesla is great here's president trump promoting tesla yesterday at the white house

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Meanwhile, Elon Musk said that he was going to be working on doubling vehicle output. This has been a serious problem for Tesla in the past, is that the demand for Tesla has not been supplied because there's been bottlenecking in the process. Here he was yesterday.

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Some of them are Christian universities. They are few and far between. The reality is the vast majority of colleges and universities instead take in high school students. They churn out left wing thinkers or people who are apathetic about politics with a degree that cost them a lot of money subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

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President Trump does have the power over the federal part of Chauvin's charges to relieve those charges, but he does need to hear. from you. Go to pardonderrick.com right now. Sign the petition. When we fight, we win. With your support, we'll do it again. All right, so President Trump is winning big victories.

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Okay, so again, President Trump's very funny. And this is a nice warm embrace here from President Trump for Elon Musk and the car. President Trump also said there's been a bunch of violence at Tesla dealerships. And he says, I'll label this domestic terrorism, which again, if you're like blowing up particular stores in the name of politics, kind of definitionally domestic terrorism.

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So again, this is quite proper. Now, as I say, the big flaw here is if the economy goes south, Bernie Sanders is waiting in the wings. He's waiting for the economy to go south because then what he's going to claim is that the oligarchy sent the economy south to hurt you. This is going to be the next take.

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If the economy goes south, mark my words, the Bernie bros will be back and stronger than ever because they're going to claim falsely that the economy going south is not the result of bad economic policies like, for example, tariff wars, but it's actually the result of evil predatory capitalism. Bernie's waiting for it. He's rooting for it. Here he was yesterday.

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So cutting the Department of Education has in fact been a Republican item on the agenda since the 1980s. But only President Trump is actually taking that seriously and all credit to him. Linda McMahon, the newly approved Secretary of Education, is going to take over a department that has already been cut by something like 50%, many of the proper jobs of the Department of Education.

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Again, this is going to be the pitch. And so long as things are going well, it's going to fail. That's why things have to keep going well. All right, coming up, we're going to jump into the Vaunted Ben Shapiro Show mailbag, answer some of your questions. If you want your question answered, by the way, you have to be a member.

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If you want to be able to see things like our All Access Live, where I hang out and answer your questions live. If you want to be able to view our amazing films from people like Matt Walsh, Am I Racist? What is a Woman? If you want to be able to access the mailbag and backstage live, you need to become a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Things, for example. like the Office of English Language Acquisition, which is designed presumably to get people to actually learn English in the country. And there's certain parts of the DOE that you might want to maintain. Okay, fine. You shift those out of that department and you kill the department entirely so that it can't be rebuilt from within by the left.

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This is one of the most bloated parts of the federal government, the Department of Education. The total budgetary resources of the Department of Education amount to something on the order of $103 billion, somewhere in that neighborhood. All of that can be cut. The left, of course, is mewling over this, screaming over this. Hundreds will be laid off, according to CNN, starting on Tuesday evening.

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In addition to those who voluntarily tick buyouts, those actions would cut the department's workforce of about 4,100 at the start of the Trump administration in half.

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon put out a statement, quote, Today's reduction in force reflects the Department of Education's commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most to students, parents, and teachers. I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the department.

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She said later the reductions are the first course of action in shutting down the agency entirely. CNN reported last week the White House was preparing an executive order directing Linda McMahon to begin the process of dismantling the department. By the way, huge credit to our friend Chris Ruffo, who's been pushing in serious ways for this for a very long time.

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Hard to think of a more effective advocate journalist than Chris Ruffo over the course of the last five years in the United States. The roughly 1,300 employees notified of their layoff will be terminated in 90 days, according to senior agency officials. Senior officials told reporters the cuts will not impact federal student aid in any way, shape or form. I would hope that they do.

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I understand that it's an unpopular view with some who believe that federal dollars should just keep flowing willy nilly. But again, one of the most bloated parts of the federal government is this thing. The laid off employees will begin their telework beginning Wednesday until March 21st. Unions, of course, are just freaking out about all of this. And by the way, that is a good sign.

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His big victory of the day is slashing and burning his way through the Department of Education. So according to CNN, the U.S. Education Department announced on Tuesday it is cutting nearly 50% of its entire workforce. President Trump, of course, has proposed eliminating the agency altogether. Now, people don't seem to understand what it is that the Department of Education actually does.

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You want the unions to freak out about all this. So, for example, Randy Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the most loathsome figures in American public life, a person who kept kids out of school for two years to get her constituents, union members, paid to effectively do nothing, wrecking kids for a couple of years on the basis of pseudoscience.

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Randy Weingarten, the far-left advocate for every bad policy you can imagine, shoes on with Molly Jongfast, who's The only notable thing about Molly Jongfast is her hair color changes on sort of a random basis. In any case. Here was Randy Weingarten going off and saying, I love this. She was saying, you know what's going to happen here?

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What's going to happen is it's going to boost funding for school choice. Oh, no. You mean the most popular civil rights policy of our era might be boosted? That, you know, parents might have the opportunity to take their kids out of failing public schools, for example, and put them in better private schools or competitors? Oh, no, Randy Weingarten.

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That sounds, rule of thumb, anything Randy Weingarten is against, we should all be for.

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It's income redistribution, school vouchers. School vouchers are a way to let parents remove their kids from schools they don't want to send their kids to. And she says this is somehow bad. Of course it's bad for her because her entire shtick is taxpayers should fund me, Randy Weingarten, and my schmucks over at the AFT to indoctrinate your kids or keep them out of school entirely.

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All of this is very good. It's a big win for the Trump administration, and we hope that it continues, obviously. This also ties into a broader level move against the educational establishment in the United States.

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So President Trump is utilizing the fact that major universities around the country have violated the civil rights of their Jewish students in order to essentially crack down on federal funding of these universities. Good for him. Good for him. Again, let me point out, if you are against all anti-discrimination law, you're fully libertarian. I sympathize with that position.

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The idea that it should not be up to the federal government to discriminate against particular types of speech or particular types of attitude. And anti-discrimination laws do that, so you're against it. Okay, that's fine. But the reality is the Civil Rights Act does, in fact, ban in federal spending discrimination.

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They seem to believe that all public schools all over the country are paid for by the federal government. That is not true. The vast majority of public school spending is state and local spending, as it should be, because there is legitimately no reason why a taxpayer in Florida should be subsidizing the public school education of a student in California, at least in the main.

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Any place that receives federal aid is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, on the basis of sex, on the basis of other immutable characteristics, for example. And that also applies to Jews. It applies to blacks. It applies to whites. It applies to everyone. It applies to Jews. And these universities have basically decided it does not apply to certain subgroups who are too successful.

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particularly Jews and Asians. Well, folks, there are bad people in the United States, some who support terrorism, and there are bad people out there. And here's the thing, you don't want any of those bad people or any of their friends or any people like them with control over your internet data. That is not a thing that you want.

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If you own any internet connected device, there are thousands of companies They might know you better than you know yourself. These are data brokers. They make billions tracking everything you do online. Plus, there are hackers. Plus, there are all sorts of identity thieves. Here's the thing. They can track the stuff you do.

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Every purchase, every location, every conversation, your most personal beliefs. They can then package that stuff into a profile if they're a data broker and sell it to marketers, activists, politicians looking to influence you. Or you could go off the grid online by using ExpressVPN. These companies track you through your IP address.

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Digital fingerprint, ExpressVPN gives you a new IP address and a location to choose, making you virtually untraceable. With ExpressVPN, your connection is encrypted and routed through secure servers. Even your internet provider can't see your activity, which is pretty important because they are actually legally allowed to sell your data to whomever they want.

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Every time you go on public Wi-Fi, by the way, you're putting yourself at risk. So if you're at an airport like I am so frequently or in a hotel or something like that, The FBI calls this... house stealing. It's a growing scam targeting homeowners across America. Here's how it works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Scammers only need to forge your signature on one document, add a fake notary stamp, pay a small filing fee, submit it to your local recorder's office. And just like that, your home title gets transferred out of your name. Well, once they have control, they can then take out loans against your equity. They could even sell your property behind your back.

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And the worst part is you might not know about anything until the collection notices or foreclosure warnings start randomly showing up in your mailbox. So when was the last time you checked your home title? If the answer is like most people, the answer is never. That's what scammers count on. That's why so many people, including senior video editor Adam, trust Home Title Lock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Their million-dollar triple lock protection helps keep your home and equity safe. And here's what you get. Immediate 24-7 monitoring of your property. Urgence alerts if there are any changes. If fraud should happen, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million bucks to fix the fraud and restore your title at no additional cost. Here's the best part.

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I've teamed up with Home Title Lock to give you a free title history report so you can find out if you're already a victim and access to your personal title expert, a $250 value just for signing up. Head on over to hometitlelock.com, use promo code Shapiro250, or click on the link in the description below.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And of course, make sure to check out that million-dollar triple lock protection when you get there. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code Shapiro250. Get the protection and peace of mind you deserve. Okay, well, over the course of the last year and a half, we saw massive upticks in anti-Semitism, basically greenlit by major American universities.

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And now the Trump administration is saying, well, you don't get your money then. You don't get American taxpayer money. And this is having some real strong side effects that are, I think, beneficial.

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The truth is that the vast majority of spending that happens via the Department of Education is federal student aid on college loans. In other words, what you have seen is the cost of college skyrocket because of the gigantic subsidies that are paid for by your taxpayer dollars to the colleges that are then churning out good little left-wing apparatchiks.

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According to Commentary, Seth Mandel writing for Commentary magazine, the administration last week canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and announced it was undertaking a review of billions more in grants. Finally, we had an answer to a lingering question.

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Would there be any tangible consequences for schools that allowed their campuses to descend into prolonged bouts of anti-Semitic hysteria? Universities clearly took President Biden's passivity as a reason to bet against being held to account for their flagrant violations of Jewish students' civil rights. If they were right, that meant the only students they had to placate were the anti-Zionists.

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There was no reason to protect Jewish rights or Jewish safety on campus because the Jews would never cause anywhere near the same level of trouble. for them. But now the playing field has changed entirely. A source at Columbia told journalist Steve McGuire the Trump Education Department's threats weren't empty.

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Quote, grand cancellation notices flowing in now, labs shutting down, layoffs imminent, faculty apoplectic at Katrina Armstrong for letting it get to this point. She has to fix this fast. She, of course, is the university president over at Columbia, replacing the disgraced Manoush Shafiq. So again, this is not just Columbia.

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It turns out that the Trump administration is cracking down on 60 other schools. The list of five dozen schools includes colleges from red and blue states, includes Brown and Yale, includes Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee, smaller institutions like Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

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And all of these universities are screaming to the high heavens about all of this. And the answer is maybe you shouldn't have made yourself dependent on federal aid if you didn't want any of this attached. And two, maybe you should have, you know, cracked down on the tentified and nut jobs you took over your campus.

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I am amused, by the way, at the consistent attitude of Democrats toward anyone who hates Jews in Israel. And it is a pretty consistent attitude. So this, of course, brings up the pseudo-controversy around the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, who's a green card holder, who's an open terror sympathizer. See, here's the thing.

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If you hold a green card, you don't have a right to be in our country if you support terrorists. That's all. That's all. If the argument is that you have the free speech right under free speech somehow, to pass out flyers with Hamas insignia on them and lead up groups that call for armed revolution against the West. I'm wondering what exactly our immigration standards are at all, at all.

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So President Trump had the right response to this yesterday. it is almost impossible for President Trump not to take iconic photos. It's just an innate quality. Yesterday, he did a bit of a showpiece for Elon Musk about Tesla. He bought himself a Tesla. And so he was standing in front of a series of Teslas next to Musk, and he was asked about Mahmoud Khalil, and here was his response.

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By the way, you know who agrees with that? Everyone. Everyone. This is not a controversial proposition in America. Everybody who, I will say, it's a very weird agglomeration of people who are suddenly very interested in the quote unquote free speech rights of green card holders.

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Democrats keep claiming that we're in a constitutional crisis. They haven't learned their lesson yet. They kept saying during the last election cycle that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy. You heard this over and over and over. Republicans, Trump, they were a threat to democracy. Everything Trump did was a threat to democracy.

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By the way, he's right about this. Here is a picture put out by Doge of the limestone mine. It's insane. This is crazy. This is crazy. Why are we hand filing retirement files? Again, like some sort of dystopian sci-fi picture from 1956. This is ridiculous. The Department of Government Efficiency put out these pictures. It's Iron Mountain, which is an actual document processing company.

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Federal employee retirements are processed using paper by hand in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700-plus mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process 10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months. Now, in the modern world, you know how you could retire today?

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By hitting a button, like one button, less than a second, done. That's how you should be able to retire. Because you can do literally, I can order anything I want from Amazon with the click of a button. It doesn't take me more than about five seconds.

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The deep state that Donald Trump complained about during his first term, he was talking about the deep state thwarting his will on everything from foreign to domestic policy or militarizing itself against his presidency by... putting together ridiculous nonsense like the Mueller report.

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And yet retirement is supposed to take months because you have to have some 60-year-old schlub wandering around in the limestone mines of Pennsylvania or something. It's absolutely insane. So Musk was also questioned about supposed conflicts of interest because, of course, he has his own business interests. And he says, listen, I'm pretty much the most public person there is.

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And if you have questions, feel free to ask them. I think one of the reasons why Trump and the rest of his team are not super interested in these sort of conflict checks is because those have been used as tools by many of the people in the bureaucracy in order to hold up people. This is what happened during Trump administration.

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Number one, I have personal friends who are forced to spend tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers because they were tangentially associated with the Trump administration. And then they were roped into the Mueller report kind of stuff. And so what Trump is saying is, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.

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And as for Musk, again, the most public person in the world, except for Donald Trump. Here's Musk talking about it.

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So one of the things that is being done is that Doge is now being allowed into pretty much every government agency to look for waste, fraud, and abuse. That includes, apparently, the Department of Defense. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that Doge should be welcomed into the Department of Defense to basically audit the Defense Department and find golden toilet seats and the like.

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Here was Secretary of Defense Hegseth this morning.

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But the reality is the deep state, meaning a permanent bureaucratic structure designed to funnel taxpayer money to allies of Democrats in and out of government, that has been a century-long project, and Donald Trump is systematically dismantling it. And the American people are for this.

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By the way, gotta love Pete Hagseth. I mean, that is exactly right. You mean like a war machine that wins wars and kills bad guys as opposed to a giant, toxic, global warming propaganda fest filled with DEI nonsense? What an idea. What an idea. Well, the government is filled with scams, but here's a scam you might not know about. It's called house stealing.

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Did you know that American homeowners have over $32 trillion in equity? Criminals are targeting it with a growing scam. The FBI calls house stealing. Scammers can transfer your title out of your name using a one-page document they file at county. Then they take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back.

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The most concerning part, you're not going to find out about it until collection or foreclosure notices start arriving in your mailbox, leaving you with a financial and legal nightmare. The best way to protect your equity is with Home Title Lock's exclusive million-dollar triple lock protection.

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This service offers 24-7 monitoring, urgent alerts, and if fraud does occur, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million bucks to fix the fraud and restore your title. Our own senior video editor, Adam, trusts them to protect his home. You can too. So when was the last time that you checked on your title? If the answer is you never have,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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well that's what the scammers are counting on the good news is we've partnered with home title lock to offer you all 25 off their services so head on over to home title lock.com use my promo code shapiro25 to save 25 and you'll also get a free title history report to ensure you're not already a victim make sure you check out the million dollar triple lock protection details when you get there link below that's home title lock.com promo code shapiro25 also

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good. Put others before yourself and glorify God.

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others? That's yours.

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu. I visited their campus. It's a beautiful place. You're going to love it. Go check it out right now. gcu.edu. Private, Christian, affordable. Grand Canyon University. Well, meanwhile, again, Democrats keep claiming constitutional crisis over and over and over.

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If Democrats try to claim that that's a constitutional crisis, a threat to democracy, the elected president going to unelected bureaucrats and telling them not to spend taxpayer money, that is one of the least fascistic things I've ever heard in my entire life. It turns out that fascism is about centralization of power. in one man or in an oligarchy, who then take more control over the people.

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The constitutional crisis, if it exists at all, which it doesn't, is being caused by federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions. So, for example... Yesterday, a federal judge named John Bates agreed to a request from Doctors of America for a temporary restraining order nationally against the Department of Health and Human Services, FDA, and Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Why?

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Well, the judge wants them to restore web pages and data that had been deleted in compliance with Trump's executive order related to gender ideology.

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So the judge ruled, quote, the removal of the web pages and data sets creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor or respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.

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So apparently this judge is now attempting to force the federal government to keep up a bunch of dumb data about gender ideology. This is the constitutional crisis? That's the thing? Again, the outrageous sort of reaction by the left to all of this, it truly is pretty amazing. And I have to say that Elon Musk trolling the media on all this is also pretty amazing.

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So we've had the spectacle over the past 48 hours of major left-wing anchors saying the words big balls and hairy balls. That is a thing that is now happening in our life. Here is CNN's Dana Bash. announcing that Elon Musk has changed his Twitter handle to Harry Balls. I'm not even kidding you. This is the world we live in. It is the most amusing timeline.

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Well, oh my gosh. I'm sorry. Just CNN having to cover Elon's trollery is pretty high level. Meanwhile, Joy Reid is very upset about big balls, as we've discussed before over at MSNBC. Again, Democrats apparently only like big balls if they're on the ladies. In any case, Joy Reid says that Democrats should actually stop all legislation until big balls can be subpoenaed.

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Meanwhile, they were weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after President Trump. Joe Biden was thinking of new ways nearly every day to violate the Constitution. Well, now, when that particular line didn't work, the threat to democracy line, they've transmuted it into a constitutional crisis.

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Yes, this is... Oh my goodness.

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They must get to the bottom of big balls. That's the thing they have to do. They have to get a handle on big balls. Slow clap for the Democrat media. You guys are doing an amazing, amazing job.

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Meanwhile, CNN's Anderson Cooper got miffed on air last night because Chris DiNuno, who's about as moderate a Republican as is possible to find, governor of New Hampshire, he suggested that Elon Musk wants to make cuts and then they got into a discussion over the cuts And Anderson Cooper calls him a d*** on air.

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There's irony to that because actually in this video, Chris Inuno is sitting next to Jeffrey Toobin, who's mostly famous for actually whipping out his d*** on air. But here we go.

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I have yet to hear of a fascist movement that delegates more power back out to the people away from a centralized bureaucracy. I've never heard of anything remotely like that. Please, name the last fascist movement that minimized the power of the executive in Americans' lives. You're gonna have to figure this one out.

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Don't be... Oh my gosh. Well, things are going well for the Democrat media. Meanwhile, Caitlin Collins at CNN says we are so close to a constitutional crisis. Oh, goodness, a constitutional crisis. Really, where is it? I'm missing it. Really, where's the constitutional crisis? I would love some details.

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Please explain how Elon Musk going and recommending cuts inside the executive branch is a constitutional crisis that is going to end democracy in America. Do you mean that there is tension between the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of the government? As written in the Constitution, that's crazy talk. Here's Caitlin Collins at CNN.

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They can't say threat to democracy anymore, so they just shifted it over to constitutional crisis. It's really lazy.

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A reckoning moment.

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they found a constitutional scholar who will say that america's on the brink of a reckoning well this sounds super scientific and legalistic to me it sounds exactly like that doomsday clock you know these fake scientists they have a thing called the doomsday clock and every so often they move it a tick toward doomsday and we're the closest we've been to doomsday since like the 1961 cuban missile crisis wow i mean like oh my gosh i i think that what are we going to do it's

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We're the closest we've been to doomsday since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and all this. All this sort of fake expertise is really, really stupid. But this is the line that they are pursuing. MSNBC's Danny Savalas says, you know, the president not following the court, that could be super duper, duper scary.

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What would you say if I told you there was a president who literally bragged about not following the court in relieving student loan debt? And that was last year. What if I told you that that was a thing? But here is the MSNBC legal analyst, Danny Savalas, panicking, running into walls,

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But Democrats don't want to figure that one out, so they're just going to keep shouting nostrums. Well, yesterday, President Trump kept the momentum going. According to the Washington Post, President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that calls on federal agencies to work with Doge in a bid to cut their existing workforce and limit future hiring.

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Meanwhile, President Trump is like, what are you even talking about? You keep saying I'm defying courts. What are you even saying? Here's President Trump saying, can you give me an example of me defying the courts? Like one? That'd be great.

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He's right about this. But again, does this sound like a man who's on the verge of tyranny? Of course not. Of course not. Now, listen, America is in a fairly serious economic situation. And the only answer to that is going to be cutting the waste and fraud in the federal government and eventually restructuring entitlement programs and production, economic growth. Those are the only things.

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We're going to have to grow our way out of many of these problems while simultaneously cutting all the waste, fraud and abuse. And the Trump administration is focused on both of those things.

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Again, there are some systemic entrenched obstacles, including the national debt and including the fact that the Biden administration blew more money into the economy, fake money into the economy through inflation than any administration in modern history. Well, that fight against inflation is not yet won. Remember, you kept hearing that it was over. It was all over, right?

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Joe Biden had quashed inflation. The economy was on a solid footing now. That was his entire campaign and Kamala Harris's campaign. And it turns out that was a lie. According to the Wall Street Journal, the fight against inflation continued to face headwinds in January, with consumer prices rising more than expected.

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The Labor Department on Wednesday reported consumer prices in January rose 3% from a year earlier. They marked a pickup from December when prices rose 2.9% from a year earlier. Stock futures turned down after the report was released and bond yields jumped. The uptick in prices comes as newly sworn in President Trump vows to lower prices for Americans.

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Higher housing costs are helping to fuel the rise along with auto insurance and airfare as well as grocery prices. Prices were up 0.5% from the prior month. Core prices, which doesn't count food and energy prices, actually rose 3.3% over the year and 0.4% over the month. Egg prices increased more than 15%, the largest increase since June of 2015.

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Ahead of that signing, Trump was joined in the Oval Office by Elon Musk, and it was highly entertaining. So first, Trump had in Musk and Elon likes to bring around his son X, like everywhere. When we went to Auschwitz together, he brought his son X because his basic principle is I'm bringing my kid everywhere. And since I'm the richest person in the world, I can.

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And that is one of the big drivers of how expensive things are at the grocery right now. There's talk that maybe the federal reserve should actually increase the interest rates at this point in order to continue to quash inflation. It's a little bit early to blame President Trump for the inflation rates, given the fact that, again, he's been in office for a grand total of three weeks.

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But the only way that inflation is going to be brought down in the end is by more productivity. The only way inflation is going to be brought down in the end is by a more solid basis for the economy other than blowing money into it for the same product. Basically, inflation is always too much money chasing too few goods.

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If you create more goods, if your supply keeps up with your demand, if you create new innovative products, well, it turns out that prices tend to decrease through competition. And that is what the administration is pursuing. That is particularly true when it comes to AI. So yesterday, Vice President J.D. Vance was in Europe to speak about AI.

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And it is pretty incredible how Europe has basically blown it on AI. AI is the single most transformative technology of my lifetime, other than the internet itself. The leaps and bounds that AI is taking, utterly extraordinary, truly extraordinary. If you're playing around with, say, Perplexity AI or Grok or ChatGPT, the quality of the AI is so unbelievably high.

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I was playing around with Perplexity yesterday. And I took a link to a video on YouTube, like a three-hour interview with an author. And I said, please summarize the main points of this interview. And in less than a second, it spelled out all of the main points of the interview. I mean, really amazing, like huge time-saving, labor-saving innovations. Europe is way behind.

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The reason Europe is way behind is because Europe is always the safety-focused helicopter parent of business. They're always worried that the child is going to be on the swings and fall off and break the head, so they put a helmet on the kid and then say, don't go on the swings. Meanwhile, the United States has always been the innovative country that says, okay, we're going to let you play.

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We'll let you play. And so the AI competition right now is between a heavily subsidized, lying government in China And it turns out that a lot of the things that China was saying about DeepSeek, which is their own version of AI, about the cost, about the sophisticated chips that they were using or not using, a lot of that turned out to be a lie.

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It's not nearly as cheap as they were saying, and they were hijacking NVIDIA chips and using sophisticated chips to actually build their own. But the real competition right now is between the United States China and Europe is like still using an abacus. And this is something J.D. Vance is pointing out. He said, listen, we're going to keep developing AI.

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And if you keep trying to quash the regulation or development of AI and thus sink the world economy, we're not moving along with that. Here was Vice President Vance yesterday at the AI Action Summit in France.

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I will say I love the normalization of kids in public life. I think it's wonderful. I bring my kids virtually everywhere. I have four of them. They're constantly with me. As they get older, I'm going to start bringing them to events so they can experience them and learn. This is how kids learn is by following their parents around. Between J.D.

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Innovation, productivity increases, right? These are things that America is going to need and the rest of the world is going to need as well. And businesses are recognizing this. Goldman Sachs has now abandoned its IPO diversity pledge. It's abandoning all this DEI nonsense. According to Bloomberg, Wall Street's leading investment bank had a policy that would only take a company public in the U.S.

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or Western Europe if it included two diverse board members, one of whom had to be a woman. That rule had initially been put in place in 2020. As a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy, according to Tony Fratto, a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs.

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Because it turns out that actually many of the most important businesses in the world do not have quote unquote diverse boards. All they have is merit driven boards. That is good.

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And by the way, those who stand up against merit, those who stand up against innovation, they're going to get run over and they should be run over because they're standing in the way of positive externalities for everyone else. Meritocracy has positive externalities for everyone else. No other system of rewarding talent creates positive externalities.

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If you reward people based on group status, that has negative externalities. It hurts everybody who's not a member of that group. If you reward people based on merit, that has positive externalities because the most meritorious are going to be more productive than any other group put in place. And they're going to do more work and they're going to be better at that work.

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Well, DEI is dying everywhere, not just at Goldman Sachs. Disney is now moving away from its DEI efforts. And that's because the American public did not like what they were seeing. It is because the state of Florida said no to all of this trash. It's because the Daily Wire announced that we would launch competition to their actual DEI nonsense. That is why Disney is doing this.

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They went woke and they went broke, and now they're trying to revert back to normalcy. And you know what? Good for them. Good for them. I'm a forgiving man. I mean, I'd like to see them do it across the board. I'd like to see less left-wing propaganda on Disney. I'd love to see the Star Wars properties restored to their...

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former place of glory, and Kathleen Kennedy put out by the side of the road with the rest of the recycling. However, according to Axios, Disney is now changing its DEI programs to focus more closely on business outcomes. As part of the shift, sources tell Axios Disney is moving and changing the content disclaimers it started releasing around certain titles in 2020.

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Those are those annoying placards that you see before Aladdin saying that this is fostering cultural stereotypes and negativity and racism right before they make money off of you watching Robin Williams voice the genie. In a note to employees sent Tuesday morning, Chief Human Resources Officer Sonia Coleman outlined ways Disney's DEI efforts will change.

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Vance bringing his kids on foreign trips and Elon Musk bringing his kid around, you're seeing a lot of kids in American public life. And again, these images matter. We talked about this yesterday. Imagery matters. The image of a secretary of defense who's working out with the troops.

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Beginning this fiscal year, Disney will replace the diversity and inclusion performance factor used to evaluate executive compensation with a new talent strategy. Wow. Disney is getting rid of its controversial Reimagined Tomorrow initiative and the corresponding website, which was used to highlight stories and talent from quote-unquote underrepresented communities.

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The company has now rebranded its business employee resource groups to belonging employee resource groups. The transformation is meant to highlight the focus on BERGs and strengthening the employee community and workplace experience. Disney is also updating the language of the content advisories that run before certain titles on its streaming services.

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Again, this is all because Disney decided that they were going to move to the left politically, and it turns out parents didn't like that crap. Disney's reputation score among Republicans has been jumping because of these moves compared to 2023, according to the Axios Harris 100 brand reputation poll.

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So its score jumped from 61.03 in 2023 to 67.9 in 2024, which is in fact a significant jump because, you know, again, they're getting rid of all of this. Meanwhile, PBS has shuttered its DEI office. PBS, of course, is publicly funded.

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The public broadcaster said in a statement, quote, in order to best ensure we are in compliance with the president's executive order around DEI, we have closed our DEI office. The staff members who served in that office are now leaving PBS. We'll continue to adhere to our mission and values. PBS will continue to reflect all of America and remain a welcoming place for everyone.

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Ah, nature is healing. This is a joy. Disney, getting back to normal. PBS, getting back to normal. It wasn't that tough, as it turns out. All it took was Democrats losing an election. So meritocracy must rule, which is why, frankly, I'm excited that there were people who were protesting the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth yesterday at a military installation in Germany. This is great.

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We can now identify their parents and kick them out. We'll get to that in just one moment. First, when you join Daily Wire Plus, it's not just a subscription. It is a statement, a refusal to be spoon-fed the nonsense shoved down your throat by the media, Hollywood, and every self-righteous blue-haired activist with a TikTok account. You've heard the lies. You've seen the manipulation.

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or the image of a national security advisor striding into NATO meetings, or the images of Elon Musk with his sort of young tech proteges going into various government agencies and clearing them out, or children in public places. All of these things have an impact on how human beings feel and how they think. And it makes a big difference.

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You know the game is rigged. You refuse to be played. Becoming a Daily Wire Plus member isn't just about access to content. It's about standing up for truth in a world that treats truth like a disposable inconvenience. It's about rejecting propaganda. It's about demanding facts, logic, and reality when the culture wants you gaslit into submission.

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So when you join, you know exactly what you're doing, backing a movement that doesn't just report on the culture but actually reshapes it. Every dollar you spend goes directly into building the future because America's future isn't going to build itself. Join the fight today. DailyWire.com slash subscribe. Meanwhile, Democrats are celebrating because a bunch of American students at a U.S.

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military installation in Germany walked out of their middle school on Tuesday as part of protests aimed at an official visit by the new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Why? Because the Defense Department is killing DEI initiatives. This is according to the Washington Post. The students attend Patch Middle School in Stuttgart, Germany, and peacefully walked out of class for nearly an hour.

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We used to just call that ditching class when I was in middle school, actually. But this is a great way of figuring out which parents are the wokies and then, you know, booting them out of the military, actually. That seems like a good idea.

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Separately, a small group of adults dressed in civilian clothing, likely parents, gathered outside at Stuttgart and protested within view and earshot of Hegseth's delegation booing and chanting DEI. Again, good luck to you. Seriously, good luck to you. Americans are not up for this crap. They are not.

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When the media covering this, it's like a front page story that you had a couple of dozen students out of something like 700 students at this middle school who walked out and whoop-dee-doo, whoop-dee-freaking-doo. Meanwhile, the actual big headline from yesterday was that Mark Fogle was freed by Russia. So Mark Fogle had essentially been kidnapped by the Russians.

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The Russians have been taking American hostages. They've been condemning people to penal servitude for minor crimes. This is true of Brittany Griner, the WNBA player. The difference is Joe Biden had to trade a Russian arms dealer to get her back. as opposed to Mark Fogle, who came back for nothing, actually.

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According to the Washington Post, President Trump thanked Vladimir Putin on Tuesday night for releasing American teacher Mark Fogle, who was freed after three and a half years of Russian imprisonment on drug charges in an exchange earlier in the day. President Trump welcomed Fogle back by ushering him into the White House, and then he also invited him to stay the night in the Lincoln bedroom.

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Fogle, for his part, was obviously grateful and celebratory about all this. He kissed the ground when he reached the United States. He... Was it the White House drinking a Pennsylvania brew at the White House? Here it was yesterday.

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So here's President Trump praising Elon Musk's son X, which is hilarious.

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Apparently, Steve Witkoff, who is the envoy to the Middle East, was the broker of this particular agreement at a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with Putin while in Moscow, arranging Fogel's release. Unclear what exactly the United States gave up to get Fogel back. It wasn't nothing.

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Presumably, it was some sort of criminal, but probably not on the level of the, you know, the merchant of death was the actual name of the person, the actual nickname of the person who was traded for Brittany Greiner. Remember that Joe Biden did not get out Mark Fogle. In fact, even Obama's ambassador to Russia was celebrating Mark Fogle's prison release yesterday.

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Here was President Obama's ambassador, Michael McFaul, celebrating Fogle's prison release and thanking Trump for it.

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The Biden administration had refused or delayed actually labeling Fogel as wrongfully detained during the administration, very, very late in the administration. Trump moved quickly with Lackery to get Fogel out, so that is a big win. And again, this is part of a broader attempt to thaw relations, presumably, with the Russians in advance of some sort of deal to be cut over Ukraine.

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The Europeans are being asked to pick up more of the slack, as they should be. Ukraine is being told by the Trump administration that they're probably not going to get to keep Donbass and Crimea because they really have no military prospect of winning back those areas. And the Russians are being told that they are not going to win Kiev. That was always going to be the outline of a deal.

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I've been saying this since August of 2022, just months after the beginning of the war, is that this is the way the war was going to end. It appears that is the direction that is currently being taken, according to Politico.

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The strategy for Ukraine is quietly shifting in Europe to match the changing tone of the United States from a promise of unyielding support to an effort to bring Kiev to the bargaining table with a strong hand. A new strategy will play out most clearly this week at the Munich Security Conference, one of the biggest gatherings of defense leaders in the world.

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And by the way, you got to love the sort of juxtaposition of the dress. Meaning Elon, for those who can't see, is wearing sort of typical tech bro outfit. He's wearing kind of like jeans and a t-shirt and then a black coat over it. And his son is dressed in the nines. Looking great over there. Meanwhile, President Trump says, listen, we've already found billions in abuse, incompetence, corruption.

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Now remember, this has to be done because Zelensky is going to have to explain to his own people why he's not winning back everything. And Zelensky is still, despite his war powers, a democratically elected leader who is going to be subject to the voting population. If he goes back to that population, and again,

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Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, wounded in Ukraine. Going back and saying, listen, we have to get Crimea and Donbass to get to some sort of off-ramp here is not going to be a popular move. If, however, Zelensky says, listen, I didn't want it. I want all that stuff back, but I was forced by everybody else to do the thing. That gives him an off-ramp.

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And some of us have been saying this for nigh on three years at this point. It's a dramatic departure from the Biden era, according to Politico, when the meeting reinforced the U.S. and its allies had Ukraine's back for, as former presidential Biden often said, as long as it takes. But that was never a good policy, because if you say as long as it takes to any off ramp, what's the off ramp then?

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Biden kept saying we're going to do this until they reach their goals. And then when asked what the goals were, they were never articulated. I mean, a good war has an actual goal at the end of the war. If you don't have a goal, it's very difficult to win. How's victory even defined at that point?

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Well, Trump campaigned, vowed to end the war in a day, but the conference is going to have Vice President Vance meeting with Zelensky. Vice President Kamala Harris had gone to Bavaria to meet Zelensky three times. But Europe is saying, we will for the moment take the lead if the Americans don't. Good, fine, do it. Seriously, do it. All you guys enjoy.

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And meanwhile, speaking of foreign policy, things are ratcheting up again in the Gaza Strip. That is because Hamas had said that they were not going to release any more hostages this weekend. And President Trump responded by saying you should release all the hostages this weekend or Israel should go in and just clean the ground with you.

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And now it was unclear whether the Israeli government was going to go along with that or try to in some way preserve the ceasefire deal. The Israeli government has now gone along with President Trump's demand. They're mirroring his demand correctly because his demand is right.

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This should have been the approach of the Israeli government from literally the first day and the approach of the American government from the first day. Trump is right on these matters, as always. President Trump in the Middle East tends to be right more often than any other politician.

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You see, it is now a constitutional crisis if the elected president of the United States appoints a person to go through all of the executive branches of government, all the various agencies, and root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Now this is a constitutional crisis.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Hamas release Israeli hostages by noon Saturday or face a return to war. Hamas had set off a rupture in the talks on Monday by saying it would postpone the release of three hostages scheduled to be freed this weekend to protest delays in deliveries of humanitarian goods. But that's not what it was about.

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The reason Hamas said they wanted to delay delivery of the hostages is because all the hostages look like Holocaust survivors. And they realize that there is serious PR blowback to their treatment of the hostages. So presumably they want several weeks to fatten them up so they don't look as though they're on the verge of death. The ones who are alive when they are, in fact, released.

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Trump is saying, no, none of that. Just let everybody out. Do it now or Israel has full reign to go back in and do whatever the hell they want. Trump said, I don't think they're going to make the deadline personally. I think they want to play the tough guy. We'll see how tough they are. Netanyahu issued an ultimatum of his own.

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He said, if Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday at noon, the ceasefire will end. The IDF will resume intense fighting until the final defeat of Hamas. This, of course, was always going to happen. I said this from the beginning of this. ceasefire deal. There was never going to be a good ceasefire deal, but Israel was always going back to war. Hamas was never going to be left in charge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Who's going to take the other side of this argument? Why are Democrats taking the other side of this argument other than they are wedded to every penny of spending and more? Here's President Trump yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, President Trump had King Abdullah of Jordan to the White House yesterday, and he is not backing off of his position on the Gaza Strip. He's saying, look, people who are there and suffering need to be let out. That place can be cleared. It can be turned into basically the Riviera on the Mediterranean. And it's going to bring jobs. It's going to it's going to make life better for people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Here is President Trump with his out of the box proposal that continues to be the best available proposal. No one else has one. Let's hear it, guys. Where's your proposal? Because it turns out status quo ante was it was terrible. So here's President Trump spelling out his proposal in front of King Abdullah of Jordan. Now, Abdullah does not want this proposal to go forward. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, because he's afraid that many of those Palestinians will be pushed into Jordan. Jordan's population is already 60 to 70 percent Palestinian. The population of Jordan is extraordinarily radicalized because the Palestinians are an extraordinarily radical group of people. They've been threatening the fall of the Hashemite dynasty.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The dynasty in Jordan is not Palestinian, although Queen Rania is. And so they've been complaining about a lack of a Palestinian state while 70% of their population is Palestinian. If the Jordanians actually wanted a Palestinian state, they could hold an election tomorrow. The problem is, of course, that King Abdullah would then likely be hanging from a crane.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So that is the reason why they don't want more Palestinian refugees. Trump, however, is saying, listen, if you're not going to take them, somebody should. So here he was yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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And hilariously, King Abdullah was forced to sit there and take this. And he, too, admitted that President Trump is bringing stability in the region.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And President Trump working his will in the Middle East. And as far as the notion that populations never move in the aftermath of losing a war, that obviously is untrue. Andrew Roberts, a very famous historian.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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has a piece over the Washington Free Beacon spelling out that reality, which is that when you start a war and you lose a war, you tend to lose territory and your population tends to have to move. And that is true everywhere from the end of World War II to the end of the Korean War.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Quote, after North Korea launched its vicious, unprovoked attack on South Korea in June 1950, it was punished so severely by the American-led United Nations force, it lost over a million dead. North Korea lost territory in the armistice in 1953 and has been a pariah state ever since.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When the Argentinian military dictatorship suddenly invaded the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic in April 1982 and were utterly defeated 10 weeks later by Margaret Thatcher's task force, the entire junta in Buenos Aires was deposed from power. Some were jailed. Democracy returned to Argentina.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Saddam Hussein's surprise attack on Kuwait was a similar example where a country invades its neighbor suddenly and without provocation after defeat in war loses both the government Saddam was hanged and its sovereignty while the U.S.-led coalition attempted to rebuild the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In the collapsing former Yugoslavia of the early 1990s, Serb leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic, General Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic took the cold-blooded decision to invade neighboring Bosnia and conduct an appalling program of what came to be known as ethnic cleansing, which was mass murder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Those critics of Donald Trump, who tritely referred to his population transfers under the Gaza plan as ethnic cleansing, ought to revisit what the phrase actually means in terms of horror, violence, and bloodshed. Once NATO finally took to the air in Operation Deliberate Force to end the brutality, all three of those Serb leaders were imprisoned.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Serbia's borders were decided by the West rather than by the Serbs. In other words, start a war, lose a war, lose. That is typically the way that war has worked. And it's only when it comes to the Palestinians that magically the rules don't apply, which has less to do with the Palestinians, it seems, and more to do with the treatment of the Jews by the international community. All right, coming up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Republicans are wrangling over the budget. We'll get to what that means. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so he's right about this, by the way. If you think that you can't get through the Senate and the House a bill that cuts waste, fraud, and abuse, if Democrats try to filibuster that, that is a losing proposition for them. Speaking of waste, fraud, and abuse, the White House on Tuesday evening, according to the Washington Post, fired the independent inspector general for the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Agency for International Development. A day after that, officers should report assessing the impact of the Trump administration's efforts to significantly curtail the agency's mission. So the guy's name was Paul Martin. He was appointed by President Joe Biden in December 2023.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He was informed of his dismissal through an email from Trent Morse, the deputy director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. The termination of Martin follows his office's publication of a widely read report warning more than $489 million in food assistance was at risk of spoilage or potential diversion after the Trump administration implemented its aid freeze and stop work order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the reason presumably he was fired is he leaked all of this to the media. He put out this report publicly. And Trump says, we are not a leaky administration. We are not going to do that anymore.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Plus, it is weird that the USAID inspector general was able to come up with, on short notice, a report talking about millions of dollars worth of food spoilage, but had nothing to say about $2.1 billion flowing into, for example, the Gaza Strip so that Hamas could continue to fund its terror war against Israel and murder its own people in the streets. And so again, they're moving fast.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They are breaking things. So Elon was in the Oval Office. And I think this is what Democrats are having such a tough time with. President Trump has actually changed in many ways. One of the ways he has changed is President Trump

The Ben Shapiro Show

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No one thinks this is a constitutional crisis, which is why Donald Trump's approval ratings remain in the mid-50s at this point, the highest they've been in his entire career. There's a brand new poll out from the UK Daily Mail, and it shows his approval rating at 53%. 53%. That includes 57% of men, 49% of women, 51% of people aged 18 to 29, and 59% of people aged 30 to 49.

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because he was going to run for reelection and then because he lost and then he was running again, there was always a certain level of insecurity that kind of surrounded President Trump. And what that meant is that the easiest way to seed all sorts of chaos with President Trump was to imply or state outright that somebody else was actually the president or somebody else was running Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, the reality is no one perceives that to be the case. Donald Trump is running the presidency. No one is running Donald Trump. Donald Trump is coming up with his own ideas. Donald Trump is making the decisions. Everyone knows this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Americans understand this, which is why all the polling data shows 70 in 10 Americans think he is a strong president, not because they think Elon is the secret president. And again, much of the media coverage is designed at sort of irritating Trump by claiming that Elon is sort of the shadow president. But everyone, including Trump, knows that's not the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Number one, Elon doesn't have any independent political aspirations. Elon is incapable of running for president. He wasn't born in the United States. But beyond that, everyone also understands that in the end, if Trump says no, Elon doesn't have any power to cut. Trump's going to be the one who has to actually implement the recommendations that are being made by Doge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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It is Trump empowering Musk, not the other way around. And so Musk, in solidarity with Trump in the Oval Office, in lockstep, arm in arm, is a major thing. It is a signifier that Trump is comfortable in his own skin as president, that he doesn't feel threatened by people who are around him, that he's willing to take advice. But in the end, he is the decision maker.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, Trump feels liberated as president, but in your own life, are you feeling buried under credit card bills, personal loans, medical debt? It feels like your money's working harder for your lenders than it is for you. It doesn't actually have to be that way. That's where PDS Debt helps out. PDS Debt does more than just help you manage your debt. They empower you to take control.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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Their platform goes beyond the numbers to understand your unique financial situation and craft a personalized plan designed just for you. No cookie cutter solutions, just a clear path to financial freedom that fits your lifestyle. And here's the best part. There's no minimum credit score required.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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Whether your credit is fair or needs improvement, they're here to help you save more, pay off your debt faster, and start building your savings for the future. And when people get into debt, it can be absolutely brutal. It can sink you into the mire for years on end. Get out of debt by heading on over to pdsdebt.com and complete your free debt assessment. See what options are available to you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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Everyday weight, it's costing you money. Get started with your free debt analysis in just 30 seconds at pdsdebt.com. That's pdsdebt.com. Take back control today. Visit pds.com slash ben. Go check them out today again. If you're in debt, it's time to fix all that. Start off by contacting my friends at pds.com slash ben. Also, you know, I've tried everything to improve my sleep.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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Setting strict bedtimes, putting the phone out of reach, get some downtime from the news, even rearranging the bedroom. But all these changes took constant effort, didn't get a lot of result, and then... I discovered the magic. Bowl and branches, 100% organic cotton sheets. From the very first night, I could feel the difference. These aren't just any sheets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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They have this incredible buttery softness that puts you in instant relaxation mode. What really impressed me is how they get softer with every single wash. I didn't think that was possible, but after a few months, they feel even more luxurious than when I first got them. Believe me. I've tried other premium sheets before. Nothing comes close to the breathable comfort of these sheets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The best part, they're woven with the finest 100% organic cotton on planet Earth, crafted by artisans who earn the pay and respect they deserve. So not only do you sleep better, you can feel good about your purchase as well. Now is your chance to change the way you sleep with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off. plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bullandbranch.com slash ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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That's bullandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash ben, to save 15% exclusion supply. See site for details. Go check them out right now, bullandbranch.com slash ben, and save 15%. So Musk had himself a good time in the Oval Office. He started off by talking about cutting the budget, and he said, listen, to do that requires a couple of things, competence and caring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, who argues with that? Who's going to argue with that? Now, is it going to be enough to recommend billions of dollars in cuts from the executive agencies and waste, fraud, and abuse? Is it all fat? Or is there some muscle? Is there some bone? There's going to be a lot of muscle and bone that gets cut or broken before it is healed. And this is sort of the way that Musk works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2137 - The Trump-Musk REVOLUTION Continues!

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In fact, the people who are least likely to support President Trump at this point are the older folks, the 65 pluses. Democrats must be absolutely peeing their pants at this point. Because here's the thing. Most Americans look at what Trump is doing, particularly with Elon Musk and his revolutionary approach to government, which, again, should just be common sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, for example, Musk was questioned by the media in this Oval Office. It is amazing how transparent this administration is, by the way. Joe Biden would not do a press conference for three and a half years because Joe Biden was not competent, because Joe Biden was not mentally there. Donald Trump is speaking to the press every single day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Elon Musk, supposedly at the head of a shadow government, is speaking to the press virtually every day when he's not on X 24 hours a day tweeting out his various thoughts. But Musk is being transparent here. He says, listen, I'm going to make mistakes in the stuff that I tweet out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the point is that I would rather make the mistakes and correct them than simply leave this behemoth staggering along the tundra only to die later and rot away.

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Correct. Correct. Again, what is amazing about all this is the Democrats keep declaring a constitutional crisis over doing sort of baseline governance. This should be baseline governance. So Musk was asked about the supposed constitutional crisis inherent in all of this. Because listen, people voted for reform. You keep saying people didn't vote for me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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People literally voted for Donald Trump knowing that Elon Musk was going to be part of the cutting effort. It is not as though Donald Trump hit the ball here. Again, seven in 10 Americans believe that Donald Trump is keeping his promises right now, which is a historic number. I mean, at this rate, the way that Donald Trump is moving, and again, It's unbelievable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We're three weeks into his presidency. If Donald Trump keeps even remotely moving at this rate, he is going to be the most transformative president in American public life since LBJ, maybe since FDR, if we keep going at this rate. Here's Elon Musk saying, listen, people voted for this. He keeps pretending like people didn't vote.

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People never voted for any of these bureaucrats, but they voted for this.

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Send somebody in to audit all these various agencies, figure out where the money is being wasted, and then don't waste our taxpayer money. It should just be basic common sense. It should be a 100% issue. Democrats are freaking out because, as we've discussed, the reality is the Democrats have built an entire bureaucratic system designed to do their will, whether they are in power or out of power.

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That makes perfect sense. And Elon points out the same thing we've been pointing out. Bureaucrats are not elected. Bureaucrats making rules and spending money they were not allocated on random nonsense that they feel it is a priority to waste money on. That is not how government ought to work. Here's Elon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He is right about all of this. Now, Elon took the opportunity to mention some of the sort of waste, fraud and abuse inherent in the system. And he mentioned this crazy story about how essentially retirement forms are processed by the federal government from a limestone mine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So first of all, it's disappointing to me because if we are going to put government employees anywhere, it should absolutely be a salt mine. They should actually have to work literal salt mines. But here's Elon pointing out a thing. And it turns out this is true. This is not a mistake by Elon. This is actually true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

Alrighty, folks. Well, yesterday, Luigi Mangione, who is the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, he had been arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he was brought into the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where he immediately began shouting at the press.

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So maybe Jamie Dimon should be tracked down and murdered. This kind of stuff is full stop evil. It is evil. I don't care what complaints you have with the health insurance company. The notion that the solution to those complaints is the murder of the executives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And he presumably was having some sort of fights with some health insurance company, but that is totally unclear. And he did leave a manifesto. His manifesto is very short. It's 262 words.

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is sick, if you were living in a tyrannical society where you didn't have any legal correctives to any of this, and you had no alternatives in terms of Medicaid, which does exist, and you had no alternatives in terms of other health insurance programs, then you can make the argument in a full-scale monarchic tyranny that assassination is a proper response to this.

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But that's not the system in which we live. And promulgating that lie leads to greater violence. It leads to justification of all violence. Unfortunately, it's not just Bill Burr. It is so many members of the elite of our society. The people who are fine living with private security as they make millions of dollars saying things on TV. It's not just Bill Burr here. It is also Jimmy Kimmel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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So Jimmy Kimmel last night decided that he would do an entire segment celebrating the good looks of the alleged shooter. Here he was last night gleefully chortling over how good looking the alleged shooter is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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I'm old enough to remember when there was widespread national outrage over Rolling Stone running on its cover a picture of the Boston Marathon bomber that made him look particularly handsome or something. And people were like, that's sick. You shouldn't do that. He's a murderer. Here's Jimmy Kimmel just doing it.

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Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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And it is worth exploring because it is a window into the mind of people who tend to believe that because the world is filled with problems, this means you get to shoot people, which is unfortunately a growing sentiment on the left and even some parts of the right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Hilarious, hilarious stuff, glorifying the alleged murderer of the UnitedHealth CEO. What a delight these people are. It's also in academia, of course. Here is a University of Pennsylvania professor who should, in fact, lose her job. You should not be teaching students if your attitude toward murder is that it is a net good because you don't like the healthcare system as it currently stands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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By the way, I'm just wondering to what extent we get to extend this logic when it comes to government-run systems. So how would people feel about people just assassinating the heads of the National Health Service in Great Britain, for example? I have a feeling these same people would be a little upset about it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Here is the University of Pennsylvania professor dancing on TikTok to the murder of the United Health Executive. It says, I've never been prouder to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Well, I'm not rocking her head to Les Mis. who will not be slaves again. Just absolute imbecility, but moral imbecility as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Apparently, the McDonald's where the police caught the alleged shooter has now been flooded with negative Yelp reviews because the basic idea is that you should not report murderous criminals if you spot them in public. Meanwhile, some TikTokers are threatening to beat up McDonald's workers. Here's one trans TikToker threatening to beat up a McDonald's worker.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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So here is what the alleged shooter actually wrote, quote, to the feds, I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial, some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Oh, well, then you're not advocating for it, obviously. Over in New York, signs have been appearing with pictures, wanted pictures of CEOs with Brian Thompson's face crossed out because, of course, he has been murdered. Here is some footage of wanted posters of various members of the health care industry. Again, wanted posters with their faces on them, presumably to be murdered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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This is all insane, especially considering that when it comes to health care, that is a complex problem requiring a complex solution. Well, there are a lot of such problems in your life. One of those is HR. When we started The Daily Wire, the biggest question mark was what we would do for HR. You know, we were focused on creating engaging content.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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It's difficult to find a managing professional capable of handling day-to-day HR tasks. If that sounds like you and your business, you need to talk to my friends over at Bambi. With Bambi, you're not just getting an HR manager, you're getting a dedicated partner who's available by phone, email, real-time chat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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They'll handle crucial tasks like employee onboarding terminations and performance reviews. With Bambi's HR autopilot feature, you can streamline essential HR practices like employee training and feedback procedures, freeing up time for what really matters to your business. All of Bambi's HR managers are based in the United States and can support the nuances across all 50 states.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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HR managers can easily cost 80 grand annually. Bambi starts at just 99 bucks monthly. So no matter the size of your business, Bambi can work for you. Do not wait another minute. Schedule your free consultation. Visit Bambi.com right now. Type Ben Shapiro under podcast when you sign up. Spelled B-A-M-B-E-E.com. That's Bambi.com. Type in Ben Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Again, they are going to help your business just an insane amount. Go check them out right now. Bambi.com. Type in Ben Shapiro to get started. Also, you know what the radical left doesn't understand? The profound unshakable bond between Christians and Jews in America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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While the secular left pushes their anti-religious agenda, Christians and Jews have stood together defending our shared values and religious liberties. That's why I'm proud to partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. For over 40 years, they've been doing something remarkable, building bridges between our communities through faith, shared values, and mutual respect.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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The spiral notebook at present has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder, the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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And the fellowship doesn't just talk, they act. Right now, they're on the ground providing real help to vulnerable Jewish families and elderly around the globe. We're talking about food, medical care, emergency assistance, and security to people who need it most.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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As someone who's spent years talking about Judeo-Christian values, I can tell you, this organization represents exactly what makes our alliance so powerful. It's about Christians and Jews coming together to do what our faiths command. helping those in need. If you want to be part of this incredible mission, visit benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Your support makes a real difference in people's lives. There are people on the ground suffering right now. The fellowship is doing amazing work. Go check them out right now. benforthefellowship.org. Once more, that's benforthefellowship.org, an excellent place to give. God bless and thank you, benforthefellowship.org. Go check them out right now. Okay, now, how widespread is this sentiment?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Well, I mean, it's widespread enough that it has made its way over into the political segment of the body politic, the overtly political. You have the cultural commentators who are sort of tangentially interested in the issue to the extent that they don't know enough about it to say.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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And then you have people whose actual profession is to supposedly understand the issues, being gleeful about the murder. Joy Reid, again, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, and that includes Joy Behar. She is gleeful that people are supporting the UnitedHealth CEO's alleged shooter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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has the number one most expensive health care system in the world, yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy. United is the, and then it's handwritten, so indecipherable, largest company in the U.S. by market cap behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Okay, and part of the reason for that hatred is because you have suggested no proper solutions. By the way, Obamacare was supposed to solve all this, remember? Lefties, come get your boy. Barack Obama, that guy was supposed to have fixed health care, you recall, and it got worse because of the subsidization and overregulation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Meanwhile, the White House refuses to answer if the Biden administration disagrees with the alleged shooter's reported manifesto regarding, quote unquote, profit over people, which, again, has been a talking point of the left for a very long time. The suggestion that the profit margin is really the problem in the health care industry, as we went through with regard to the charts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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There are a wide variety of healthcare systems. When it comes to spending per capita, the bottom line is that as income goes up, so does healthcare spending. It's just a reality. But the White House, again, has been playing this ugly game. Democrats have been playing this ugly game as long as I'm alive.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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The reason health care is bad in the United States or worse than it should be in the United States is because of those greedy health care executives. It is amazing, by the way, that this logic is never, ever applied to literally any other area of human life. Nobody ever says, you know, the NBA could be even better if they paid LeBron James less. Nobody ever says that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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It's only with regard to healthcare and other areas that the left cares about that suddenly the profit margin becomes bad. Nobody ever suggests that Bill Burr should make less money in his comedy because obviously the profit margin in his comedy is what is driving, it's making his comedy worse.

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Here is Karine Jean-Pierre refusing to condemn the idea that the UnitedHealthcare CEO, the reason UnitedHealthcare denies too many claims is because of their profit margins.

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It's not totally clear what he is saying here, but here is video of him emerging from a police car and being ushered into the jailhouse where he is being held pending his possible extradition to New York. He apparently is fighting that extradition. Here's what it sounded like yesterday.

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So I'd be avoiding the question, obviously. By the way, it's not just Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House. It's also Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren is such a disappointment of a human being. So I knew Elizabeth Warren back when she was a torts professor at Harvard Law. She was there at the same time that I was. She was a teacher, obviously, and I was a student.

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No, the reality is these blank have simply gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Okay, there are a couple of key lines here that are quite amazing in this manifesto. One is...

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And Elizabeth Warren was not a nut job at that point, but she clearly has had too much of the Bernie Sanders Kool-Aid. She said, quote, this is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change. Violence is never the answer, but... People can be pushed only so far. But I have a question. You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts.

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You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts. It seems like you might have something to do with this a little bit. So I have a question. If they're frustrated with the system, are they allowed to assassinate you? The answer, of course, is no, nor should it be yes. And nobody should be making a butt about that point. But when it comes to the left, they make that point all the damn time.

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There's a piece over at Politico trying to explain what exactly is going on over here. Joshua Zeitz, a Politico magazine contributing writer, and he has a piece talking about a particular theory called social banditry. He traces that to the Marxist scholar, Eric Hobswam in 1959.

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He suggested that social bandits were sometimes fictional, sometimes real figures who operated outside of the law and were widely revered for their efforts to mete out justice in an unjust world, like Robin Hood, for example. Hobswam's theory,

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which historians continue to debate, rested on a fairly specific Marxian analysis of power and economic relationships in agrarian societies, but such characters transcended different geographies and times, ranging from the fictional Robin Hood in 14th century England to brutally violent real-life outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the Kid in the post-Civil War era United States to Pancho Villa in the early 20th century Mexico.

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So what exactly is the theory? Well, the theory basically suggests that that social banditry attracts popular attention and support in rural environments where the state is weak, where peasants' longstanding prerogatives were eroding in the face of economic change, and where inequality was rampant.

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So that means that if you then commit individual acts of violence, you are rebelling against some sort of evil system. The problem, of course, is that that is not how the United States works.

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The reality is that while people might be large scale upset with insurance companies, and I think for some good reasons because of the regulatory environment, the basic Marxian idea, which is that violence is now justified in a democratic republic because you don't like how a company is doing its business. That is, in fact, as most Marxist materialism is, wrong and also morally wrong.

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The argument here is that we don't have effective government with regard to this stuff, and that's why things aren't changing. Well, we have more regulation on the healthcare industry than virtually any other industry in the United States. We have more subsidization of the healthcare industry than literally any industry in the United States, bar none.

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Medicare and Medicaid comprise a huge chunk of our budget every single year in the United States. And that's leaving aside state costs. But this, again, this basic idea, and it does tear apart the country, is the idea the system is so broken that murder, individual murder, is the solution to the system.

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You shouldn't tolerate that particular argument when it comes to the supposed racial injustice of the United States. You should not tolerate that argument when it comes to the economic system of the United States. And you shouldn't tolerate that argument when it comes to the health system of the United States either.

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Again, no one is denying people's bad feelings about health insurance companies, many of which, again, I think are fully understandable. But the extension of that to I now have sympathy with the murder of the CEO is a step beyond and has no limiting principle at all. It's truly ugly. Okay, meanwhile, the Daniel Penny trial is now over. The fallout, of course, is not.

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The left is super upset over Daniel Penny's acquittal. So Alexander Ocasio-Cortez had the dumbest take of the day, predictably, since she's not a particularly smart human being. She suggested that people who ride subways should fear Daniel Penny.

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which is a hell of a statement considering that he literally saved subway riders from a highly drug-addled, deeply mentally ill, violent, threatening homeless person. Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finding the stupidest possible take.

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Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have the space and frankly do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. In other words, he didn't have a solution for any of the health insurance problems in the country. And those problems are quite real because the United States has a very heavily subsidized and regulated health care system.

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So apparently he should have been remorseful for attempting to stop a guy who was shouting that he was going to kill everyone on the subway. He should express remorse for that. Whoopi Goldberg doing the same routine.

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Here she was yesterday from her very rich and privileged station in American life, suggesting it made her uncomfortable that after his trial, after his acquittal, Daniel Penny went to a bar. Apparently, he's supposed to what? Go live in sackcloth and ashes in a monastery somewhere?

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Well, what exactly is he supposed to do after being unfairly targeted and prosecuted for an act of heroism on the New York subway?

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Okay, I mean, I promise you, I won't. Jamal Bowman could predictably be counted on to have the AOC-like take. He wrote an open letter to white people. We'll get to that in just one second. First, let me tell you about the holidays, the heart of family tradition. You know, those precious moments of being together, whether you are decorating the tree, lighting the menorah, just sharing a meal.

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The traditions matter. Have you thought about what happens if you die? You know, like if you're dead. I know, real dark. But here's the thing. You need to protect your family's future and your peace of mind with Policy Genius. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $292 per year for a million dollars in coverage.

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Their digital tools let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for free, no hidden fees. Their licensed support team is there to help you get exactly what you need. They answer questions, handle paperwork, advocate for you throughout the entire process. Even if you already have life insurance through work, it might not protect all your family's needs.

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They probably won't follow you if you leave your job. Join thousands of happy Policy Genius customers who have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. Secure your families tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today. Head over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro, get your free life insurance quotes, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

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right now dailywire plus gift memberships are 40 off that means this year you can save serious cash while giving a full year of uncensored daily shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media with limited ads plus groundbreaking investigative journalism access to our entire entertainment catalog including what is a woman the number one documentary of the decade am i racist full access to bentkey our kids app featuring over 40 shows and 1500 hours of fun content made just for kids and it's safe material that i'd let my kids watch that's why we did this

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There's so much more to finish your Christmas shopping with one click. Go to dailywire.com right now. Give the gift of Daily Wire Plus. OK, meanwhile, Democrats continue to. militate against the acquittal of Daniel Penny in the subway case with Jordan Neely. Representative Jamal Bowman, who thank God was primaried out in New York. He has an entire letter dedicated to white people. Here we go.

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Insurance is not actually insurance. It's actually health coverage. Insurance, as we mentioned yesterday on the show, would imply that you are making a bet with the insurance company that something bad might happen to you and the insurance company is betting that it will not happen to you.

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Ready? Dear white people, capital W, capital P, white people. I don't know why I feel the need to keep talking to you. I don't know why part of me still has hope for you and for us. Some of you are too far gone. Maybe enough of you aren't and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy.

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I just want to call out the hypocrisy and evil of it all and just continue to hope I won't rely completely on you because I know what's most important is to work with my community and other like-minded allies in the fight for justice. But I guess I'll just offer this. I'm 48 years old and I've seen countless incidents of police, brutal violence and killings in my lifetime.

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The first black man I saw violently attacked on camera was Rodney King. Those officers were acquitted. So actually two of the four officers were convicted and did time in jail. Next, says Jamal Bowman, was Eric Garner's murder and his cries of, I can't breathe. All he was doing was trying to sell a few cigarettes to survive an economy that failed him, and he was jumped and killed by police.

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Actually, he was refusing to comply with police orders, Eric Garner, and he was wildly overweight, and that is what caused his death. He had a heart attack, effectively speaking. The next video burned into my memory is the murder of Philando Castile, shot and bled to death by police on the live stream.

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Okay, that was indeed a terrible case in which Philando Castile reached for his ID and the cop panicked, And a wrongful death settlement was brought against the city, settled for about $4 million. Okay, so again, Jamal Bowman just goes on. The world saw George Floyd murdered. His murderer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. I cried and couldn't stop crying.

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I saw five black Memphis police officers beating a black man to death on camera. White supremacy is not skin color. It's a state of mind, which of course is an easy way to get out of the fact that none of these cases were actual white supremacy. Jordan Neely is the latest. He was sick. He was not a threat. Um, he was, he was shouting at everyone on the subway, testified in the trial.

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They were scared of Jordan Neely. He was subdued, still not a threat. Daniel Penny choked him for six minutes and killed him. We all watched it on camera and he was still acquitted. I wish I didn't have to live with all of this trauma deep in my bones, says Jamal Bowman. I wish I could just be free to be me. I marvel at the beauty and greatness of my people in spite of white supremacy.

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That is obviously not how healthcare works in the United States because no company in their right mind would bet that, for example, you won't need a checkup next week. That would be a stupid bet. So this isn't insurance at all. It's health coverage that is provided at discount based on government subsidy and also based on collective risk pooling.

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It's extraordinary. That is what I will continue to lean on. RIP Jordan Neely, the justice system failed you. Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny are free. You're gone. We must still fight. So first of all, Kyle Rittenhouse shot some white Antifa members and he did so in self-defense. Daniel Penny was defending fellow subway riders from Jordan Neely.

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And the attempt to turn everything into a racial issue, I think that day is over, by the way. I think Americans are tired of it. They are sick of it and they don't care about it anymore. But Democrats keep doubling down on it. Here were Democrats in front of the House of Representatives yesterday suggesting the full scale commutation of all death row sentences because of race or something.

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We should note at this point that the people on death row are literally the worst people on planet Earth. The worst people who exist. We're talking about child rapists and murderers, for example. But here are Democrats. It's pretty clear with whom they side.

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Why the hell not? Why the hell not? Again, what a joke the Democrats are. Daniel Penny, for his part, he's been speaking out. He says, listen, it's pretty obvious that these sort of left wing policies have not worked. They've made people less safe. That's the reason why I had to stand up in the first place.

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Meanwhile, Penney also said, he was asked, you know, would you have gone through this again, knowing that you'd get prosecuted, that you'd have to stand trial? Here was his answer.

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That's actually how the system works, and the system doesn't work particularly well in a lot of ways. It works better than many of the other systems, including nationalized health care. But the point there is that the alleged shooter himself is angry at a system that he says he does not fully understand and he has no proper solutions for. And by the way, he happens to be wrong on the merits.

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Well, that seems like the kind of person you want more of on the street. Democrats, of course, want apparently more Jordan Neelys on the street and fewer Daniel Pennies on the street. And that is not a call for people to die, obviously. That is a call for people to be kept safe from people who have serious mental illness, schizophrenia, massive drug problems.

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Liberals have decided to leave on the streets. Now, speaking of terrible policy, the Federal Trade Commission, under the excreble Lena Kahn, has now decided that they are going to nix the merger between Kroger and Albertsons. The idea being that Kroger and Albertsons are competing with each other and that's what's keeping prices low. Well, there's only one problem.

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Their market share as a general percentage of the supermarket industry has dropped radically over the years. Why? Because there are places like Target and, for example, Walmart that now sell groceries. And so consolidation is a way of competing to lower costs.

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Alina Khan, who is an anti-market radical, appeared with Hassan Piker, who has now apparently been deemed worthy of decent conversation by the left. I mean, he was on Pod Save America the other day. It's amazing who they will elevate. Truly amazing. And Lena Kahn, the current FTC head, she says that they are going to go after this merger and cancel the merger between Albertsons and Kroger. Why?

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In order to increase labor costs artificially. Because the idea is if they're a merger, then you can't play the two sides off against one another in attempting to get labor. That is not why or how you block mergers. That is not what the FTC is designed to do. The FTC is not a unionization project. The Federal Trade Commission is meant to prevent monopoly that damages consumers.

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And here they are basically saying we don't care if it damages consumers to block the merger. It's all about us pleasing our union base.

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So when he says that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy, there's an excellent thread from a person named Jeremy Kaufman laying out some of the statistics with regard to the United States healthcare system. And the point that he makes is that healthcare spending in all countries tracks income.

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That is not the job of the Federal Trade Commission. That is a psychotic perspective on economics. It is markedly worse for consumers. You're artificially increasing the price of labor by preventing a perfectly market efficient merger from happening because you want to increase the price of labor. That's what she is talking about right there. Well, good news. She's going to be gone.

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Trump's going to get rid of her. President-elect Trump on Tuesday announced Andrew Ferguson was going to lead the FTC. He is currently already a member of the agency. That's great. He's a veteran congressional aide. He's a former Supreme Court clerk. He doesn't need to be confirmed because he's already on the FTC. Ferguson is all for economic efficiency.

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He has vowed to extend his regulatory scope to target social media sites that police conservative voices as well. Andrew Ferguson will be an excellent change to the idiocy of Lena Kahn, who is indeed a deeply radical human being. By the way, Donald Trump is ready to open up this economy to a boom.

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So yesterday, he promised, via Truth Social, that any person or company investing a billion dollars or more in the United States, quote, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including but in no way limited to all environmental approvals. Good. Good. Okay, that is a pro-investment idea. streamlining the process of investment. I mean, it should be done for everybody.

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I would hope that it happens for everybody. But if you're about to sink a billion dollars into the American economy, it seems to me that we should probably rush your approval process. Good for President Trump. This is the thing about Trump. Regardless of his ideology, the man's a pragmatist and he would like to see a booming American economy. That is for damn sure.

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Okay, meanwhile, breaking news, the UK government has now announced they are indefinitely banning puberty blockers. Remember that time that puberty blockers were considered mandatory medicine? It was the only way to prevent your girl from killing herself if she wanted to become a boy?

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Well, now the National Health Service, the vaunted National Health Service that we keep hearing so much about from the left, they have decided that puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria and gender incongruence in under 18s were banned temporarily in May 2024 after the cast review found there was insufficient evidence to show they were safe.

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Legislation will be updated to make the order indefinite and will be reviewed in 2027. So basically the entire transgender medicine con is now over. It's falling apart as well. It should be. That is excellent news. And again, goes to the heart of an entirely stupid debate that we've been having in the country over the course of the last 10 years.

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And it is 10 years in which the left maintained that human beings were such interchangeable widgets, that we were all such blank slates, that a boy could be a girl and a girl could be a boy. And that the true obstacle to happiness was shooting girls filled with testosterone and then chopping off their healthy body parts. Amazing stuff. So good on the NHS.

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In other words, the more people get rich, the more they spend on healthcare. And this is true across countries. Here, for example, is a chart of health spending increasing rapidly with real income. So if, for example, you live in Hungary and you have a significantly lower income, you're going to spend less on your healthcare. And as your income rises, you're going to spend more on your healthcare.

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The United States is lagging behind on this. They shouldn't be. All of this should be banned immediately in all 50 states. That should be a priority, by the way, for the federal government under the brand new Health and Human Services Administration of RFK Jr. This should absolutely be ruled under the HHS mandate as non-usable for under 18.

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I'd make the case it should be non-usable for everyone because it is bad medicine. It has nothing to do with actually solving the underlying problem any more than ice pick to the frontal cortex solves seizures. In any case, the Trump administration is now going to have to look pretty deeply into the DOJ again.

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Just before Trump takes office, it is now being revealed that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone records from two members of Congress and 43 staffers, including Kash Patel, the new Trump pick to lead the FBI during sweeping leak investigations during Trump's first term, according to a watchdog report released on Tuesday.

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The new report from the DOJ inspector general raises concerns about how the department tried to root out reporter sources from a sprawling and bipartisan list of federal employees who had access to classified information because of their job. Patel and the two members of Congress are not named in the report, but two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN Patel was targeted. So was Adam Schiff.

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So was Eric Swalwell. Patel was a staffer for the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee at the time. Here yesterday was the Republican chairman of the oversight committee, Mike Turner, slamming the Trump DOJ for spying on the congressman and staff, including Kash Patel. When we say the Trump DOJ, we mean the DOJ as led by Trump appointees. But much of this was done at the lower levels of the DOJ.

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You'll recall it was the same DOJ that was targeting Trump at the time.

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I mean, if you're wondering why it is that the Trump administration is nominating so many people who are victims of these particular agencies to then lead the agencies, this would be the reason. Because sometimes it takes the person who is motivated to actually clean out the deadwood from these institutions.

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Speaking of deadwood inside the institutions, what the hell does our Department of Defense do exactly? What would they say they do now? It's a serious question under Lloyd Austin. So apparently there have been drones floating near a bunch of military sites

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According to Fox News, a top FBI leader revealed the agency knows concerningly little about mysterious drones that have been seen hovering over New Jersey. Dozens of drones have been spotted flying near sensitive sites like a military research facility in recent weeks. There's also reports that this was happening over in Virginia as well over the course of the last few weeks.

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Some drones as large as SUVs have been spotted hovering in the Garden State skies, as well as smaller, more rapidly maneuverable drones resembling what's referred to as drone motherships that have been deployed in Ukraine, Russia and China, according to Fox News contributor Brett Velasovich.

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That is true everywhere. It is true in Norway. It is true in Canada. It is true in Italy. It is true in Spain. It is true everywhere. It is almost a straight line, arithmetic correlation here. That as you make more money, you spend more money on your healthcare, which of course makes sense because you care very deeply about your healthcare. That is not a giant shock. As it turns out,

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Here is Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, saying that one police officer saw as many as 50 drones hovering around.

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Meanwhile, the FBI itself is saying they have no idea who is operating these drones. So what would you do? What do you guys do here? Seriously, what do you do? This is like the most obvious thing in the world. You have giant drones that are hovering like motherships with smaller drones that are around them near American military bases.

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And the FBI is like, oh, apparently FAA regulations prevent them from just shooting down or even blocking these drones, which is totally crazy. And the power of your federal government, able to raid your house for an IRS regulatory violation, unable to do anything about swarms of drones hovering around our military bases in the United States. Genius level stuff.

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Here's senior FBI official Robert Wheeler saying the FBI has no idea what's happening here.

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Well, I'm glad you're actively investigating. Your investigations have been so great thus far over at the FBI. And Kash Patel can't get in there fast enough. All right, folks, in just one second, we'll bring you the latest from Syria, as well as an insane take from Caitlin Clark on her role in the WNBA. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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If you actually correlate healthcare costs with income, what you see is that income rises, so does healthcare costs. Again, not a giant shock. In rich country, labor costs more. Inputs cost more. The real price of healthcare increases actually slower than incomes in cross-sectional analysis.

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So as income in the United States increases, so does healthcare price, but slower than income increases in the United States. Not only that, You can see in surgical prices that there is correlation between income and the price of surgery, for example. Because again, as people make more money, they also demand more money as the inputs on labor.

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If you are a surgeon in the United States and the average income is $80,000 a year, you're going to make more money than in a country where the average income is $40,000 a year. That is not a shock. Straight line correlation. Caesarian sections are more expensive in Norway, where the income is higher, than in Israel, where the income is lower.

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Appendectomies are more expensive in Australia, where the income is higher, than Korea, where the income is lower. And none of this is a giant shock. In other words, the market mechanisms continue to function in the sense that as people make more money and as they spend more money, the costs go up. Most importantly, the idea that profits are radically high in health services is not true.

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So what he appears to be shouting there is it's an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience. It's not exactly clear what he is talking about right there. What is the insult? That you've been arrested when the evidence is pretty clear that you were the person who shot to death Brian Thompson, this UnitedHealth executive?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Profits in health services are actually lower than in many other areas of the American economy. So if you look at hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities, the profits are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% to 5%, somewhere in that neighborhood. If you look at construction, they're way higher than that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

426.656

Profits are really, really high in manufacturing, for example, but they're not particularly high in the healthcare industry, again, because of regulation and subsidization. So why exactly is it that we spend so much money, but we get so little input in terms of our health expectancy rising, our life expectancy rising?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

443.066

Well, number one, there is in fact a law of diminishing returns when it comes to healthcare spending. It's true across countries. At a certain point, a massive increase in healthcare spending only leads to a marginal increase in life expectancy. And this is not just true of the United States. It's true literally everywhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

460.863

So for example, the cross-sectional relationship in terms of how much you spend on care and the outcome is totally flat. So the life expectancy in, for example, Israel and Luxembourg is totally the same, but the health expenditure per capita is wildly different. So Israel is spending about $2,500 health expenditure per capita And the life expectancy in Israel is about 82 and a half years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

488.783

Same exact life expectancy in Luxembourg, except they're spending $6,500 per capita. Because it turns out, no matter what you do with medicine, you simply can't prolong life beyond a certain point on average. So what's the big problem in the United States? Why does the United States have a lower life expectancy?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

503.628

Well, there are a bunch of reasons, but the biggest reasons are we do a lot of drugs, we're really fat and we drive badly. Those would be the big reasons. We lose in the United States about a year and a half in life expectancy on average through drugs, car accidents, and violence. And we happen to be really fat. We have a huge diet metabolic problem in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

529.673

In fact, it has almost a six-year decrease in life expectancy in the United States thanks to diet and metabolic because we're real fat in the United States. Okay, so none of this is to ignore the problems in the healthcare system. It is to point out that whenever anyone suggests that there are easy solutions and they are only barred by the evil of greedy health insurance companies, they are lying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

549.06

It is not true. It is overtly false. That's true whether the shooter is saying it while murdering somebody. The alleged shooter is saying that while murdering somebody. It is also true whether you are a comedian or a political commentator. So this brings us to Bill Burr. So I have to say, Bill Burr is an a**hole. So Bill Burr, I used to really enjoy his work. On occasion, I still enjoy his work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

572.074

He's a comedian, which means he's very hit or miss. His Red Rock special, for example, hilarious. I used to be, I'm such a Bill Burr fan that I actually bought a ticket for me and my wife and two of our friends to go see Bill Burr at the Hard Rock Casino down here in Hollywood, Florida.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

585.99

And I have to say it was one of the worst shows I ever saw in my life because he got up there and Bill Burr has become woked. He has become woked, I assume, because his wife is very much on the left. Over time, I think he became embarrassed that many people on the right thought he was very funny. And so he decided that he was going to start woking it up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

602.202

Well, Bill Burr is a disappointment, sort of like incognito mode on your computer because they keep telling you that everything you do in incognito mode is incognito. Not true. Going online without ExpressVPN, it's like putting all your passwords and credit card numbers on a huge billboard for the whole world to see.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

615.272

In today's connected world, we're constantly jumping between networks, grabbing coffee at our local cafe, working from hotels or killing time at airports. What many don't realize is these convenient connections can be a playground for cyber criminals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

62.385

What exactly is the insult to the lived experience? Is the idea that if you've had a bad experience with a health insurance company, this means that you now get to murder the head of the health insurance company? By the way, not even clear in this particular case that the alleged shooter's health conditions had anything to do with UnitedHealth. Like nothing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

624.759

When you browse on these unencrypted networks, your personal information from passwords to banking details is vulnerable to anyone with the right tools. And here's the scary part. Gaining access to someone's personal data doesn't require advanced hacking skills. With some basic equipment that's readily available, even young teenagers could potentially intercept your data.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

639.91

Once stolen, this information is incredibly valuable. Cybercriminals can earn upwards of $1,000 per person by selling personal details on the dark web marketplaces. This is where ExpressVPN comes in. They create an encrypted tunnel that shields your online activity from prying eyes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

652.458

Think of it as a secure private corridor for your data to travel through, keeping you protected no matter where you connect. Their encryption is so robust, even with a supercomputer, it would take over a billion years to crack. But despite this fortress-level security, it's remarkably user-friendly. You open up the app, you tap once, you are now protected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

665.826

The peace of mind ExpressVPN gives me is unparalleled. Protect your online privacy the same way I do by visiting expressvpn.com. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com. Get three extra months for free with my exclusive link. That's expressvpn.com. Also, let's talk about something that affects pretty much all of us. That would be taxes. The October 15th deadline, it's passed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

686.177

Are you prepared for what could come next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension? Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they don't play around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

701.371

There's good news. There's still hope. Tax Network USA has been in the game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law. They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

716.865

So don't let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA. Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what you should do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

734.74

That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So this entire show that he did in Hollywood, Florida, it was so bad that he got frustrated with the audience. The audience was not laughing at his jokes because his jokes were basically about how Floridians were a bunch of anti-gay racists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

754.637

And Floridians were like, that's not true. There are a lot of gay people who live down here and a lot of Hispanics and black people who live down here. And in fact, the room is filled with Jews. And so he actually got so frustrated, he ended up cutting his show early and walking off the stage. And the reason was he was totally disconnected from the audience. Well, that disconnect has continued.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

774.608

You'll remember that he appeared on Bill Marshall, where he declared solidarity with the pro-Khamas students on campus. And now... He is proclaiming that he is very happy that CEOs are walking around in fear for their lives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

788.724

Now, you do get some extra points for being a comedian in today's day and age, meaning that we will tend to give you some more leeway to say edgy things because you're trying to be funny. And it's not clear to me here that Bill Burr is attempting to be funny. This is just his actual political opinion. He's not saying anything funny or insightful here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

805.083

Here is Bill Burr yesterday explaining that he is perfectly fine with CEOs having to live with full-time security because they have fear they might be shot because after all, they're murderers too. I don't believe that Bill Burr holds the same standard for comedians. There's an argument that's been made by the left.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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In fact, it is unclear by whom he was insured. What we know, as we discussed yesterday on the program, is that this particular person Mangione, he had had some sort of surfing accident where he had a really bad back injury that apparently left him in crippling pain. And he had a surgery that is very often unsuccessful that implanted a series of pins in his spine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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It is a crap argument when made about comedians, and it's a crap argument when made about CEOs. The argument goes something like this on the left. People like Bill Burr mock the vulnerable. They mock the marginalized, and thus they are a danger to the vulnerable and the marginalized. So presumably, Bill Burr should have to live in fear of making a joke.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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Bill Burr should have to live in fear because he doesn't know who he's damaging. In any case, here is Bill Burr openly cheering against the murder of a UnitedHealth executive because he says CEOs should live in fear if they don't act in the way that he would have them act in a system that he has no fixes for, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

919.473

Okay. Bill Burr is an... What he is saying here is truly evil. He's truly evil. He's saying you should live in fear if you're the CEO of a company and that company does things that Bill Burr deems to be bad, to be bad things. Now, we have laws on the books, for example, that prevent things like fraud. We have laws on the books that prevent things like embezzlement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

941.27

We have laws on the books that punish criminal activity. If you don't like the system, and many people don't, the proper response to that system would be legislation. In a democratic republic, the way that you fix problems is you have open discussions of the details of those problems, and then you try to craft regulatory or legal fixes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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You do not say that it is a good thing that CEOs should live in fear of their lives because Bill Burr deems them morally inferior. Bill Burr doing his blue collar class routine act is a bunch of horseshit. Bill Burr is worth $14 million, and he makes his money making crap movies for Netflix at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

974.738

Again, this basic idea, if we're going to have a functioning country, you can't justify the murder of people who run their businesses legally in ways with which you disagree. It is one thing to disagree with them. You can call them whatever you want. When you start justifying them living in fear or suggesting maybe they should be murdered, I'm just wondering what the limiting principle here is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole

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I'm wondering what it is. The alleged shooter in this case was echoing Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The Unabomber suggested that if you were, for example, an oil executive, maybe you should be murdered. Because after all, there were externalities to the oil industry. Why not the banking industry? Maybe Bill Burr doesn't like the banks after all. That bank denied grandma her loan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

Hey folks, well it's very difficult to begin the new year with such terrible news out of New Orleans. I wanted to bring you the latest breaking news from the authorities at this point. So what we do know is that by various reports, somewhere between 10 and 15 people have died in New Orleans at this point. Another 35 have been wounded by a terror attack. The terrorist's name...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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There are questions that have been raised about why exactly Bourbon Street wasn't better protected, why there weren't steel bollards that were up, why there weren't barriers that would have prevented some sort of terrible automobile attack like this one. Obviously, this is not the first time that you've seen an Islamic terror attack of this nature.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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Almost every year, there's a Christmas market in Europe that is attacked by some member associated with ISIS. So what the hell happened here? Well, apparently, according to New Orleans City Council member Jean-Pierre Morel, he said on Wednesday the barriers on Bourbon Street were in the process of being repaired. The suspect actually drove over the sidewalk to avoid that particular area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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He said even had the bollard barriers been up, the circumvention by riding on the sidewalk would have defeated them. Apparently, according to that city council member, the suspect was staying in an Airbnb before the attack. Again, a horrible, horrible attack. Details are still emerging. The officers who were involved in killing the suspect, two of them received gunfire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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According to the chief of police, they will be okay. What we do know about the suspect at this point, Jabbar was an Army veteran, possibly had been discharged. Unclear exactly at this point whether that would be an honorable or dishonorable discharge. There is some tape apparently floating around of the suspect doing things like diversity training on behalf of the military.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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He apparently, again, was born in Texas and that he was raised in Texas as well. We don't know if he went abroad and was recruited abroad or if he was trained abroad or anything like that at this time. Again, what we do know, according directly to the FBI, is that he was driving a Ford pickup truck, which was rented. They're working to confirm how the suspect came into possession of the vehicle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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And again, there was an ISIS flag that was located in the vehicle. The FBI says they're working to determine the subject's potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations. Now, very early on, the mayor of New Orleans immediately called this a terror attack, and the FBI immediately tried to walk that back and said, well, we don't know if it's a terror attack or not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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is apparently Shamsud Din Jabbar. Now, normally I don't mention the names of mass killers. The difference is that the authorities are actually seeking more information about this person. And so if you have information about this person, it's actually relevant to know his name. He's a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas. Apparently, according to the FBI, he was driving a Ford pickup truck.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

231.537

We're not going to care. And then they came back and said, we're investigating it as a terror attack. They're going to sort of pretend away the fact that they denied it was a terror attack at the outset. But this is pretty clearly an Islamist terror attack.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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So presumably the FBI is going to spend the next hours and days trying to retrace exactly what happened to this person, who this person was, who this person was associated with, and if there are other suspects who are out there right now. Meanwhile, there are other explosions that are happening. Unclear whether these are related, whether it's an accident or anything else like that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

263.796

It would be very weird if it were an accident, what just happened outside of the Trump Vegas hotel. Apparently... A Cybertruck blew up in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a fairly large explosion. No reports of any casualties. It did rock the area. We have no other information on this at the time. Maybe somebody put fireworks in the Cybertruck.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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Maybe this was a message about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We don't know anything like that at this moment. President Trump has issued a statement. He issued a statement very quickly on this, did President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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President Trump's statement lamented the amount of crime under Joe Biden to quote, when I said that criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody's ever seen before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump administration will fully support the city of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil. JD Vance also put out a statement in solidarity with the people of New Orleans at this time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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Is it heartbreaking violence last night in New Orleans? Such a beautiful and great American city. May God bless the victims and their families. Okay, so what exactly is going on here? Well, this person was an ISIS affiliate. We know that ISIS tends to recruit over the internet. We know that ISIS has agents all over the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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Very often, these are people who are born domestically inside the West and then are recruited because they are radical Muslims into ISIS. We also know that ISIS has been flexing its muscle somewhat in Syria. the decline of the Assad regime in Syria, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and its replacement with HTS, which is an Islamic Jihad break-off group.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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It's a break-off group from originally Al-Qaeda and then also from ISIS. That break-off group says they now oppose al-Qaeda and they oppose ISIS, but we know that ISIS also has been attempting jailbreaks in the Kurdish areas of Syria. Could this have something to do with the situation in Syria, the caste in Syria? Totally unclear at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

394.734

Again, it could be another one of these ISIS quote-unquote lone wolves. Again, it appears this person was a domestic American citizen, a person born in the United States and who's recruited into ISIS. Islamic terrorism remains a serious threat to the American public. Pretending that away by suggesting that the real threat in America is right-wing quote-unquote white supremacism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

41.576

which appears to have been rented. There was some early reporting that it had crossed over the U.S. southern border via the Eagle Pass crossing. That does not mean the person inside was an illegal immigrant or anything like that. Apparently, this car was rented.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

416.124

the real threat of terrorism in the united states has nothing to do with radical islam is of course wish casting and this is one of the big problems that europe has had as well is the attempt to pretend away the problem of radical islamism and its impact on the politics and the lives of people who are living in europe a huge amount of the immigration backlash that is happening in the west is a direct result of the flooding of the west

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

440.208

with people from countries that unfortunately harbor beliefs that are very much in line with those of ISIS, that are Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, that are radical Islamist cells or associated therewith. So again, information is still coming out at this point. We'll bring you more information as it does.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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And there are going to be serious conversations, and there should be, about the nature of our immigration system, about who should get in, about who should not be allowed in, That is not just going to be a question with regard to illegal immigration. It's going to be a question with regards to legal immigration. Where are people coming from? What are their belief systems?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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How well do they want to assimilate into the United States? How much do they actually care about American values? How much do they hate those values? How vulnerable are they to recruitment by radical Islamist terror groups like ISIS? These are all open questions at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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One thing is for sure, things are about to change in the United States in a very significant way with regard to how Americans view all of these issues because President Trump is coming into power. That is going to change how these issues are addressed. Border issues, immigration issues, anti-terrorism issues. No more excuses for radical Islamic terror under President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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That was one of his strongest points during Trump term number one. I would assume the same is true during Trump term number two. He's put together an excellent foreign policy team that is directed against Islamic terrorism, that is directed against defeating Islamic terrorism, and that is directed against allowing immigrants from places that are warm toward Islamic terrorism into the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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And we'll continue to bring you all of the news on this. I should mention that in order for us to continue to bring you things like Ben React, we would appreciate you subscribing over at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Go check us out right now. It's a brand new year. It's a good time to subscribe and join the fight, dailywire.com slash subscribe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

56.443

It last crossed through that Eagle Pass crossing back in November, so it's quite possible the person who owned the vehicle went to Mexico and back into the country. In any case, What we do know is that at 3.15 a.m. Central Time, an individual drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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After hitting the crowd, the suspect then exited the vehicle and fired on local law enforcement. Law enforcement returned fire and killed the suspect on scene. There was, in fact, an ISIS flag in the vehicle. the FBI did ask for citizen help in determining if there were any other associates. They are investigating other known associates.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts to New Orleans Tragedy and Cybertruck Explosion

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They're operating under the assumption this person did not act alone and that this may, in fact, have been part of a terrorist cell. Presumably, one of the reasons for that is that there were IEDs that were found in the vehicle. There were also IEDs that were found, apparently, on the street. And those were apparently detonated a little bit earlier today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

0.253

Well, folks, we'll get into everything market-related. The market remains a chaotic place. The Dow futures were up. The S&P 500 up this morning. So what the hell is going on? We'll get to that in a moment. First, you know the legacy media. They think that you're too dumb to see through their manipulations, narratives, headlines. We know better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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A good foreign policy and good economics is your friends are your friends and your enemies are your enemies, not your friends are your enemies and your enemies are your enemies. That is a bad policy. President Trump hit back hard against China, according to The Wall Street Journal yesterday, but left the door open to talks to lower tariffs for other countries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Again, this is why I think the markets are kind of sanguine. President Trump's comments leave countries and industries to fend for themselves ahead of his self-imposed deadline Wednesday for imposing steep duties on nations like China, Japan, and Vietnam. So today's going to be a big day, depending on whether he cuts any deals or gives indicators that the deals are going to be cut this week.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

1041.858

Here's what President Trump yesterday asked on whether the tariffs are permanent or whether they're temporary, and his answer was, some of one, some of the other, who knows?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

1091.018

Okay, so what does that mean? And the answer is nobody knows what that means. President Trump, for his part, he's telling people not to be panikins. This is his new term that he coins. Whatever you think of President Trump's policies, the man is deeply amusing. So President Trump put out a tweet yesterday urging people not to be panikins.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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So yesterday there was a $2 trillion swing, a $2 trillion swing. And part of that came in the middle of the day when there was a false report that Kevin Hassett, the head of the National Council of Economic Advisors, had said that there would in fact be a 90-day delay put on the tariffs. And it turned out he didn't say anything like that. It was a false report from a blue check on Twitter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Quote, the United States has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago. Don't be weak. Don't be stupid. Don't be a panicking. A new party based on weak and stupid people. Because you're panicking. Be strong, courageous, and patient. Greatness will be the result. It's like if Marcus Aurelius I had a bit of a drinking bout right there. Strong, courageous and patient.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Greatness will be the result. Don't be a panic in. OK, well, listen, everybody is happy not to panic if President Trump takes the off ramp and we get to better trade deals. In fact, that'll be a win for President Trump. He should take the win. That's a thing that he should do. Because if not, then bad things could easily happen. Now, again, this is what his team is telling him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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His team is openly telling him at this point that he needs to be taking the off ramp. So Politico says that Scott Besant actually went down to Florida to lobby President Trump on Sunday. to talk about his endgame.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Quote, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson flew to Florida Sunday to encourage President Trump to focus his message on negotiating favorable trade deals or risk the stock market cratering further, according to two people familiar with the conversations, granted anonymity to share details of them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Besson, who landed with the president at the White House on Marine One Sunday night, told Trump markets would remain in peril unless he started putting more emphasis on talking about his endgame with tariffs, winning deals with other countries. Besson's view was, the markets will keep melting unless you shift, one of the people said.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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You're not going to abandon the policy, but you have to talk about negotiating and what the endgame is. A second person described the meeting as an opportunity to figure out next steps after 50 countries reached out to open discussions on the U.S. 's new tariff regime after the shock and awe of last week's Liberation Day announcement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The purpose of Trump's April 2 tariff rollout was to create maximum leverage over foreign governments, the person added, describing Besant's view. Trump and top administration officials have spent the last several days urging Americans to brace for a long, painful, potentially permanent trade war.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Besant is perhaps the most powerful voice urging Trump to telegraph to anxious Americans that there is an end in sight. Besant is the first known advisor to try to urge the president to alter his rhetoric on trade, albeit privately and gently. So he's pushing open, open talk about negotiations, talk about negotiations. And then Besant himself is doing that, as we mentioned, with regard to Japan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Here is Besant making the case publicly that President Trump is giving himself leverage for negotiations. That's what this is all about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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OK, sounds great. And that was reiterated by Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council. He says there are going to be great deals on the table. We're going to be looking for great deals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And again, blue checks on Twitter don't mean what they used to mean. If you were a blue check during the old Twitter days, that meant that you were somebody who was usually at a large outlet or somebody who was quite famous. Now you can sort of buy the blue check. And so just having a blue check by your name doesn't mean anything, but it's still taken in the old way.

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Kevin Hassett is saying deals are coming to the table. Well, we certainly hope that that is the case. But you know what? You constantly need to maintain not only your own financial security, but like your security security. Have you checked your home title lately? Most homeowners never do. But with the growing amount of digital scams targeting property owners, it's more important now than ever.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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So some bizarre account put out a statement saying, that the United States was going to essentially postpone the implementation of Trump's tariffs for 90 days. And the market spiked immediately, went up hundreds and hundreds of points within minutes. The White House said that's not true. And then the market dropped again. Again, that was bad reporting.

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Okay, and this is the thing I think that most Republican senators are looking for as well, including longtime allies of the president, like, for example, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who is more on the libertarian end of the spectrum. He said Trump could go down as the most pro-trade, pro-growth president in modern U.S. history if he uses this moment as an opportunity to reduce trade barriers.

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Senator Ron Johnson, another MAGA ally, he said at some point you have to take yes for an answer. And this comes after Vietnam, Taiwan, the EU. People are coming to the table and they're saying, let's go zero for zero. Let's do this thing. In fact, global leaders are rushing in, trying to get President Trump to actually agree to these things.

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According to the New York Times, on Monday, European officials offered to drop tariffs to zero on cars and industrial goods imported from the United States in return for the same treatment. Israel's prime minister stopped by to personally petition Trump on Monday in meetings at the White House. Vietnam's top leader in a phone call last week offered to get rid of tariffs on American goods entirely.

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Indonesia prepared to send a high-level delegation to Washington, D.C. to directly negotiate with U.S. government. Even Lesotho, a tiny landlocked country in southern Africa, was assembling a delegation to send to Washington to protest the tariff on its exports to the United States, which includes denim for Calvin Klein and Levi's. So is Trump willing to negotiate? This is the big question.

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This is the big question. Is he willing to negotiate? If the answer, of course, is yes. If the answer is we get to off ramps, everything goes back to status quo ante and even better because it's basically the same thing that he did with regard to NAFTA and the USMCA. He negotiated a slightly better version of NAFTA that turned out to be the USMCA and it was good for the American economy.

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He could certainly do the same thing and get bigger wins from other countries. Not as big as the wins that I think that would be touted, given the fact that we don't actually have a 90% tariff regime from the Vietnamese toward America. Those statistics on that chart were not true. Those were trade deficits. But he could get wins. He could chalk up those wins.

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He could claim those wins and the economy would start to go up again. And the good news is that because of all of this, he now owns the economy. So if the economy goes up, then he gets all the credit. Converse, of course, is if the economy goes down, he is going to get all the blame, which, of course, is a point that is being made by people both left and right.

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Here is Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana making that point. Is President Trump's economy for better or worse now?

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At The Daily Wire, we are going to bring you the facts. No filter, no spin. And then you get in on the conversation. Join the live chat during our daily shows, 100% uncensored, ad-free, packed with fans who actually think for themselves. My producers are also in the chat daily to add to the conversation. Get the news the way it should be, honest, fearless, without an agenda. Your voice matters.

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OK, so he is right about that. Meanwhile, Democrats, of course, are hoping for a recession. They want President Trump to steer the economy into recession. Here is Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, saying that Trump is teeing up a new recession. He's obviously rooting for it.

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OK, so again, they're rooting for all this. So the question is, does he take the off ramp? So we've seen some indicators. Yes, because Besant is pushing for it and he's saying he's negotiating with Japan. Again, the Nikkei jumped this morning based on all of that. The Nikkei went up significantly, like six percent, seven percent, based on the fact that people think there's going to be an off ramp.

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CNBC ran with the reporting because they were very excited to be first. And then the markets dropped again. And right now, nobody knows what in the hell is going on. And that is the key to understanding what's happening right now.

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And then there are some counter indicators, which is that President Trump is fine with this thing lasting for a while. So yesterday, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the White House. Israel had offered before the tariff regime even went into place to go to zero. Now, the truth is 98% of American goods going into Israel had no tariffs on them.

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The United States and Israel have had a free trade agreement for some decades. And again, Israel is just example of one nation that's doing this. Taiwan is doing this. Vietnam is doing this. Even the EU is making these overtures. So here is Netanyahu going even further yesterday. He was talking with Trump in the Oval.

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And Netanyahu said, we're not just going to work on eliminating the trade barriers that exist. Those are gone. We are going to work on eliminating the trade deficit. And again, these are two different things. Trade barriers are the tariff rate, the tax rate essentially charged on the import of American goods by foreign countries. Then there are trade deficits.

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Trade deficit is where essentially Israelis buy less of American product than Americans buy of Israeli product. That'd be the trade deficit. I don't know how exactly you're supposed to accomplish that. You can tell Americans that they can't buy Bomba and diamonds and tech. Like what exactly does that look like?

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But Netanyahu is basically saying to Trump, I'm going to give you every single thing you want. Just take away the tariffs, anything you want. We'll get rid of the trade deficit, even the thing you care about. So here's Netanyahu saying that.

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Because no one knows what's going on, people are afraid that they're going to be selling into an up curve, and they're afraid they're going to be buying into a down curve. And so pretty much the markets are just chaotically roiling at this point, which makes perfect sense. And you can see it not just at home, but you can see it abroad. So for example, the Japanese Nikkei,

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So that is Netanyahu giving Trump all the things that he wants. And then Trump was asked, are you going to reduce the tariffs on Israel? He's like, I don't know.

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Okay, so we might not. Okay, again, you can make an argument about Whether the United States should be providing as much military aid to Israel as as they are currently providing. I made the argument that Israel should do its best to get the hell off of American aid as soon as humanly possibly good for America and good for Israel.

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That has literally nothing to do with the trade barrier discussion that is underway. I mean, that is it. That is a counter indicator. Then Trump was asked, will there be any pause in the tariffs? No pause. We're going forward full steam.

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Okay, and then President Trump says it might take some time, right? We might be doing this for quite a while. Here's the thing. Right now, this is all theory. Everything that's happening with this tariff plan is all theory. It hasn't gone into place. Once it goes into place, supply lines start changing. Small business owners across the country are going to get smacked with import taxes.

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And it's going to affect their bottom line in a serious way. Prices are going to go up. Right now, it's all theoretical. It's all fun and games. The minute this becomes practical, the minute Vietnamese goods really do get hit with a 46% tariff coming into the United States. I mean, forget about the Chinese goods, which are now going to be hit with something like 104% tariff.

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But at least you can justify that based on security necessity. But EU goods are going to get smacked. various goods from around the world, Malaysian, Indonesian goods are going to get smacked. Japanese goods are going to get smacked. If that happens, if the rubber actually hits the road, then everything that is currently theoretical discussion becomes reified.

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And once it's reified, then the markets can make a decision based on new data, actual data, not speculation. Right now, the markets are speculating. Will Trump say yes or will Trump say no? Will he stay or will he go? Will he find an off-ramp or will he stay on this tariff regime? And Trump is giving... Tremendously mixed signals. So again, here he was saying yesterday, it's going to take time.

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But remember, time is actually not a friend here because the longer the tariff regime is in place, the more the reality of higher prices and restricted supply lines is going to become a reality in the real world.

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It dumped tremendously in the early morning yesterday. And then in the aftermarket last night, the Nikkei ended up rising 7%. Why? What happened between Sunday night and Monday night? And the answer is that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant put out a tweet thread in which he said that Japan was in the middle of negotiations with the United States.

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Okay, so let's be clear about this. In order to even build the new factories that he wants to build in the United States requires foreign product. In order to build that new machinery requires machinery that comes from overseas. We don't have all this stuff made in the United States. And here is the real counter indicator that Trump is looking for deals.

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Yesterday, he was asked explicitly, what if the EU just goes to zero? What if the EU just says we're getting rid of all the trade barriers? And he says, not enough because the EU owes us If that's the case, then this could be happening for a while. And this is why, again, if everybody was very sanguine about the markets, the markets would be spiking and just continue to spike.

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Because there's always a temporary bump. He's now making great deals. The reason people are kind of wavering is because who the hell knows what's happening?

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So, again, he's saying not enough. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Quote, following a very constructive phone discussion with the government of Japan, the president has tasked me and the U.S. trade representative to open negotiations to implement the president's vision for a new golden age of global trade with Shigeru Ishiba, who is the... Prime Minister of Japan, and his cabinet. Japan remains among America's closest allies.

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I look forward to our upcoming productive engagement regarding tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, currency issues, and government subsidies. I appreciate the Japanese government's outreach and measured approach to this process. China has chosen to isolate itself by retaliating and doubling down on previous negative behavior.

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Over 50 countries have responded, both openly and positively, to the president's historic action to create a fairer, more prosperous system of global trade. We look forward to meaningful negotiations with them over the coming weeks. So it sounds to Japan... as though the Trump administration is looking for an off-ramp, like they are looking to get off this train.

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And indeed, the best case scenario for the tariffs, I've said this since literally the first day, the first day, is that what Trump was looking for was a zero-tariff regime with various countries around the world, that basically he declared war on pretty much everybody in order to get everybody to the table, and then he could get them all to lower their tariff barriers and non-tariff trade barriers.

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Okay, which of course is true. A nuclear Iran not only threatens Israel, it also threatens the Saudis. It threatens global oil supply. It threatens the spread of terrorism around not just the region, but around the globe. Tucker Carlson found this an appropriate time to tweet yesterday.

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Victor Davis Hanson, the historian we've had as a guest on the program, tremendous historian, He has a piece of the free press trying to make the strongest possible case for Trump's terror regime. And what he comes up with is reciprocity. Here's what he writes to the Free Press.

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Quote, whatever you think of tariffs, it's clear that now is the worst possible time for the United States to participate in a military strike on Iran. We can't afford it. Thousands of Americans would die. We would lose the war that follows. Nothing would be more destructive to our country.

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Okay, so the false binary that has always been created around the Middle East is that if you hit a target in the Middle East, full-scale war erupts, and thousands and millions die, full-scale invasion of Iran. Barack Obama used to say the same crap, and it isn't true. How do I know it's not true? Because literally, Donald Trump did it in his first term.

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He took out Qasem Soleimani, who's the head of the IRGC's terror mechanism, and nothing happened. That is what happened. Nothing. And this idea that a strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities would result in what? Iran attacking Hawaii? Widespread war? Nope. But again, these false binaries that Tucker likes to posit effectively act as cover for the Iranian regime.

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Because again, if the idea is that you have to let Iran go nuclear rather than striking their nuclear facilities, thus endangering extraordinary elements of importance to the American national security apparatus, ranging again from Saudi and UAE to Israel, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and all the rest, the Straits of Hormuz.

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If that's the idea, well, you may as well just surrender the Middle East to the Iranians now, which of course, you know, I don't know what Tucker's feelings are on that. He was interviewing the Emir of Qatar. Qatar is essentially a cutout front for the Iranian regime. And he was treating them with great care, shall we say.

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President Trump obviously does not follow that same belief system, neither does the rest of the administration. Thank goodness. Alrighty, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. Remember, you have to be a member over at Daily Wire Plus to join. And if you do, then you can ask me questions. I will answer those questions and all the rest. Become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing globalization should have shocked Washington policymakers out of their static half-century trade orthodoxy and into readjusting American trade policy to ensure parity and reciprocity, especially as Chinese imports, coupled with U.S. outsourcing and offshoring, began to result in a rust belt with an array of accompanying social and cultural pathologies.

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But the 1990s exuberance of an unrivaled hyper-power America, now victorious not just in World War II but over the Soviet Union as well, created a sense of unreality in Washington." In reductionist terms, those tasked with directing U.S.

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trade policy rarely cared to calibrate the real social, cultural, and moral costs of millions losing high-paying jobs, of small communities offshored and outsourced into oblivion, of soaring opioid use, suicides, fragmented multigenerational families, and a nation increasingly dependent upon strategic materials, pharmaceuticals, and precision machinery imported from abroad, and not always from allies or neutral nations.

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Be a part of it. Join now at dailywire.com. slash subscribe already. So the markets were in turmoil yesterday. They finally ended down slightly. And one of the questions is what the hell is going on? Have we already hit bottom is sort of the big question, because if we have great, the Dow futures again this morning were up over a thousand points.

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And so he concludes, quote, the ideas of equity and symmetry are critical to Trump, not just financially, but also psychologically. In Trump's world, those nations that consistently rip off the United States do so because they do not respect or fear the United States. Without such deference, Trump argues, America insidiously also loses its influence and deterrence abroad.

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In a larger Trumpian sense, a nation that will not secure its border, insist on fair trade, or address a $1 trillion annual trade deficit will be considered weak abroad and ripe for exploitation. In terms of national security, America now relies on other nations for key parts of our munitions, for life-saving drugs and medicines, for strategic materials and ores, etc., etc.

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The emphasis on reciprocity is the key to winning support for Trump's tariffs. And then Victor Davis Hanson put out a tweet that essentially said the same thing.

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Please, tariff symmetry, he writes, quote, a key to reducing the nearly $1 trillion trade imbalance and encouraging foreign investment is the idea that trade reciprocity and parity, roughly zero tariffs or identical reciprocal tariffs between the United States and trading partners are our primary goals.

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This is a concept the American people support wholeheartedly and even an extremist will continue to do so. Totally agree with that. That is right. I've been calling from day one for the Trump administration to take the off ramp of zero tariff policy. I've said from the beginning, before the beginning,

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That if what President Trump is attempting to do is get, for example, some sort of win off of Mexico or Canada before even this current tariff regime, if the goal was to get Canada to go to zero or Mexico to go to zero or shore up the border or whatever else it was, make that clear and then do it.

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But a chaotic rollout of global tariffs without any sort of clarity as to what we are attempting to achieve, that is going to be a different thing.

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Victor Davis Hanson, who again is an ally of the president and is talking up the tariff, says this, quote, talk of either reparatory tariffs, additional fines on partners for their past asymmetrical tariffs, or higher tariffs on countries that either now run deficits with America or have little or no tariffs with the U.S.

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will lose public support and only energize opposition to what otherwise is rational and sympathetic American position on rectifying a half century of chronic and mounting trade deficits. True, many countries level tariffs under insidiously Machiavellian conditions, such as falsely constructed health and safety barriers, excise and VAT taxes, and currency manipulation.

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But those complexities, says Victor Davis Hanson, should be left for round two of negotiations. Since for now, the public is mostly concerned with do unto others as they would do unto you reciprocity. Getting to zero or identical tariffs with a host of current mercantile trading nations would be an astounding accomplishment and one that the public needs to digest, appreciate, and savor.

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Before in one fell swoop, jeopardizing such historic corrections by trying to solve the entire half-century trade quagmire all at once. a task that will lose public support if the countries are still tariffed after agreeing to zero reciprocal tariffs with the U.S. And that is the thing the market is trying to game out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Right now, the market is trying to figure out whether Donald Trump actually wants the off-ramp or whether he wants a longstanding trade barrier regime designed at reducing trade deficits rather than reducing trade barriers. That is the big question in the market.

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And oddly, that chaos in the markets, the sort of roiling in the markets as opposed to a total dump, might actually give President Trump the room that he needs to do more with regard to this tariff regime. If the market stays currently where it is, say just around 40,000 or below in Dow Jones Industrial Average, just around 5,000 in the S&P 500,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The S&P futures were up about two and a half percent. The Nasdaq futures were up two point two six percent. So is all the panic overrated? Is it all over? Are we basically now on even keel footing? Well, to understand that, you sort of have to understand what happened in the market yesterday. So it was a wild session yesterday in the markets, up and down and all around.

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If that's where the markets stay, President Trump is going to feel like he hasn't actually done anything that the markets don't like too much. And then he is going to continue to roll out stricter and stricter tariffs. It's a catch-22 for the markets.

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If they jump the wrong way and they sell, if you sell all your stocks and then President Trump says, hey, off-ramp, we're negotiating bilateral trade deals that lower trade barriers, you look like an idiot. If you don't jump and President Trump continues... to push away allied nations who are coming to the table on bended knee, offering everything. Then you look like an idiot. So it's a catch 22.

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Everybody is sort of frozen in place. And the Trump administration could easily misread the markets being frozen in place as a quasi approval for the thing that he is publicly saying he wants to do. This is why mixed messages are such a problem politically and for markets. Because what exactly is the market happy about? And what exactly are they sad about?

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This is why I put heavy focus on the jumps that you saw yesterday in the markets. So you saw that jump when? When there was talk that President Trump was going to postpone the trade barriers. That's when you saw a jump. You're seeing a jump in Japan when Besson says there's an off ramp. In other words, people want more free trade, not less free trade.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And that is going to be the big burning question here. What does Trump want? What does President Trump want? Does he want more free trade or does he want less free trade? Well, it's not clear exactly what Trump wants right now, but President Trump did specifically exempt gold and silver bullion from the sweeping new tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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While these new policies are triggering significant financial chaos and uncertainty, the administration preserved your ability to diversify into precious metals. So if you're concerned about your savings, I encourage you to have a free consultation with a Birch Gold Precious Metals Specialist. That first step, text BEN to 989898. Receive your free no-obligation info kit on gold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Learn how to hold gold and silver in a tax-sheltered account. Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA for no money out of pocket. With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and thousands of thankful customers, I recommend Birch Gold to help protect your savings through gold investments. Just text my name, Ben, to the number 98 98 98.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Again, text Ben to 98 98 98 to claim your free info kit right now. Text Ben 98 98 98. And right now... A lot of uncertainty out there. You don't know which way the markets are going. The best hedge against uncertainty, historically speaking, is in fact precious metals. I have gold from Birch Gold. It's definitely worth checking out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Go check them out right now by texting my name, Ben, to the number 989898. Again, text Ben to 989898 to claim your free info kit right now. There's a lot going on in the world and I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with my busy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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I learned pretty quickly peak performance requires peak nutrition, which means eating enough veggies. That's why I'm so thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every single day. That sounds miserable and time-consuming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

695.258

With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, your body knows precisely what to do with them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

709.314

It's kosher, so I pop it right into that protein smoothie every day. It keeps the gun show going strong. Head on over. To balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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There were points at which the market was down over 1,000 points. There were points at which the market was up over 500 points. And nobody really seemed to be able to get their hands around what exactly was happening. According to the Wall Street Journal, stock futures rose in after hours trading Monday following a day of market whiplash that ultimately left major indices largely unchanged.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Again, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro for 35% off your very first order as a preferred customer. And you get that free bottle of Fiber and Spice, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. There are three rationales for tariffs, traditionally speaking, called the three R's of tariffs. One is revenue. And we're going to raise revenue by essentially...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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forcing countries to pay a tax when they bring their products in, which means that it gets passed along to the consumer. And for a long time in the United States, tariffs were a chief way of bringing in revenue. We didn't have an income tax. The reality was that we were a largely agricultural country. And so importing products into the United States created an enormous amount of revenue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Those days are long past. We're not going to be bringing in seven, eight trillion dollars in revenue, the kind of money that it would take to replace, for example, the income tax, if we were going to Increase the trade barriers. So revenue is one possibility. You've heard that retail by President Trump. We're going to increase our revenue. Number two is restriction.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And the real question here is whether President Trump is doing tariffs because he likes restriction or the third are reciprocity. This is the biggest question in the markets. Restriction or reciprocity? Are we restricting trade because we are seeking to protect particular sectors of American industry? Or are we seeking reciprocity so we have more free trade? Restriction or reciprocity?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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The markets are not going to like a restrictionist tariff regime that is designed to quote unquote reshoring manufacturing if what that means is at the cost of the rest of the American consuming and producing public. And the reality is that people have a wildly mistaken view of just how many jobs are powered by various sectors of American industry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Here is a chart of job sectors in the United States historically. This chart shows you over time how jobs have shifted in the United States. So when you take a look at 150 years of U.S. employment history, this is according to Visual Capitalist, agriculture in 1850 represented a huge percentage of American employment, represented something like 70, 80% of American employment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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By the year 1900, agriculture represented about half of American employment. Meanwhile, manufacturing was quickly rising. Manufacturing hit all-time highs in the 1950s and 60s when it represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 26% of all American jobs. Agriculture shrunk down today. The reality is that about 10% of jobs in the U.S. private sector are in manufacturing, 10%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And 10% are in agriculture. 80% are in services. So if you are doing restrictionism in order to bulk up American manufacturing, which by the way, will be largely done by machines, not by additional humans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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If that is your goal, and it's not a national security goal, it's a goal because you think you have a peculiar view that America is going to return to the 1950s where people were working on sewing machines in factories or riveting in Ford factories. First of all, it's not the way that it's going to work because that is not how it works in industrialized countries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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You have factories that are like that in China because China has 1.4 billion people and can force people in penury to work for pennies on the dollar. But here in the United States, we are going to push all of that into machinery, which is precisely why industrial production has continued to rise while employment in America has actually dropped because technology replaced the jobs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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Contracts tied to the Dow Industrials, the S&P 500, the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 all ended up gaining more than 1%. A false dawn on the tariff front fueled a brief rally Monday morning with the S&P 500 surging some 7% from its low on the day before the administration clarified there would be no delay in implementing new levies. And this is the key to understanding what's going on with the market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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It was mostly not outsourcing. It was actually technology that replaced those jobs. Bottom line is this. If the goal of President Trump is restriction in order to bulk up the number of people employed in the manufacturing sector, for example, which sometimes President Trump retails, the markets are not going to like that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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If the goal is reciprocity, and we start seeing in the next few days, President Trump cut good deals, which is the thing everyone is urging him to. I'm urging it. Elon is urging it. Bill Ackman is urging it. Everyone, Besant is urging it, as it turns out. If that is the plan, then the markets are right not to panic. If that's not the plan, then it's a bit of a different thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And President Trump is sending totally mixed signals right now. So we don't actually know what the story, again, none of this, by the way, is a rip on President Trump's China policy, which I think is right. I think we should be tariffing the living hell out of China. China is a bad actor on the world stage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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In fact, one of the reasons not to tariff our allies and look for zero tariff regimes with, say, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, is because you want to build a ring of fire around China. You want to build a trading ring around China that throttles China. You want all of those countries to be our allies. You want all of those countries to trade more with us than they trade with China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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That would be the goal. When you force everybody out into the cold, they're going to start making common cause with each other. That is the reality. You're seeing it from Canada of all places. Mark Carney up in Canada is basically saying he wants to do a trade deal with China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2175 - REBOUND or FALSE SPRING? Has The Market Hit Bottom?

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And China is coming and offering all these places zero tariff regimes while President Trump is pushing out 10% tariff at a minimum. So going after China, which is what he is doing, that's great. It needs to be paired with being friendly with our allies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

Already, folks, got a lot coming up on today's show. We'll get into the cultural impact of the Met Gala. New Yorker magazine features some of your favorite Democrats in their living rooms. Plus, President Trump's war on Harvard University continues. First, our friend and colleague Andrew Klavan has a brand new book out. It is a must read.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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During the pandemic, you could tell that he was the villain because the villain has a giant portrait of the villain behind him, like Biff in Back to the Future 2. So Al Sharpton poses in his apartment in his socks. This is how you know they're casual. He's wearing a vest and a shirt and a tie and dress pants, and he's hanging around in his socks wearing

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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The show, the culmination of five years of work by Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's curator in charge, to diversify the department's holdings and shows in the wake of the racial reckoning. brought about by George Floyd's murder seemed long overdue. Yes, there was nothing that was longer overdue than a fashion show about black fashion. Super, super overdue. That is why George Floyd died.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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on the Upper East Side, next to what appears to be like a playpen for a child, but there's no child anywhere to be found. So I don't know if Al Sharpton is using the playpen or what. And then behind him, a picture of Al Sharpton. This is your racial fighter, Democrats. This is the person to whom Democratic political candidates have to come to pay obeisance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Really, really solid stuff here from the Democratic Party. And then they wonder why blue collar has moved away from them. Why blue collar workers of every stripe have moved away from the Democratic Party. This would be the reason because the actual morality that drives the Democratic Party is this snooty elitism that sneers at people who don't have the same aesthetic tastes that they do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And listen, I don't have the same aesthetic tastes as many Americans. I listen to classical music. I like to dress decently. I wear suits on Saturdays. I'm an Orthodox Jew. My aesthetic cultural tastes are not necessarily the same as a blue-collar worker from Wisconsin. But that doesn't mean that they're necessarily better than the blue-collar worker from Wisconsin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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But what reeks from all of these pictures is just a disdain for normie Americans. This is why Donald Trump is president. So I pray that Democrats keep on doing this sort of stuff. Met galas and New Yorker spreads all the way up the wazoo. I hope they just continue this forever.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And this is one of the reasons why the Trump crusade against our colleges and universities is being well-received by the American public. The reality is that these universities are churning out Not elites. Every society has elites. Elite just means people who are good at a particular thing. They're elite athletes. That means that they are very good at being athletes. They're elite artists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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That means they're very good at making their art. There's a difference between elites and elitists. Elitists are people who believe that they are better than everybody else because either they are elite or they think that they are elite.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Well, the Democratic Party is replete with this sort of elitism, this idea that their moral standards are better than everybody else's, specifically in rejection to traditionalist religion, for example. And Harvard University churns out these types. So I went to Harvard Law School. And I remember the very first day orientation at Harvard Law School. I've told this story before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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We all crowd, class about 400, 500 people. We all crowd into a room at Harvard University. It's one of these rich mahogany rooms, beautiful auditorium. And the dean of the law school, Elena Kagan, who's now in the Supreme Court, walks up and she explains in the room to everybody in the room that these are the elite.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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These are the people who are going to be making the decisions for the rest of the world. She says, effectively, you are going to rule the world. We have so many Harvard Law School is the source of this many Supreme Court justices. Harvard Law School is the source of this many CEOs. Harvard Law School is the source of all that is good and positive in the world. And those people are going to rule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So if you're here, the competition is over. This is something she actually said. She's trying to explain that the law school is not a place of sort of dog-eat-dog competition a la the paper chase back in the 1970s. Instead, it was a place where the elites come to congregate and to mingle and to make the connections that are going to form the future of America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Well, it is precisely this sort of mentality that the Trump administration is saying is inappropriate at these colleges and universities. Now, that in and of itself is not a violation of the law. You want to be elitist at a university, you certainly can do that. However, the elitist morality that is being crammed down propaganda-wise at these universities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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That was for the Met Gala to have extraordinarily rich and famous people wear bizarre outfits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Clearly, that is what was necessary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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and the willingness in the name of elitist intersectionality to overlook the Civil Rights Act, for example, that is punishable by law. And so yesterday, the Trump administration announced they will not be providing Harvard University with any new federal grants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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That is what Education Secretary Linda McMahon told the school Monday in the latest escalation of a continuing battle between the government and the country's most prominent university, according to the Wall Street Journal. McMahon took aim at Harvard students, its academic rigor, and its faculty, accusing the university of violating federal law,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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and losing its privileges to partner with the federal government. McMahon says Harvard has made a mockery of this country's higher education system, which, of course, is true. She says the Ivy League University will cease to be a publicly funded institution. McMahon said, hey, you have a $53 billion endowment, so why don't you tap your alumni? Which, of course, is right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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There's no reason why federal taxpayer dollars should be subsidizing a university to the tune of billions of dollars in federal funds. McMahon says, at best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our nation and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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The letter accuses Harvard of violating the Supreme Court ruling in 2023, banning affirmative action, saying it continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. That, of course, is a reference to a study showing that Harvard Law Review was wildly oversampling minority students at the top echelons of the Harvard Law Review.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Meanwhile, Alan Garber, who is the president of the university, said the university has appreciated being able to conduct scientific research at the behest of the federal government, but knows the funds have strings attached. Garber said, we think it's an honor to be able to perform work for the federal government addressing national priorities, but he is not going to cave to the administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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However, according to the New York Times, on Monday, when the Met Gala opened, the starry gas at its signature gala, the splashiest party of the year, it did so in a very different world, one in which the federal government has functionally declared war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as programming related to race, especially in cultural institutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And so the battle will continue. The administration is also saying that the 501c3 status for Harvard should be revoked. Now, the question is whether they've actually violated the 501c3 charitable donation statute. So 501c3 organizations are nonprofits. If you give to a 501c3, that is tax deductible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Revoking Harvard University's 501c3 status would mean that if somebody gives a multimillion dollar donation to Harvard University, they do not get a tax write-off in the same way that they would not get a tax write-off if they decided to buy a yacht or something. Well, the 501c3 laws were in fact weaponized by the Obama administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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During his term, Lois Lerner at the IRS used 501c3 statutes to crack down on every right of center 501c3. And now President Trump is basically doing that in reverse, except he may have a better legal basis for doing it. Good Peace by Ira Stoll. over at the Wall Street Journal, talking about whether it is legally acceptable to go after the 501c3 status of a place like Harvard University.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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He says that according to the law, tax exemption applies to a corporation organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary or educational purposes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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No substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda and which does not participate in or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. It's been very unclear how to interpret that law. Basically, the idea here is that Harvard University has become a propaganda outlet for particular types of politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And so the Obama administration, again, tried to apply 501c3 law in this way against any supposedly conservative-oriented group. The Trump administration is saying, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And it seems to me that if there is to be some sort of bipartisan off-ramp here, then that should be to rewrite the 501c3 law to become significantly clearer about what is prohibited and what is not prohibited, because this law seems to be weaponized by alternative administrations against whoever is in violation of their sort of political priors. We'll get to more on that in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1455.743

First, I need to make sure that I'm maintaining health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with this crazy work schedule. When I was younger, I thought I could just power through on willpower and caffeine, but I have learned peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means getting enough veggies in your diet. Now, here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1471.173

Veggies are awful, like truly terrible, one of God's punishments upon mankind, but that's why I'm thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. That sounds awful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1483.442

With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and your body knows precisely what to do with them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1497.652

They're kosher, so I pop them right in the protein smoothie, I'm good to go. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Also, Starting a business is exciting. The expense, the chaos that comes with it, well, not so much.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

15.462

It's called The Kingdom of Cain, Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. Only Andrew could take Cain and Abel, Dostoevsky and Hitchcock and pull out a powerful case for faith in a fallen world. The chart, it's moving. It's exactly what you would expect from a best-selling novelist and one of the oldest human beings. I mean, wisest people at The Daily Wire. The book is out right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So a bunch of big names did not show up to the Met Gala who historically had, that includes people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, but the resistance showed up in force. Now, the theme of this year's Met Gala, according to the Metropolitan Museum, was, again, superfine, tailoring black style.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1516.066

When I launched The Daily Wire, we became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee and freelancer expenses, counting hours, reconciling statements. It was all a nightmare until we got it figured out. I mean, it would be great if there was a shortcut. Well, there is. That's why I want to introduce you to Ramp.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1531.213

Ramp is a free corporate card that automates your entire tedious and time-consuming expense process. Most finance teams are trapped, spending about 80% of their time on tactical busywork, like chasing expenses and reconciling statements, with only 20% left for strategic thinking. Ramp flips this equation entirely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Their corporate card automates operations, freeing you and your finance team to focus on those strategies that truly drive growth. Forecasting, strategic planning, high-value decision-making. Again, you want to plan for the future of your business, but you don't really need to spend time on HR if you don't have to.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

1561.578

It's no wonder over 25,000 businesses trust Ramp, including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America. That's why they were just named number one in spend management by G2. And switching to Ramp is super easy. For new members, Ramp offers a complimentary white glove onboarding service to help you migrate from your current corporate card to start using Ramp.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And now, for a limited time, listeners of this show... You can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just head on over to ramp.com slash Shapiro. That's ramp.com slash Shapiro. R-A-M-P dot com slash Shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Meanwhile, the Trump administration is telling universities that the government will be shutting off federal student loan spigots for specific schools if too many of their former students have lapsed on their payments. This, by the way, is a wonderful policy. This is absolutely, in unsullied fashion, a good policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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The reality is that federal student loans to students that push them into majors that are completely non-compensatory on the other end. You go and you get a degree in queer studies at Harvard University and there's no way you're going to be paying back your student loans. There's no reason the federal taxpayer should be subsidizing all of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Monday's warning, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is a plank in a broader strategy to accelerate repayment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, as we begin to help defaulted borrowers back into repayment, we must also fix a broken higher education finance system that has put upward pressure on tuition rates without ensuring that colleges and universities are delivering a high-value degree to students. And this, of course, makes perfect sense because the great acceleration...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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of the number of people going to colleges and universities has not been a boom for the country as a whole. It is based on a fundamental category error. Yes, people who go to college in 1970 are earning more than people go to high school in 1970. But the solution to that is not everybody goes to college. It should be people who are going to college for a reason should go to college.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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If you just put upward pressure on the number of people going to college and you say getting a degree in nonsense from your local university is in and of itself worthwhile, sponsored by the taxpayer. What you will end with is massive student debt, people in hock to these universities for long periods of time, and universities continuing to increase their tuition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And this was based on an exhibit at the Met Museum that, quote, explores the importance of style to the formation of black identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So these are all good moves by the Trump administration. And again, the reason why the American people are going to stand behind this stuff is because of the bizarre elitism exhibited by institutions like a Harvard University, which again is of a piece, it's the same cultural piece as the Met Gala or the New Yorker.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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These are all cultural institutions that shape how people at the quote unquote top echelons of society think. I know, I went to them. And there's no question that they lead people who go to these places and integrate into these systems to believe that they ought to operate oversized power against the rest of the public.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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When it comes to federal student loan debt and all the rest, one of the big questions is where is that money going? And what are people majoring in based on the loans that they are taking? So I asked our friends and sponsors at Perplexity that question, what are the college majors of students who receive federal student loan aid by percentage?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And unbelievably enough, there is no good federal data on this, which is insane. That's crazy. How is it that there's no good federal data on, you know, what are the majors of the people to whom you're lending money? That would be the number one question in the private loan sphere that you would be asking.

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If you're a loan officer and someone came in and wanted some sort of loan to go to college, you would ask them right off the bat, what are you majoring in? Because if they're majoring in music, then probably you're going to think more carefully than if they are majoring in, say, pre-law or in psychobiology or something, some sort of field that is likely to lead them to

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a career that will allow them to pay off the loan, according to Perplexity, there's limited direct data on the precise percentage of students in each college major who receive federal student loan aid. However, available sources provide insight into the distribution of student loan debt by major and general pattern of aid usage across feature of study. So in terms of distribution by major...

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Through a presentation of garments and accessories, paintings, photographs, decorative art, and more, from the 18th century to today, the exhibition interprets the concept of dandyism as both an aesthetic and a strategy that allowed for new social and political possibilities.

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Apparently, majors such as health professions, business, education, and social sciences tend to have higher numbers of students taking on federal loans, reflecting both enrollment size and also program costs. Well, that's not great.

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The reality is if you're an education major, what are the chances that as an education major, you're going to be paying off that student loan debt in anything like a reasonable amount of time? Or you're a sociology major. How fast are you going to pay off that student loan debt? How is it that the federal government doesn't even know where that money is going? That's totally crazy.

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Obviously, this is something the Department of Education should immediately investigate. What are the majors of the people receiving federal student loan aid? What do they get for their money? Or more importantly, what do we, the taxpayers, get for our subsidization of those loans?

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And again, as I've said before, the Trump administration is doing deeply important work on everything from DEI to going after the colleges and universities. They're doing deep work in the cultural sphere. All of this is laudatory and excellent. All of it goes by the wayside if the economy tanks.

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So it is unclear at this point, as we've said, what the results of President Trump's tariff war is going to be. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, is almost single-handedly holding up the stock market at this point.

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As I said before, President Trump should basically just put tariff and tax policy in the hands of Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, and let him talk, and everything will be well. And he should also fire Peter Navarro. who is truly a dotard and a fool when it comes to trade policy. Firing Peter Navarro would shore up the economic health of the country in extraordinary ways.

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Investors would put their money back in knowing that there was solidity D-dollarization might itself slow or stop. People are withdrawing money from the American system right now, investors, because they are unsure of what comes next.

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And they are also afraid that if the economy tanks, you will get a populist left-wing party in power that will then completely destroy the investment environment for everybody who actually wants innovation in the United States. So there has to be a recalibrated policy. Scott Besant has a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about President Trump's three steps to economic growth.

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So the goal here is to, I suppose, recreate the mood of outfits that were worn by black people in resistance to white supremacy. According to the Met Museum, together, these characteristics demonstrate how one's self-presentation is a mode of distinction and resistance within a society impacted by race, gender, class, and sexuality.

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And basically he says, we need time. So he says that there are essentially three things that need to be pursued. One is renegotiating global trade. He says tariffs are an effective tool for balancing international commerce. They reduce trade barriers in other countries, opening more markets to American producers while also bringing back thousands of manufacturing jobs.

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Now, again, notice the language that Besant is using. It's the language that I've been using about tariffs, which is tariffs are good if they are used as a tool to get other countries to lower their tariffs. They are not in and of themselves a good. And then he says economic security is national security. We need to shore up our supply chains. That, of course, is true.

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So the way Besant is talking about tariffs is a way the markets understand. And then he says we need to pass a reenactment, a renewal of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We have to make it permanent and adopt the president's new tax priorities. That, of course, is absolutely true. And we must deregulate the economy. And all this is right. And if Besant gets his way, the economy is going to boom.

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You will get the Trump boom that was promised. However, President Trump still seems to be making the suggestion that patience is the thing that is called for here. And conflict continues to exist in the administration over the proper role of tariffs in all of this.

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According to Politico, President Trump and his top aides have settled on a decidedly non-Trumpian message for American businesses and consumers panicked by his trade war. Be patient. However, the problem is that there are long tail effects to policy. If you slap a trade war on everybody and then people stop shipping, it takes months to iron all of that out.

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The supply line problems that were developed in 2020, thanks to COVID, took at least two years to actually iron out on the other end. It is a real problem. Well, the Treasury Secretary was asked yesterday if China is coming to the table, and he is still not being particularly clear on whether China is coming to the table. China basically wants the United States to come to the table first.

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They want to humiliate the United States. President Trump doesn't actually want to do that at this point. But as Besson says, the current tariff rates against China, as currently created, And without any of the preconditional work necessary to actually go after China on trade in that way, they're unsustainable. That's not me saying that. That's President Trump's Treasury Secretary.

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Okay, so he's basically saying China has not called. So there's no trade deal with China that is in the works. As far as these other trade deals, I mean, okay, fine. So if he cut a trade deal with Namibia, great, or Ethiopia, all right. But the reality is that there are certain key countries that we should be getting to an off-ramp with. Mark Carney...

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the newly elected prime minister of Canada, because President Trump could not stop attacking Canada and helped to sink the candidacy of Pierre Poliev, who actually did win the highest vote percentage in Canada for the Conservative Party since about 2011.

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The problem is that all the libs came home to Mark Carney after Justin Trudeau resigned and President Trump attacked Canada over and over and over. Mark Carney is showing up at the White House to negotiate tariffs. The United States should not be in a tariff war with Canada. President Trump negotiated the USMCA that we were operating on before we decided to randomly tariff Canada.

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Howard Lutnick, there's sort of an inverse correlation between Howard Lutnick's appearances on TV and stock market success. He's sort of the opposite of Besson. Every time the Secretary of Commerce speaks on TV, the stock market freaks out. Every time Besson talks, the stock market gets better. That is not a coincidence. Here was Howard Lutnick enthusiastically endorsing tariffs.

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So you will notice that this is not sort of typical sartorial splendor for black people of the past. And in fact, If you watch movies and shows that are made about the early 20th century, there was a form of black fashion and it is actually quite cool. I mean, a lot of the stuff that people were wearing in the early 20th century, pretty neat.

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Okay, well, that is all dependent on finding an off-ramp. Letnick himself says that he feels very good about the tariffs and everything that's going on.

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I mean, in what sense? In what sense? The idea that if you eliminate all trade deficits in the United States, that means endless economic growth is unsupportable by the actual statistical reality. And again, I'm worried about this because I want President Trump's agenda to succeed. President Trump is doing many, many important things all across the globe.

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Economic downturn, I'm going to keep beating this drum until the policy changes. Already, the policy has changed some. Remember, between Liberation Day and when President Trump decided that he was going to back off many of the biggest tariffs in his Liberation Day sort of framework, there was a massive stock market drop. And then he tweeted, and the stock market recovered some.

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And so we're down maybe 3%, 4% from where we were in the S&P 500 and in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But that was reliant on people making clear that that policy was not well calibrated. Well, things need to change because otherwise Democrats will have a lot to run on.

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NBC's Kristen Welker was grilling Representative Byron Donalds from Florida about President Trump's language regarding tariffs in the economy. And she said, is kids should have fewer at all is actually a very good argument.

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Okay, so again, that is him avoiding the actual question, which is, if there's restriction of supply, is that going to affect the American people? Listen, I hope that everything that Donald is saying comes true. I hope that everything that Ludnick is saying comes true. I hope that we get an economic boom like we've never seen in this country.

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However, that is not what this was because in order to prop up the sort of intersectional ideology that suggests that being black is equivalent to being gay, is equivalent to being transgender, is equivalent to being transgressive in virtually all of its forms, that is how it came out over at the Met Gala.

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Good policy is the thing that makes economic booms possible. And there is a reason why just yesterday, Ford... dropped its first quarter profit estimate by 64% and suspended its outlook for the rest of the year based on uncertainty. The markets right now are being held up by the possibility that President Trump backs off of the Liberation Day framework. That is what's holding up the economy.

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If it goes the wrong way, then that all changes. Alrighty, meanwhile, the President Trump trollery train continues and the left does not really know what to do about it. So President Trump is now talking about reopening Alcatraz. Okay, wait. It's funny. It's not a thing that's going to happen. I promise you, we're not reopening Alcatraz and then just sending random criminals to Alcatraz.

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But the left, they're like a cat with a laser pointer. President Trump controls the laser pointer and they just jump around like crazy trying to follow the laser pointer. Or if you just recognize that President Trump says a lot of stuff, he says a lot of bleep, as I've said before. Here's President Trump on Alcatraz.

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I'm sorry, it's hilarious. There's nothing I can do about the fact that the dude's funny, people. Like, it's not my fault. He's funny. I'm sorry. He just described Alcatraz as horrible, beautiful, strong, miserable, and weak, which is just a grab bag of adjectives. I don't even know what to make of that. Horrible, beautiful, strong, and weak, miserable, and interesting. OK. All right.

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If you guys would make a big deal over that, I suppose that you can. Then President Trump was asked about his tweeting out of an AI picture of himself as Pope. And President Trump's like, are you kidding me? Like, am I allowed to make a joke now or not allowed to make a joke? How does this work?

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Now, we should always point out that the Met Gala is a bit of Marie Antoinette in the modern American landscape. Every year, a bunch of very rich and very famous people get enormous attention for wearing some of the most bizarre crap imaginable. And then we are told that they are brave and groundbreaking for doing so. Well, the rest of the country tries to, you know, just pay its bills.

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Really, really, guys, that is that is correct. And again, I'm not going to hear about how President Trump's insulting the Catholics from the party of Gretchen Whitmer and bizarre lesbian communion scenes with Doritos and the party of transgender, transgendering the children and same sex marriage. Like, no, it's an on demand abortion. Nope. Nope. You don't get anything to say about this.

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Meanwhile, in global news. So as I mentioned on Sunday, I flew out of Israel on a Lufthansa flight. I believe it was the last Lufthansa flight to leave before just outside the airport, a Houthi missile fell. The Houthis are, of course, a wonderful, generous group of Islamic terrorists backed by the Iranians with this delightful slogan, quote, God is the greatest.

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Death to America, death to Israel, curse be upon the Jews, victory to Islam. which is not particularly catchy and a little bit long for a slogan, hard to chant, but is in fact a pretty solid expression of their motivating ideology. They have pledged they are going to try to continue to bomb Israel's airport so as to stop incoming and outgoing traffic.

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So this morning, Israel decided that they were not going to be having any of that. And Israeli warplanes then carry out a massive attack on the Sana'a International Airport and essentially leveled it. They said, OK, you're going to attack the the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Well, then you just won't have an airport anymore.

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And that came shortly after they had sent another strike to the port in Hodeidah, basically destroying that as well. They destroyed a bunch of infrastructure at the port of Hodeidah, which is sort of an importation point for weaponry from Iran. Again, the Houthis are just an Iranian arm. That's something President Trump himself has said. This is perfectly appropriate.

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Apparently, the IAF, the Israeli Air Force, coordinated this with the Americans. The Americans did not take part in this particular airstrike. Israel did it themselves. So that is a perfectly appropriate response to people firing missiles at your airport. Meanwhile, Israel is now unleashing a strategy in Gaza, which is something they should have done all along.

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Israel is saying they are going to retain complete security control of the Gaza Strip and they are going to stay indefinitely, which, of course, there is no alternative that has been offered that is anything remotely plausible or credible. They are going to continue to ensure that food does not flow into Hamas. Hamas has been stealing the food in the Gaza Strip for a very long period of time.

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And Israel is going to take direct control over the handouts of food. Why? Because Israel has AI technologies that allow them to actually determine based on their information who is a terrorist and who is not.

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And if the IDF is actually handing out the food, then it is significantly more likely that food ends up in the hands of civilians as opposed to Hamas, which just works directly with the UN and all other food agencies that were working in the Gaza Strip. According to the Washington Post, Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday described intensified operations in Gaza.

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He said that the population is going to be moved south. so that Israel can actually control the territory. The northern part of the Gaza Strip was the chief point from which the attacks of October 7th were launched and where most of the rockets were being fired from during the years between 2005 and 2023. The plan will require tens of thousands of reservists to be called up in the coming weeks.

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And there will be sterile zones secured by elements of the IDF. Meanwhile, Hamas will be fought in these cities. One of the big failures of the IDF plan so far have been these sort of incursions and pullouts and incursions and pullouts in the Gaza Strip with the hope that Hamas would deal with Israel with regard to the hostages.

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This year, obviously, it was race directed. And this is the backlash that the left is going to have to confront. Because in reality, politically, the American people are tired of DEI. They're tired of it. They don't like it. It was one of the main reasons why Democrats lost in last election cycle. Americans are extraordinarily tired of thinking tribally along racial lines.

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Netanyahu did say that this is basically the last chance for Hamas to give up the hostages, including American Idan Alexander. I know Idan Alexander's parents. I brought them to meet President Trump during the campaign. President Trump was asked about this. He said, we'll find ways to get the population food. But Hamas has been stealing the food.

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Okay, that is exactly right. And in reality, people who are in a war zone and have been governed by terrorists for 20 years, at their original choice, by the way, and many of whom are deeply sympathetic to the terrorists, there are protests in Gaza sometimes against Hamas. Hamas then shoots those people.

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There have been zero protests calling for the freeing of the hostages, which is the thing that would actually end the war. If Hamas' leadership went into exile, and if the hostages were free, that would end the war. No one so far as I can tell who has been on the side of the Palestinians in this conflict has actually said that out loud, even though that is clearly the case.

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So that is the latest on the Middle East. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to try out Jasmine Crockett as the hot new fresh face of the Democratic Party. Jasmine Crockett, of course, a congresswoman from Texas. And she has basically decided that speaking in the most colorful tones is going to win her political support. Again, it's not a bad bet.

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And the fact that Cory Booker's bizarre rantings on the floor of the Senate to no apparent purpose, Mr. Potato Head popping in the angry eyes, just ranting nonsensically. and very intensely about President Trump being angry about things. It made him much more prominent. Jasmine Crockett seems to have gotten some momentum for herself doing the same thing.

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So she was very upset because President Trump suggested that she has low IQ. And I got to admit, when I see her activities and when I watch her talk, she does not strike me as a particularly high IQ person. I don't think that she's over in the corner solving Rubik's cubes and figuring out how quadratic equations apply to physics or anything like that.

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Here she was saying that actually it's just it's wrong to call her low IQ. I'm not sure that it's like deeply a morally wrong thing to say that a person who appears to be kind of stupid is stupid, especially when that person is advocating for some of the worst policies for the American government possible.

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OK. All righty. By the way, she then suggested to students that if people are opposing you, you might want to use a chair against them. This apparently is the mark of brilliance inside the Democratic Party. Here she was.

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And that's manifesting itself in a lot of ways, mostly positive, a few negative. When it comes to the Met Gala, however, again, you have the world's most rich, most famous people who are focusing in on racial differentiation. It does come with some awkwardness because a bunch of white people went to the Met Gala. And so you do wonder if this runs into charges of cultural appropriation.

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Yeah, guys, apparently it's evil to say that she's stupid, but it's not evil to tell people that if they oppose them politically, you should pick up a chair and use it. Sounds great. In a moment, the show continues with our discussion of the Georgia Senate race and bad news for Republicans over there. Plus, why is Newark Airport a complete disaster aside from the fact that it's in Newark?

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First, you have to become a member. And we have all sorts of good stuff behind the paywall. So you want to do that anyway. We've got all access live. You can hang out with me. We've got new series from Jordan Peterson and behind the scenes footage from Matt's movies. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So many of the DEI traps about race are catch-22s. So on the one hand, for example, there will be a suggestion that if a historically black area has a lot of investment and people drive up the real estate prices, this is gentrification and wrecking the neighborhood. If white people move out of that area, then that is presumably white flight.

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Get your copy today at store.dailywire.com. We begin today with the Met Gala. So I know you don't think the Met Gala is all that important. I don't either. But it is very important to the cultural glitterati, the people who make culture. So the theme of this year's Met Gala is superfine, tailoring black style.

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And the same thing holds true when it comes to things like fashion. If white people pay tribute to black people through fashion, then that is cultural appropriation. And if they don't, then that is neglecting the impact of black fashion on America and the West and all the rest. Okay, but let's just put it this way.

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If the future of the Democratic Party is re-embracing DEI and re-embracing it through a sort of effete fashionista sensibility, good luck to the Democrats. This is precisely the kind of crap that most Americans are ready to end. This is not a reversion to normality. It's a reversion to bizarreness. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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Access the entire library of DailyWare Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. And as always, your free Leftist Tears Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You just need my friends over at Pure Talk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the economy, a little bit rocky right now. There's no reason you should be spending extra money on your cell phone bill. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years at this point. The coverage is excellent. Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, you insure your car, your phone, your home, because if something bad happens, you want to make sure that,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's no guesswork involved, just clarity that helps you choose what's right for your specific needs and your specific budget. I have life insurance because I want to make sure my family is taken care of. You should do the same. Policy Genius's side-by-side comparison tool shows you quotes from top insurers across America completely free with no hidden fees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. So let's go through some of the things that were being worn at the Met Gala. So we begin with a person named Coleman Domingo. Here he is wearing what appears to be a giant shower curtain topped by the breastplate from Gladiator. And somehow this is super fine black fashion.

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And clearly, when this thing was originally thought about, people thought Kamala Harris was going to be president of the United States. That is the reason why they did it this way. Last October is when they announced this. And it was designed as a celebration party for the nation's second black president, Kamala Harris. And then she lost.

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At least his second outfit, he took that off and then he wore a second outfit that appears to be some sort of tribute to, again, early 20th century black fashion. He's got kind of a... a checkered coat and baggy pants. That was not the worst outfit for sure. Bad Bunny showed up. This is the name that his mother gave him, Bad Bunny, his original name.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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He came out of his mother and his mother said, I shall call him Bad Bunny. And he showed up wearing a kind of normal, cool suit, but then carrying a luggage bag, which I don't particularly understand. A singer named Doshi showed up as well. And I have no idea who this person is. And she showed up wearing what appears to be a romper, like a child's romper from the early 20th century.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So that was rather bizarre. Chapel Roan showed up as well. It was not a particularly good... Does Chapel Roan have any good looks? Chapel Roan is... This is... Wow. What is this supposed to be? Is it supposed to be like a riff on James Brown circa 1969? Chapel Roan. These are the people that you should emulate. These are your cultural... guideposts and landmarks. Cardi B was there being Cardi B.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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She apparently just picked up a velvet rug and decided to wear that around. Again, the disconnect between the celebrity class and the rest of America is nowhere more obvious than when it comes to the Met Gala and the willingness of the celebrity class, which, again, exists in its own class.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Hey, Cardi B has much more in common with Tom Cruise than she does with a black person working long hours at a factory in Baltimore or something. The class differentiation at the Met Gala is the thing that sets it apart, and the attempt to cross-cut the class differentiation by reference to race is a giant failure. It's a giant failure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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It's why the Democratic Party has failed, because they moved away from their sort of class-conscious soft Marxism, the populism of the Bernie Sanders, and they moved toward a racial Marxism that is incredibly divisive and most people find off-putting and annoying. Again, these outfits are bizarre and ridiculous. Okay, here's Gayle King straight from the moon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So Gayle King is one of the lady astronauts who's not an astronaut who was put on Blue Origin and then the rocket came back to Earth for better or for worse. And she showed up wearing what appears to be a purple gown merged with a jellyfish in some way. And again, look, I can make fun of the Met Gala all day long because it's ridiculous. I mean, Colin Kaepernick, shut up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And so now we are in this weird nether region in which the left continues to whine that Kamala Harris should have won the election, even though she lost pretty clearly and evidently. And the rest of the world wonders why people are dressed up in bizarre outfits paying homage to something or other. According to The New York Times,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Colin Kaepernick has not been relevant in American discourse for well over a decade at this point. Colin Kaepernick, who became famous by being a second-rate quarterback who lost his job and then decided that he hated America, is still somehow getting invites to some of the most important cultural events of the season. He showed up wearing a sort of purplish outfit with a cape.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Andre 3000, I don't know who that is. I don't know what happened to the first 2,999 Andres. It's like Mickey 17. He showed up wearing a piano on his back, which, I mean, feels a little inconvenient. If you are feeling the solidarity, the racial solidarity here, raise your hand, because I'm just wondering what that is. What is that supposed to be?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Doja Cat, who, again, is named after marijuana and a cat. was there as well. I don't even know what this is. She appears to be wearing no pants, a jacket, and I can't even see her hair properly here. But it's a look. It's a look. And Demi Moore, fresh off her Oscar loss, was there as well. Again, there's a bit of awkwardness to white people attempting to cosplay in black fashion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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What is this, a sort of Cleopatra outfit? It's all terrible. It's all terrible. And again, shows the wild disconnect between a party that claims to stand for the lower classes and what they actually wish to do in their spare time. And this brings us to an article from The New Yorker. This article from New Yorker magazine says, is an article about the living rooms of the rich and famous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Quote, What aspects of living are meant to be done in a living room? Exactly. Not eating, which takes place, at least theoretically, in the dining room or in the kitchen. Not sleeping or having sex, which takes place in the bedroom. What the living room is for, ostensibly, is gathering. Wow, just what an amazing New Yorker.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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This is the effete liberalism that cosplays as radical, but actually is just ridiculous. Going all the way back to this sort of mentality in the 1960s, written about by Tom Wolfe in famous essays like Radical Chic, in which Leonard Bernstein, the conductor for the New York Philharmonic, had the Black Panthers over to his apartment where they talked about killing Whitey and how the Jews were bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And then he sat there and clapped. This is kind of the New Yorker's mentality. And that happens to be the mentality of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. So they put out, the New Yorker, these pictures of prominent Democrats in their living rooms. And I have to say, just absolutely absurd. We begin with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who apparently sits on couches and knits.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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This is what we are supposed to believe, is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spends her evenings knitting on her couch in East Elmhurst, flanked by a bulldog, Oh boy. Woman of the people there, AOC. Just the childless energy in many of these photos is extraordinarily strong. These apartments are immaculate. There are no children anywhere to be seen in any of the photos.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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There are like a couple of people who had their kids as sort of a prop there. So you have AOC. And then we have, of course, Alex Soros and Huma Abedin, the new power couple, because Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner didn't happen, fell apart, and Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton never publicly happened. Alex Soros.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Last October, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute announced its next fashion show, Superfine, tailoring black style, the political landscape looked very different. Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and first black woman ever to top a major party ticket, was in the final weeks of her campaign for the White House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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Investor and Huma Abedin, so Alex Soros is George Soros' heir, and it's definitely straight. This is the straightest pose you will ever see with Huma Abedin. They look so happy together in this particular photo, glaring into the camera high above the New York City skyline where Alex Soros hosts every Democratic politician attempting to garner that blue collar.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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This is just blue collar appeal in extremists. I mean, look at the blue collar appeal of Huma Abedin trying desperately not to hold the hand of Alex Soros as he crosses his legs in the most masculine fashion possible and glares angrily into the camera. What a charming couple of political influencers in Democrat world. Well, if you don't appreciate that, maybe you will appreciate Ella Emhoff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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So Ella Emhoff is the long forgotten daughter of Doug Emhoff, who is the wonderful first husband candidate You'll recall him from such hits as, yes, I may have punched my girlfriend in public. And also, I'm the world's best Jew who doesn't know what Jews do. Ella Emhoff is his daughter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And apparently in her spare time, she stands on Ottomans in very crowded apartment quarters, flanked by stacks of books she undoubtedly has not read. In an outfit that is sort of a mix, the bottom half of the outfit is effectively Ella Emhoff wearing what a Wisconsin father would wear before he goes to bed every evening, namely gym shorts and long socks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And she's got the calves, as someone observed online, of a hockey player. And then a tank top while she holds a dog and, again, looks deeply unhappy. You're in your living room. You're supposed to be relaxing. Why do you all look so unhappy? Seriously, like the living room, you're supposed to be having a good time, no?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2193 - The Ongoing INSANITY of The Met Gala

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And all these Democrats look so unbelievably grumpy as they sit in their decent apartments in New York City being upset about life. And then finally, Al Sharpton. So my favorite game to play when it comes to political celebrities is do they have a picture of them in a picture of them? Anthony Fauci famously had this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

Well, folks, tonight, Daily Wire backstage returns live for President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress. We are covering it all like never before with Matt Walsh and me. Live from D.C., do not miss the exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, followed by the full address completely uninterrupted. And when he's done, we're back with a breakdown of what it all means.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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There are a lot of rumblings in the business community that things like tariffs, like the overvaluing of the stock market that has occurred due to the inflationary spiral brought since COVID, that's destined to come down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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I've pointed this out before, but the Magnificent Seven, the top seven companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, those top seven companies have a price to earnings ratio almost of 60%. That means the total price of the company compared to the earnings of the company on an annualized basis, 60. That's crazy. That's completely out of whack.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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The entire Dow Jones industrial average at this point has a PE ratio of about 26. It really needs to be down at about 16. It's too high. Meanwhile, real estate is also getting stuck because the interest rates remain relatively high by historical standards.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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And that means that grandma doesn't want to sell her house because if she sells her house, she's going to have to buy a new house with the worst interest rate. That means inventory is not actually matching demand. There are all sorts of problems with the economy. The administration needs to focus laser-like on that because nothing kills an administration faster than a weak economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Joe Biden learned this the hard way. Speaking of which... There's a lot of consternation rising over looming government shutdown. According to the Washington Post, Congress has less than two weeks to extend federal spending laws and keep the government open.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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According to Breitbart.com, a social media post by the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, Michael Banks, shows February apprehensions to be a record low for the agency. Banks' post reveals the startling impact of the Trump presidency on illegal migration to the United States in the 42 days since assuming office. Banks posted, quote, February proves our combined efforts in securing the border work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Republican negotiators walked away from talks over the weekend to reach a deal on a top line number on how much the federal government should spend for the rest of 2025. Democrats had said the number is irrelevant if Trump refuses to spend the money in accordance with the law or if he allows Doge to basically go through with a red pen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Meanwhile, Trump and his advisors, including Budget Chief Russell Vaught, have argued the president has the power to withhold money Congress orders spent. Democrats say they want assurances from congressional Republicans in the White House the administration will actually spend any money included in any new law preventing a shutdown.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Now, Republicans theoretically could continue to pass a continuing resolution. They could avert a government shutdown on their own, but that's going to require Republicans to get together again. So once again, heavy burden falls on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on all of this stuff because of the narrowness of his majority. Now, Democrats are already preparing the bad headlines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Democrats are eager for a bad headline. According to CNBC, Democrats are now claiming that because the Social Security Administration is opening its doors to Doge, this means that presumably Social Security payments will be missed. That, of course, would be a killer for the Trump administration, were it to be true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Former commissioner and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley told CNBC, quote, ultimately, you're going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you'll see that within the next 30 to 90 days. Now, it is worth noting here that Martin O'Malley is a wild Democrat, who at one point actually, I believe, ran for the head of the Democratic National Committee.

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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So there's that. However, all it takes is one bad headline, truly one bad headline, to switch public opinion on a lot of the things that are going on right now. So it's wonderful the Trump administration is moving fast and breaking things and tearing down bad systems. What they're doing on immigration is fantastic. What Doge is doing, I think, is wonderful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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However, the economy must continue to sail. It must. And the perception of American strength must continue, which brings us to the situation in Ukraine. So I don't know what in the hell Vladimir Zelensky thinks he's doing at this point. I honestly, God, don't understand it. The president of Ukraine seems to believe that if he continues to chide President Trump and then say,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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rather untethered things about the war, that somehow this is going to earn him the support of America in some way. So President Trump has made very clear he wants a ceasefire. He wants this war ended as soon as possible. And meanwhile, Zelensky is out there preaching that the war is never going to end, that the end of the war is still very, very far away. What does he think Trump is going to do?

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Of course, President Trump is going to see that as a rebuke to him. Here's Zelensky yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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The peace that we foresee in the future must be just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable. Now that, of course, was almost designed to earn President Trump's umbrage. President Trump immediately responded by saying he better not be right about the end of the war being far away. Here he was in a press conference yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 8,326 illegal aliens at the U.S.-Mexico border, making it the lowest month in recorded history. That's an insanely... Low number. Insanely low. Remember that there were months during the Biden administration where in excess of 200,000 illegal immigrants were crossing the border every single month.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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I think that Vladimir Zelensky misunderstood the assignment here, but you need to transform your own understanding of your body's metabolism with Lumen, a revolutionary device that unveils detailed insights through something as simple as your breath. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. All you need to do is breathe into it first thing in the morning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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You'll know exactly what's happening with your metabolism, whether you're burning fats or carbs. Based on your measurements, Lumen creates a personalized nutrition plan just for you. What's great about Lumen is that I can breathe into it before and after workouts and meals and so I know exactly what's going on in my body in real time, which is, in fact, a fantastic feature.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Lumen will give you tips based on those readings to keep you on top of your health game. Your metabolism is your body's engine, powering everything you do. When you optimize your metabolic health, you can experience improved energy levels, better fitness results, and enhanced sleep quality. I've personally found that understanding my metabolism has transformed my approach to health.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Take the next step to improving your health. Go to lumen.me slash Shapiro. Get 20% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Shapiro for 20% off your purchase today. Thanks to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Shapiro for 20% off your purchase today. Also, when it comes to grocery shopping, I have a problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

1349.966

I have a very busy schedule, and the Shapiro family is always slammed with after-school activities and all the rest. That all changed thanks to Hungry Root. It's become the easiest way for me to eat healthy and stay on top of meals, even with a busy work week. Hungry Root is like having your own personal shopper who really gets you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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They can handle all your weekly grocery shopping, recommending healthy foods that align with your tastes, nutrition goals, and the like. What I love is how they make it simple to eat high-quality, nutritious food, whether you're looking for anti-inflammatory options, gut-friendly meals, or you're just trying to get more variety in your diet. The best part, they learn your preferences over time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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It's amazing how well they're able to figure out exactly what you like. Everything they offer is free, from high-fructose corn syrup and artificial preservatives. Hungrywood actually makes it very easy for me to get kosher dairy products, which is my thing, because I put that nonfat Siggy's mixed berry yogurt they've been sending me in the smoothies, and that keeps, you know, this body rockin'.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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You're gonna love Hungry Root as much as I do. Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time. Get 40% off your first box, plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to HungryRoot.com slash Ben. Use code Ben. That's HungryRoot.com slash Ben. Code Ben. Get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. HungryRoot.com slash Ben. Code Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Okay, Trump then put out a statement on Truth Social, quote, this is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky and America will not put up with it for much longer. It is what I was saying. This guy does not want there to be peace as long as he has America's backing and Europe in the meeting they had with Zelensky stated flatly, they cannot do the job without the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking? And he ain't wrong about that. What are they thinking is in fact the question of the day. Trump went on to bang on Zelensky by suggesting that Zelensky really needs to switch his approach or he will be gone in short order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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There were days that were like 8,000, 10,000 illegal immigrants arriving at the border. That is a drop of 94%. 94%. from the 140,000 encountered just one year ago. Even since December, that is a drop of 82%. And there's only one reason for that, and that is the presence of President Trump in the White House, Tom Homan, as his borders are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Again, President Trump does not want to be perceived as a as a sort of stand in for Vladimir Putin in all of this. Trump was ready to do the thing earlier last week. He was ready to do the thing. He wanted to sign, as I've said over and over and over, that rare earths mineral deal. Why? Because the goal was to do with Zelensky what he's currently doing with Taiwan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Again, TSMC is the company in Taiwan that makes the semiconductors. Those semiconductors are now going to be made partially in the United States. Taiwan is going to invest via TSMC. TSMC, the company, is going to be investing $100 billion in American domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. That serves a dual purpose. One, it reshores some key items that America wants and needs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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And two, it also means that the United States is now invested in the continued success, health, and prosperity of TSMC, which means more invested in Taiwan. Trump was trying to do that exact same thing with Ukraine. He didn't want to issue an open security guarantee because the situation is too volatile. He just wanted the Rare Earths Minerals deal as a way, a wedge to get in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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He openly said this during the press conference. He said it. He kept this close to just saying he was going to give a security guarantee that was effectively a caveat to the Rare Earths Minerals deal. And top Republicans are still hoping that Zelensky comes back to the table on that thing. I don't know what the hell Zelensky is doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Seriously, as someone who would like to see Ukraine capable of standing up to Russian predations, I do not know what Zelensky is thinking here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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According to Politico, congressional Republicans are signaling they want President Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to patch things up after a testy Oval Office meeting cast significant doubt about the future of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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GOP lawmakers on Monday sought to lower the temperature just days after the clash between the leaders sent shockwaves through Washington and Europe. With members of Trump's party expressing optimism, the nations could still clinch a minerals deal to bolster U.S. backing for Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, quote, I just hope they can get things back on track and that everybody will redouble their efforts. He said this is a historic opportunity, a potentially historic agreement. Obviously, last week was a missed opportunity. But I think if people are operating in good faith, I think we can get things back on the rails.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Meanwhile, we'll see what President Trump has to say about all of this in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Lindsey Graham, who had blasted Zelensky on Friday, said, quote, I've told President Zelensky, do the minerals deal. See if we can get an arms package. We'll talk about a good ending to the war. That's the sequence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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The more he talks about security guarantees and the war is going to be a long time away from ending, the harder his case will be. Speaker Johnson also defended Trump on Monday, but added, quote, I encourage, as I did over the weekend, President Zelensky to come back to the table and accept the deal that was proposed because that is the solution to get us out of this mess.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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And again, that's totally correct. That's totally correct. As I said yesterday on the show, there is a wide ranging belief that President Trump is attempting to rewrite America's power in the world by granting spheres of influence to China or to Russia. That's not, I think, what he is doing. It's not what he was doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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President Trump has had a longstanding belief that when America intervenes in places around the world, America gets repaid. He believed this about Kuwait and Iraq. And by the way, this is not a rare belief in American foreign policy history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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When America supported Great Britain during World War II, the initial move towards supporting Great Britain was a program called Lend-Lease, in which the United States ended up with control of a huge number of very important British military bases. So the idea that America always gets nothing out of its foreign relations is just not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Watch with us tonight, 8.30 p.m. Eastern time on Daily Wire Plus. Speaking of which... The president of the United States tonight will be speaking to a joint session of Congress. It's not technically a State of the Union address, but it is, in fact, a State of the Union address. It's just that in your first year, you don't really do that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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What President Trump is attempting to do here makes perfect sense, which, by the way, is why his perspective remains popular. So Harry Enten at CNN actually did some polling on this. And he said, you know, shockingly to Democrats, at least Joe Biden was wildly unpopular on Ukraine and Trump is pretty popular on Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, this is an administration that takes illegal immigration very seriously. And you know what? Illegal immigrants are not coming. It turns out all it took was a new president to fix this particular problem. Meanwhile, there are other percolating problems that President Trump is taking on. So there's a big announcement yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Okay, now, why do Americans feel that way? Because what Americans want is the rational thing. They know the war isn't going anywhere. They want an off-ramp. Now, Americans want an off-ramp. Americans like foreign policy off-ramps. There's one thing Americans really like a lot worse than foreign policy off-ramps, and it's not even endless war. Americans don't like endless war.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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In order of things, Americans hate. They hate endless war. And then, even more than endless war, they hate ignominious surrender. They really don't like ignominious surrender. Americans were humiliated by Joe Biden's pullout from Afghanistan. They hated Joe Biden for it. Look at his approval ratings. They sank into the mire. What does that mean?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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It means that while Americans do not want to continue to fund the Ukrainian war indefinitely, they also do not want to see pictures of Russian soldiers strolling through Kiev. That is not something they want. They do not want Vladimir Putin standing on Vladimir Zelensky's body in the middle of the street. That's not something they want.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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which is why the Trump administration move, I think it's a pressure tactic to get Zelensky to come back to the table and sign the rare earth minerals deal. So I think Zelensky really should do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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But the administration announced yesterday that they would pause all military aid to Kiev until President Trump determines that the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, is making a good faith effort toward peace negotiations with Russia. Now, this I do think is not a particularly good move.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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And the reason I'm not sure that this is a particularly good move is because if you're Vladimir Putin, what would drive you to the table? It takes two to tango here. What moves has Putin affirmatively made toward a deal? Now, again, I can say all day long that I think I know what a deal looks like. It looks like. The Europeans give a security guarantee to the Ukrainians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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The Ukrainians feel some level of security. They're not going to be invaded by Russia again. And Donbass and Crimea go to Russia, right? That's been the deal since 2022. But is Russia willing to accept that deal? Or do they believe that the United States is going to pull out and that the Europeans will pull out and that Vladimir Putin will eventually stroll through Kiev?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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So if this is a short-term tactic, a pause, which it seems to be, fine. If it's a pause that's designed to get Zelensky back to the table, sign the rare earth mineral deal, we all move forward hand in hand, great. But how Russia reads it is going to make quite a large difference here. If Russia reads a pause in military aid to Ukraine,

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as new impetus to relaunch a mass offensive, that will lengthen the war. It will not shorten the war. It will lengthen the war. Again, usually when you're making this sort of negotiation, yeah, you're pressuring Zelensky to come to the table by telling him we're not going to be here forever.

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But at the same time, you're saying to Putin, you also need to come to the table with some concessions in hand, or we're going to increase the amount of military aid that we are giving to Ukraine. Again, Putin's whole game here is he thinks he can outlast the West. And so far, he hasn't been wrong.

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A White House official said in a statement, quote, the president has been clear he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution. Well, again, I get it as a temporary pause to push Zelensky.

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I will also say that one thing that does not necessarily contribute to a solution is if Russia perceives massive weakness and then goes for it. The White House did not say under what conditions the United States would resume aid or whether it would be at the same pace. While there isn't a clear understanding of what Washington wants from Kyiv, the decision was the most demonstrative U.S.

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President Trump announced that TSMC, which is the largest manufacturer of sophisticated microchips on planet Earth, located in Taiwan. They make about 92% of all sophisticated semiconductors on planet Earth.

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shift from Ukraine's top ally. And again, this seems all quite easy to fix by Zelensky. If Zelensky simply wants to fix this, all he has to do is sign the deal he said he was going to sign back on Friday. What a historic, catastrophic boo-boo by Vladimir Zelensky. Seriously. Mark Kansian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, former U.S.

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official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, quote, Ukraine wouldn't surrender tomorrow or next week, but they would lose military capability gradually. At some point, they would face defeat. So, again, do I think that this is like a massive deal that the Trump administration is doing this? No, because I don't.

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I think, once again, this is a negotiation tactic by Trump to get Zelensky back to the table to sign the things Zelensky needs to sign. The Europeans, for their part, are freaking out. They believe that this is somehow a repudiation of NATO. President Trump, in that press conference, said he was not repudiating NATO. I understand that Elon said that we should get out of NATO. That's stupid.

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I'm sorry. It's dumb. The United States should not, in fact, get out of NATO. There's no purpose to getting out of NATO unless you actually wish the Russians to walk into the Baltics. If you wish them to enlarge their sphere of influence, get out of NATO. But President Trump doesn't want to get out of NATO. He said he doesn't. He wants them paying their fair share. He wants them paying their 3%.

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He said he wants to defend Poland. He wants Poland to be able to defend itself. And the sort of rush to Trump as an isolationist seems unjustifiable, even in the face of the argument he's currently having with Vladimir Zelensky. I say once more, he was trying to get to an agreement on Friday. It's so irritating. He was trying to get there.

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Nonetheless, the worry is out that retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, said, quote, I worry we may be in the last days of NATO. He said the transatlantic alliance may not be about to collapse, but I can sure hear it creaking louder than at any time in my long career in the military.

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Now, President Trump did write on Sunday on his truth social platform, quote, we should spend less time worrying about Putin, more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our country so we don't end up like Europe. Now, sure, Sounds great. Also, the United States can, in fact, walk and chew gum.

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President Trump announced yesterday that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will be investing at least $100 billion more in chip manufacturing plants in the United States over the next several years. TSMC, according to the Wall Street Journal, plans to use the funds to add to its chip manufacturing that's already building in Arizona.

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Trump has done a magnificent job of shutting down the border thus far. And actually, the United States does not have to pull out of NATO in order to actually do this. This is one of my sort of bugaboos. You hear this very often from actual real isolationists. They'll say, well, you know, we simply can't afford. We can't afford to support, say, NATO.

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We can't afford, for example, to continue funding war in Ukraine. We can't afford it. Well, that's not true. We can afford it. It's just that we would actually have to look more seriously at, you know, the gigantic spending problem that is actually driving America's national debt, namely the vast entitlement and means tested welfare programs that are destroying our fiscal standing in the world.

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You make the case we shouldn't spend the money there. That's fine. But make that case overtly. Don't fib about the case. Don't make the case that you're doing this because you're a fiscal conservative. Well, at the same time, you're arguing that America should never touch Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or any means tested welfare program.

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Just make the argument openly and then we can actually have an open discussion about this sort of stuff. In the end, I think Zelensky will come to the table. In the end, I think the Europeans will come to the table. And I think this will resolve itself. Again, I also think that President Trump is not interested in a less powerful America on the world stage.

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He just really has promised to get to the end of this war and he would like to do so. Meanwhile... Pam Bondi has now suggested that they're still going to release an Epstein list. I'm not aware that there is an Epstein list that hasn't been released at this point. I'm a little bit confused as to what exactly the goal is here. So Pam Bondi was on with Mark Levin over the weekend.

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And here she was suggesting that the sort of Epstein screw up last week in which the Justice Department released a binder filled with nothing. That actually is going to be solved in the near future. Here she was.

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OK, listen, I would love to see all of that. Also, I don't think there's going to be a lot there. And I think the screw up last week, I know there's an attempt to sort of backfill that screw up. We'll find out in very short order whether or not there is anything more happening here.

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It will construct three new chip plants, two chip packaging plants, and a research and development center, according to Chief Executive C.C. Wei. Here's President Trump at the White House announcing this yesterday.

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Now, there are some accusations that the head of the FBI's New York field office was forced out of the bureau on Monday. That is going to NBC New York. Two of the sources. who spoke with NBC News, said Assistant Director in Charge James Dennehy was given a choice to either resign or be fired, and he was eligible for retirement and has officially retired.

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He said he was forced to, I've been told many times in my life, when you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it's best to quit digging. Screw that, I will never stop defending this joint. He said he was not given a reason for the decision. Immediately, rumors started circulating that the real reason that Dennehy was fired had to do with some sort of cover-up with regard to Epstein.

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I've seen no evidence to this point that suggests that that is, in fact, the case. It may be a sort of convenient way of finding somebody to blame for the screw-up that the DOJ caused. ushered out last week. They, of course, said that there was a low-level person at SDNY who's basically covering up files, deleting files. But why would he be allowed to retire with his pay if that were the case?

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He should be legally prosecuted if, in fact, that was the case. So we'll have to see how that emerges, whether this is sort of a misdirect or whether it actually is real, whether somebody was actually committing the crime of destroying relevant documents rather than publicizing all of that.

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Meanwhile, speaking of legal matters, President Trump announced a little bit earlier this week that he wants to posthumously pardon baseball legend Pete Rose. He wrote in a Saturday Truth Social post, quote, Major League Baseball didn't have the courage or decency to put the late great Pete Rose, also known as Charlie Hustle, into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now he's dead.

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We'll never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a far better player than most of those who made it and can only be named posthumously. What a shame. And he said that he will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn't have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning. He never bet against himself or the other team.

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He had the most hits by far in baseball history and won more games than anyone in sports history, said Trump. Now, it's not really clear what he'd be pardoned for, Pete Rose, because he was never convicted of betting as a sort of criminal matter. He pled guilty to filing a faulty tax return in 1990 and did five months in prison. So it's not sure what exactly the pardon would be.

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And whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame, I think, is sort of an open question at this point, given the fact that there are so many terrible people in the Hall of Fame. However, there was an ironclad rule in Major League Baseball that you should not bet on baseball. He did, in fact, bet on baseball.

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And so the ban seems largely justified to me, despite the fact that I'm actually kind of a Pete Rose fan. If we are issuing pardons, however, there is one person that President Trump should pardon from federal charges forthwith. It would be incredibly controversial, but I think that it's absolutely necessary. That person is Derek Chauvin. President Trump should, in fact, pardon Derek Chauvin.

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He should. He should pardon him his federal charges. If we are talking about reversing the evils of the last several years in American life, obviously COVID and its handling was a massive evil, destroyed the economy, set us on a path to fiscal insanity, destroyed children, led to massive health-related coverups, just horrifying all the way around.

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And President Trump has taken on a lot of those things. But when it came to BLM, the inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America's race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

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The evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not, in fact, commit murder of George Floyd. George Floyd was high on fentanyl. He had a significant pre-existing heart condition. George Floyd was saying he could not breathe before he was even out of the car. He was in the car saying he could not breathe.

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Derek Chauvin, for a large segment of even the tape that was shown, had his knee on George Floyd's shoulder or back, not on his neck. The autopsy of George Floyd showed that he had no damage to his trachea, that probably George Floyd died of excited delirium.

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There were no accusations, even at trial, that Derek Chauvin had committed a hate crime against George Floyd or that he targeted George Floyd because of his race. Nonetheless, on the basis of extraordinarily scanty evidence, and despite the fact that there was massive pressure on the jury, that the mayor of Minneapolis paid a settlement to the George Floyd family immediately,

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that the president of the United States suggested that Derek Chauvin was guilty right off the bat, that the jurors were being openly threatened and admitted as much. Despite all of that, Derek Chauvin was convicted on federal charges and pled guilty to federal charges. Derek Chauvin should, in fact, be pardoned on that.

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We will be covering that a lot more in coming weeks because I think it is worthwhile to remember that there is a man who is rotting in prison because the media decided in the middle of 2020 that they were going to turn

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A tragic law enforcement stop that ended with the death of a man who had a significant problem with drugs and pre-existing health problems into the raison d'etre of the entire 2020 election. And it led to vast chaos.

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It led to, again, the destruction of racial comedy in the United States, $2 billion in property damage, and a guy rotting in prison who the evidence demonstrates certainly was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in that case. If we're going to talk about delivering pardons, President Trump, I think, should really seriously consider pardoning.

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on federal charges, he can't pardon on state charges, Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd. As I say, we will be covering this pretty extensively in the coming weeks. Right now, you should go to pardonderek.com and sign our petition asking President Trump to grant justice to Officer Derek Chauvin. That is pardon, P-A-R-D-O-N, Derek.com, P-A-R-D-O-N-D-E-R-E-K.com.

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We're gonna be digging into this topic on the show in the very, very near future. All right, guys, coming up, we are going to delve into the Ben Shapiro Show mailbag. Now, remember, you have to be a subscriber to actually have your questions answered. And I will give you the greatest advice you have ever had in your entire life.

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You will tell your grandchildren about the moment that your question was answered on the Ben Shapiro Show. It will be on your tombstone. But you're never going to have that pleasure if you're not a member. You need to become a member and use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Again, this is a big win for President Trump. It follows on a commitment by TSMC to build a chip factory in Arizona for $12 billion back in 2020. President Trump said if they did the chips in Taiwan to send them here, they would have a 25% or 30% or 50% tariff. It'll only go up. By doing it here, there are no tariffs. So the company is now planning to spend a total of $165 billion on its U.S.

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factories. Now, that is good for a couple of reasons. That is good, number one, obviously, because it creates jobs in the United States. It is also good because it diversifies the sources of semiconductors. If, God forbid, the Chinese were to blockade Taiwan...

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and it's three years from now, presumably TSMC would have set up chip manufacturing facilities in the United States sufficient to prevent the Chinese from essentially shutting down the world economy. That is a major issue. Semiconductors are the new oil. Lack of semiconductors can shut down entire massive industries in the United States.

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Everything from your phone to your car to your refrigerator runs on semiconductors. And so were China to grab control of TSMC in Taiwan, it would be a world catastrophe. Diversifying that resource inside the United States is of course a good move for the United States. It also happens to be a good move for TSMC for a couple of reasons.

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One, it means that the United States is now invested in making sure that TSMC is not victimized by the Chinese in Taiwan. President Trump would love to see all of this investment move from TSMC in Taiwan to the United States. But if TSMC in Taiwan stops existing, it's very hard for that money to make the move. And two, Again, when it comes to U.S.

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In any case, President Trump is going to be saying a lot of things according to his truth social quote, all caps, tomorrow night will be big. I will tell it like it is. Well, I mean, I think we're pretty used to that. So it'll be interesting to see what exactly that encompasses. But there is a lot happening. Most of it good. Some of it dicey, a lot of it risky.

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domestic production of resources that are actually crucial national security industries, it makes sense to subsidize that production in the United States, to reshore it in the United States.

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Since the Biden administration, the United States has expressed concerns about TSMC's near monopoly on advanced chip manufacturing and has been urging the company to relocate more of its cutting edge production, including advanced chip packaging facilities to the United States. The U.S. supported TSMC's growth through the 2022 Chips Act. That was a giant subsidy act by the Biden administration.

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Now, one of the problems is that it's going to take a while for these factories to come online. It is not as though the money comes in and magically TSMC is up and running in the United States, in Arizona, the same way it is up and running in Taiwan. But looking down the road, the production of these semiconductors can be incredibly important.

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And again, domestic chip manufacturing capacity is a national security imperative. So that makes a lot of sense. Trump said on the campaign trail, quote, Taiwan pretty much has a monopoly on that market. We must be able to build the chips and semiconductors we need right here in American factories with American skill and American labor. And that's exactly what we are doing.

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This, of course, follows very hard. on the building of other gigantic AI-based facilities by, for example, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. You remember just last month, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle, and SoftBank pledged to invest as much as $500 billion into building AI infrastructure in the United States.

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Last week, Apple said it planned to spend more than $500 billion and add 20,000 jobs over the next four years domestically to expand its own manufacturing footprint in the United States. Now, the reality is Apple was already doing some of this. Apple was already building its domestic manufacturing base, but it gives a win to President Trump, which is a smart piece of politicking by Apple.

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That's the good news. The bad news yesterday is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped massively on news that President Trump was interested in reinstating all of these 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 1.5%. At one point, it was down 750 points. It closed down about 650 points.

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And there's a lot of angst, a lot of heartburn over President Trump's announcement about tariffs. According to the Associated Press, President Trump said the 25% tax on imports from Mexico and Canada would start Tuesday, sparking renewed fears of a North American trade war that already showed signs of pushing inflation up and hindering growth.

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And this is where President Trump does have to walk very carefully. Inflation killed Joe Biden's presidency. If you wish to see President Trump be successful, he needs a booming economy. He cannot have a recessionary economy.

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If tariffs continue to drive up prices, and if wages do not increase sufficient to meet those prices, you're going to be in exactly the same predicament in which Joe Biden found himself. Now, again, I'm perfectly fine with using tariffs as leverage.

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If the goal of a tariff is to get other countries to lower their own tariffs, if the idea is you have a 25% tariff on our lumber, and now we have to put a 25% tariff on your oil products, and then we trade one for the other and all the tariffs go away, I'm perfectly fine with that.

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If the idea of a tariff is to threaten, say, the country of Colombia with a 50% tariff in order to get them to take deportees, great. That is a piece of leverage. I still am unclear as to what the actual demand is against Mexico or Canada that would get rid of the tariffs. If the idea of the tariffs is that they are inherently a good for the United States, That is not true.

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I think we are all invested in the success of the Trump administration. We should be. As Americans, we should be invested in President Trump being a wild success in the economy going up and to the right, in immigration going down, illegal immigration going down, in world security getting stronger.

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Tariffs are, in fact, a tax on American consumers. They drive up the prices. President Trump is playing a bit of a risky game when it comes to tariffs. A lot of uncertainty in the markets already, and smart investors prepare ahead of time, just like keeping a life jacket handy before setting sail.

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That's why many people are adding gold to their portfolios, leading to record gold prices in early 2025. There's still a great opportunity for you to diversify and strengthen your financial future. When it comes to diversifying into physical gold, I personally trust my friends over at Birch Gold. They're the people I turn to for my own gold investments. Their specialty?

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Thank you so much for joining us. to the number 989898. There's no obligation, just useful information. With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and countless five-star reviews, text Ben to 989898. Let the experts at Birch Gold help you secure your future today with gold. Yeah, and text Ben to 989898 and talk to my friends over at Birch Gold.

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Ask all of your questions, and then when you feel secure, diversify at least a little bit into precious metals, my friends over at Birch Gold. Also, Securing your family's future is really, really important in today's world. As somebody who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you right now, having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind.

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It's about giving your family options if, God forbid, something terrible should happen. That's why I want to tell you about Policy Genius. They're not an insurance company themselves. They are the country's leading online insurance marketplace. They let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side, completely free, with absolutely no hidden fees.

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Their licensed support team handles everything, answering your questions, managing paperwork, advocating for you throughout the entire process. And don't just take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation.

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We should be invested in all of these things because, after all, we are all invested in a better America for everyone. And again, on many of these things, President Trump's... Mere presence in the White House has changed things radically, most obviously with regard to illegal immigration. So this was Trump's raison d'etre. This is the reason he entered politics in the first place in 2015, 2016.

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Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today. head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro, or click that link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

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Now, again, there may be industries, like for example, semiconductors, where you need them produced domestically for national security reasons. It simply can't be produced in China or in any place that is subject to Chinese predation. I get that, and I'm all for it.

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It is another thing to say that Canada is some sort of deep and abiding national security threat requiring widespread 25% tariffs on Canadian product. Canada, by the way, is the number one trade partner with the United States. Here was President Trump yesterday saying there's no room left for negotiation. I wasn't even aware there were negotiations going on.

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Now, again, I just want to know why. Like, well, what are we getting out of this? As American consumers, what do we receive from the tariffs? I understand the theory, which is that there are going to be a lot of companies that reshore inside the United States. And it's true. There will be jobs in those industries.

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But the thing about tariffs is that they have a discrete beneficiary and they have diffuse victims. In other words, there's a group of people who benefit from the tariffs and everyone else pays. It is essentially a subsidy from every other consumer in the United States to people in those industries that are now going to be making more money.

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And that is what a tariff actually does, which is why yesterday Warren Buffett was criticizing tariffs as a general matter.

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And Buffett knows of what he speaks. The Canadian foreign minister already said, quote, if Trump is imposing tariffs, we're ready. We're ready with $155 billion worth of tariffs and we're ready with the first tranche of tariffs, which is $30 billion. Again, that would be the Canadian foreign minister, Melange Jolie.

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She also said that Canada has a very strong border plan and explained that to Trump officials last week. He said diplomatic efforts are continuing. So again, if this is, again, just another gambit by President Trump to get a win out of Canada, that's fine with me. If, however, this goes back to President Trump's sort of general warmth for tariffs, that's not good policy. It just isn't.

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The idea, by the way, that tariffs are going to pay off the national debt, that's nonsense. The amount that tariffs paid last year was only $80 billion. The national debt in the United States is $37 trillion. So yeah, that is not going to work. There will be some good headlines that emerge.

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So, for example, Honda is now going to produce the next Civic in Indiana, not Mexico, apparently due to US tariffs. This is according to Reuters. The change underscores how manufacturers are scrambling to adapt President Trump's proposed 25% tariffs on goods from both Mexico and Canada. This is the first concrete measure by a major Japanese car company. Now, again...

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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It is now a decade later, and President Trump is doing the thing that Democrats said was impossible. They said without a giant piece of legislation from Congress, there was in fact no way to bring down the rates of illegal immigration. And then it turns out all it took was a president who says he's going to deport illegal immigrants and the rates of illegal immigration drop effectively to zero.

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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That's going to be good for the people who are living in Indiana who get to work at the factories that are making the Honda Civic. It's not necessarily going to be good for all the American consumers who are now going to be paying more money for the Honda Civic, which is presumably what is going to happen here. The prices are going to go up.

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Mexico has long been a lower-cost production hub for Japanese and other global automakers. So reshoring, it does have costs, and we should recognize those costs, which should be realistic about the prospects of the Trump economy. And again, we need a strong economy from President Trump. There are some blinking red lights here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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I've been saying for several weeks at this point, really since President Trump took office, that the number one focus of the Trump administration has to be to get the economy back on track. What does that mean? It means productivity increases, yes, through things like AI, but it also means, it also means radical deregulation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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Doge has been focused up till now on getting rid of much of the personnel at a wide variety of government agencies. That's all fine. That's all great. I'm glad to get rid of those personnel, although Democrats will just rehire them as soon as they regain power at some point.

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Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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What really needs to change is the regulatory and tax structure of the United States, which is why it's very important that Trump's tax cuts become permanent. It's really important that the regulatory state get off the back of the American business person. Right now, the models that are being utilized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are showing economic contraction in the first quarter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now model had up until the February 28th update been forecasting growth between 2% and 4% in line with other models. However, a graph on the GPN Now page lists the blue-chip consensus average of the top 10 and bottom 10 forecasts at a slight tick more than 2% U.S. GDP growth for Q1 2025.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2150 - Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge

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But the February 28th update of GDP Now saw a plummeting forecast from roughly that same 2-plus percent to negative 1.5%. The model updated Monday with an even more pessimistic outlook, negative 2.8%. Those are mathematical models. Now, again, that could be totally wrong. However...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, President Trump's leverage play continues to work. Canada has now caved. President Trump tried to push a 25% tariff against Canada. Canada immediately suggested that they were going to tariff American goods. That would have been much worse for them than for us in any trade war between the United States and Canada. Canada is going to lose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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He's the president of the United States. President Trump can appoint Secretary Rubio, the head of USAID. These are executive branch agencies. The way an executive branch agency works is everyone serves at the pleasure of the president of the United States.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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That doesn't mean the president can violate statute, but he's not violating statute when he puts his own people in place at these agencies to ensure that his priorities are enacted via the statute. Now, if you don't like that, there's a way that this could have been avoided. And that would have been not to create a massive administrative bureaucracy since the beginning of the 20th century.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The Democrats, in other words, centralized extraordinary power over the course of a century and a half in the executive branch. And now they're just mad that the person in charge of the executive branch is using that power to carve away all of their permanent substructures. What we are watching is a sea change in the way that government is done.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Not because Donald Trump is, quote unquote, dictatorial or authoritarian, but because he is using precisely the same power every Democrat has used in order to carve away the permanent root of the Democratic Party.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Again, all these programs at USAID, not all, most of these programs at USAID are boondoggles that are designed to help out Democratic allies and promote Democrat blue priorities, even when they're not in the government.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Again, the United States, if we need those sorts of materials, can go elsewhere for those sorts of materials. There's not a lot of sting in these Chinese retaliatory measures. So the notion that this is going to radically alter the American economy in any way is unlikely. Prices will go up in certain areas of the American economy, but unlike tariffs on, say, Mexico or Canada,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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You want to look at something that is the definition of the deep state, a continuing, never-changing bureaucracy that consistently floods taxpayer money to a bunch of allies of the Democratic Party. And Trump is saying, no, we are not going to do that. Here's President Trump backing Elon Musk's program here and saying, listen, he's good at cutting things. That's why he's there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Again, notice some of the things that Trump is saying there. He's saying, listen, if Musk proposes a cut and we don't want to do it, we just won't do it. And we think that Musk is conflicted out on a particular issue. He won't be involved. Right. He's saying Musk works for me. I'm the president. Musk is not the president. And he works for me and he's doing good work and he's cutting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And if that means some things get broken that we then have to patch back up, then that's what it will be. Marco Rubio put out a note to senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers and quote, the Department of State and other pertinent entities will be consulting with Congress and the appropriate committees to reorganize and absorb certain bureaus, offices and missions of the USAID.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The White House put out a statement saying, quote, under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ends right now. Now, again, Rubio has put in charge a person named Peter Morocco, who's the head of the State Department's Foreign Assistance Office, and also an unnamed person expected to be the USAID's deputy administrator to review agency activities and operations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The review could eliminate certain aid programs or lead to the closure of certain missions around the world. But many of these programs will indeed remain. In fact, some of the humanitarian programs are already being preserved by the Trump administration. So this idea that all of this is simply going away is not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Many of the programs are going to remain if they are useful to the United States. But there are many things that are not useful to the United States, and there is no reason we should be funding them. So the turmoil, in other words, you cannot shrink an agency that is a permanent part of the political substructure without turmoil. That's just the way this is going to work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Now, Democrats are freaking out about all of this. Atul Gawande, who, of course, is an American surgeon, writer, and sort of a famous Harvard professor, and who has worked pretty closely with USAID. He put out a statement via Jen Griffin over at Fox News saying, quote, this is a gift to our enemies and competitors. This pause is not a pause. It's a destruction of the agency.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Two weeks ago, I was combating diseases. We had 21 serious outbreaks at the time worldwide. Three are serious now, an Ebola outbreak in the capital of Uganda. Bird flu has broken out in 49 countries. Our efforts to contain them have all been shut down. We were on the verge of ending HIV, TB, and malaria that has all ended with this pause. It is a gift to our enemies and competitors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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We're funding demining operations in Vietnam to allow farmers to get back to their fields so people can farm. Now, here's the thing. Do you think that all of these things are going to go away? Do you think Marco Rubio wants headlines or Trump wants headlines about how AIDS spikes in Africa because USAID funding has ended? I have a feeling that Trump doesn't actually want those headlines.

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where Mexico and Canada, Canada's an ally, and Mexico's at least titularly an ally. China is an actual geopolitical enemy of the United States. And so actually having a trade war with China, even if it does some economic damage to the United States, will do much worse economic damage to China. Will President Trump get some sort of concessions that allow him to walk back the tariffs?

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So what is this going to be in the end? It's going to be the same as all the other Trump programs. It's going to be designed to achieve victories and to minimize defeats and costs. He is utilitarian. Everyone seems to be making the mistake.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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at every aspect of this administration, that Donald Trump is some sort of ideologue, that he's going to do tariffs, not because he actually wants to pry concessions out of America's opponents or out of America's erstwhile allies, but that he's doing tariffs because he's ideologically wedded to tariffs and he will ride that bomb all the way down into the ground like Rip Torn in Dr. Strangelove.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, that's not the way he works. And the same thing is true of USAID and the same thing is true of everything else. President Trump is seeking victories and he's seeking to minimize defeats. President Trump's winning continues. But in order for you to win at life, you have to plan. Securing your family's future is of utmost importance in today's world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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As someone who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind. It's about giving your family some options if the unexpected occurs. That's what I want to tell you about Policy Genius. They're not an insurance company themselves. They are the country's leading online insurance marketplace.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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They let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side, completely free, absolutely no hidden fees. Their platform uses real licensed insurance experts who work for you, not the insurance companies. You can find the best fit for your family. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policy starting at just 292 bucks per year for a million dollars in coverage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Some options are 100% online and let you avoid those unnecessary medical exams. The process is fast and simple. Their licensed support team handles everything, answering questions, managing paperwork, advocating for you throughout the entire process. Don't just take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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No matter what stage of life you're in, PolicyGenius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation. Secure your families tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today. Head on over to PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description. Get your free life insurance quotes. See how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Also, after launching The Daily Wire, we knew the frustration of getting trapped in endless busy work, chasing down receipts, wrestling with expense reports. So as a business owner, if you feel like your finance software isn't cutting it, Let me tell you about something that's completely transformed how you and your business can actually handle finances.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Here's what makes Ramp different. You can issue cards to every employee with custom limits and restrictions while their intelligent software automatically collects receipts and categorizes expenses in real time. No more end of month chaos.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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In fact, businesses using Ramp close their books eight times faster. Here's the best part. Ramp users save an average of 5% in their first year alone. Plus, getting started is incredibly simple. In just 15 minutes, you can set up your account, start issuing virtual and physical cards, whether you have five employees or 5,000. And now, get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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That's ramp.com slash Shapiro. R-A-M-P dot com slash Shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions do apply. Again, that's ramp.com slash Shapiro to get started. The caterwauling. from the left, is not about the loss of HIV programs in Africa. That is not what this is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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It is about the fact that the plaything of the permanent Democratic Party, the administrative bureaucracy they built and have lavished with trillions of dollars over the course of decades, is now being destroyed. redone by the Trump administration, and they are freaking out about it. And I got to tell you, when some of the worst people freak out about a thing, I tend to like the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So for example, Representative Ilhan Omar, she was out there yesterday complaining about the cuts to USAID. And all I can say is if Ilhan Omar is against it, I'm for it.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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We'll find out, but they're going to have to be some pretty significant concessions. And President Trump is moving faster than any president of my lifetime to do things. It is astonishing. Astonishing. I've never seen an administration move this quickly to do as many different things as the Trump administration is doing right now. Whether you're talking about walking back support for the UNRWA,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, you know who put Donald Trump in charge of the executive branch of the government? We had an election. And Trump won. And now a bunch of people who work for Trump are doing the things that Trump wants them to do inside the executive branch of government. You know who USAID does not actually work for is Ilhan Omar. Ilhan Omar is part of the legislative branch.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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That legislative branch approves budgets. And then when it comes to the actual spending on these particular projects, that happens in the executive branch, where the president and secretary of state have enormous authority because... Marco Rubio was confirmed and Donald Trump was elected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Ripping on Elon for being Trump's hatchet man is just a way of avoiding the reality, which is you lost the election. You lost. And the reason you're really angry is not, of course, because Donald Trump is making cuts to USAID. What you're really angry about is that the thing you guys have counted on forever, an endless funnel, fire hose, gushing, damn breaking river of money is now being stopped.

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from going to your friends while you are out of power. That's why you're really, really angry. Democratic Representative Johnny Olszewski of Maryland, he's trying to make the claim. It's hilarious. They know that most Americans don't actually want to spend the money that USAID is talking about spending, and they don't like these projects. So what is he saying?

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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He's saying, well, actually, if they come after USAID, what will they come after next? They're going to come after your freedom. I'm going to need a logic here that connects, cuts to USAID to, quote, unquote, your freedoms.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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OK, first of all, I do love the fact that Democrats label Social Security a freedom when it is actually an entitlement. Second of all, Donald Trump is not touching entitlements. He has said this over and over and over again. In fact, he's trying to save money abroad so he can spend the money at home. Chuck Schumer had, I think, the funniest take. He's like, oh no, what if they shut down the IRS?

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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I don't know. What if they shut down the IRS, Chuck? I mean, obviously the American people do love the IRS. If there's one agency of the American government that the people just adore, it is the Internal Revenue Service that audits their restaurant receipts.

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whether you're talking about ending support nationwide for the transing of the children, whether you are talking about ending DEI initiatives all over the country, whether you're talking about reconstituting the Defense Department. By the way, recruitment immediately has skyrocketed since the appointment of Pete Hegseth to Secretary of Defense.

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Not ours. Not the IRS. No, that would be terrible. Meanwhile, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. I do love when Democrats scream and cry about constitutional crises after they literally located all power in the executive branch and cheered as Joe Biden violated the Constitution repeatedly. Now they're very upset about the Constitution.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Again, Elon Musk works for, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, the president of the United States who was elected. He was elected. And he actually has pretty significant plenary power over the defense of the United States. That is one of the things that is most located inside the executive branch, Chris Murphy. Meanwhile, Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey doing the same routine.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So outraged, so outraged. He's saying, I wanted to get in the USAID building and I couldn't. They wouldn't let me in. Well, I have a question. Do you work for the executive branch? Because I noticed that you are a senator.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Instead, Justin Trudeau has bent the knee to President Trump. He announced that Canada would appoint a fentanyl czar, list cartels as terrorists, and launch a joint strike force with the United States to combat organized crime, fentanyl trafficking, and money laundering. also announced that he would be deploying 10,000 personnel to the northern border as well.

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Well, I mean, they actually work inside the executive branch. If your boss doesn't want you there, you don't work there anymore. The real reason for this, the gravy train has stopped flowing.

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Now, meanwhile, hilariously, the federal government, as we know, put out a notice, an email to federal employees, millions of federal employees saying to them, listen, if you want to come into work, you want to work for the president's agenda, you want to be a member of the executive branch, great. We'd love to have you. If not, here's a buyout offer that pays you until September.

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We're talking about getting wins at the Panama Canal, where the Panamanian government has now announced it is not going to take place in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative anymore. This administration is pushing so hard, so fast on so many fronts. that it's very, very difficult for any opposition to truly form around any one issue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Apparently, according to Axios, about 20,000 federal workers have taken the buyout offer. That is about 1% of the federal workforce. The White House is targeting 5% to 10%. The offer is open through Thursday. So it could rise, despite the unions attempting to sort of cudgel everybody to stay. The official... According to Axios, we expect more to come.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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If you see what's happening at USAID, it's just one piece of the puzzle. In other words, many of these people are going to lose their jobs anyway. So either take the buyout or you may find yourself on the breadline regardless. The buyout offer entitles federal employees to stop working immediately and continue to be paid through September 30th.

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The federal workforce's normal attrition rate is about 6% a year. So perhaps some of those people were meaning to leave anyway. But again, people are quitting because they are seeing that the cuts are coming with the chainsaw. Speaking of which...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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According to Politico, President Trump is about to finalize an executive order to shutter the Department of Education, which has been a longtime Republican goal. Again, one of the things about Trump that is truly an amazing, amazing thing. There's so many promises that various politicians have made for decades.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Ronald Reagan pledged to shut down the Department of Education in the 1980s, like about the time I was a baby. And Donald Trump is actually trying to do it. He's actually taking seriously the promises that he made to the American people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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According to Politico, the Trump administration is finalizing plans to dismantle the education department through an executive order that would build on the president's campaign promise to hammer the longtime conservative target. The order was expected to lay out a two-part strategy for shuttering the agency, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It would direct the department to craft a plan to wind down its functions using its existing administrative authority. But the order was also expected to call for the agency to inventory a complex set of laws needed to delegate the department's powers to other agencies and then shut down the department.

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So, in other words, many of the functions of the DOE would move outside the DOE, but the department itself would be shut down. That would require some sort of legislative help, presumably. According to a third person granted anonymity, representatives from Doge are already working at the Education Department headquarters and seeking access to agency records.

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So, again, right now, Linda McMahon is up for Secretary of Education. There will be a Senate confirmation hearing. One of the sort of open strategy questions here is whether it would have been better to wait until she was confirmed in order to actually do this sort of thing.

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With that said, the fact that Trump is taking this so seriously is yet another indicator that he was serious about the things that he was promising. What exactly does the Department of Education do? Well, it's number one spending priority in fiscal year 2024, according to USAFacts.org. The U.S. Department of Education spent about $161 billion on federal student aid.

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The best the Democrats have done so far is trying to mobilize around the end of USAID. Now, USAID. is an agency that was originally brought into being by foreign aid initiatives of Congress and then put into power by an executive order by JFK all the way back during the middle of the Cold War. And USAID, which is designed originally, the U.S.

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So that would be, you know, like Pell Grants and paying for people to get their degrees in lesbian dance theory and all the rest. Another $83 billion was spent on elementary and secondary education, which are basically block grants that are given to various states. Now, education should be a local consideration. Education should be controlled by the state, by localities, by local school board.

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Ideally, we'd have vouchers so people can actually, you know, go to the school that they want to go to. There is no question the Department of Education is yet another gravy train for the left, one of the biggest gravy trains in America. The university system is a giant apparatchik for the left-producing machine.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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It is a giant machine designed to churn out left-wingers with worthless diplomas unless you're in the STEM fields. That is what it is designed to do. And by the way, if you're in the STEM fields, you can certainly get a private loan to study engineering at MIT.

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The reality that the reason Democrats are very, very in love with these agencies is, again, because they are permanent structures that are designed to pay all of their friends. Some of the biggest graft agencies in the history of mankind are happening via the Department of Education.

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Speaking of the education, higher education, by the way, a group representing white and Asian high school and college students filed a complaint Monday in federal court against the University of California, claiming that nine of its campuses are still using racial preferences in admissions in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws. And that is almost certainly true.

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Many of these universities have vowed that they would essentially do affirmative action under another name. And now the lawsuits are coming fast and furious.

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The best way to stop all of that is to make Linda McMahon the Secretary of Education and allow her to go to work and to unleash Harmeet Dhillon over at the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ to go after all of these universities that are acting in violation of law. I have no doubt that all of that is going to happen. All right, coming up, the cuts don't stop there.

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It's February, which means the usual crowd is claiming we don't do anything for Black History Month, which is complete nonsense. We literally have the number one documentary of the decade covering race in America. It's called Am I Racist? It was the surprise box office hit of the year. And shocker, it's not exactly what the left was looking for.

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Now exclusively on Daily Wire Plus, we're pulling back the curtain with The Making of Am I Racist, where Matt Walsh, director Justin Folk, and the team show how it all came together. Watch it now at dailywire.com. And meanwhile, the cuts don't just stop at the Department of Education or USAID. Scott Besant.

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who is the new Treasury Secretary, is ordering a freeze at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was always Elizabeth Warren's baby. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is basically just a way of blackmailing various businesses with regulatory oversight. That's what it always was. It is independently funded, so it actually does not even come from the legislature.

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The legislature does not appoint separate funding. This is actually the subject of the Supreme Court case. The question was whether it violated the separation of powers for Congress to set up a mechanism that was then funded directly from the Federal Reserve, which is how the CFPB works.

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Well, the only problem, again, Democrats, if you put all the power in the executive branch, what happens if people you don't like take over the executive branch? Well, now you're finding out You did all of this in the assumption that even if a Republican was elected, the Republican would never touch your precious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, it turns out the Republicans are touching all of the things that you built and they are taking control of those levers and using them in ways you didn't like. And this is the story of Lord of the Rings. If you don't want somebody you don't like controlling the ring, don't create the ring in the first place.

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But Democrats created it and now they're very upset that the powers of the ring are being used by people they don't particularly like. Well, now, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has ordered a freeze to work at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.

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In an internal email on Monday, Besson's office directed CFPB staff to cease much of the Bureau's work, including enforcement actions and decisions about active litigation. The email directs staff to suspend the effective dates for rules that had been completed but aren't yet in effect.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Besson's appointment is the beginning of what is expected to be a rollback of many of the agency's actions under the Biden administration, which included rules capping overdraft fees and banning the use of medical debt by credit reporting companies. Biden appointee Rohit Chopra was ousted on Friday. Trump hasn't named a candidate to lead the CFPB on a permanent basis yet.

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Agency for International Development, which was designed essentially as a way of spreading America's foreign policy tentacles all over the world. I mean, that was the explicit purpose. It wasn't just to do nice things. It was to do nice things and also to support countries institutions in various countries that were going to be a bulwark against communism. That's what USAID was for.

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But Besant is looking forward to getting rid of the dead wood at the CFPB, which again has become a left-wing organization designed to hinder business in the United States. Senator Ted Cruz said last week that he would advance a proposal to cut the CFPB's funding entirely, which would effectively kill the bureau.

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Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who built this thing, this is her legacy, aside from her legacy of wigwams and teepees, she said, quote, if President Trump and the Republicans decide they're just going to bend the knee to Wall Street billionaires and try to destroy that agency, they're going to have a fight on their hands. Well, they don't have to have a fight on their hands.

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Remember, Elizabeth, you're the one who set it up so it's independently funded outside the legislature. All that has to happen is Scott Bessing comes in and just freezes everything. Congrats to you. Genius level stuff happening over at the Congress of the United States.

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And again, because Trump is moving so fast, it is very, very difficult for Democrats to consolidate around any one line of argumentation. And meanwhile, President Trump welcomed his first foreign leader to the White House yesterday. That first foreign leader is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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There are all sorts of outstanding issues that the United States and Israel are working through. Those include the currently ongoing hostage deal with Hamas that eventually is going to come to an end. There is no way that Hamas can be allowed to run the Gaza Strip. That is not me saying that. That is Secretary of State Rubio. That is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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That is National Security Advisor Mike Walz. The entire leadership of the United States knows that this is not a real possibility, which means Israel will, in fact, have to go back in Other outstanding issues obviously include the possibility of a Saudi deal and what happens with Iran.

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New information suggests that Iran, of course, is trying to race toward a bomb, figuring that they're on their last legs, that regime, and that the Trump administration is not going to be handing them pallets of cash worth billions of dollars, unlike the Biden or Obama administrations. They're rushing toward a cheaper, uglier form of the nuclear bomb.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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According to the New York Times, new intelligence about Iran's nuclear program has convinced American officials a secret team of the country's scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran's leadership decides to race for a bomb.

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The intelligence was collected in the last months of the Biden administration and relayed to President Trump's national security team during the transition of power. Now, the reality, again, is that effectively a single sortie of airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would end their nuclear program for the moment for a significant period of time. They have no air defenses.

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It turns out that all of their proxies are unbelievably weak. Israel completely destroyed Hezbollah's capacity to make forward war at minimum cost to itself. Israel hit Hezbollah so hard that its ally Assad fell in Syria. Hamas is no longer an offensive powerhouse. The Houthis have been largely quieted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Israel is doing heavy work in Judea and Samaria to shut down Iranian proxies in places like Janina Nablus. And so what that means is that Iran is uniquely vulnerable to things like an airstrike right now. All that the United States really has to do is give Israel the weaponry and get out of the way. And that would basically end the threat of an Iranian nuclear program for the moment.

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And since the end of the Cold War, USAID has been transformed into trans pride flags in Africa. USAID has been turned into boondoggle projects that are designed to pay millions or billions of dollars to left-wing NGOs, both in the United States and outside the United States, and keep up an entire employment line. for people who are out of power.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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As the New York Times points out, Iran has never been weaker than it is today in the view of American and Israeli officials. Hamas and Hezbollah have lost their leadership and their ability to strike Israel. Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad has fled to Moscow. His country is no longer an easy route for Iranian weaponry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Apparently, Trump is indicating he's in no hurry to get into a direct conflict with Iran and is open to a negotiation. But the question is going to be what that negotiation looks like. I don't believe that President Trump is going to give away the store the same way that Biden and Obama were going to.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And what verification measures could actually be taken to keep Iran from diving for a nuclear weapon? The Saudis certainly don't want it. And the Saudis are another American ally, aside from Israel, that the Trump administration is quite close with.

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It seems like the precondition for any sort of actual Abraham Accord deal between the Saudis and the Israelis is largely dependent on a forward move against the Iranian nuclear facilities. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. President Trump yesterday gave a nice little geographic disquisition on the state of the Middle East. Here he was.

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He's right about that, obviously. President Trump told reporters, I have no assurances that the Gaza truce will hold. I have no guarantees the peace is going to hold, which, of course, is exactly correct. It is not America's job to ensure that, quote unquote, the peace holds. It's America's job to ensure that American hostages get out.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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It's America's job to ensure that its allies have the wherewithal to destroy Gaza. terror threats. That's all good for the United States. And President Trump, I believe, is going to do all of those things and more. Okay, meanwhile, the catastrophic fallout continues in California from those devastating wildfires, the most damaging wildfires in American history.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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I had the opportunity to sit down with my friend Adam Carolla to talk about all of that. Here's what it sounded like. All right, well, Adam, you escaped California, but only after half the state burned down. I mean, you can't say that you weren't mourned, since I did warn you many, many times that this was going to happen.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And not that I'm a prophet or anything, but plagues were unleashed upon the state of California. But it's a pretty serious topic, obviously. You've been really vocal about the failings of the California state government. First of all, what's it like on the ground over there right now?

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So when Republicans are in power, USAID is still paying a bunch of blue organizations to keep the trains running on time and to make sure that the money continues to flow to various organizations abroad that are willing to spread social leftism, not just anti-Chinese or anti-Russian,

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Well, what's been the reaction of people in California to this? I mean, they voted for this. I mean, not for the fire, but for all the policies that lead to the exacerbation of fire, to the failures of the local government, to the failures of the state government. Has there been any sort of great awakening happening in California over this?

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or anti-America's enemies moves, as you might expect if you were pursuing actual hard-nosed American foreign policy. Again, soft power can be a very good thing. The idea of USAID is not wrong.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Yeah, well, I think that's one of the great ironies is suddenly Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are turning into Republicans, apparently the emergency waivers. Now you don't have to wait. We have to build as fast as possible. And the question is, well, why? I mean, if it was good policy in the first place, what made a bad policy all of a sudden? And the answer is there was always bad policy.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Yeah, it's just there was no cost of bad policy because they were actually helping a small coterie of environmental activists at the expense of everybody else. And everybody else was basically complacent enough to let them get away with it.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The idea that you want to find non-governmental organizations in, for example, countries that are teetering between China and the United States and support those non-governmental organizations to make that country more pro-America That's not a bad idea. The problem is that the USAID infrastructure has been hijacked by the radical left.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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John, on a personal level, how long do you have to be out of your house? Because it's not obviously just a problem for people whose houses were lost. The entire area, as you say, now charred.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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This is a point that President Trump made yesterday slamming USAID and saying, listen, it didn't have to become a cutout for left wing ideology, but it did. And that's not my fault. That's your fault. The first term, though, USAID was something that you liked in some respects.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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How many people are actually going to end up going back? I mean, because there are going to be a lot of people. Number one, many of the actual insured values of the homes are not up to par with the actual value of the homes. I mean, people lost not just their homes. Many of these people, whether you're talking about the richest people or many who are not nearly as rich, lost...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Pretty much everything. And the fire insurance situation in California is a disaster area. So a lot of these people just don't have the money to rebuild. Many of them are going to say, why do I want to take five, 10 years to rebuild in Malibu? And I can just take my money and go somewhere else. How many of these people do you think just leave?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Yeah. So it seems to me that you have two choices. I mean, you have your house there, but you may never go back to depending on what the California Coastal Commission has to say. So you either have to run for mayor of L.A. yourself or you have to leave. These seem to me the two most obvious options. Which one is it, Adam?

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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We did that with the Supreme Court as it turns out, but yeah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So he is right about that. Again, the fact is that what the left has done with so many institutions, and USAID is just one of them, is taken the original purpose of the institution and then gutted it and worn the face around like Hannibal Lecter. That is exactly what they have done with the university systems in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, Adam, it's great to see you. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances that you're in Florida. But, you know, when when you return to the blighted land of my former home, then, you know, I hope that things are better for you there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So yesterday, as we talked about, Mexico caved and said that they would send 10,000 National Guard troops to America's southern border to police for fentanyl and to police for illegal immigration. And now Canada is doing the same. Instead, the sweeping tariffs that Trump was proposing have been put on hold for 30 days, presumably to reach a further agreement. Meanwhile, Beijing,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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They did it with the objective press in the United States, and they did it with USAID. USAID has been participating in so much waste and fraud over the course of time. As Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center points out, USAID has sent $9.3 billion to Islamic terror states collectively responsible for killing over 3,000 American soldiers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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There's an enormous number of terrible organizations supported by USAID. That was a point that was being made by Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. Here she was yesterday talking about examples of waste and abuse inside USAID.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Of course, she is totally right about all of that. Now, I will say that there is a wing of the Republican Party that wishes to use the fact that these institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted to basically go totally isolationist, which again, as I said yesterday, is a mistake. Two things can be true at once. USAID has become a totally corrupted institution.

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Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Also, that doesn't mean that the best strategy for the United States is to retreat from the world. entirely and simply grant that vacuum to, for example, the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians. With that said, Elon Musk, who had basically been put in temporary charge of the USAID, he said yesterday that there basically is nothing left at USAID that's worth saving.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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So the budget of USAID is somewhere between $40 and $50 billion. It is a very, very large governmental program. So when people say things like, well, it's only 1% of the American budget, that's true, but that's just because our budget is way, way, way too large. That doesn't mean we should be wasting tons of money on interests that are antithetical to American interests abroad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Again, the spreading of social leftism in America Zimbabwe should not be the goal of American foreign policy. Flying pride progress flags outside the Vatican should not be a goal of American foreign policy, and neither should supporting left-wing NGOs that are also supported by people like George Soros abroad. That is a bad use of taxpayer dollars.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Whether or not it is a waste of taxpayer dollars is actually secondary to the fact that it's counterproductive for American interests abroad. We should not be wasting tons of money. And you should not be giving all of your information to your internet service provider. See, here's the thing. Every time you hop on the internet, your service provider can see literally everything you do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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is attempting to figure out how to end around the tariffs that President Trump just put on them. He put a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. Beijing is hitting back by announcing a quote-unquote broad package of economic measures targeting the United States. The fresh duties were announced by China's Ministry of Finance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And get this, in the United States, they can legally sell your entire browsing history. Yeah, even that incognito browsing isn't so private after all. Who would have thought? That's why I started using ExpressVPN. It's this brilliant app that encrypts everything I do online and routes it through secure servers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

572.607

Since I started using it, my internet provider can't see any of my browsing history, which means they've got nothing to sell because they've got nothing on me. But here's what I really love about ExpressVPN. It also hides my IP address, so those annoying data brokers can't build a profile about me to sell to advertisers. Plus, it's incredibly user-friendly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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You don't have to be a tech wizard to use it. They've made it so simple, even your kids could figure it out. All you have to do is tap one button and get protected. They've got apps for all your devices. It's rated number one by CNET, The Verge, and other major tech reviewers. If you want to start taking your online privacy seriously, don't wait.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Use my special link to get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. That's ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. Again, ExpressVPN.com slash Ben to get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free. Also, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans. Taxes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

620.527

now that it's the new year and tax season is upon us are you prepared for what's coming next you owe back taxes are your tax returns still unfiled did you miss the deadline to file for an extension as we head into the busy tax season the irs may be ramping up enforcement let me tell you they don't play around you could face wage garnishments frozen bank accounts even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet but here's the good news there is still hope tax network usa has been in the game for years they know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

645.011

They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt, and they've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burden. So do not let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. So here's what you actually need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So what exactly happened here? Well, the president deployed Elon Musk and Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, to go into the headquarters. over at USAID and began digging through the personnel files and trying to figure out who was a waste of money, where was all the money going?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And the acting heads of USAID tried to resist, so President Trump fired them. Now, a bunch of people on the left are very, very upset about all of this. They're upset for a couple of reasons. One, they're upset because they actually like the Pride Progress flag being flown in far-flung African nations. with American taxpayer dollars. They want America funding abortion abroad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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They levy a 15% tax on certain types of coal and liquefied natural gas and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large displacement cars, and pickup trucks. Now, the problem with all of that is that China is not a massive consumer, for example, of American crude oil. We have plenty of markets all over the world that are perfectly willing to take our liquefied natural gas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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It's this sort of stuff that they are interested in. So number one, on an ideological level, they support precisely the things the American taxpayers don't want to do. But there's something else going on too. And that is USAID, like so many other federal government programs, is an absolute gravy train for Democratic allies. That's what it is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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It is a bunch of money that is being spent on various constituencies that Democrats cultivate and then use as the incoming State Department officials, for example, if Democrats win office. It is not a coincidence that so many Democrats, both elected and unelected, worked at places like USAID or places funded by USAID.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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This giant grab bag of cash, which has essentially become a handout mechanism for the left wing, Of course they're angry that it is going away or at least being radically minimized. So what happened?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Apparently on Sunday, two senior USAID officials were suspended for blocking Doge officials from a restricted area as after the agency's website went offline and Elon Musk posted to X that USAID was beyond repair and needed to be shut down. This is according to the UK Guardian, which of course is a very left-wing source from Great Britain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Well, now Marco Rubio has said that he is now the acting head of USAID, which of course makes sense. One of the kind of points that the Democrats were making is Elon Musk has never been appointed to a government position. He's sort of operating as an outside government advisor. He doesn't take a salary from the government. He doesn't work for the government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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We don't know if he has a security clearance. So instead, Secretary of State Rubio, who was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate, and of course has passed every security clearance and used to sit in the Senate, he says, listen, I'm the acting head of USAID now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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And we're going to go through and we're going to make sure that all of the priorities of this administration are aligned with the spending at USAID.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Okay, this is all perfectly obvious. And basically what President Trump did is he used Doge as the crowbar to pry open USAID. And then once all of the rot was spilling out into the hallway, then he said to Rubio, okay, you go in and you take all the rot and you clean it out. So... What Democrats are claiming is that USAID is going to be completely shut down. Of course, Musk had said that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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You don't have to shut down the agency in violation of statute in order to achieve the same purpose. You can simply clean it out, and that would be the best thing to do. Again, the strategy seems to be, from the administration, move fast and break things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Basically, all of these cuts, all of these attempts to bring a chainsaw to the party, that's exactly how Musk ran, for example, X. When Musk took over X, he fired pretty much everybody in the building. He called in everybody, he fired them, and that broke a bunch of the systems. And then he rebuilt and fixed the systems. And that's precisely what he's doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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He's actually running places like USAID the same way that he actually ran X. So, for example, he brought in with him when Doge went into USAID, he brought in with him, according to Wired, six young men between the ages of 19 and 24 who, quote, have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Doge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The Ministry of Commerce and China's Customs Administration also announced new export controls immediately effective on more than two dozen metal products and related technologies, including, for example, tungsten, a mineral typically used in industrial and defense applications, as well as tellurium, which can be used to make solar cells. This is according to CNN. Now, here is the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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tasked by executive order with modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and progress. The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within Doge, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer. Now, this, of course, is an issue of supposed consternation to the left.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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Oh, my God, all these young people, young, brilliant people who are highly technologically qualified making cuts. And checking the work? No. Now, of course, if these people were on the left, it would be an unmitigated good. It would be the next generation taking over, getting involved in public service.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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But when it's people who are on the right, then, of course, they're evil nerds in the back closet, probably incels or something, even though what you're really seeing is a bunch of very effective young people who are doing a bunch of scut work that other people aren't willing to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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The six men, according to Wired, are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk's lackeys, including senior staff from XAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company, have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration and have gained access to the Treasury Department's payment system. So what exactly is the problem?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

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There seems to be a kind of missing link here in democratic logic. And the missing link is this. All of these people, all of them work for the president of the United States. Trump can fire Elon Musk at any time. He can fire any of the people who are working for Elon Musk at any time. He can simply stop granting them access to any of the government buildings.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

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All righty, folks, I am off because of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. That is the one where the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. But I didn't want to leave you hanging. Parenting is hard. Raising stable, responsible kids in this culture, even more difficult. We are giving you the first episode of Dr. Peterson's brand new series, Parenting. Head on over to dailywireplus.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

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Here is Parenting, exclusively at Daily Wire Plus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

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We'll get to more on that in a moment. First, I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with the family, even with the busy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means actually eating vegetables.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

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But I don't like vegetables, so I'm very thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day, which sounds miserable. time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

452.718

Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, so I can pop it right into the protein smoothie, and I'm good to go. Head on over to balanceofnature.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Jordan Peterson Reveals Crucial Differences Between Mothers & Fathers | Parenting

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Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get that free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. Go check them out right now. balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro for 35% off your very first order as a preferred customer and get a free bottle of fiber and spice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

0.219

Already, folks, lots of news happening in the world. An election in Canada, negotiations over Russia and Iran, plus economic fallout. We'll get to all that in a moment. First, the countdown is on. The Daily Wire is celebrating President Trump's first 100 days back in office with a 100-hour flash sale on annual memberships. 100 hours only. The clock is already ticking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Okay, so again, this is the upside of the Trump administration. Immigration, they've been doing an excellent job, even though courts have been attempting to hamstring them pretty much every step of the way in sort of a funny corollary to the immigration situation. Over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Her handbag was stolen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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She had put it underneath a chair in a restaurant and purse snatchers grabbed it. Well, the suspects were then nabbed by the authorities. And one of them, it turns out, was apparently in the country, not legally. So that was a bad idea. Tom Homan, the bulldog border czar, had a bit of a funny quip about all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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So, again, the Trump administration on this matter has actually been completely thorough. They are doing a good job on all of this. And they're being very aggressive in their public facing about all of it as well. According to Axios, Trump administration officials late Sunday began placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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The posters which read arrested specify various crimes linked to the pictured immigrants and have the White House's official logo at the bottom, according to Axios. So all of these posters were designed to point out that, again, the goal here is to deport criminal, illegal immigrants. Hundreds of these posters were put up.

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And this is still President Trump's most popular issue, the immigration issue. As well, it should be. Meanwhile, the DOJ is reorienting in a positive direction as well. Our friend, Harmeet Dhillon, who, full disclosure, we've worked with on a bunch of legal cases. Her law firm is excellent. She moved over from her law firm to head the Civil Rights Division over at the Department of Justice.

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And she's now reorienting the DOJ toward pushing against institutional discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, including universities. And now that's been apparently a great way of getting people at DOJ who are, in fact, many of them sort of deep state members embedded with the left. to quit.

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Carney is the former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He is like a World Bank IMF guy. He is very much in line with the sort of Green New Deal, relatively open borders, Justin Trudeau policy. His expected victory, says the Wall Street Journal, is a remarkable one for a party headed for defeat at the start of the year.

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According to the New York Times, hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the DOJ Civil Rights Division as veterans of the office say they've been driven out by Trump administration officials who want to drop its traditional work in order to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League, other schools and liberal cities. Well, good.

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Harmeet said in an interview over the weekend, now over 100 attorneys decided they'd rather not do what their job requires them to do. I think that's fine. She said, we don't want people in the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go persecute police departments. The job here is to enforce federal civil rights law, not woke ideology. Now, again, that is great.

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Harmeet is terrific. She's doing a great job over there. And it's specifically because, again, that the administration is doing so many really important things that I am concerned about the administration's generalized foreign policy approach. Because administrations rise and fall as a unit.

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If the American people like President Trump's immigration policy, but do not like his economic plans, and the economic plans are pulling in the 30s right now, that is going to sink how they feel about his immigration agenda.

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If the American people like what President Trump is doing on DEI, I love what President Trump is doing on DEI, but they don't like his foreign policy or believe that his foreign policy is going to lead to a more fractious and conflict-ridden world, that drags him down. Again, presidencies rise or fall as a unit.

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Now, one of these sort of truisms of American politics, that foreign policy doesn't tend to matter all that much. Well, here's the thing. It doesn't matter all that much until it absolutely does. Excellent example of this would be Joe Biden. So if you look at Joe Biden's approval rating during his presidency, his approval ratings from the time he was elected were fairly high.

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After his election, his original approval ratings were up in the 50s. And then they started to slowly decline. where they really started to cross streams, where the disapprove versus the approve started to cross streams, was specifically around the withdrawal from Afghanistan. So his numbers had been declining, albeit slowly, and then the withdrawal from Afghanistan absolutely cratered him.

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He was underwater the rest of his administration. Because it turns out there's one thing Americans do not like, and that is our enemies winning. We don't like it. And the world is filled with American enemies. And those enemies, yes, include Russia. Yes, include China. Yes, include Iran.

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not because we don't like them, but because they very clearly do not like us and have their own actual interests. They say those interests out loud.

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I'm always bemused and puzzled by people who seem to believe that Iran, China, Russia, and our foreign enemies are only reacting to us, as opposed to they have independent interests that conflict with ours, that their agenda for the world is not the same as ours, and they see us as an enemy. That is very clearly true, for example, about the Russians. They're not shy about this.

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I discussed this on the show at length on Friday. We went through the thought of Alexander Dugin that happens to match up with the thought of Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov and everybody else who is in power in Russia. They believe that the great obstacle to Russian imperial ambition is the Atlantic alliance, meaning NATO, but effectively the United States.

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Again, the conservatives had a more than 20 point lead in January. And a lot of that was because of Justin Trudeau's mismanagement, anger over inflation, high housing costs, immigration, insane social leftism. And then something happened. And the thing that happened essentially was that Justin Trudeau dropped out.

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If Russia is able to take over Ukraine, this is one of their chief goals. It has been since the 90s. If they're able to completely ingest Ukraine, regardless of how many Americans don't care about Ukraine. They will care if Vladimir Putin starts strolling through the center of Kiev. The same thing was true about Afghanistan. Look at the polls.

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Americans did not like that we were there in Afghanistan. You know what they liked even worse? When we withdrew in shame in September of 2021. When that happened, it absolutely cratered the Biden presidency.

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If Ukraine were to be full-scale taken over by the Russians, that'd be quite bad for the United States, for our allies, for NATO, for all the other countries that are along the borders of Russia, and for international politics more generally. Because by the way, if Russia were able to completely ingest Ukraine, The next step would very obviously be a blockade of Taiwan by the Chinese government.

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They would start to occupy the outlying islands. And so far, President Trump, when it comes to Taiwan, has said that if that were to happen, we'd hit them with tariffs. Okay, well, we're already hitting them with tariffs, and it doesn't seem to be deterring them at all, as we'll get to in a moment. First, not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful as you are.

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It only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity.

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If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock U.S.-based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the Million Dollar Protection Package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft.

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You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with LifeLock, you can help protect it. My producer, Justin, he uses LifeLock and it gives him the peace of mind to know that his information is safe. Act right now, save up to 40% your very first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock. And use promo code Ben or go to LifeLock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply.

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Again, go check them out right now. LifeLock.com slash Ben. Get 40% off your very first year. 1-800-LifeLock or LifeLock.com slash Ben. Use promo code Ben. Also, why should Americans be worried about higher taxes on carried interest? That sounds like a rich person thing.

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Well, the answer is because hiking the tax on carried interest means higher taxes on investments that are currently helping Main Street economies grow and thrive. Left-wing politicians in Washington have been trying to raise taxes on carried interest for years. They love America's tax rate to be higher than China, France, Germany, even Canada. Well, we don't want that to happen.

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American investment should stay in America, fueling the growth of businesses that create jobs and build communities. America's private equity investors directly support 13 million hardworking American jobs. It's time to take a stand for small business and speak up against tax increases on American investment. Tax hikes on carried interest are bad for the country. So what is carried interest?

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Basically, carried interest is the share of a profit of an investment that's paid to an investment manager that is basically sort of an alternative investment bonus. So if you invest really well, then you get carried interest. And that carried interest then is taxed at a capital gains tax rate as opposed to a basic income tax rate. Why is that important?

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Because again, the way to incentivize better investment is in fact to keep the taxes low. Tax hikes on carried interest are bad for America, just like tax hikes generally. are not good for the country. That is one of the reasons why you should care about all of this. This has been paid for by the American Investment Council.

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So there are two conflicting arguments about what exactly happened in this election cycle. Argument number one is that Trudeau dropping out alone would have propelled the liberals to victory. That basically, the liberal party did what the Democratic Party did in the last election cycle. They took their bad candidate, flipped in a new, fresh candidate, and then ran for victory.

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So what exactly is the Trump administration approach with regard to Ukraine? It remains unclear. Russia continues to be intransigent. So Russia lies about their policies all the time. They are now ordering, quote unquote, a three-day unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine, supposedly for next week, according to the New York Times. Of course, their last ceasefire, which was for Easter,

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really wasn't a ceasefire. They were flying drones the entire ceasefire. I know because I was over there. According to the New York Times, the Kremlin said Russian forces would stop fighting on May 8th for 72 hours to mark the May 9th celebration of the Soviet Union's victory in World War II, which is a major holiday in Russia.

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In Russia, they do not celebrate the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which probably led to World War II in the first place, but put that aside. The Kremlin said during this period, all hostilities will cease. Russia believes the Ukrainian side should follow this example.

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And then Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the declaration underlines our willingness to get on the path toward a peaceful resolution. Well, no, it doesn't. If they wanted a 30-day ceasefire, they could do that literally right now, like today. They don't need these three-day fake ceasefires, which are obviously an attempt to slow play the Trump administration.

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By the way, the demands of the Russians still today include full demilitarization of Ukraine. According to the New York Post, Russia shamelessly demanded the U.S. lift its sanctions and that Kiev be demilitarized and recognize that 20% of Ukraine belongs to Russia. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted on Monday that Russia will accept nothing less than total victory over Ukraine.

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After Steve, after Steve Witkoff, the Trump special envoy, again, the idea that Steve Witkoff has any sort of special negotiating expertise, I want to see one iota of evidence that this is the case, because he seems to just travel around the world being taken in by various dictators, the Emir of Qatar, or being taken in by Vladimir Putin, with whom he said he was striking up a friendship.

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When asked by the Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, what terms would Russia agree to come to the negotiation table with Ukraine, Lavrov then rattled off a list of of items, quote, the international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions as part of Russia, as sovereign Russian territory, and then demilitarization.

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He insisted that basically Ukraine give up its military and also that at the same time the West lift all the sanctions. And they changed their constitution. OK, so in the Ukrainian constitution is a commitment to try to pursue entry into NATO. So they'd have to change their own constitution. So all of that says that the Russians are not interested whatsoever.

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I mean, there's no evidence of their desire for any serious peace negotiation here, because what Lavrov is saying here is obviously complete non-starter. Okay, but what is the U.S. 's perspective going to be here? Well, J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States, he was on with our friend Charlie Kirk, and he says, if this doesn't stop, if the war doesn't stop, the Ukrainians won't win.

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Okay, well, that's true if you cut off support for them. And by the way, there are actually three possible outcomes. One would be heavy support to the Ukrainians, sufficient that they actually push Russia out of these areas. That is a very unlikely outcome because it would require heavy levels of support the West is not willing to provide and risks the possibility of more Russian escalation.

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It's up to people like you and me to help build the future of the country. Head on over to dailywire.com. Use code DW100 to join the fight. All right, so the big news as of today is the election in Canada. So you'll recall that if you go all the way back to December when Justin Trudeau, i.e.

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And it's a very short election cycle because Carney, upon entering, declared, you could see that there was a boost in the polls, he declared a snap election, which meant that there was only about six weeks between the declaration of the election and the actual election. That's how the system works over there when you...

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Then there is possible outcome number two, the most plausible and the outcome and the one that the West should be pursuing. And that is effectively a 1953 style Korean armistice, meaning the lines are drawn where they are drawn. The war ends. Ukraine remilitarizes, strengthens, and everybody moves forward.

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OK, and then there's possibility number three, which is that Ukraine just completely collapses because the West withdraws. Here's the vice president.

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Okay, so I have a question. What is the solution then? Because you need to get the Russians to the table. It takes two to tango. I mean, so I'm hearing Vance correctly assess that Ukraine is not going to be taking back Crimea or the Luhansk-Donetsk-Kyrgyzstan region anytime soon. That's true. But in order for there to be a deal, the Russians need to come to the table.

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What is the thing that would drive the Russians to the table? So far, I'm not seeing it. And Steve Witkoff doesn't seem to be doing anything to actually get the Russians to the table at all. Meanwhile, President Trump, over the course of the last 24 hours, has been saying that he believes there will be a deal with Iran. Now, let me ask a very simple question.

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President Trump called the Obama deal with Iran, the JCPOA, he called it literally the worst deal in history. In history, he said it over and over and over. Here's President Trump saying it.

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are in power, you can declare a new election, essentially, dissolve your own government. So the question is whether Justin Trudeau dropping out alone would have been enough to push the liberals to victory, or whether it was a combination of Justin Trudeau dropping out and President Trump's incessant, continuous, and aggressive attacks on America's top hat up in Canada.

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So what was that terrible deal that Obama cut with Iran? Well, it included the so-called P5 plus one. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, the UK, the US and Germany, P5 plus one and the EU are all signed in for the JCPOA, which is Obama's awful Iran deal. Again, not me saying it's an awful deal. President Trump saying it was an awful deal.

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What exactly did it do? Well, basically, it set a 10 year limit on the use of particular centrifuges. According to the Council on Foreign Relations synopsis of the deal, Iran agreed not to produce either highly enriched uranium or plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon. And they said they were going to ensure that four downed Natanz and the Iraq facilities, which are their...

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their various nuclear facilities pursued only civilian nuclear energy. Now, let's be real about this. Iran doesn't need nuclear energy like at all. They're one of the most oil rich, natural gas rich regions on planet Earth. They are not technologically sophisticated. They are not interested in a green new revolution over there.

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The reason they are pursuing nuclear facilities is because they are pursuing nuclear weapons. Quite obviously, the JCPOA was supposed to limit the numbers and types of centrifuges that Iran could operate. And the IAEA was supposed to somehow enforce that. They were going to be allowed to use their centrifuges to spin up to a certain level of purity in their uranium, enrichment in their uranium.

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If you enrich uranium to 5%, that's good for like a nuclear power plant. At 20%, you can do it for a research reactor or medical purposes. You need 90% uranium enrichment in order to get to nuclear. So the idea was keep them to 5%. But the problem, of course, is that the spin up from 5% to 90% is actually quite fast. It doesn't take years to spin up uranium from 5% enrichment to 90% enrichment.

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The deal also got rid of sanctions on Iran, freed up them to use money for ballistic and terrorist activity, ballistic missiles and terrorist activity. The IAEA was supposed to monitor them, but they weren't giving them full authority to see anything in Fordow or Natanz or any of the rest of their nuclear reactors. That's the deal that President Trump said was the worst deal ever.

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Okay, that's the deal. It also had a 10-year sunset that basically said after 10 years, all the sanctions are gone and Iran can develop nuclear weapons. So it was clearly an awful deal. So the question right now is what deal is the Trump administration seeking to cut? And you hear a bunch of conflicting messages from the Trump administration.

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One of them, the only one that would be sufficient is complete denuclearization of Iran. No nuclear facilities, none. Why? Well, because why would you possibly trust the the militocracy in Iran not to lie about what they are doing with their nuclear facilities? I mean, first of all, they don't even need to lie. We all know what they're doing with their nuclear facilities.

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You think they are really trying to power up their country on nuclear energy? That's their big priority? In a country that can't even export oil right now? They have such an oil glut that their entire economy has basically cratered because of the maximum pressure campaign of President Trump.

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My theory is pretty much number two, that President Trump obviously had something to do with the results of the Canadian election. So sure, obviously it makes a huge difference if you swap out the very unpopular Justin Trudeau for a cipher, a non-entity like Mark Carney. And Carney, to his credit, ran a little bit more as a moderate on issues like immigration or even on the economy.

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So if you were to get rid of the sanctions and then to sign off on, well, they can have nuclear, but they can't actually have like nuclear nuclear. That is just the Obama deal. That's just Obama 2.0. Well, President Trump, after saying all that about the Obama nuclear deal, said yesterday that Iran deal is going to happen.

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OK, well, the problem with that, obviously, is that when the president says a deal will happen, we'll have something without dropping bombs all over the place. Well, I mean, first of all, it's not necessary for the United States to drop bombs all over the place. I mean, I'm sure it'd be helpful to Israel, for example, if the United States were to lend some B-2s for one sortie over Iran.

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And that could destroy the nuclear facilities and no, it wouldn't start a giant world war. Iran is so weak right now that after Israel destroyed their entire air defense system, they uselessly fired a bunch of missiles at Israel, which caused zero casualties. So this idea that Iran is like a sleeping giant waiting to awake if their nuclear reactors are finished off is not true.

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That's not true whatsoever. And we also know that the United States actually has struck significant Iranian targets before with no actual serious blowback, including the killing of Qasem Soleimani during Trump administration number one. But if the Trump administration were to sign a crappy deal with Iran that would allow them a pathway to a nuclear weapon,

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that allow them to open up their markets again, to reconstitute their terror network, that would not be good for the world either, and it would be bad for the Trump administration. And then there is China. China continues to grow more and more aggressive, and this is where our trade policy comes in. So if the idea was that tariffs on China were somehow going to curb their aggressive intent,

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That is not yet in evidence at the very, very least. And again, there have been some mixed signals from the Trump administration on this. Remember, TikTok is still operating despite the fact that there is a congressional mandate for TikTok to come to an end or at least be divested of its Chinese ownership.

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Right now, China is making aggressive moves in the South China Sea, according to the Washington Post. The Philippines and China have each unfurled their flags on a disputed reef claimed by both nations in the South China Sea, escalating tensions, reigniting hostilities over Beijing's expansive territorial claims in regional waters. Now, why does that matter?

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Well, because the South China Sea is the source of pretty much all shipping coming from the Far East to the rest of the world and vice versa. So a lot of shipping moves through the South China Sea, I asked my friend and sponsor, Perplexity. Approximately how much?

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And the answer is, according to estimates, one third of all global maritime trade, somewhere between 30 and 33% passes through the South China Sea every year. That's like $3.4 to $3.6 trillion worth of goods annually. It's particularly important for energy shipments, about 40% of all global petroleum products and 45% of crude oil transported by sea pass through the South China Sea.

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It's a crucial artery for China, Japan, South Korea, and many other Southeast Asian nations. The Chinese takeover of the South China Sea could effectively cut off the east from the west in a lot of very important ways, which is why I also asked perplexity about China targeting islands and land masses in the South China Sea.

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There are a couple of areas where China has been particularly heavy on this. One is called the Spratly Islands. They've apparently reclaimed land and built artificial islands on seven reefs in the Spratly Archipelago, equipping them with military installations, airstrips, ports, and surveillance equipment.

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There have also been recent standoffs, as we mentioned, at Sandy Cay, which is a small sandbar near Thitu Island, which is controlled by the Philippines. There's also the Paracel Islands. China's controlled those since 1974, but they've been increasing their militarization. They've actually been attempting to build entire islands in the Spratlys in an attempt to maximize military presence there.

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He suggested he wasn't going to raise taxes. He was going to mildly lower the taxes in Canada But the big election issue in Canada was not any more inflation or fiscal mismanagement in Canada, which is what Poliev had been running on.

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Who controls the South China Sea has a bottleneck on global trade, which is one of the reasons why the Chinese are attempting to turn the South China Sea into essentially a Chinese lake. Manila deployed Navy and Coast Guard ships Sunday to San D.K.

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and two neighboring islands where its national flag was planted, according to a statement and photos from its National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea. And that, of course, is a response to China's Coast Guard seizing the sandbank earlier this month and then planting their own flag on it.

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Now, again, China is moving aggressively to consolidate space in this entire area, figuring that if it can push the U.S. Navy further and further away from Taiwan, that will also solidify its opportunity to take Taiwan or blockade Taiwan, which would completely melt down the world economy, probably comparatively to China's benefit.

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Now, again, the way that President Trump was attempting to deal with this was through a massive tariff on China. As I've said before, I'm totally on board with this. President Trump should be doing that. But you actually have to fulfill the preconditions before you do that. You have to make sure that you are economically ready for that, militarily ready for that.

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Your supply chains are in order and all the rest. The question is whether President Trump is actually doing that. this whole tariff process because he's trying to shut down China or because he has a sort of bizarre view of trade. So President Trump did an interview with the Atlantic. Now, again, I don't think the president should be doing interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg.

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I think Jeffrey Goldberg is the lowest of the low. He was an Obama stenographer. And reaching out to the Atlantic, I just don't see why. But President Trump gave an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg in which he talked about his tariff plan. And here's how he discussed it. Quote, Look, we lost trillions of dollars last year on trade with Biden, trillions of dollars.

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Every year we lose trillions, trillions, right? Hundreds of billions, but basically trillions. We went over the ledge into the T word. And I can't imagine it's sustainable to have a country that can lose that much money for years into the future. Okay, so first of all, it's not how trade deficits work.

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You're not losing money when you run a trade deficit any more than I lose money when I buy a product from the grocery store. That money comes back in the form of people buying treasuries, in the form of people investing in American companies, in the form of them buying real estate. The money comes back just in a different way on capital services. There's all sorts of ways the money comes back.

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The main election question in Canada, beginning in January, simultaneous with the dropout of Justin Trudeau, was America's aggressive attack on Canada, both rhetorically and in terms of policy. President Trump first started attacking the Canadians in December 2018. of last year. He started calling them the 51st state and trolling the Canadians.

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It just may not be on manufactured goods. He says, we're going to be very rich. We're going to make a lot of money. I don't think the answer is that it will affect me. It always affects you a little bit. I don't think there's certainly no theory like you say that if it hits a certain number, I don't know where it is today. How's the stock market? And then he said, this is a transition period.

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It's a big transition. I'm resetting the table. I'm resetting a lot of years. Not from the beginning, you know. Our country was most successful from 1850 or so to think of this from 1870, really, from 1870 to 1913. And it was all tariffs. And then some great genius said, let's go and tax the people instead of taxing other countries.

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So, again, that is a vision of tariffs that is very much in line with the idea that he just likes tariffs. And so what he's doing with China is actually more of a cover for his love of tariffs than it is about boxing in China. Either way, the markets are not responding particularly well to this. And again, the effect of the tariffs has not really hit yet.

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The empty ships are going to start arriving any moment now, according to Investors Business Daily. The port of Los Angeles is now warning that there will be difficult decisions ahead as all the shipments from China cease. Again, it is one thing to cut off China at the knees.

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It's another thing to set up a trading system that actually in some ways benefits China comparatively, meaning that if the EU doesn't cut off China, but the United States does, if countries in Southeast Asia start reorienting toward China as opposed to the United States, that is not a win for the United States, particularly when the president is slamming those countries with their own tariffs.

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According to Investors Business Daily, President Trump's trade war policies are expected to bring about a 35% decline in cargo arriving at the port of L.A. by next week. That is according to the executive director, Gene Sirocco.

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His warning came during the Port's Board of Harbor Commissioners meeting April 24th, with the executive director saying retailers and manufacturers typically put in orders to factories in Asia around three to four months in advance of shipments.

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Trump's 90-day pause on the broad reciprocal tariffs resulted in no real difference for businesses because everybody is sort of not sure what's going to happen, whether Trump puts those back in place or not. He added that U.S. exporters are getting hit hard by retaliatory tariffs amid Trump's trade war, and that includes agriculture, heavy-duty manufacturing, and information technology services.

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Unions are starting to sound off, right? This is supposed to benefit manufacturing unions, but the longshore and warehouse union came out with a very strong statement yesterday, quote-unquote, unequivocally condemning the recent tariffs the Trump administration has imposed. Tariffs are taxes.

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These and other reckless, short-sighted policies have begun to devastate American workers, harm critical sectors of the economy, and line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of hardworking families. Prices for food, gas, household goods are rising due to tariffs. Again, this is a very strong statement from a union, right?

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Those are the people that President Trump is supposedly attempting to protect with a lot of this tariff policy. Now, President Trump has also suggested that revenue from tariffs is going to somehow replace the income tax. Well, if that were to happen, basically you'd have to increase tariffs on all incoming goods to the United States by 67% or something. You'd have to increase them to 67%.

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And then you'd have to assume no drop-off in actual purchases in order to replace anything remotely like the income tax.

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As the Wall Street Journal points out, Trump's statements point to a central riddle of his trade agenda, whether the point of higher tariffs is raising money or gaining leverage to strike better deals with trading partners, as some administration officials and congressional Republicans insist.

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But the idea that we are going to be replaced, listen, if we were able to replace the income tax and tariffs I had before it, it's just the math doesn't work. And so the biggest thing right now that matters for Republicans is getting this gigantic, big, beautiful bill done. It has to get done.

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It just has to, because if that falls through, if there is no preservation of the Trump tax cuts, the economy is going to free fall. So right now, Speaker Johnson is pushing for passage of the big, beautiful bill by Memorial Day, which is four weeks away.

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According to Politico, House Republicans will launch a legislative sprint when they return to Washington on Monday, with key committees set to finally put GOP pledges on taxes, energy defense and border security into legislative text. The problem is unclear if you can get everybody on board, including many of the conservatives in the caucus.

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And then he started talking literally his first day in office about dropping serious tariffs on the Canadians. And what that did is it flipped the entire political fight in Canada. So before it had been about Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party's mismanagement, and then it turned into who is best willing and conditioned to fight President Trump on his tariff agenda.

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Representative Darren LaHood of Illinois suggested his colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee will not be ready to advance the tax portion of the bill until early June, which, of course, is way past the Memorial Day deadline. There's been a lot of infighting inside the House Republican caucus.

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Meanwhile, Johnson is pushing to move quickly, but there are a lot of pitfalls ahead on spending. Republicans still haven't seen a plan to meet the shared goal of slashing $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. And some Republicans want that number to be even higher.

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But then you have some populist Republicans, say Josh Hawley in the Senate, who doesn't want to cut Medicaid at all, doesn't want to touch any of the entitlement programs. So it will take an act of political leisure domain. It will have to be basically political magic for Johnson and Thune to get something through.

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I think it will happen, but it's going to be a complex and difficult process, absolutely for sure. Okay, meanwhile, in other news, the media continued to melt down over the failures of 60 Minutes to basically allow the inmates to run the asylum. So 60 Minutes has had serious credibility and reporting problems for quite a while. It's a very biased program.

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Sherry Redstone, who's the head of CBS's parent company, Paramount, has basically asked to screen or at least know what exactly 60 Minutes is talking about. And this caused Bill Owens, who was the show's executive producer, to resign because he basically said, if I don't get to run the show the way that I want, well, then I'm not going to run the show at all.

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Well, Scott Pelley, who is one of the faces of 60 Minutes, he did a monologue at the end of 60 Minutes on Sunday in which he ripped into management.

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Well, was he, though? Was he? Because here is the thing. You have Scott Pelley there saying they do a wonderful job with all these stories. Well, here was Leslie Stahl like two weeks ago asking a person who was literally in a Hamas tunnel, like kidnapped by Hamas in a Hamas tunnel, whether Hamas was nice to him or not. Just genius level journal.

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I can't imagine why Sherry Redstone was concerned about 60 Minutes.

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Who's willing to stand up to Trump? And there's a widespread perception in Canada that Pierre Poliev, because he was a candidate of the right and was widely liked by many conservatives in the United States, that Pierre Poliev was some sort of Trump ally and therefore ill positioned to go up against Donald Trump. He tried to draw a contrast with Trump.

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I mean, what a crazy question from Leslie Stahl. Do you think that actually they were starving or maybe maybe it was the Israelis starving them, which is why you were some. Hamas has been stealing all the food aid coming in. It's the reason why Israel has now cut off the food aid is because Hamas was stealing all of it. And the only way to get the hostages free, presumably, is to actually cut off.

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That's what 60 Minutes is. So what they're really mad about is the same thing that the Washington Post editors were mad about when Jeff Bezos was like, guys, by the way, you don't get to basically run whatever you want using an outlet that I own. So again, 60 Minutes has been a wildly biased program for decades. They're getting what they deserve right now.

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And no, Bill Owens isn't a hero for standing up to management in any way, shape, or form. Already coming up, we'll get to a brand new study on the abortion pill that says the reverse of what many people on the left have been saying. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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On all annual plans, click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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He tried to say that he was going to fight Trump on the tariffs and that Trump was wrong on the tariffs. The problem was that imagistically he was of the right. Trump was of the right. His entire campaign slogan, by the way, was Canada first, which was very reminiscent of President Trump's America first slogan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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And so that obviously was sort of roiling underneath the dynamics of Trudeau versus Poliev. And then once Trudeau dropped out, it was almost like a hot air balloon that had dropped its ballast. The Liberal Party started to rise precipitously specifically because Trudeau, who was wildly unpopular with the public, was gone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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handsome Bernie Sanders, was the prime minister of Canada, the Liberal Party in Canada was in a state of complete electoral collapse. The polls showed that the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poliev, who was in fact a good candidate, was winning. The Conservative Party was winning by 25 points over Justin Trudeau. The Liberal Party was in a state of absolute meltdown.

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And meanwhile, the underlying conditions had changed since the election in the United States, and particularly since President Trump took office and started aggressively using American policy to go after the Canadians. President Trump, of course, has been continuously trolling the Canadians. And the question you have to ask yourself here is what exactly was the strategy?

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Seriously, what is the thing that President Trump was going for? I've been asking this about President Trump's tariffs on Canada all the way along the line. If President Trump was simply trying to get the Canadians to lower specific tariffs against, say, American dairy products. OK, so let's negotiate that.

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But President Trump in his first term literally negotiated himself the USMCA, which is the governing trade agreement with both Mexico and Canada. And then he overthrew his own USMCA to go after Mexico and Canada. on the basis of his specious theories with regard to trade deficits. So he went hard after Canada. He slapped a giant tariff on Canada.

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And so that became the only issue really in the election. All the other issues just became secondary. So could Poliev have done something differently? There are a lot of theories on sort of the MAGA right in the United States. I think many of them trying to get President Trump off the hook for some of the blame for Polyev's loss over there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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The theory is that Polyev should have run harder to the right. He should have differentiated himself more from Mark Carney on issues like, say, immigration. He should have bear hugged Trump. The problem, of course, is that Canada is basically Vermont. This idea that Canada is somehow down home Alabama, secretly waiting to go deep red is I have yet to see the evidence of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Well, on the day of the election, President Trump put out a truth that said, quote, good luck to the great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power for free to the highest level in the world. Have your car, steel, aluminum, lumber, energy and all other businesses quadruple in size with zero tariffs or taxes.

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If Canada becomes the cherished 51st state of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this landmass would be. Free access with no border. All positives with no negatives. It was meant to be. America can no longer subsidize Canada with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we've been spending in the past.

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It makes no sense unless Canada is a state. So literally on the day of the Canadian election, President Trump unleashes a truth declaring that people should vote for him. He's not eligible to be Canadian prime minister, nor is the United States going to annex Canada. That is not a thing that is going to happen. We're not invading Canada. We're not annexing Canada.

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All of this started off as a joke. And I think President Trump is so committed to the bit at this point that he couldn't get off the train. Plus, he slammed Canada with a wide variety of significant high tariffs. Again, the sort of change in electoral mood in Canada was in fact due to both those factors. Justin Trudeau dropping out because Justin Trudeau is incompetent.

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Carney gives a feeling to Canadians that he is more solid because he has more of a financial background and he's done a lot more trade deals and all the rest of this sort of stuff. But according to pollsters, Poliev suffered for rhetoric too similar to President Trump's.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Abacus data polling last week indicated 46% of Canadians held a negative perception of Poliev the highest level since the start of the campaign. Now, conservatives didn't get blown out in the election. They still had more than 40 percent of the popular vote, which is close to the share in the last federal election they won in 2011. The liberals had just over 44 percent.

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They benefited from a drop in support for all the smaller parties who seemed to come together around Mark Carney. Carney, for his part, ran a little bit away from Trudeau, but mostly he ran against President Trump. So here is the question. What is the strategy? Is this a good thing?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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And then Justin Trudeau dropped out and the polls started to come together really, really quickly. So last night, the election result, Mark Carney, who replaced Justin Trudeau, you can call him ugly Justin Trudeau.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, believe it or not, there are some on the on the isolationist right in the United States who are celebrating this. So Kurt Mills from American Conservative magazine. Again, a very, very strong isolationist. He put out a statement saying prediction Trump will and already has weirdly get on with Carney. Trump vibes with the smart hyper Machiavellian central left types.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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His relationships with Macron and Starmer are strong. He isn't actually friends with Boris Johnson. Poliev could have been Canuck DeSantis. Okay, so first of all, Canuck DeSantis sounds pretty great. As somebody who is a resident of the state of Florida, Governor DeSantis is an excellent governor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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I do not know by any stretch of the imagination how it is better to have a socialist-leaning, Green New Deal nut job as the... sober faced head of Canada, as opposed to the other guy who was just less sober faced. I don't I don't understand how it's a win for the United States to have a far left leaning internationalist. I mean, you talk globalist. Mark Carney is the definition of a globalist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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He's the definition of somebody who wants international institutions to run as much as possible. He would like to make greater overtures toward China, for example. And yet there is this idea on some parts of the right that somehow it's better. Now, I think some of that is cope. I think some people are taking the copium and they are saying, well, it's Polio's fault.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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If only there had been another party that was even more right wing, then that would have worked. Let's be real about this. The rhetorical attacks on Canada have not actually resulted in a net good for the United States. I care about results. What are the results? Is the United States better off because we keep yelling at the Canadians?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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I mean, clearly, I think we are now worse off because we don't have a friendly leader in Canada who's capable of making a deal that is going to actually benefit the United States. Is the United States better off for the trade war that we've declared on Canada? I'd love to see the results. If so, I'm waiting to see them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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So basically, if Justin Trudeau is handsome Bernie Sanders and Mark Carney is ugly Justin Trudeau, his Liberals are now projected to win the Canadian election, according to the Wall Street Journal. They were set to win a fourth term in national elections on Monday, fourth consecutive term. So, I mean, well done on you guys, Canada.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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It turns out that the United States, as the sort of center of gravity on planet Earth, many of the things that we do have a rather outsized effect. Canada just happens to be one of those effects, and so far those effects are not good. We'll get some more on this in just a moment. First, you know what I hate? Big government. You know what else I hate? Being overcharged. Do not like it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, can help you save money on your cell phone bill. That is correct. Pure Talk says, I don't think so. It's $100 a month, cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead... They're offering America's most dependable 5G network and America's most sensible prices. Listen to this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch to Pure Talk right now at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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puretalk.com slash Shapiro. I've been using them for years. They're great for you the way they have been for me. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, Do you know, just like in the United States, Israel celebrates their own Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut, this year, Israel's Independence Day falls on May 1st.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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For the people of Israel, however, the concept of freedom has become intertwined with large ongoing challenges. Many people are facing difficult circumstances navigating daily life amid uncertainty. During these challenging times, it can be hard to find moments of joy and celebration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Well, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews provides essential support for vulnerable populations, ensuring the elderly, the sick, wounded soldiers, and families in need receive the care they deserve. Your generous gift to the fellowship today will help provide vital aid, including medicine, nutritious meals, safety measures, and comfort to those who need it most.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Show your support for Israel by making a meaningful contribution. Your gift can make a real difference in someone's life. Make your gift online today at benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. There's still tons of Israelis who are serving on the front lines. Their families need help. You can help them out today at benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Meanwhile, in actual good news, the Trump administration, there are many areas of the Trump administration that I think during the first hundred days have not gone particularly well. That would range from the economy to some areas of foreign policy. However, when it comes to immigration, President Trump has been absolutely stalwart. That was his number one issue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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He's actually handled immigration so well that it dropped out of the top four or five issues for Americans. It was the number one or number two issue in every poll for Americans during the 2024 election cycle. Trump comes in and literally on the first day, everything gets fixed. Because he says, we're going to enforce the border. Don't come here. And people stop coming here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Well, yesterday, Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced that President Trump is going to be signing an EO, cracking down on illegal immigration.

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Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Oh boy, you make some choices you're going to have to live with up there. It wasn't clear whether the Liberals would actually win a majority of seats or a smaller share that would require them to win support from other parties to govern. That'd make a very large difference, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Okay, so all of that is quite good. He signed three executive orders, including one that instructed Pam Bondi and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, to pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures against so-called sanctuary cities. Again, that is correct. If you have said so, here's the deal.

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Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Local law enforcement cannot be militarized by the federal government under the Posse Comitatus Act to actually enforce federal law. That is not a thing.

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However, obstruction of justice, which is a thing that has been happening in these sanctuary cities where ICE goes in and you have local law enforcement actively obstructing, getting in the way, declaring their sanctuary cities and going out of their way to sort of thwart federal law. That is something that the federal government should be cracking down on.

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Another one of these executive orders aims to bolster legal resources to police officers accused of wrongdoing. The third seeks to enforce existing laws requiring professional truck drivers to be proficient in English, according to the New York Times.

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Ep. 2188 - Canada Veers LEFT: Ugly Trudeau Wins!

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Now, President Trump, of course, has also been unleashing ICE to actually go after illegal immigration wherever they find it in significant numbers. One of the big sort of splashy stories that happened over the weekend is U.S.

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federal agents, according to CNN, early Sunday raided what authorities described as an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs and took into custody more than 100 migrants accused of being in the country illegally, according to the DEA. Jonathan Pullen, the special agent in charge, said what was happening inside was a significant drug trafficking, prostitution, crimes of violence.

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If they only have enough seats in the Canadian parliament that they have to form a coalition with another party, that still leaves them vulnerable to the possibility of some sort of vote of no confidence in the future. If, however, they have a pretty solid majority in the parliament, then you get four years of Mark Carney up in Canada.

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We seized a number of guns in there. So again, the raid had been planned for months, according to the DEA. During surveillance, investigators documented drug trafficking, prostitution, and presence of people suspected to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren Daragua, the international gang MS-13, as well as the Hells Angels. This is a very large raid.

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Attorney General Bondi, in explaining the nature of the raid, explained there'd been a bunch of 911 phone calls during the Biden administration, basically ignored.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

Well, folks, did China just drink our milkshake? China has a brand new AI model. It's called DeepSeek. And some people are comparing this technical advancement from China to Russia's Sputnik moment back in 1957 when they launched a satellite into orbit, shocking America's technological cadre. What exactly are we talking about here? Apparently, China has now released a brand new AI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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President Trump said, quote, President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman. Trump, of course, is pushing for a return to meritocracy. He's pushing for less regulation. Here he was just yesterday talking about the rise of the meritocracy in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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It works it through a matrix where it can actually determine which words in any given sentence are the most important. And then it predicts, essentially, this is how LLMs work, large language models. It then predicts what the next word in a sentence is going to be.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Okay, that's great. Again, that's all great. Now, one of the things that he is also doing is he's taking executive action in order to radically reduce spending inside the federal government. So, according to Politico, tens of billions of dollars in federal grants and loans to organizations across America will be halted today after you get another bombshell order from the White House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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A brief two-page memo, first published by Marisa Cabas, a New York-based journalist, and swiftly matched by Washington Post, revealed the next step in Trump's warp-speed overhaul of the U.S. state. An immediate freeze on all federal grants and loans to outside bodies, which may not align with the president's worldview.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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While Social Security, Medicare, and payment to individuals will not be affected, this does include grants and loans issued to research bodies, charities, universities, and community projects. The scale of the order is so broad, it cites federal spending totaling $3 trillion that people are freaking out about all of this, of course.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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The memo issued by the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Matthew Vaith, said all federal spending must be aligned with presidential regulations. That includes immigration, foreign aid, DEI programs, and the environment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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One of the things you're going to see here is something called malicious compliance, in which you see lower-down deep staters attempt to apply these rules to clearly meritorious projects. So there's a grant for cancer research, for example, and you will see some low-down deep stater basically say, well, we can't give the grant to the cancer project. What's the point?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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The point is not to enact Trump's will. The point, of course, is to thwart his will by doing something that earns a bad headline. You saw the same sort of thing happen just the other day with Pete Hegseth. Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, put out a memo saying no DEI inside the DOD, and everybody freaked out because somebody low down in the DOD said we can't teach the Tuskegee Airmen anymore.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Hegseth's like, that's not what I meant at all. You're going to see much of the same thing applied to, for example, cancer research, but it'll be quickly corrected. Now, Trump does have the power to pause spending subject to review. And the president did have the power to withhold congressional spending prior to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court has to say about all this. If we get a meaner, leaner government with lower taxes and lower regulations that gets paid for by tariffs, and he really does mean to sort of redo the McKinley policy. Kind of interesting. Certainly interesting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is why you can prompt ChatGPT to write you a joke about a duck in the style of Charles Dickens, and it will do that, simply based off cramming extraordinary amounts of data. Takes huge energy, takes huge number of sophisticated microchips, or at least that's what everybody thought until a little bit earlier this week. This week, China released... an AI model called DeepSeek.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, Democrats are insisting, of course, that President Trump fix all the problems within the first 24 hours. Chuck Schumer, who had not mentioned inflation for years, the Senate minority leader, now he's saying the president has to answer how he brings down egg prices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So he wouldn't talk for years about the price of eggs, but now we are like a week into the Trump administration, part two, and he's talking about egg prices. Well, folks, when it comes to the world of politics, there are always battles over opinion, but then there are also battles over the facts. Well, how many times have you heard We'll be right back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whether it's taxes, healthcare, or the economy, USAFacts gives you the numbers you need to cut through the nonsense and make informed decisions. And to make it really easy, go to USAFacts.org, sign up for their weekly free email that you can rely on to get the data behind the news. It's like a personal briefing on the state of the nation, delivered right to your inbox.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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No spin, no bias, just facts. Look, if you care about how our government is spending money and where your taxes are going, this is for you. Go to USAFacts.org right now. Get clear, contextualized facts on the issues that matter. It's time to know the facts because data does not lie. That's usafacts.org. Check it out today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's no reason to fight over the facts because the facts are just the facts. You should fight over the opinions. Instead, check out the facts at usafacts.org today. Also, research shows one of the biggest challenges employers face is the pressure to hire quickly. Let's be honest. Searching for great candidates and reviewing applications can feel like a full-time job in itself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you're an employer who can relate, I have one question for you. Have you tried ZipRecruiter? ZipRecruiter has figured out how to solve this very problem. In fact, Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one. Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site that employers trust most based on G2. Their powerful matching technology starts working immediately, connecting you with qualified candidates so you're not going to waste your time or money. When you find that perfect candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's pre-written invite to apply message to reach out to them directly. So relax, employers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Let ZipRecruiter speed up your hiring. See for yourself. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire right now and try it for free. That's the same price as a genuine smile from a stranger, a picture of perfect sunset, or a cute dog running up to you and licking your hand. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Democrats are struggling for a way forward. President Trump is moving fast. He's breaking things. That is for sure. And he's going to need to because he's been left with a really fragmentary world thanks to Joe Biden's policies. Democrats are searching for a way forward on a wide variety of issues. Number one on the list, of course, is immigration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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DeepSeek is apparently just as sophisticated as ChatGPT, but it cost a fraction of the cost to produce. Instead of using NVIDIA sophisticated microchips, apparently they were using less sophisticated microchips. That's the reason why NVIDIA, which had been moved up to a trillion dollar market cap, it had grown massively.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Democrats have not yet decided whether to go along with President Trump's tough on immigration proposals or whether to resist them. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, he said yesterday that the military will be activated to protect the sovereign territory of the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Tom Holman, the border czar, is saying similar things. He says President Trump is going to be happy with the level of deportations that we are now pushing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, he is right about all of that. Democrats are freaking out, being led by Selena Gomez. So first of all, points to Selena Gomez for actually being able to emote on camera. I wasn't aware she could do this. I mean, I had tried to watch Only Murders in the Building, and she's the worst thing on screen by far.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then, of course, she's in the worst movie I have ever seen, Amelia Perez, which is a horror show of a film. She can't act in that either. But she was crying openly on camera about the thought of deportations pursued by the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's a 30-year-old company, but only in the last three, four years has it spiked significantly. to that trillion dollar valuation, it dropped almost 20% in the stock market because suddenly it appears the barrier to entry in AI has dropped precipitously as well. It is less expensive than thought to develop a very sophisticated AI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Shut down on actresses crying on camera until they can figure out what the hell is going on. Executive order from President Trump to do all of that. Again, that was about my emotional response after having seen Amelia Perez. Again, the worst film possibly ever made. Meanwhile, Claudia Scheinbaum, the socialist president of Mexico, took over for Emmanuel Lopez Obrador.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So she was out there suggesting that the United States is super bad for deporting Mexican criminal illegal immigrants. She says, quote, the Mexicans there sustain the economy of the United States in the countryside, in services everywhere. Well, I mean, if they're such... great citizens who add to the economy, why don't you want them in your country? That seems kind of weird.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, the real reason why Mexico has always been a big backer of illegal immigration, twofold. One, the drug cartels make an awful lot of money, and the drug cartels basically run the Mexican government. And two, a huge number of Mexicans who cross the border then send remittances back to Mexico and send money back home. That is the actual reason.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, Honduras is trying to lead a revolt of left-wing states from Latin and South America to against the U.S. move to deport illegal immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to Breitbart, far-left President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, on Sunday, called for an emergency meeting of the community of Latin American and Caribbean states later this week to discuss President Trump's crackdown on illegal migrants in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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CELAC is a 33-country bloc founded in Caracas in 2011, largely promoted by Venezuela's late socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez, as a U.S.-free alternative regional structure to the Organization of American States, of which the United States is, in fact, a member. So President Castro...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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announced that Gustavo Petro, who is the idiot socialist unpopular president of Colombia, will travel to the Honduran capital city to participate in the meeting. The event will address migration, the environment, and Latin American and Caribbean unity as its three main subjects.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, let's see what they have to say, because the reality is that, again, the United States represents a huge portion of the export market for all of these particular countries. They're going to have to take back their illegal immigrants. It's just that simple. Brazil, by the way, is still trying its own routine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Lula da Silva, who is a dictatorial authoritarian left-winger, has told his foreign ministry to, quote, seek answers from Washington over what I call the degrading treatment of Brazilian migrants during a U.S. deportation flight on Friday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The official request for an explanation, according to the Washington Post, was issued after Brazilian officials interviewed many of the 88 migrants aboard the flight. Among the first deported by the Trump administration, many of the migrants described a harrowing experience during their transport to Brazil. The passengers said the plane operated by ICE was in faulty condition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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China was able to do it apparently based off chips that were not from NVIDIA, which is why NVIDIA's stock dropped. It's also why a huge number of stocks that were tied into American AI dropped as well. The idea is now there's a much more competitive sphere. According to the Wall Street Journal,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There was no air conditioning and a mechanical issue became apparent soon after takeoff, requiring multiple maintenance stops in Panama and then in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. So they didn't like the plane enough. For hours in Panama and Manaus, the passengers said they were left to languish in the heat in handcuffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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People, including six children, began to feel faint, according to the migrants. When they tried to resist, they were violently repelled and threatened. Well, I mean, forcing your way off the plane that is deporting you will probably end with bad consequences for you, it seems. Meanwhile, again, left-wingers in the United States are still trying to figure out exactly how to deal with all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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On the one hand, you have people who say that they will move along with the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants. On the other, you'll have people like Chicago alderman, Byron Sigcho Lopez, who says that Trump's mass deportation is unconscionable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, I mean, if this is the angle that Democrats take, good luck to them politically speaking. Meanwhile, in Florida, controversy has broken out because Governor Ron DeSantis wants to immediately apply new laws to help out ICE and the federal government. And Florida Republicans, some of them, are bucking him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Washington Post, the GOP-led Florida House and Senate within 20 minutes ended a special session that DeSantis had called to review several immigration proposals. Instead, they called their own special session. It was a remarkable turn of events in Tallahassee. The actions came as Republican lawmakers said they didn't want to do the special session.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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DeSantis had announced the special session before Trump took office, saying it was necessary to get the state in line with plans to address illegal immigration and carry out mass deportations. What exactly was the purpose of the legislators' law? Well, they wanted to remove immigration enforcement from the governor's office and instead give it to the state's Agriculture Commission.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's only one problem. Wilton Simpson, who is the Florida State Commissioner of Agriculture, happens to be pretty soft on illegal immigration. So is this an attempt to sort of end around Trump enforcement powers? Theoretically, it absolutely could be.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Technology stocks tumbled Monday on news that China's DeepSeek had trained a sophisticated artificial intelligence model at a fraction of the cost of its Silicon Valley rivals, triggering a sudden reversal of the recent AI rally. NVIDIA, whose chips have been used to power many of the leading AI models, sank 17%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so I hope that the Trump administration takes note of precisely who is opposing attempts by Governor DeSantis to actually implement what Trump would like with regard to compliance with federal immigration law. Again, there are many differences between DeSantis' session proposal and the Florida legislature and what they are actually pushing, including, for example, law enforcement compliance,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The DeSantis proposal would have mandated maximum participation in the deportation with penalties for noncompliance. The Florida legislature instead failed to put an enforceable duty on state and local law enforcement to fully cooperate, for example. So Florida localities would be left to their own devices. There's some significant differences right there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And meanwhile, in other modes of resistance, President Trump. has now signed an executive order barring people with gender dysphoria from military service, which of course makes sense because if you are joining up so that the taxpayers can fund your hormone and genital mutilation, then you really should not be in the U.S. military. Again, this is not a question about patriotism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There are lots of patriotic people who can't serve in the American military. If you suffer, for example, from clinical depression, you're not supposed to be taken into the US military. There are plenty of mental conditions that prevent you from serving in the US military. It seems that gender dysphoria should be one of those conditions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump signed executive orders on Monday barring trans people from enlisting and cracking down on DI initiatives in the military, according to NBC News. The order would update all DOD medical standards to ensure they prioritize readiness and lethality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It would also end the use of invented and identification-based pronouns in the military, prohibit people assigned male at birth from using women's sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities, and bar coverage of transition-related medical care for currently enlisted service members and their family. Again. All of this makes perfect sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If the goal of the military is not to be a social engineering project, but to actually be the deadliest fighting force on planet Earth, there is no reason why you would, in fact, add to the mix of the US military people who have significant DSM-diagnosable conditions. This, of course, has led to the resistance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The move wiped out more than $590 billion from the company's market value and tarnished one of the stock market's brightest stars. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composites slid 3.1%. The S&P 500 sank 1.5% after reaching a record last week.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, one of the things that Trump is doing here is he's picking up 80-20 issues and he's clubbing Democrats with them and basically daring them to resist him. And Democrats are going for the dare.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's called DeepSeek. This is an AI that was trained on chips that are way less sophisticated than the NVIDIA chips that have been sort of the drivers of the AI revolution. So to review for just a second, for those of us who haven't been following AI very closely, artificial intelligence has progressed tremendously over the course of the last three to four years. Tremendously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Here's State Representative Leigh Finke, who's transgender, meaning a man who believes he's a woman, suggesting that this makes us less ready, that barring men who say they are women from the military somehow makes us less ready militarily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Really? Really? I'm going to believe you. Uh-huh. Sure. What we need is more admirals like Rachel Levine. Probably. Speaking of which, the Biden administration policies with regard to spending on the military and on the State Department, totally insane.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Biden administration quietly awarded $15 million in taxpayer funds to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to help distribute oral contraceptives and condoms, according to a non-public congressional funding notice reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. I can't imagine why Donald Trump is now reviewing all foreign aid, including to the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Agency for International Development. We'll get to more on that in just one second. First, it's no secret legacy media is collapsing. Why? Because Americans are waking up. They're tired of being lied to, tired of the spin, tired of the narratives of The Daily Wire. We don't tell stories. We show you the truth. From investigative reporting to fearless commentary, we bring the facts straight to you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It doesn't stop there. We're making movies, documentaries, and series that challenge the woke Hollywood agenda and reshape the culture. But here's the deal. We can't do it without you. We need your support to keep growing, to keep fighting. Now is the time to join the fight. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Become a member today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so when it comes to President Trump's action in the military, when it comes to President Trump's action on the State Department level, this is all a response to the insanity that was the Biden administration policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whether you're talking about Biden administration giving $15 million to the Taliban for contraceptives, or whether you're talking about the insane amount of foreign aid that is poured out to these dictatorships all over the world that they used to just line their own pocketbooks and coffers, The Trump administration is now stopping all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, again, it's quite possible that AI was being overvalued, that all of these various companies were being overvalued, that it's sort of like the tech bubble in the late 90s, that a huge amount of money is being invested into AI, but it's not clear how much revenue is actually going to be generated by AI in the real world. So tons of money is now chasing a couple of sort of big hits.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to Politico, the Trump administration's sudden halt on U.S. foreign aid is causing chaos inside groups ranging from health providers to landmine removers, interrupting lifesaving programs as officials struggle to understand the scope of the directive. So there was an order on Friday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to cut all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Leaders of aid organizations are looking at which programs to stop and whether to immediately cut staff or even shut down. As they seek waivers, aid groups are scrambling to adjust. Now, again, an enormous amount of the coverage of this stuff is going to be that malicious compliance kind of stuff that I'm talking about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The United States is still going to give foreign aid to prevent, for example, HIV from spreading in high-risk areas. That's not going to go away in all likelihood. Anything that creates a bad headline is likely to remain on the books. But the goal for many people in the deep state is going to be to suggest that no cuts can ever be done because if you do any cuts, then bad things might happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, yeah, anytime you cut, bad things could happen, and then you deal with it on a case-by-case basis. And some people have likened what Trump is doing to the federal government to chemotherapy for cancer. That's probably right. It'll do some damage to things that you might like, but it'll also take out the cancer. And that, of course, is the goal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Among the aid groups that appear affected are ones that remove landmines from conflict zones by testing and treatment for people with HIV in African countries through the president's emergency plans for aid, relief, tackling food security worldwide. But again, how much of that aid is actually necessary? How much of that aid is actually useful?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That would be the big question because it turns out we got some problems here at home as well as many people have noted in the past. If it's not a core American interest, then us spending billions of dollars handing it to dictators all over the world seems like a very, very bad plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, the State Department has been urged to observe the spirit of President Trump's anti-DEI order during Black History Month, according to The Wall Street Journal. The State Department should observe the spirit of the Trump administration's elimination of DEI in its public messaging, according to a Monday directive viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Apparently, public diplomacy staff should highlight the valuable contribution of individual Americans throughout U.S. history while ensuring our public communications maintain the spirit of the directive eliminating DEI programs. There'd be no restrictions on content or programming related to accessibility or people with disabilities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The goal, of course, was to stop, for example, the propagandizing of Black History Month in the State Department. Because again, the idea is that when you divide Americans by group and then you promote Americans by group, that is generally a bad thing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent cables last week to staff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's great talent in the department, but quote, upholding strict meritocracy is essential to securing our nation's future. And he even opened an email account, deiatruth at opm.gov, to monitor the possibility of people trying to shift DEI programs into sort of old wine into new bottles, so to speak.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, President Trump is making strong moves inside the DOJ and with regard to inspectors in general. Apparently, according to the Associated Press, the Justice Department said Monday it had fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of President Trump, moving rapidly to pursue retribution against lawyers involved in the investigations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, let's be clear about this. Firing lawyers when you come into the presidency is a pretty well-established precedent. You don't want lawyers in the DOJ who are going to target things that you don't find to be actual law enforcement priorities. And when people say, how dare President Trump weaponize the DOJ? All I can say is the DOJ was weaponized under Joe Biden against Donald Trump directly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This happens very often when you have a speculative bubble that's created by a new technology. And then the market tends to wipe out a lot of the speculation, and what you end up with are the long-lasting gains from the technology. The dot-com bubble, of course, did not end dot-com. The dot-com bubble did not end the internet. Instead...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The abrupt termination targeted career prosecutors who worked on Jack Smith's team, which of course makes perfect sense because if you believe that Jack Smith was a political player, then you could have simply recused yourself from engaging in those particular investigations. Nonetheless, the sort of self-righteousness of so many of the people in the federal government

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Their weird belief that the world rests on their shoulders and their shoulders alone is pretty amazing. Here, for example, is one Inspector General fired by President Trump named Mark Greenblatt. He was talking about the email that he received from the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, the real arrogance was shown by one inspector general named Mike Ware, who suggested, hey, we did wonders for the company. Wonders. Inspector, yes, you did wonders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Really, wonders? Name the wonders, please. I'd love to hear the wonders. Meanwhile, President Trump has a bunch of nominees who are up for confirmation this week. One won on Tuesday. That'd be Scott Besson. He is now your new Treasury Secretary. He was ushered in 68 to 29 to confirm Besson to lead the Treasury Department. That is not a shock. His confirmation hearings were fairly uncontroversial.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, there are two very, very controversial nominees who are up this week, maybe three if you count Tulsi Gabbard. One, of course, is RFK Jr. RFK Jr., again, I like RFK Jr. a lot personally. I've had him on the show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He has expressed support for policies that I think are really troubling, including apparently, according to Politico, openness to adopting a key progressive proposal for lowering drug prices in a closed-door meeting with Senate Finance Committee staffers. What exactly was that measure?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He indicated that he would consider authorizing the government to seize the patents of high-priced medicines from manufacturers and sharing them with other drug makers as a way to force down costs. Okay, that is a great way to destroy research and investment in drugs. the medical industry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The dot-com bubble was created by enthusiasm for an entire new wave of products. And it turns out that a lot of that enthusiasm was put in the wrong places. But it didn't mean the internet didn't transform life. It did. The same thing is going to be true of AI. So a lot of these stocks that are currently highly valued may be overvalued at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you just seize patents, which are actual private property, and then you just distribute them out there, who is going to put the money into research and development, into R&D, to develop a drug, knowing it could be seized at any moment by the federal government and just redistributed to a bunch of people who never produced the drug in the first place?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, that approach was long supported by progressive Democrats. It was supported a little bit by Joe Biden, who would use executive authority to take certain drug patents developed using taxpayer money and license them to other manufacturers that might make and sell them for less. That is going to generate some pretty significant pushback from Republicans, you would imagine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Big backers of that policy include Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. And then, of course, RFK Jr. is going to have to face down questions about his formerly pro-choice positions. Now, Katie Miller, who's Kennedy's spokesperson, disputed the characterization. She said, quote, this is once again another example of Politico carrying Democrats' water.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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After Politico is told this did not occur the way Democrats have described it, they're seeking to publish it in an attempt to denigrate Bobby Kennedy and create a story where there is not one. The fact remains this did not occur. This is a smear campaign against Donald J. Trump. So, you know, apparently, I hope that's right, because I like RFK Jr.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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a lot on a personal level, and I hope that he did not back any policy like that. One truly egregious nominee, and this is a really bad nominee, is Lori Chavez de Remmer for Labor Secretary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She is just a stand-in for union-based labor for these very, very corrupt private and public sector unions who should presumably use government power in order to cram down on private industry a wide variety of bad regulations. Senator Rand Paul, who's a libertarian, said he's a no on Lori Chavez at Dremmer. It'd be kind of surprising if she got through. She could lose 15 more Republicans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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At the same time, a bunch of Democrats could vote for her, so maybe they pick her up. The question is whether she makes it out of committee in the first place. All right, you guys. In one second, we're going to get to the most insane media story of the day, courtesy of the New Yorker magazine. First, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapira.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And the fact that China was able to develop DeepSeek without using NVIDIA chips means, again, that many of these companies that were assumed to have essentially an oligopoly, that they were going to have enormous power in the AI market, maybe they don't have as much power as they thought they did because it turns out the barrier to entry is now much lower.

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All in all, Monday's market bloodbath wiped out some $1 trillion from the stock market's value, according to the Dow Jones market data. Now, as I said, some people like Marc Andreessen, the investor, have been comparing this to the Sputnik moment.

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Sputnik, of course, is when the Soviet Union launched a satellite that orbited the Earth and shocked the Americans out of their complacence about their technological superiority. This is something very, very similar. America had assumed that we were way ahead in the world of AI, and that was particularly because of our control over the microchip sector via TSMC and NVIDIA.

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And it turns out, not so much. According to the New York Times, this new chatbot created by DeepSeek is the talk of the AI world. Apparently, it works basically as well as ChatGPT. One columnist said, I spent the morning playing with the chatbot, asking it, along with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropix Clawed, all the questions I could think of after some initial toying, I was impressed.

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It was able to solve complex math, physics, and reasoning problems, I fed it, twice as fast as ChatGPT. When I asked it questions about computer programming, the types a job applicant might be faced with in a technical interview, its responses were as in-depth and speedy as its competitors'.

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Now, there are some problems with DeepSeek, and this is one of the reasons why America needs to win the battle for AI. DeepSeek monitors all your data. If you use DeepSeek, it is doing the same thing that all other various Chinese companies do. It is mining your data to an extraordinary extent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In the same way that TikTok is a Chinese PSYOP that is designed to draw enormous amounts of American data to it, the same thing is true of DeepSeek. According to their user agreement, we automatically collect certain information from you when you use the services, including internet or other network activity information, such as your IP address, unique device identifiers, and cookies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We collect certain device and network connection information when you access the service. By the way, this includes keystrokes, It includes pretty much all data that DeepSeek also is censoring like mad. DeepSeek will not allow you to ask questions, for example, about the Tiananmen Square massacre. So what does all of this mean?

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If you've been following ChatGPT, it is so good at this point at pretty much everything, and it is only one step removed from being able to do many things in the real world. So for example, if you use ChatGPT to put together a travel itinerary for any location on the globe, you can give it a prompt. It'll give you the travel itinerary.

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Well, according to President Trump, what this means is that it's a wake-up call to American industry. Get competitive. Get competitive now. Here's President Trump saying it's a wake-up call. He was speaking at the Congressional Institute yesterday.

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Okay, he's right about all of that, right? When the cost goes down of actually being able to participate in this market, that means more innovation and more competition, and that's good. As the Wall Street Journal points out, DeepSeek is challenging assumptions about the computing power and spending needed for AI advances.

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OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank last week made headlines when they announced a joint venture, Stargate, to invest up to $500 billion in building out AI infrastructure. Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Meta would spend $65 billion. which means a radical reduction in the cost to actually develop a useful AI.

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So what exactly does this mean? Well, number one, President Trump had rescinded a Biden executive order that gave government far too much control over AI. Companies developing AI models that pose a serious risk to national security, economic security, or public health and safety would have had to notify regulators when training their models and share the results of red team safety tests.

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Biden had suggested that that was necessary in order to eliminate bias and limitation and errors. But deep seek is an open source model, meaning anyone can see the code. And that is designed to basically wipe out all competitors, because if you have the most advanced version and you just release the advanced version, everybody ends up using your code. Now, all of that could be a positive.

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One thing is clear, however, and that is we do have to out-compete China. That is why I'm so puzzled by President Trump in that same speech, suggesting that he's going to be putting tariffs on Taiwan. I understand President Trump wants to reshore a lot of this production. President Trump seems to be of the belief system that if we reshore,

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Right now, you can't just hit book, but soon you will be able to do that. And AI is going to change how we do our jobs in so many different industries. It was assumed that America had a massive lead in the AI industry. Why? Well, because AI...

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semiconductor production in the United States away from Taiwan, that that effectively means that the United States doesn't have to get involved if China decides to make a play for Taiwan because an American key national interest will no longer be at stake. There's a big problem with this. One is TSMC is leagues ahead of anything that's being produced inside the United States right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And two is it appears that DeepSeek was just able to radically increase its capability without using sophisticated semiconductors like from TSMC. So it might be a moot point anyway. Well, all of this is a transformative move in American and international markets, but you need to look at your own personal finances.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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all while maintaining a well-balanced portfolio. The best part, Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is spare change. The app makes it simple to begin investing in just minutes with clear guidance every step of the way so you can give your money a chance to grow behind the scenes.

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Paid non-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier two compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. The important disclosures at Acorns dot com slash Shapiro. Also, did you know that somebody becomes a victim of identity theft every three seconds?

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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As we recognize Identity Theft Awareness Week, I want to talk about protecting your identity. In today's digital world, your personal information passes through countless hands at medical offices, retailers, and online services. With data breaches becoming increasingly common, it's more important than ever to stay protected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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working as it does, of incredible levels of data, just reams and reams of data, has to use very sophisticated microchips typically created by NVIDIA and then produced at TSMC, which is an actual semiconductor factory over in Taiwan. And firms like Meta that have been investing billions of dollars into AI or OpenAI or Google.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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The most comprehensive plan includes the million dollar protection package offering. up to $3 million in coverage. Plus, their monitoring services work around the clock to help protect your credit cards, bank accounts, and personal information from being misused. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock.

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Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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She's emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing their experts are always monitoring her sensitive information for any suspicious activity. So right now, save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock.com slash Ben. That's LifeLock.com slash Ben to save up to 40% terms apply LifeLock for the threats you can't control.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2126 - Did China Just DRINK OUR MILKSHAKE?!

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Here's President Trump announcing his tariffs on Taiwan, which, again, is a strange move since, again, Taiwan is, in fact, an American ally.

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Okay, so he wants to reshore a lot of this stuff. Taiwan, for its part, is trying to basically talk him out of this, suggesting, hey, you know, you guys are running way behind. You design the chips. We make the chips.

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That's a pretty good deal when it comes to free trade, and it lowers the cost, and it's going to be necessary to lower the cost, given the fact that China is now much more competitive. And this does play into concerns over the way that the Trump administration so far is dealing with China. Obviously, when it comes to TikTok,

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My hope, and I think this is true, is that President Trump has been using carrots and sticks with regard to Chinese outfits like TikTok. He has delayed, for example, the implementation of the shutdown of TikTok in order to negotiate presumably a sale of TikTok that will end without TikTok being controlled by the Chinese.

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If we are in fact in competition with China, which we certainly are, then we need to be using every resource at our disposal and not hamstringing our ability to compete with the Chinese by putting tariffs on semiconductors, which of course drives up prices for precisely the companies we need to actually out-compete the Chinese on this basis. Now, with all of this said,

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President Trump has been pairing his call for tariffs more broadly with a call for tax decreases. So, for example, President Trump the other day suggested funding the government solely through tariffs. Now, if the question was, can we substitute tariffs for income tax? I'm in.

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Really, if you're going to lower the cost on business in the United States by giving giant tax cuts and at the same time increase government revenues through tariffs, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. If, however, the idea is tariffs without any sort of concomitant deregulation or tax cuts, that just raises prices in the United States.

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All of these various companies have been pouring billions of dollars into buying these NVIDIA microchips that are designed in order to be able to process these huge quantities of data because that's how AI actually works. The way that AI works is it crunches as much data as humanly possible.

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Now, again, if he's using tariffs as a tradeoff for a relatively small government, if he's using it as a tradeoff for lowering taxes, I agree and I'm in. And that seems to be the pattern that he would like to follow ideologically. That was, in fact, the plan of William McKinley, who sort of modeled himself after William McKinley, for those who don't know.

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was a twice-elected president of the United States, assassinated, and the person who took over for him was Teddy Roosevelt. As the Wall Street Journal points out in a piece by David Uberti, Trump tries to forge a golden age economy of self-reliance and defiance.

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A potentially leaner, meaner government at the center of it all is already throwing the country's weight around even against longtime allies in the hope of bending global trade to America's will. In discussing possible tariffs that could upend some U.S.

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company supply chains and other countries' entire economies, Trump has likened his approach to that of President William McKinley, Republican leader during an era known as the Gilded Age, a period of rapid industrialization after the Civil War that created tremendous wealth for America but was marked by rampant inequality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

Folks, tons to get to on today's show. memberships. Well, of course, this weekend marked Memorial Day, a grave occasion when we actually have the opportunity to honor our fallen warriors. And that means that it's time to take a look at where the United States currently stands in the world geopolitically.

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Now, I think that they're wrong. I think that President Trump has a gut level desire for a peace through strength policy. And there are members of the administration who are much more aligned with the Trump 1.0 peace through strength policy. One of those would be the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He put out an ad today that is very much peace through strength based. No more distractions.

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OK, so again, this ad is much more. This is the peace through strength perspective, right? So that's sort of the Hegseth side. And again, there is a debate inside the administration about all of this right now. The vice president seems to be taking the lead in a lot of these debates. But here's the thing. Reality exists. I've said this a thousand times. I'll say it a thousand more.

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President Trump does not have thoroughgoing philosophies when it comes to foreign policy or domestic policy. President Trump has impulses. And when those impulses are right, they are great. And when they're wrong, they run up against reality and he shifts his impulses. That is why President Trump is such a pragmatist.

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And so right now, America's enemies, our opponents, are showing that they believe that there is play in the joints and weakness at the seams with regard to America's foreign policy. There's no question that's what's happening. Look at Russia's behavior over the course of the last several months since President Trump took office. They've been upping the ante.

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They're simultaneously negotiating with President Trump. And by negotiating, I mean stringing President Trump along. They've been doing this with the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who again has yet to negotiate a really good deal anywhere that he has been deployed.

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In any case, according to the Wall Street Journal, Russia has now launched its largest ever drone and missile assault on Ukraine on Monday, according to Ukrainian officials, defying President Trump's calls for an end to the bombardment. Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched more than 350 explosive drones and at least nine cruise missiles.

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Kiev scrambled aircraft and deployed electronic warfare systems and mobile air defense teams throughout the country in response. The latest attacks came just hours after President Trump issued a strong rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin, denouncing airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital and other cities that killed at least 12 people on Sunday.

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Trump went on social media, on Truth Social, and he posted he has gone absolutely crazy. He is needlessly killing a lot of people. And I'm not just talking about soldiers. And he put up this post. Missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever. I've always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it. And maybe that's proving to be right.

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But if he does, it'll lead to the downfall of Russia. Likewise, President Zelensky is doing his country's no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems. I don't like it. And it better stop. This is a war that would never have started if our president is Zelensky's, Putin's and Biden's war, not Trump's.

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I'm only helping to put out the big and ugly fires that have been started through gross incompetence and hatred. Hey, so he starts off right there and then it sort of goes wrong. Again, I'm not sure what he wants from Zelensky that Zelensky hasn't already given him. Zelensky has given him the immediate ceasefire. Zelensky has said he will go anywhere for direct talks.

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Zelensky gave him the rare earth minerals deal. It's sort of both sides of him from the Trump administration and from President Trump is the reason why Putin is pushing. Hey, Putin believes he can get away with it. Now, President Trump, when he says that President Putin has gone crazy, And he's kind of not sure what happened to him. Nothing happened to Vladimir Putin.

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He's one of the most consistent leaders in modern world history. He's been absolutely consistent in his territorial ambitions, in his desire to restore, quote unquote, Russian greatness, in his desire for Russia to be perceived as a global hegemon in its own right, as a global power, not a regional power, a global power. Again, Putin has been absolutely consistent.

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Every single president seems to make this mistake with Putin. George W. Bush famously suggested he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw through to his soul. Barack Obama tried to set a reset button with Vladimir Putin and then dismissed Russia as a geopolitical enemy in 2012 in his race against Mitt Romney.

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Joe Biden tried to make overtures to Putin, originally suggesting that if Putin, you know, sort of lightly, if he sort of lightly invaded Ukraine, well, then there might not be a lot of American pushback. Everyone makes this mistake with Putin for some odd reason, but Putin has been absolutely consistent.

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By the way, Putin responded to President Trump's suggestion that Putin had gone crazy by suggesting that this was emotional overload. So the Kremlin, their spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said, quote, we are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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This is a very crucial moment, which is, of course, associated with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reaction. Now, again, what the Russians are pretty openly saying at this point is that they would like to continue their expansion in Ukraine. They apparently are recruiting another 50,000 troops. That, of course, is no surprise.

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Okay, so again, that's the proper tone for Memorial Day. All of this part and parcel of a broader discussion as to what America's foreign policy should look like. And it is kind of unclear what the Trump doctrine is at this point in time. J.D. Vance, just before the weekend, spoke at the Naval Academy. At the Naval Academy, he spoke at length about what he sees the Trump doctrine as.

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They're happy to throw men into the maw, into the gristmill. The Kremlin continues to maintain that they're not going to end the war short of more territorial expansion. And this, of course, is leading to Western pushback, particularly from the German chancellor.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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He has now come out, Frederick Merz, and he said that Germany, along with Ukraine's other key Western backers, had lifted range restrictions on weapons they sent to Kiev to fight against Russia. Which, by the way, is the correct response. It is. If Russia gets to fight an endless war against Ukraine...

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then Ukraine should have the ability to strike at, for example, Russian weapons depots and supply lines inside Russia. Here's Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Now, again, President Trump taking that position, and Merz said that that is going along with the American position as well. That is a good thing. That is President Trump actually trying to apply peace through strength. He's doing the same thing, apparently, in Northern Europe. According to the Wall Street Journal, The Trump administration wants NATO to get more lethal.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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A testing ground is Europe's north, where NATO faces Russia on two sides. Some European officials worry America's commitment to the transatlantic alliance is waning, given President Trump's criticism of it and his stated desire to reduce military engagement abroad. But U.S. military commanders say that their posture remains firm. Brigadier General Andrew Saslov, deputy chief of operations for U.S.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Army Europe and Africa, said, from a U.S. Army perspective, my orders haven't changed. The high North and the Baltics have been thrust into the center of U.S. war planning as their access to shipping routes, territory, and energy reserves will be crucial to the West in a new era of geopolitical conflict.

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The region is hawkish on Russia and is driving European efforts to rearm and boost defense budgets, including support for Ukraine's armed forces. Nordic countries have been ramping up their military spending. That includes, of course, Finland, Norway as well. So again, that is President Trump reacting in the right way. And he's going to have to because he is going to be pushed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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We'll get to more on this in just one moment first. Made in America means something to our country's private equity investors. When you invest $700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you're investing in the success of Main Street.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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And there's a lot of wiggle room here as to what exactly he means. I think that Vice President Vance likes to use the Iraq war as sort of the bugaboo to attack any ideology that he does not find particularly good for American foreign policy. That's fine, but you're going to be hard pressed to find anybody who, knowing all we know now, would go back in time and do the Iraq war again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Just use their ready-made invite to apply messages to personally connect with your top picks. Here at the DailyWire, we're always looking for top talent. Having the great features ZipRecruiter offers would make hiring a breeze for any business owner, big or small. Gear up for summer with ZipRecruiting's high-speed hiring tool.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The same thing holds true with regard to China. So right now, China has been... withholding from some sort of blockade or attack on Taiwan. There are a couple of reasons. One, they're not quite sure what President Trump is going to do if there were some sort of blockade attempted against Taiwan.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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There are definitely members of the Trump administration who basically would abandon Taiwan to its fate, regardless of the consequences. One of the sort of strange statements about this was made by Elbridge Colby, who is a deputy secretary of defense for policy. He's been a big proponent of the idea that we ought to shift our focus from the Middle East to China.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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But then he's also made statements like, if Taiwan gets attacked, we do nothing about it. So I'm not sure how that shifts the focus precisely. Now, China is basically banking on the United States not doing a lot about Taiwan. And or they're hoping that the United States, through its own trade policy, is going to sort of self-defeat.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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That the United States is going to weaken itself with its allies and thus lead to further inroads for the Chinese in their race toward artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence. So the question for China is, is the window closing? If China believes the window is closing, then they absolutely could go for Taiwan.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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If they believe that the United States is weak and will do little, they could absolutely blockade Taiwan. And that would be global economic disaster. Again, the only reason for China to do that is if they actually believe that their window is closing. They're an aging country. They do have significant debt problems. Their economy has always been a bit of a paper tiger.

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And I don't mean here they don't have enormous manufacturing capacity. They do. But there is a vast income divide in China. A huge percentage of the population makes like 150 bucks a month. And those people live out in sort of the rural areas of China. China has done a sort of incredible job of ensuring that its cities are not swelled with these people. They force people to stay in their own areas.

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And then they artificially boost buying in tier two and tier three cities. A lot of what we see sort of publicly from China is not exactly what is going on in China. So it is certainly true that they're sucking in money from the periphery and then they are using it in a sort of fascistic and mercantilistic push for manufacturing supremacy.

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And that's particularly true when it comes to artificial intelligence. However, they do have some very serious burgeoning financial problems. Obviously, they have a big real estate problem on their hands. They have a demographic problem on their hands. There are folks like Kenneth Rogoff, the American economist,

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who teaches at Harvard University, who suggested that actually the Chinese rates of growth are likely to slow sometime in the near future. If that happens, are they more or are they less likely to make a move on Taiwan? The answer probably is more likely to move on Taiwan, which presumably is why, according to the Taiwan News, China has now strengthened its ability to rapidly attack Taiwan.

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So I'm not sure who he's arguing against here, aside from a very, very small coterie of people who refuse to acknowledge the reality, which is that we didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that the occupation did not go the way that it should have gone and all the rest. In any case, Vice President Vance is laying out what he sees as the Trump administration's foreign policy.

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The Chinese Air Force has expanded its combat radius with new fighter jets, such as the J-10, J-16, and J-20, which can reach Taiwan from bases deep inside China without the need to refuel, a Taiwanese defense official told the Financial Times.

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Chinese military aircraft now enter Taiwan's air defense identification zone more than 245 times a month, compared to fewer than 10 times per month five years ago, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense. Aircraft also cross the Taiwan Strait median line roughly 120 times a month. In the naval domain, a U.S.

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official says the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard maintain a near constant presence of about a dozen ships near Taiwan. With access to nearby ports, Chinese ships could move into a blockade posture in a matter of hours. And forward deployment of vessels allows for faster coordination of airstrikes.

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Meanwhile, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has reorganized large army units into smaller ones, including six amphibious combined arms brigades along the southeastern coast, according to the Financial Times. U.S. Army War College expert Joshua Arastegui says, quote, this reflects the PLA's renewed emphasis on Taiwan and lays the foundation for actual warfighting capabilities.

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And of course, Joe Biden left the United States military in the lurch. The sort of trade posture originally taken by the Trump administration during Liberation Day, which is gradually being corrected. alienated a lot of the allies the United States would need to call on. And there remain open questions about what the United States would do in case of a Chinese move against Taiwan.

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China's banking on that. There's a lot of push right now. Russia is pushing in Ukraine. They're trying to prey on these sort of isolationist instincts in the Trump administration. They're trying to string along the Trump administration at the same time, upping the military ante. China is obviously banking on the fact that the United States is looking for an off-ramp with China.

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I do not think that China took, for example, the Trump administration's refusal to actually impose the TikTok ban as a sign of friendship. They took that instead as a sign of weakness, and they are building up their capacity to invade Taiwan, which of course would be disastrous for the global economy because Taiwan produces all the sophisticated semiconductors basically on planet Earth.

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And then meanwhile, the Iranians seem to be openly strengthening their position in negotiations. They seem to believe that President Trump actually wants some sort of off-ramp with Iran more than Iran wants an off-ramp with the United States, which, if true, would be an insane proposition. Totally insane. Iran's skies are open. Iran is an extraordinarily weakened country.

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Its proxy forces have been devastated by Israel. Its economy is on a razor's edge. The Ayatollahs are unpopular in their own country. Why in the world would the United States be seeking an off-ramp faster than the Iranians? By what stretch of the imagination?

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It is a bizarre negotiation strategy to continue to maintain that you're having great negotiations while Iran is continually publicly strengthening its own position, rejecting your core demand. The United States is core demand by President Trump. Again, he's the same president. President Trump was right in Trump 1.0.

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He said the Iran deal, the JCPOA cut by Barack Obama was the worst deal in American history. He was not wrong about that. He said it over and over and over. Why? The JCPOA essentially granted Iran

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And so what he suggests is that President Trump's visit to the Middle East, in which he visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, was designed in sort of recapitulating an American foreign policy that is based on a realistic assessment of what the world looks like. Here was the Vice President of the United States.

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Iran a clear pathway to a nuclear bomb while allowing them to use funding for their ballistic missile development, for the funding of their proxy terrorist groups all over the region, ranging from the Houthis to Hamas to Hezbollah, It was an awful, awful deal, which is why President Trump pulled out of it. Why would he seek to reenter such a deal simply to what?

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Placate the isolationists who mistakenly believe that if Israel bombed the Iranian nuclear facilities, somehow this would pose a grave global danger to the United States. On what planet? Please explain to me the chain of events. Please explain the chain of causation right there. Again, the sort of language coming from the Trump administration here.

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is bizarre and mixed, shall we say, because what's being conveyed by the Americans is optimism about a deal. What's being conveyed by the Iranians is that they are not making any sort of real concessions with regard to their nuclear program. So here is President Trump over the weekend saying that the United States talks with Iran have been good.

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Okay, very bizarre to say that we've had very, very good talks with Iran, considering the fact that according to the Iran International publication, Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of Iran's Parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told Didban Iran that the offer right now from Oman includes a temporary pause in enrichment with the possibility of resuming activities afterward.

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He says Tehran has not accepted the proposal due to concerns rooted in past experiences. He said the Omanis told us stop enrichment now for six months and then resume it again. But Iran has not yet accepted this offer because based on past experience, there's the likelihood of further excessive demands from the other side. So in other words,

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The Omanis are trying to push the Iranians into a six-month pause. Why? What would a six-month pause do? Number one, it would open up the Iranian economy. Number two, it would allow them to rebuild all of their air defense systems that Israel couldn't actually strike their nuclear facilities. And number three, it would push toward a JCPOA 2.0.

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Apparently, according to Arastani, if negotiations break down, Iran possesses 300 kilograms of enriched uranium, an amount he said is sufficient to produce 10 atomic bombs. He said, quote, there will be a deal and Iran will enrich at a level one step above the JCPOA. I mean, that's unbelievable. That's basically Iran spitting in the eye of the Trump administration.

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While President Trump is saying the negotiations are going well, something is not being conveyed to President Trump. I don't know who's talking to President Trump. I don't know what the Witkoff team is doing in these negotiations. I don't know what the flow of information is. But the Iranians are openly spitting in the eye of the United States, taking these positions publicly.

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You know, if President Trump is pissed at Zelensky, who gave him everything he wants on the rare earth minerals deal and the ceasefire and the direct talks, Why is he so sanguine about the Iranians who are openly rejecting the key negotiating point in his demands? I mean, over the weekend, Christine Ohm, the head of the DHS, was on Fox saying that Trump will never accept a nuclear capable of Iran.

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Meanwhile, the Iranians are saying we won't do a deal unless we're nuclear capable.

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Okay, so is that the position of the Trump administration or is there going to be a giant cave? We don't know yet. And the Iranians don't know yet either, which is why they're pushing.

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By the way, the idea that the Iranian regime is somehow friendlier toward the West or they've moderated in any way, weird because the newspaper for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to Fox News, praised the terrorist who murdered an American and Israeli Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., calling him, quote, our dear brother.

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Those are the people who are being negotiated with and who want a nuclear weapon. And who believe that if they just stall enough, President Trump will cut a deal. Well, President Trump, I don't believe he will cut a deal. I don't believe that President Trump is going to cut JCPOA 2.0, no matter who in the administration is urging him to do so.

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I don't think President Trump is going to cave on Taiwan. I don't think that's President Trump's way. I think that in reality, President Trump is a peace through strength president. But that needs to be conveyed, not just in words, but an actual forward posture in military spending.

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in public statements, because again, the United States has spent the last 20 years being non-credible in its threats. The Trump administration was credible during Trump one. Joe Biden was not credible in his threats. Barack Obama set red lines and then immediately obliterated them as soon as they met with the light of day.

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President Trump 2.0 does not need to be like Barack Obama or like Joe Biden. He came into office promising precisely the opposite. It's more on this in a moment. First, you might already own a firearm, but some prefer starting with a less lethal option to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger. Enter Byrna. That's B-Y-R-N-A.

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Obviously, I love the Second Amendment and a bunch of firearms, but the thought of using lethal force, particularly in my home, not ideal for everybody. Luckily, Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammo designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes without those unwanted repercussions. And Burna is excited to introduce the all-new compact launcher.

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Sleek, slim, hits like a sledgehammer. The same size as a smartphone, allowing you to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence. This launcher fires at 400 feet per second with 41 joules of force per square inch. It's a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks. One thing I love about Burna is they are, in fact, American.

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Over 80% of the components in the compact launcher are sourced in the United States. Their pistols are hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And it gives you peace of mind knowing that you can have it in pretty much every state because it is legal in all 50 states, requires no background checks, can be shipped directly to your door.

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Plus, Burna is trusted by hundreds of police departments and government agencies worldwide. Try before you buy. Visit Burna.com to find a Burna dealer partner near you. That's B-Y-R-N-A.com. Thanks to Berna for sponsoring this video. Meanwhile, on trade policy, the Trump administration continues to sort of try things out and then see how they work.

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So over the weekend, the president of the United States threatened Tim Cook, suggesting that Apple needed to manufacture the iPhone in the United States. It was sort of a bizarre statement, considering the fact that the United States is not going to be a salutary place to actually produce the iPhone. If you want the iPhone to cost you $5,000, that's a really good way to do it.

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Cook had tried to shift production away from China and toward India, which would be really, really good. The United States needs to foster better economic connections with India, a rising power that is a bulwark against both Pakistan and And so it would be good if Apple made more connections with Modi's India. That'd be an excellent, excellent proposition.

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President Trump, of course, has suggested instead that there needs to be a reshoring of manufacturer of iPhones in the United States. Apparently, on Friday morning, according to the New York Times, President Trump caught much of his own administration and Apple's leadership off guard with a social media post threatening tariffs of 25% on iPhones made anywhere except the United States.

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The post thrust Apple back into the administration's crosshairs a little over a month after Cook had lobbied and won an exemption from 145% tariff on iPhones assembled in China and sold in the United States.

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Now, we should point out at this point, that's not going to cause Apple to reshort production in the United States because the differential in cost between producing an iPhone in India and producing an iPhone in the United States is way bigger than 25%. So all you will do is ramp up the amount of money it costs the American consumer to buy an iPhone. He's not going to reshore because of that.

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The costs are just too great. Again, if the costs of reshoring are higher than 25%, you'll just leave the production in India and pay the 25% to get the iPhones into the United States and consumers will effectively pay it. So is that a good move? Probably not. I'm not sure exactly why we are attempting to cudgel Apple into doing such things. Again, getting them out of China, good.

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Suggesting that we're going to have unionized factories in the United States screwing in the screens to iPhones. No, that is not going to happen. Also, the sort of tariff war is, in fact, leading to selective inflation in product prices in certain areas.

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According to Axios, from Ralph Lauren to Barbie Maker Mattel, several household names have recently announced they're looking at higher prices in an effort to offset the tariff regime. Last month, CEOs from some of the nation's biggest retailers warned President Trump his trade policies could disrupt supply chains.

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Now, again, he's arguing here presumably against the war in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan is a bit of a different story, since originally the war in Afghanistan was launched on the back of 9-11. So it was, in fact, a core American national interest to defenestrate the regime that had protected Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the murder of 3,000 Americans.

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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that the foreign countries and producers would bear the cost of the tariffs. And then Walmart warned that it would raise prices. And at that point, President Trump suggested that Walmart should eat the tariffs, which, of course, is not a thing that is going to happen in reality. So apparently Ralph Lauren, Walmart, Mattel.

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Volvo, Subaru, Ford, Nike, Adidas, all of them are talking about now increasing prices. And those increases in prices can make it hard for the Federal Reserve to, for example, lower interest rates. The mortgage rates are currently still riding up around 7%. So it's going to be very difficult to unlock the real estate market with the interest rates that high at this point in time.

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However, President Trump did announce that he would be delaying Another proffered tariff. So President Trump, over the weekend, threatened the Europeans with a 50% tariff. He said, they're not negotiating fast enough. And so we're just going to dump a 50% tariff on them. The stock futures immediately dumped. And so then he walked it back.

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He said, we'll wait until July 9th to try and negotiate something. Okay, well, you know, better.

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Okay, so that is a good thing. Better that he should delay it so that we can actually get a good deal. That was the promise. The promise was tariff war would lead to better deals. We're still waiting for many of those better deals to materialize. And we've gotten to kind of where we needed to get to with China, sort of. We're down at a 30% tariff rate on Chinese goods.

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China has dropped its tariff rate on American goods to 10%. We need to radically lower our other tariffs on all the countries surrounding China so as to help box them in using our trade measures. Stephen Moore, who's a financial advisor to the president, an economic advisor, he celebrated the olive branch by the Europeans.

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Again, he's right about that. That is a good thing. And getting the Europeans to the table would definitely be a good thing. We also need the Europeans to actually shift their trade away from China.

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And obviously, there are many different iterations of American foreign policy, many of them bad, very few of them actually wonderful. Obviously, the United States got involved in a war in Libya and overthrowing the Libyan regime that I opposed and thought was wrong. The United States got involved in the war in Syria in sort of bizarre ways, the civil war in Syria.

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If the goal is to isolate China, if the goal is to prevent China from cheating on IP and cheating on its artificial exchange rates on its currency, if that's the goal, then we actually need to pursue policies that achieve that particular goal. Speaking of a win for the Trump administration, this is, in fact, a good thing.

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I understand there are people who don't understand how the steel works, but the reality is that it is good for Nippon Steel to actually be able to bid for U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel is not an American-owned company. It is not an American government-owned company. It is just a steel company in the United States called U.S.

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Steel that has sort of a long and storied history, but it doesn't belong to the American government. U.S. Steel... is simply an American firm that produces overpriced steel and has thus been subjected to a shrinking share of the markets, both internationally and domestically. Nippon wants to come in, change over the management structure, make it significantly more cost effective.

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That is, in fact, a good thing. That is not a bad thing. Capital from Nippon coming in and fixing U.S. steel so it doesn't lose employees and market share is actually a good thing. Here's President Trump saying so.

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Okay, so again, that is a good thing. We have to see what the details of the deal look like. But honestly, it's really not up to the United States government or it shouldn't be if a foreign investor decides to buy a share of an American company unless there is some sort of national security issue involved, which there simply is not with regard to U.S. Steel.

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And I think so much of the confusion is based just on the name U.S. Steel and the fact that we all have sort of seventh grade memories of what U.S. Steel represented in the early 20th century. Meanwhile, on the economic front, The situation continues to be a little bit fraught with regard to the so-called big, beautiful bill. It has now passed the House. It is in the Senate.

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Unclear exactly what's going to happen in the Senate. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has pointed out that there are serious problems with the bill from the Senate perspective. It doesn't cut the deficit enough, doesn't cut the debt enough. And again, he's not wrong about this. America does have a giant ticking time bomb that is the national debt. The bill does cut some deficit.

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the idea that we're increasing the deficit with the bill assumes sort of, it's sort of an accounting conversation. Is the amount of money the United States is set to take in based on the tax rates currently or based on the reversion to the pre-Trump tax rates?

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The United States has been involved in a wide variety of conflicts all over the world. And so this requires more specific definition. So J.D. Vance suggests, the vice president of the United States, that the American foreign policy has to be focused on our pure adversaries encountering them. Here's what he had to say.

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If you suggest that the amount the United States was set to take in was based on the pre-Trump tax rates because this was set to sunset officially, that's when you get a quote unquote deficit increase. If the suggestion is that the tax rates were basically always going to be extended,

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Then what you're talking about is a deficit decrease from what it otherwise would have been because the bill actually attempts to cut the cost curve on things like Medicaid for people who are not working. That's the real question. Now, if you're a real fiscal hawk, you still are going to say that this bill is not cut enough. That includes an enormous amount of pork. And that's true.

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There's an enormous amount of pork in this bill. That is the position of Senator Johnson. Here he was.

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So,

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Okay, but that $22 trillion in additional deficit, as Senator Johnson correctly points out, that is attached to Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare in the main. Those are the chief drivers of America's national debt. And no one, as I've said a thousand times, is actually at this point willing to seriously consider cutting entitlements.

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Rand Paul, of course, has been very consistent on this throughout his career. Here's the Senator from Kentucky making much the same point.

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OK, now, the real question here is not really about the principle. On principle, obviously, Senator Paul and Senator Johnson are right. The question is about pragmatism. And here are the choices. The American people are not ready to restructure entitlements. They're almost never ready to restructure entitlements. That's just the reality of the situation. So what are they?

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So the two choices are you let the taxes increase like 70 percent or you don't let the taxes increase. Those are really the two choices on the table. That's the point being made by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

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Okay, so again, he is not wrong there either, except that whenever people in government talk about cuts, they don't actually mean that they are cutting. What they mean is they are cutting the trajectory of future increase. That's like saying that, yeah, I know I'm going to go into debt 200 bucks next month, but I've cut back a little bit. So I'm only going to go into debt 150 bucks next month.

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You're still going into debt. Hey, so let's just be clear about what we're talking about right here. But here is the reality. Neither party is willing to face up to what it will actually require in order for us to bend the cost curve in a very serious way. Neither party is willing to do this.

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And it's always funny to hear people out of power talk about this because suddenly the minute they're out of power, they start talking about debts and deficits and entitlement restructuring. So Jack Lew, who of course is the former Treasury Secretary under Joe Biden, Here he was suggesting that what we actually have to do is raise the taxes and then carefully restructure entitlements.

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Weird, because you guys never talk about carefully restructuring entitlements when you have the capacity to do so.

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So in reality, again, all my sympathies are with Senator Johnson and with Senator Paul. The American people are not ready for this. They just aren't. Donald Trump ran on the proposition that the American people are not ready for this. He's the first Republican of my lifetime to run for president as the candidate to openly say he was not going to touch any of the entitlement programs.

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That's one of the reasons why he has been so successful in a sort of populist vein. Because it turns out that one of the best ways to win office is to promise everybody the moon. Lower taxes and high entitlement spending is in fact a quite popular position in the United States. democratic position, which is higher taxes and much, much higher social spending.

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That is also a relatively popular position. So long as you can lie and pretend that raising taxes on the wealthy is actually going to pay for everything, which of course it will not. So both parties that are totally dishonest about what it would actually take in order to get out of our debt crisis, which means let's be real about this. We're going Thelma and Louise over that cliff.

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That's what's going to happen 10 years from now. 15 years from now, major austerity measures are in the offing. That's just the reality. Joining us online is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who's been a leader in trying to push this big, beautiful bill toward a better answer with regard to debt and deficits. Senator Johnson, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it. Morning, Ben.

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Thanks for having me on. So let's talk about the problems with the big, beautiful bill. Obviously, House Speaker Mike Johnson is very high on this. Obviously, there are others in Congress who are as well. And the argument that they are making is essentially that in order to come up with this big deficit number from this bill, you have to assume that the Trump tax cuts were going to expire.

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And you basically have to look at the decrease in revenue from the tax cuts being renewed as a form of deficit increase. Well, what do you say to that argument?

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So Senator Johnson talking about reducing the deficit over time and reducing the national debt over time as the big drivers of the national debt and the deficit continue to be our massive entitlement program, Social Security and Medicare. Those are the third rail of American politics. Nobody wants to touch them. Anybody who does touch them is immediately electrocuted.

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President Trump did run in 2016 on the idea that he really was not going to fundamentally change Social Security and Medicare. Is there a way for us to actually reduce the deficit and bring down the national debt without taking on these major entitlement programs that are only going to expand as our population ages?

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So when we look at those 2019 spending levels, just to get a little bit more specific, what kinds of things would have to, quote unquote, be cut in order for us to restore the 2019 spending levels? Because obviously to I think everybody else, we remember 2019. It wasn't a year when we weren't spending lots of money. We were still spending lots of money.

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And you're right, obviously, that if we continued with our current level of tax revenue stacked up against what the spending levels were in 2019, we actually would have a budget surplus. So what would that actually look like in practice?

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So, Senator Johnson, when we look at the constituency of the Senate, obviously, the Republicans have a majority, but it's a fairly narrow majority. You have a somewhat fractious caucus. Obviously, you have fiscal conservatives like you or Senator Paul from Kentucky.

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But you also have Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, who's written full op ed suggesting that any sort of cuts would be political disaster for him and for the Republican Party. How do you cobble together a majority just on a pragmatic level for a better version of big, beautiful bill that you're talking about?

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Senator Johnson, on another topic, you've also reported a new report that shows a cover up of adverse events in the COVID-19 injections by the Biden administration. They knew that there were, in fact, adverse events related specifically to things like myocarditis.

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And the Biden administration in 2021 basically downplayed a lot of those results specifically in order to continue propagating untrue statements about the COVID-19 vaccine. Why don't you talk about what exactly that study found?

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Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin doing yeoman's work with regard to budgetary issues and the like. Senator Johnson, really appreciate the time and the insight.

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OK, we can pause it right there. Now, again, the vice president would go on to suggest that the shift in thinking from ideological crusades to a principled foreign policy restores the credibility of America's deterrence in 2025 and beyond.

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Meanwhile, President Trump is making strong moves against Harvard. President Trump is now set to cancel the federal government's remaining federal contracts with Harvard University worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter being sent to federal agencies on Tuesday.

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The planned additional cuts represented what the administration's official called a complete severance of the government's longstanding business relationship with Harvard. And that, again, is based on their unwillingness to change their order of business, their operations.

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His suggestion is that they have violated the Civil Rights Act by essentially allowing a discriminatory atmosphere against Jews. Now, again, I've said it before. If you want to make the argument that the Civil Rights Act is wildly overbroad and that it wraps up violations of the Constitution within it, I think that argument is not only plausible. I've made that argument before.

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I've made that argument for 20 years. There are certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act, such as banning discrimination by government, that are correct and good. And then there's a bunch of stuff in there that really is a wild constitutional overage.

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And there's a great book called The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell talking specifically about the constitutional shift over the Civil Rights Act, how the entire structure of the federal government got completely changed over by it. However, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And you do not get to play the game

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where local police departments all over the United States are sued into oblivion by the federal government for not violating civil rights on the basis of race. But Harvard University gets to violate the so-called civil rights of its students, so long as those civil rights are the civil rights of Jews. That is the point being made by President Trump.

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On Monday, President Trump said he was considering taking billions in grant money from Harvard University and instead redistributing it to trade schools across the United States. He posted on Truth Social, quote, I'm considering taking $3 billion of grant money away from a very anti-Semitic Harvard and giving it to trade schools all across our land.

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And the Houthi example is a very interesting one for him to use here because the reality is that the Houthis have not actually ceased their activities in the Red Sea. Originally, we did not define our battle against the Houthis as simply restoring deterrence with regard to Houthi attacks on American ships. The goal was to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

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What a great investment that would be for the United States and so badly needed. The announcement didn't provide any further specifics, but again, it is true that the executive branch does have the unique capacity to redirect funding away from these universities. That is not, in fact, like an earned entitlement mandated by law. So he can simply say, listen, no further funding, no future funding.

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And there can be an argument over whether the university's violation of the Civil Rights Act justifies particular types of action by the administration. But the notion the federal government is bound and committed to continue funding Harvard University, that is not true. And this is one of the real problems for Harvard University. They can complain all they want.

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But if the federal government under President Trump decides, then no further money will flow to Harvard. No further money will flow to Harvard. Harvard has been locked in a battle with the Trump administration since March when the government said it was reviewing nearly $9 billion in federal funding over anti-Semitism concerns.

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So it'll be, by the way, you want to talk about genius populist moves, shifting money from Harvard University with its endowment of something like $150 billion. Shifting that money over instead to trade schools is a wonderful populist move. Truly, truly a smart populist move by the president of the United States. And Harvard deserves every little bit of this.

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All they had to do is negotiate with President Trump. That's all they had to do. And they wouldn't do it. They decided they wanted to stand up on their hind legs and defend. their discriminatory atmosphere, an atmosphere they never would have allowed for any other minority group at Harvard University. Never, not in a million years.

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And so President Trump is using this as a club to clock them as well they should be. Speaking of which, President Trump is also now looking to actually make people pay their student loans. So Joe Biden's proposition is essentially the American taxpayer should foot the bill for subsidizing all of these universities all over the United States.

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Well, now President Trump is saying, no, no, no, you got to pay off your student loans. According to the Wall Street Journal, borrowers have been required to repay their student loans for some months now.

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But just this month, the Trump administration began putting millions of defaulted student loan borrowers into collections and threatened to confiscate their wages, tax refunds, and federal benefits. The collections process was standard before the pandemic. So they're claiming this is something new. It isn't. This is how it used to work.

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Now, if President Trump wants to do something truly populist, what he should do is open investigations into the various colleges and universities that sold people scam degrees with the tacit or explicit promise that they would be able to get a high-earning job afterward. Because it turns out that student loan balances are not equivalent across various career choices.

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Student loan balances from the Federal Student Aid Program Division, those loan balances typically go to majors that do not earn out. That's why you can't get a private loan on those things. So there'll be a jump in delinquency. There'll be some people who get hit.

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It seems like a good opportunity to go back to many of these universities and ask them whether they defrauded their own student body in trying to promote the idea that a $200,000 degree in lesbian dance theory was going to somehow pay off in a six-figure salary. Meanwhile, the New York Times has an amazing rundown on the Democratic inability to communicate with the normies.

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It's an entire piece titled, Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward. Shane Goldmacher writes, One long-time Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America's two major parties to animals.

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The goal was to ensure that people could use the Red Sea and the Suez Canal again in order to ship things, including oil and LNG from the region. That has not, in fact, been restored. And let's be clear about this. The Houthis are still shooting a couple of missiles a day over Saudi Arabian airspace at Israel.

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After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shankar Osorio. Republicans are seen as apex predators like lions, tigers, and sharks. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs, or sloths. So it's pretty amazing.

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Six months after President Trump swept the battleground states, according to the New York Times, the Democratic Party is still sifting through the wreckage. Its standing has plunged to startling new lows. 27% approval in a recent NBC News poll that is the weakest in surveys dating all the way back to 1990.

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The stark reality is the downward trend for Democrats stretches back further than a single election. Republicans have been gaining ground in voter registration for years. Working class voters of every race have been steadily drifting toward the GOP.

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And Democrats are increasingly perceived as the party of college educated elites, the defenders of a political and economic system that most Americans feel is failing them. Well, actually... They are seen as the defenders of a moral system that is failing them. It is not just a political and economic system.

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It is a moral system whereby elitists at the top of American society decide boys can be girls, decide that a person who graduated from Harvard is of more moral worth than a blue collar worker. And then people who go to church are in fact, bitter clingers. This started under Barack Obama and it never stopped.

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The first challenge for Democrats, says the New York Times, is that it is not just Republicans and independents who've soured on the Democratic Party, it's Democrats themselves. The Democratic base is aghast at the speed with which Mr. Trump is undermining institutions and reversing progressive accomplishments and the lack of resistance from congressional leaders. Well, yes.

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So hilariously, they're trying to figure out exactly how to deal with this. Quote, fierce ideological debates over policies, whether to push for a stricter stand on immigration, defend transgender rights less forcefully, or embrace anti-corporate economic populism are already playing out on Capitol Hill and the nation's 2028 campaign trail.

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And they point out again that they have lost men like across the board, across the board, they're losing men. And they actually have no way of regaining those men. This is hilarious. Democratic donors and strategists are gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.

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The prospectus for one new $20 million effort obtained by the Times aims to reverse the erosion of democratic support among young men, especially online. It is codenamed SAM, short for Speaking With American Men, a strategic plan, and promises investment to, quote, study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.

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It recommends buying advertisements in video games. Above all, it says, we must shift from a moralizing tone. Well, I mean, they're not wrong that the moralizing is the problem, but they're not going to be able to abandon that sort of stuff because that is the essence of the Democratic Party at this point. It is not a sort of progressive redistributionism.

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They're still shooting at a wide variety of ships in the Red Sea, and shipping has still not been restored in the Red Sea. So the question becomes, when we are articulating a foreign policy, and I agree on a sort of surface level with everything that the vice president is saying right here. I don't disagree with anything that he's saying.

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It is arguments over whether you are an oligarch or whether you're experiencing food insecurity or whether transgender intersectionality is the way to perceive the world. Democrats have been too fond of using sociological left-wing idiocies for too long to simply break out of it now. It's gonna be very difficult for them to break that particular addiction, for sure.

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And by the way, the Democrats continue to move to the left. According to a brand new primary poll, AOC would trounce Senator Chuck Schumer in a New York primary. She leads Schumer 54-33 among likely Democratic voters in New York City. That's unbelievable because, of course, she is wildly to the left. The numbers are troubling for Schumer, obviously, according to the New York Post.

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It is amazing to watch as Schumer simply falls apart. But this is the next wave of the Democratic Party. This is why they're trying to try out Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff under Barack Obama, to try and be the guy. Yeah, good luck, guys. What an uninspiring crew the Democrats are rolling out right now.

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This, by the way, is the reason why Democrats tried to run a dead person in that last election cycle.

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And Alex Thompson, who's the author alongside Jake Tapper of this new book about the Biden health cover up, he points out that Biden aides the way that they justified lying to the American public about exactly how bad things were for Biden is because they said it was the only way to save democracy from Trump. Yeah. Well done, guys.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Well, the presidents of the United States, Donald Trump, did a couple of things over the weekend. One of them Great. One of them not so good. We'll start with the not so good. He put out a statement on Memorial Day, and he's fond of doing this, putting out these statements on sort of national holidays or national days off in which he rips into his political opposition.

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But the use of the Houthis is kind of a telling example, because the One of the things that is sort of an open battle in the administration that we all need to keep our eye on is what this sort of language obscures. What is the actual policy of the Trump administration? Is it a policy that makes sure to actually set red lines that are keepable?

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Unbelievable. By the way, Sam Harris, again, I'm friendly with Sam, but we should remember that Sam Harris is still out there saying that he would rather have Joe Biden in a coma than evil Trump. Well, it didn't work. It didn't work because the American people weren't up for it.

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Okay, I'm just going to point out that that reason that doesn't work is specifically because if you lie to the American people, they will pick the other person. It is because of that belief that the American people could not be leveled to, that they couldn't be told the truth. It is precisely that reason why you have seen the rise of Donald Trump.

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Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now. We get into Brigitte Macron pushing Emmanuel Macron in the face on camera, which is about the most French thing I can think of. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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When the vice president suggests, for example, that every mission has to have an exit strategy with an end in sight. Here's what he said, just to quote him.

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OK, now, again, all that sounds really nice. The reality is that foreign policy is a lot messier than that. So, for example, the United States currently has troops stationed in South Korea. Why? That is an open ended conflict.

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There's an armistice with North Korea and the United States is, in fact, maintaining the peace in the region between South Korea and North Korea by having a trigger force there. The United States still has military bases in Japan. Why? Presumably to deter a Chinese takeover of the South China Sea. The United States still has overflight and overwatch power over the Middle East. Why?

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To ensure the free flow of oil, for example, and to prevent, I assume, the nuclearization of Iran. I mean, that's something that President Trump has said himself. This kind of Easy notion that the United States can simply, in pinpoint fashion, define our conflicts and get in and get out is not the way actual foreign policy really works.

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And it very often is the predicate for a bad argument about how the United States needs to spend less on, for example, military development. Right now, the United States spends approximately 3.7% of our GDP on military. That is actually historically low. So I turn to our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity to ask a quick question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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How much has the United States defense spending declined as a percentage of GDP since 1900? And as Perplexity points out, defense spending was actually quite low in the United States other than in World War I for the period 1900 to 1930. And the reason for that is because the empire upon which the sun never set was not the American empire. It was actually the British empire at the time.

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We had a spike to about 4% of GDP during World War I. Then spending went up to 40% of GDP during World War II. And then during the Cold War and Vietnam era, 50s through 70s, we saw sustained high spending typically between 7% and 10% of GDP. During the 80s, because of the defense buildup that ended up crushing the Soviet Union, we were spending about 6.8% of GDP.

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He did that on Memorial Day as well, which, again, isn't the best look because it's Memorial Day. He put out a statement saying, happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum.

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In the aftermath of the Cold War, we dropped down to about 3.5% of GDP, went up slightly during the War on Terror to 4.5% of GDP. Now we're at 3 to 3.5%. So bottom line is this.

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If you believe that we are now living in a much more dangerous world than we were in, say, 1996, then obviously that's going to require more of a military spending commitment, a safer world, a world in which free trade actually applies, in which you do have freedom of navigation.

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in which economic growth is the norm, in which the United States has trade capacity and commerce, in which global growth is the norm. That is maintained by the American military. That's the reality of the situation. That's always been the reality of the situation. And the sort of notion that I think has been promoted by some on the more isolationist side of the Republican aisle

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That if the United States basically defines in pinpoint fashion its own military engagements, that the rest of the world will simply comply. That is not the way the rest of the world works. And by the way, that's been true all along. This idea that straying from the founders is not true. There's a very famous story about George Washington going all the way back to the Constitutional Convention.

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that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds who allowed 21 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again, all protected by these USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous for our country.

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There was a constitutional delegate who suggested that the standing army of the United States should be limited to 5,000 men. The reason was that there were a lot of members of the founding generation who didn't like the idea of a standing army on the national level.

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And George Washington would have to fend off the British with an army of essentially irregular soldiers, militiamen who he had to cobble together throughout the Revolutionary War. The constitutional delegate proposed a 5000 man cap on the on the army in the actual Constitution.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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And George Washington agreed and then sarcastically said that there had to be a stipulation added to the Constitution that no invading army could number more than 3,000. Of course, the joke he was making is that when it comes to foreign policy necessity, is the mother of policy. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, the administration is doing a lot of work attempting to cut the waste and the fraud and the abuse via Doge. But while they attempt to stabilize the country's economy, it's tough for them to consider everybody's individual personal finances, meaning you ultimately have to take responsibility for safeguarding your own financial future. That's why I just bought gold from Birch Gold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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In the past 12 months, the value of gold has increased by 40%. With central banks buying gold in record quantities, demand does not appear to be subsiding anytime soon. Again, a lot of vacillation in American trade policy. Right now, a lot of doubts about America's capacity to pay its future debt. Gold is ahead against all that kind of stuff.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Birch Gold, as I've personally experienced, makes the process of owning physical gold remarkably simple. Thank you for watching. I always assumed restless sleep was inevitable. Night after night, tossing and turning, waking up with an aching back. I'd convinced myself that's just how sleep was supposed to be. Then I tried Helix Sleep and everything changed.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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It's truly been transformative for my sleep quality. Now I easily fall asleep in just minutes. What makes Helix different is they don't just sell you a random mattress. They actually match you with the perfect one for your body and sleep style. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, or somewhere in between, they've got you covered.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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They make it so simple to get your best night's sleep every single night. All you have to do is take their sleep quiz, get matched with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else. I've been using a Helix mattress for years.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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I have one that is firm but breathable because otherwise I get the back pain and tend to heat up at night. Helix solves all that for me. And right now, Helix is offering an incredible Memorial Day sale. Visit helixsleep.com to get 27% off site-wide plus a free bedding bundle, which includes a sheet set and mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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That's helixsleep.com for 27% off site-wide plus a free bedding bundle with any Lux or Elite mattress order. Again, just visit helixsleep.com for this exclusive offer. So you can have all of these principles that we all hope to have about no open-ended missions, no long-term commitments.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The reality is that in a world in which the United States refrains from any long-term commitments and refrains from flexible policy, what you end up with is more red lines crossed, actually. And so the question becomes for the administration, how strong are the administration's red lines and what happens when those red lines are crossed?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When it came to the Houthis, the United States drew a red line. Originally, it was about freedom of navigation. That was literally in the signal chat that got leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg. which was accidentally included in the signal chat. It's about freedom of navigation. That freedom of navigation has not, in fact, been restored.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Now, again, you make the case that shouldn't have been the mission in the first place in the Red Sea. Fine. But that was not actually the mission. The ends were shifted in order to achieve some sort of titular end to a conflict with the Houthis so that the United States could then go and pick up checks in Qatar.

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Again, you can make the argument that that's a good policy or that it's not a good policy. But let's be clear about what happened there. And right now, America's enemies are perceiving, at the very least, this happens to every president, It shouldn't really be happening to President Trump is the truth.

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The reason it shouldn't happen to President Trump is because if President Trump had foreign policy team number one, Trump 1.0 in place, it wouldn't be happening. Trump 1.0 was extremely predictable on foreign policy. If you cross a red line, you will get punched in the face. If you do not cross a red line, we'll negotiate with you. That was the foreign policy of the United States.

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A Melvillian sentence there from the president of the United States. Again, on Memorial Day, it isn't a happy Memorial Day. It's actually not the proper greeting. But in any case, the actual good thing that he did was, of course, he gave a speech at Arlington in which he discussed our national heroes. Here's what he had to say.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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It was an actual peace through strength, realist foreign policy in Trump 1.0. But America's enemies and opponents are seeing that there's some play in the joints here, that there's a lot of debate inside the administration over whether Trump 1.0 was too hawkish. That is why, for example, there's been a lot of roiling debate over the makeover of the NSC, the National Security Council.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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The National Security Council, which is now under the tutelage of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was basically cleansed. And many of the people who were cleansed were some of the more hawkish voices at the NSC, leading to the supposition that Vice President Vance actually has a lot to do with staffing up at the NSC. Now, again, maybe you agree with Vice President. That's fine.

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Ep. 2207 - Can Trump STOP World War III?

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Everybody's allowed to have their own view on this, and maybe he's right. But America's opponents also see this. And what they widely perceive right now is that now might be a good time to push. That is certainly clear from Russia. It is clear from China, and it's clear from Iran. Russia, China, and Iran are all pushing very hard right now, sensing weakness in the Trump administration approach.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

folks tons of news today obviously a huge blow up when pretty much all the members of the national security team of team trump end up in a signal chat with a journalist accidentally we'll get to that momentarily first your reminder episode three of the case for derek chauvin is on today's episode so make sure you stay tuned for that in the middle of the show we'll also get to the

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Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

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And again, as much as I despise Jeffrey Goldberg as a human being, I think that Jeffrey Goldberg actually did the responsible thing in not printing, for example, operational details or blowing the operation beforehand, which he certainly could have done.

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With all of that said, the reason that everyone is so casual about the use of classified material these days, the reason all this is happening is because of the original sin of James Comey not prosecuting Hillary Clinton over her emails. That is the reality. That set up an entire permission structure for people to mishandle classified materials, unless apparently you're a Republican.

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That is the way this works. If Hillary Clinton... uses classified materials and she puts them on a private server, which James Comey of the FBI openly acknowledged was likely accessed by foreign sources. And then there's no prosecution that attends. Then how can that rule apply to anybody else?

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So my assumption is that Jameson Greer had JG as his initials on Signal and that Waltz or whomever else put together the chat, one of his aides, whoever did it, hit instead Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. This does not mean, as per so many folks who do not like Mike Walsh, that he was regularly chatting with Jeffrey Goldberg.

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This is why it was so ridiculous when they tried to go after Trump for the classified documents mishandling at Mar-a-Lago at the same exact time that Joe Biden had a bunch of classified documents in his garage. This issue is largely played out in the sense that while something can be a giant screw-up, nobody takes it as a criminal-level screw-up at this point.

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That was killed dead by the operation to let Hillary Clinton off the hook back in 2015-2016 for her email scandal. And so when the left says, we've now heard the end of but her emails, the reality is but her emails was the inciting event for an entire string of mishandling of classified materials on both sides of the aisle. Then there are the Democrats who are saying this could have cost lives.

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It really could have cost lives. I mean, if it had not included Jeffrey Goldberg, sure. But that is also a hypothetical that did not happen in reality. Again, a giant screw-up is not quite the same thing as an intentional move to endanger human life on the American side of the aisle. Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense, was on CNN going off about all of this. And again, this is exaggeration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, again, I agree that it should be taken seriously. The idea that this was like jeopardizing massive amounts of life because Jeffrey Goldberg was included, that's an exaggeration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's also worth noting that many of the same people who are very upset with this particular situation would have been perfectly happy if the war plans had been leaked by an insider at the Trump administration to the front page of the New York Times. That sort of stuff happened all the time in the first Trump administration. Democrats are going on offense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday, this is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called Hegseth, quote, the most unqualified person to ever lead the Pentagon in American history. Now, do we think that any of this is going to pay off in a major way?

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One of the things that is fascinating is not the Democratic attacks on Republicans, on Waltz, on Rubio, on Hegseth, on any of the rest of us. The part that's really fascinating is the mobilization on one side of the Republican aisle against Waltz in particular. Because there are really two issues that are of note with regards to this leak.

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One is the leak itself, which obviously is deeply noteworthy. The administration should make sure obviously nothing like this ever happens again. And then there is the second issue, which is what was actually said in the leak. And one of the things that I'm noticing is that partisans of J.D. Vance are coming out saying that the real story here is the leak.

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It just means that Jeffrey Goldberg was in sort of a list of contacts that included Jameson Greer, and both of them had the initials JG, and he hit the wrong one. Okay, so in any case, what ends up happening is that there is a very detailed discussion that's quite fascinating about the strike against the Houthis that happened March 15th.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And partisans of Mike Walz are coming out and saying that the real story here is what was said in the chat. And the answer is both. Both of these things are actual real stories and neither should be obscured. Politico is reporting that Waltz could theoretically be on the chopping block, that President Trump is upset because he doesn't like bad headlines. That, of course, makes sense.

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The president has a right to be upset. A senior administration official told Politico on Monday afternoon they're involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with Waltz following that bombshell report. One official said, quote, half of them saying he's never going to survive or he shouldn't survive. It was reckless not to check who's on the thread.

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It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can't have recklessness as the national security advisor. Now, let's be fair about this. If you're saying it was reckless to... include Jeffrey Goldberg, obviously true.

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If the idea is that it was reckless to have the conversation on Signal, half of the conversations on planet Earth about national security are being had on Signal because it is encrypted. That is specifically the reason why, that's why I downloaded Signal. That's why when I have sensitive conversations, those happen on Signal.

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And if you're talking about recklessness to be involved, now you have to fire the entire team because literally everyone on the team was on that Signal chat. We'll get to the rest of this story momentarily. First, the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts in 2025. With April 15th approaching, time is now running out.

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If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds the problem. Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone can be a costly mistake. This is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels. This means they know exactly which agents can help resolve your case effectively. Whether you owe $10,000 or $10 million, their team of attorneys and negotiators brings proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and the expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder. Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS. Act first. I need to tell you about my friends over at PragerU, the conservative nonprofit fighting to educate the next generation and win back the culture. Conservatives won huge in November, but the fight is far from over. The left still controls our schools. They're undermining faith, family, and freedom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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One election isn't going to fix that. That's why PragerU is making real, lasting change. They're reaching young people like never before with pro-American, pro-Judeo-Christian content, nearly 2 billion views a year. 65% of their audience is under the age of 35. And right now, PragerU is getting into classrooms.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Nine states have already partnered with them to bring PragerU videos and books into schools with more states on the way. But they can't do it alone. Right now, every dollar you give is triple matched to help push back against radical indoctrination. Do not wait. Go to PragerU.com slash DW. Make your donation today. It will be triple matched. match.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Together, we can keep the momentum going and stand strong for our values. That's PragerU.com slash DW. PragerU is basically a daily wear sister company, and they do amazing, amazing work. We've worked with them for years. Obviously, Dennis Prager is an icon, and what he's doing with PragerU is truly amazing. Go check them out right now. PragerU.com slash DW.

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Jeffrey Goldberg has a long piece in The Atlantic about this, and here's what he says. This is the world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time on March 15th, the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming.

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So one issue obviously is Walt and what are the consequences for the screw up. But the other issue, and this is the one that, again, I'm seeing a lot of misdirection by people who are who are fans of the vice president away from the thing that J.D. Vance actually was saying in the chat, which to me is another fascinating aspect of this. Right.

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You now have a window into the sort of open foreign policy debates that are happening inside the Trump administration. So you have the president and he says, listen, we are going to reopen freedom of trade and freedom of the seas. We're going to strike the Houthis. We're not going to be cowards like the Biden administration was about the Houthis.

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And then a consequential discussion ensues in which part of the administration says that means we need to go punch them in the mouth. And Vice President Vance takes the position we should not punch the Houthis in the mouth and then puts forward what is a pretty milquetoast delay tactic. Because what Vance says in there is an open disagreement with President Trump.

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an open disagreement with President Trump, right? Quote, I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. And well, actually it isn't. Striking the Houthis is not inconsistent with messaging on Europe. By the way, the argument that 3% of U.S.

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trades runs through the Suez, but 40% of European trade does, and thus it doesn't matter for the United States if trade moves through the Suez Canal, that's incredibly silly because trade is intertwined. If you raise the price of goods massively in Europe, that is going to raise the price of goods in the United States because we trade with Europe. That is a thing that we do.

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So to me, what that bespeaks is an entirely different geopolitical strategy that Vice President Vance is suggesting here than what the Trump administration as a whole has been promoting. When you look past the actual leak issue to the actual content here, Walt, Hegseth, Miller are all reflecting the priorities of the president of the United States and Vice President Vance, not so much.

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When he says, well, this is really about cramming it down on the Europeans. Why don't the Europeans do it? He knows full well that the Europeans are not capable of taking on the Houthis. He knows that full well. And he also understands how global trade works.

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What that really suggests is that the vice president has a very different view of foreign policy, a view that he expressed pretty clearly before he was vice president. When he said he didn't care whether Russia took Ukraine, for example, that is certainly a view.

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The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had texted me the war plan at 11 at 44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining. So he says the story technically begins shortly after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel in October of 2023.

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That is a view that bespeaks a foreign policy of spheres of influence, essentially, that Russia should have its own sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, stretching all the way down into the Middle East, that the United States should essentially remove itself from the world, which may or may not mean a broader sphere of influence for the Chinese,

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Vice President Vance, again, he has a very different foreign policy than the Trump foreign policy. That is just a reality. And you can see it in these messages. When he says there's a strong argument for delaying this month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.

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The reality is the chance of a serious oil price spike from hitting the Houthis actually was incredibly low because the Saudis don't like the Houthis either. And what? Is it going to shut down traffic in the Red Sea? The traffic's already shut down in the Red Sea. None of that makes any sense.

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So I think that the vice president, when he says that this is really just about bailing out Europe, it's bad to bail out Europe. The United States has an interest in freedom of the seas. Our shipping does go through the Suez Canal. Global shipping goes through the Suez Canal. We trade with all of the countries that have shipping going through the Suez Canal.

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beyond which the United States does have an interest in backing our Saudi and Israeli allies in striking the Houthis, who have already been responsible, by the way, for the death of Americans. So when the vice president says the sort of stuff that openly conflicts with what the president of the United States is saying, that is another story.

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So there are two sort of dueling narratives, and it'll be interesting to see how it shakes down inside the administration. As the Wall Street Journal points out, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was a voice for U.S. leadership and for carrying out the president's policy. Vice President J.D. Vance was a voice for U.S. retreat, even when Mr. Trump directed otherwise.

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And again, it'll be interesting. There are a lot of competing voices inside the Trump administration. It'll be fascinating to see which voices end up taking the floor and what President Trump actually does. What should be the consequences for this sort of breach of security? I think this all blows over within 48 hours, frankly. I think that it's a serious mistake. I think it's a problem.

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I think, unfortunately, leaks happen all the time. A kind of self-goal and own goal like this, where you create the leak, is obviously a massive problem. I'm sure Mike Walz will be called on the carpet by the president of the United States, as will other members of the administration, who apparently never checked to see who else was in chat before they started having these high-level discussions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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To me, the much more consequential matter is not this. The much more consequential matter is what does the foreign policy of the Trump administration look like and who gets to shape it? Because that is an ongoing battle inside the Trump administration pretty much every day on every issue ranging from what we do in Ukraine to what happens in the Middle East.

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And that to me is a fascinating discussion that's gonna continue on into the future no matter what happens with this particular issue. Alrighty, now, as you know, we've been calling for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. We have an ongoing series here, the case for Derek Chauvin. It is time for part three of that case. We're going to examine the autopsy report of George Floyd.

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The Houthis, an Iran-backed terrorist organization whose motto is God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam, which, as I've said before, is a very wordy slogan. They had launched attacks on Israel and on international shipping, creating havoc for global trade. Throughout 2024, the Biden administration was ineffective in countering those who the attacks.

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Just last week, in an interview with David Weigel of Semaphore, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, while campaigning across state lines in Wisconsin for a Supreme Court candidate, decided to call those of us advocating for justice in the Derek Chauvin case racist. Governor Walz's response is exactly what we've come to expect from the left.

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When confronted with evidence, they simply yell racism and hope nobody notices the complete absence of substantive rebuttal. The facts are clear and well-documented. Let's address Walls' legal confusion. This is the same governor who apparently doesn't realize Minnesota inmates like Chauvin typically serve just two-thirds of their sentences under his state's own laws.

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Much like he was caught unaware that the state pension fund he oversees holds Tesla stock, well, he publicly celebrated the company's stock decline. The irony of Tim Walls claiming that Chauvin's pardon would undermine faith in the system while simultaneously defending a prosecution marred by coerced medical testimony, politically motivated prosecutorial takeovers,

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his city and the entire country burning during deliberation and careers threatened for those who dared question the predetermined narrative is apparently lost on him. If we're serious about justice, we should care more about whether the conviction was based on actual evidence than mob rule.

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But that would require intellectual honesty rather than just cheap political point scoring or willful ignorance. Governor Walz should leave the serious discussions about justice to the adults in the room. He should probably return to his true calling as an inflatable waving tube van outside a Chevron gas station. If you'd like to discuss this issue further, he's always welcome on the show.

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Now, on to the evidence. In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, there were two separate autopsies conducted. The official one, performed by Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office, conducted by Dr. Andrew Baker, and a second, hired autopsy commissioned by the Floyd family, performed by Dr. Michael Bodden and Dr. Alicia Wilson.

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These two autopsies reached notably different conclusions, and the distinctions between them are absolutely critical for understanding the miscarriage of justice in Chauvin's case. Let's begin with the official autopsy performed by Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker on May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd's death. Baker had been the county's chief medical examiner since 2004.

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He's a board-certified forensic pathologist. His findings were released in a 20-page report on June 1, 2020. The official autopsy listed the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest, complicating law enforcements of dual restraint and neck compression. The manner of death was classified as homicide. Now, this is really important.

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In medical examiner terminology, homicide simply means death at the hands of another person. It is not a legal determination of murder, which would include various additional elements depending on the degree. But here's where things get really interesting. The autopsy report explicitly states, this is a direct quote, no life-threatening injuries identified. Let me repeat that.

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No life-threatening injuries identified. The report documented various minor injuries, including cutaneous injuries to the forehead, face, upper lip, shoulders, hands, elbows, and legs. It noted mucosal injuries to the lips and patterned contusions of the wrists consistent with handcuffs. But the report further clarifies that there were no facial, oral, mucosal, or conjunctival patechiae.

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which are the small spots of bleeding in the eyes that would typically be present in a case of asphyxiation. The report also found no injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures, meaning no damage to the throat, hyoid bone, trachea, or voice box. Notably, the report did not find any damage to Floyd's neck or cervical spine.

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Dr. Baker wrote that Floyd's neck was palpably stable and free of hemorrhage. There was not even visible bruising on Floyd's neck. In other words, despite the popular narrative that Chauvin choked Floyd's death, the actual autopsy found zero evidence of damage to Floyd's airway or throat structures. This critical fact has been almost entirely ignored in public discussion of the case.

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The incoming administration promised a tougher response. This is where Pete Hegseth and I come in. On Tuesday, March 11th, writes Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic. I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. First of all, a connection request means that Waltz was not actively in contact with Goldberg before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What the autopsy did find, however, was substantial evidence of severe preexisting heart disease. The report describes arteriosclerotic heart disease, multifocal, severe, and hypertensive heart disease, with cardiomegaly, which means Floyd had an enlarged heart, riddled with plaque, and blocked arteries.

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The normal weight of a human heart varies based on factors like age, sex, and body size, but the typical average for men is between 280 and 340 grams. Floyd's heart weighed 540 grams. That is significantly above the normal range. His coronary arteries were 90% blocked. Two other arteries were 75% narrowed, an extremely dangerous condition that put him at high risk for sudden cardiac death.

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Dr. Baker explained that when someone with heart disease is physically restrained, quote, those events are going to cause stress hormones to pour out into your body and ask your heart to beat faster, ask your body for more oxygen. Floyd's enlarged heart needed more oxygen than a normal heart and was therefore limited in its ability to provide that oxygen under stress.

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The most explosive part of the autopsy and the part that has been most aggressively downplayed by the media is the toxicology report. The official autopsy found multiple drugs in Floyd's system at the time of his death. Fentanyl at 11 nanograms per milliliter. Norfentanyl at 5.6 nanograms per milliliter, a form of fentanyl that had already been partially metabolized by Floyd's system.

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4-ANPP at 0.65 nanograms per milliliter, another fentanyl-related compound. Methamphetamine at 19 nanograms per milliliter, various cannabis compounds like THC. Let's focus on the fentanyl levels for a moment, 11 nanograms per milliliter.

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Dr. Baker disclosed on his witness statement for the trial that, quote, if Floyd were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD overdose. Baker also noted that deaths have been certified as fentanyl overdoses with levels as low as three nanograms per milliliter. Floyd's level was nearly four times that amount.

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Also central to the report is the shocking condition of George Floyd's swollen lungs, which weighed two to three times their normal weight due to fluid accumulation caused by the fentanyl toxicity. According to CDC guidelines, fentanyl routinely triggers pulmonary edema, quote, significantly reducing respiratory function and leading to hypoxia.

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Baker testified that Floyd's lungs contained cirrus fluid, which is consistent with drug-induced pulmonary failure, not physical trauma. Floyd's potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system, along with methamphetamine, created an extremely dangerous combination that can cause respiratory depression, cardiac arrhythmia, and sudden death.

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In stark contrast to the official findings, the autopsy commissioned by the Floyd family reached very different conclusions. This examination was performed by Dr. Michael Bodden, a former New York City chief medical examiner, and Dr. Alicia Wilson, a pathologist from the University of Michigan.

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Just for those who are not conversant in how Signal works, if I want to connect with you on Signal, I have to make a connection request. So the idea that they were regularly using Signal to chat with one another is not true. Signal is an open source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text messaging services are capable of delivering.

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We should pause here to talk about Dr. Michael Bodden, the so-called celebrity pathologist who performed the independent autopsy for the Floyd family. Bodden has made an entire career out of contradicting official autopsy findings in politically charged cases. It's essentially his brand at this point. Let's look at his track record.

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In 1978, he served as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations Forensic Pathology Panel investigating JFK's assassination, where he contradicted key aspects of the original Warren Commission findings. He was involved in reviewing evidence in the MLK Jr. assassination. He testified for the defense in the OJ Simpson trial, disagreeing with the prosecution's timeline.

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In the Michael Brown case, he claimed shots were fired from further away than the official autopsy indicated. And the cherry on top, Dr. Michael Bodden was also hired by the Epstein family to conclude that Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide, but homicidal strangulation. Bodden has literally been fired twice from medical examiner positions, one as chief medical examiner of New York City,

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after complaints about sloppy record-keeping, poor judgment, and lack of cooperation, and then again from running Suffolk County's medical examiner's office. New York Magazine skewered Bodden for his disconnect between his fame, which he loved to discuss, and his accomplishments, which paled in comparison to his fame-chasing.

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Dr. Bodden and Dr. Wilson determined that Floyd died from asphyxia due to neck and back compression. They claimed that pressure on Floyd's neck impaired blood flow to the brain, while weight on his back impeded his ability to breathe. Most controversially, they stated that Floyd had no underlying medical problems that caused or contributed to his death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They came to that conclusion without access to the toxicology reports, tissue samples, Floyd's medical records, or the body cam footage. So when their findings completely contradicted the official autopsy, should we really be surprised? Moreover, Dr. Bodden's report ignores the heart disease documented in the official Hennepin County autopsy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Dr. Bodden went so far as to say, quote, I wish I had the same coronary arteries that Mr. Floyd had that we saw at the autopsy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We've recently received several tips related to Derek Chauvin's case. We're actively tracking down all of those leads. Stay tuned. We may have some breaking news on the Chauvin case very soon. If you do have a tip, send it our way. Include my name along with Derek Chauvin in the subject line and ensure it reaches my team immediately. You'll find the submission link in this episode's description.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

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I assumed the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump's national security advisor. I did not assume, however, the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.

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I've met him in the past, and though I didn't find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual given the Trump administration's contentious relationship with journalists and Trump's periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Wald in order to somehow entrap me.

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It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them. This is Jeffrey Goldberg writing for The Atlantic. I accepted the connection request, hoping this was the actual national security advisor, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine or Iran or some other important matter. Two days later, Thursday, 4.28 p.m.,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The message continued, Thanks. So as Goldberg points out, a principles committee generally refers to a group of senior most national security officials, and that includes secretaries of defense, state, treasury, the director of the CIA. He said he obviously was not meant to be on this group, certainly not on a commercial messaging app.

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Thank you.

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So, again, they're going to continue charging for it and all this. Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, she is openly saying, do not come here illegally. If you're trying to get in, do not do it.

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All this is, in fact, having a massive impact. The successes of the Trump administration continue to stack up. Alrighty, guys, coming up, Democrats continue to root for the failure of Tesla. We'll see how that works out for them. First, your reminder, we have tons of great stuff that's still on today's show. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Bernie Sanders and AOC.

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We're going to take a couple of questions in the mailbag. To get all of that sort of stuff, you have to join Daily Wire+. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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One minute later, a person identified only as MAR, which presumably is Marco Rubio, wrote Mike Needham for state, apparently designating the current counselor of the State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user identified as J.D. Vance wrote Andy Baker for VP. One minute after that, Tulsi Gabbard wrote Joe Kent for DNI.

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Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

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Nine minutes later, Scott B., apparently the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant or someone spoofing his identity, wrote Dan Katz for Treasury. And at 4.53 p.m., a user called Pete Hegseth wrote Dan Caldwell for DOD. Brian McCormick for NSC, and John Ratcliffe. Included the name of a CIA official, and Jeffrey Goldberg doesn't name that CIA official because that would be classified.

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The principals had apparently assembled, and all 18 individuals were listed as members of the group, including various National Security Council officials, including Steve Witkoff, Susie Wiles, and Stephen Miller, presumably. That was the end of the Thursday text chain. After receiving the Wall's text related to the Houthi PC small group, I consulted a number of colleagues, said Goldberg.

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We discussed the possibility these texts were part of a disinformation campaign initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions and sometimes succeeds.

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I had very strong doubts the text group was real because I couldn't believe the national security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe the national security advisor to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S.

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officials up to and including the vice president. The next day, says Jeffrey Goldberg, things got even stranger. At 8.05 a.m., Friday, March 14th, Waltz texted the group, quote, Now, This is important because a high side inbox, high side means classified.

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Okay, so big bombshell story yesterday dropped by Jeffrey Goldberg, the execrable editor of The Atlantic. Jeffrey Goldberg is basically a stand-in for Barack Obama's foreign policy team.

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So what he is saying is the stuff that we're talking about right here is not considered the sort of classified protected material that would be legally actionable if it were to disappear. High side is typically the sort of inbox that is used for that classified material. It's important for legal reasons.

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State and DOD said, Waltz, we developed, suggested a notification list for regional allies and partners. Joint staff is sending this AM a more specific sequence of events in the coming days. We will work with DOD to ensure chief of staff, office of the VP, and POTUS are briefed. At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled J.D. Vance responded at 8.16.

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Team, I'm out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan, but I think we are making a mistake. Vance was, in fact, in Michigan that day. The Vance account went on, quote, 3% of U.S. trade runs through the Suez. 40% of European trade does. There is a real risk the public doesn't understand this or why it's necessary. The strongest reason to do this, as POTUS said, is to send a message.

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Then Vance continued, quote, I'm not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There's a further risk. We see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself.

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But there is a strong argument for delaying this month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc., Then Joe Kent, who's Trump's nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote, there's nothing time-sensitive driving the timeline. We'll have the exact same options in a month.

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And he breaks this story that he was accidentally included in a signal chat that basically included everybody who was a top member of Team Trump in the national security sphere, ranging from the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance to Stephen Miller, a top advisor to President Trump.

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Then John Ratcliffe replied and contained information that might actually be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations. So credit where it's due. I think Jeffrey Goldberg is just awful in every possible way, but he did refrain from actually including the classified information or information he thought might be classified in

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He refrained from putting that in the article itself. At 8.27, a message from Pete Hegseth said, quote, VP, I understand your concerns and fully support you raising with the president. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out. Economy, Ukraine, peace, Gaza. I think the messaging is going to be tough no matter what.

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Nobody knows who the who these are, which is why we would need to stay focused on one, Biden failed, and two, Iran funded. Hegseth then continued, quote, waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. Two immediate risks on waiting. One, this leaks and we look indecisive.

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Two, Israel takes an action first or Gaza ceasefire falls apart and we don't get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We're prepared to execute. And if I had a final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This is not about the who these, I see it as two things. One, restoring freedom of navigation, a core national interest. And two, reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.

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But we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC, that's Operation Security I welcome other thoughts. A few minutes later, Michael Waltz posted, quote, whether it's now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.

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Per the president's request, we are working with DOD and state to determine how to compile the costs associated and levy them on the Europeans. J.D. Vance then replied, quote, if you think we should do it, let's go. I just hate bailing out Europe again. The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later, VP, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic.

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But Mike is correct. We are the only ones on the planet on our side of the ledger who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any given president's directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go. The post still retains 24 hours of decision space. At this point, Stephen Miller joined the conversation.

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And he said, quote, as I heard it, the president was clear. Green light, we make soon clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. For example, if Europe does not remunerate, then what? If the U.S. successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.

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Pete Hegseth then replied, agree. And so Goldberg waited. And then at 1144 a.m., On Saturday, March 15th, Hegseth posted in Signal a team update, which contained, apparently, information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing. Vance then wrote, I will say a prayer for victory. And two other users subsequently added prayer emojis.

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And Goldberg then waited around to see what happened. And sure enough, at 1.55 Eastern time, explosions were being heard in Sana'a, which is the capital city of Yemen. And Michael Waltz then replied, saying, amazing job. And John Ratcliffe wrote, a good start. And then Waltz responded with three emojis, a fist, an American flag, and fire.

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And then Secretary of State Rubio presumably wrote, good job, Pete and your team. And Susie Wiles texted, kudos to all of them, most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM. Really great. God bless.

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Well, this is obviously a negative story for the administration, but there's plenty of positive for the administration, including Doge continuing to surgically cut the fat from decades of bloated government spending and corruption. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is correct.

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All of them were on a signal chat and they were talking about the upcoming military strike on the Houthis. And somebody, it appears to have been Mike Waltz, accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg in this Signal chat. Now, what exactly happened here? The answer is almost certainly that he meant to include the U.S. trade representative, Jamie Singh Greer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

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Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead, They're offering America's most dependable 5G network and America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data, plus mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. The best part? Right now, you get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus.

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Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. Access to Daily Wire Kids programming. And as always, your free leftist year's Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill.

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Instead, you just need our friends at Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. That's Pure Talk, wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Also,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with my busy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. And I still try to do that on occasion. But the truth is, peak performance requires peak nutrition. And that means eating enough veggies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And I hate veggies because I don't know why God did them. This is why I'm thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. That sounds miserable and time consuming.

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With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day and your body knows just what to do with them.

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Ep. 2165 - National Security Bombshell & The Case For Derek Chauvin Ep.3 | The Autopsy

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It's kosher, so I pop it right into the protein smoothie and I'm good to go. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get that free bottle of fiber and spice that's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com.

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Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and that free bottle of fiber and spice. So, again. The conversation itself is really fascinating. So there is a bunch of issues to talk about here. Obviously, the biggest issue is the leak itself. How did this happen? And the answer is you have all these officials. They're using Signal. This is obviously a mistake.

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It's obviously a mistake. President Trump was asked about this yesterday. He did not have any knowledge of what was going on. He presumably didn't have any knowledge of what was going on. Here he was yesterday.

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So Trump denies knowledge. And of course, he probably had no knowledge of this because it was literally everybody else in the administration who was on this particular chat. The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was asked about this and he tore into the Atlantic as well.

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If you've ever used Signal, Signal is an encrypted messaging service that is supposed to be basically uncrackable by outside sources. And one of the things that happens when you use Signal Chat, I'm on Signal, I have a bunch of Signal Chats. When you are on Signal, you can choose how your name appears in its sort of identity line. You can either pick your full name or you can pick the initials.

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OK, so again, you know, Hegseth attacking The Atlantic. I'm all on board with it. I think The Atlantic's editor, particularly Jeffrey Goldberg specifically, is not a good representative of the journalistic institution. He was basically a stenographer for Barack Obama. But it was confirmed that the signal chat was involving all these players and it is real. So that raises a couple of questions.

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One is legal. So there are people today who are attempting to claim that this was somehow violative of criminal law, that this is a breach of official records acts because signal chats have an auto-delete function that you can activate. As I mentioned when we went through the story, the use of terms,

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For example, in the piece, such as high side suggests that there was an entire other thread that was going on inside the sort of classified government rooms that was preserved. So there's that. Two, the president of the United States has the signal ability to simply declassify whatever he wants. So the idea that this is sort of a violation of law, I think, is overstated. Is it a scandal?

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Sure, it's a scandal when there's a screw-up this big. If you accidentally include a journalist in a high-ranking discussion about precisely where you're bombing, that is a major problem, of course. It is a breach of security. I am not willing to hear that from people on the Democratic side of the aisle who are perfectly fine with the Hillary Clinton email stuff. I'm not.

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And this is one of the lines that the left is taking about all of this today, which is, you know, you guys, you fussed all about Hillary Clinton and her emails and keeping those on her own private server. So number one, we should recognize that what Hillary Clinton did was very bad. And this right here is also quite bad.

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Inviting a journalist into a group chat, obviously, that involves high-ranking discussions of national security matters that are classified, that is a giant boo-boo. That is a huge boo-boo. It is a mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2145 - The NSA's Secret SEX CHATS?!

Well, folks, Democrats remain puzzled at why Donald Trump won re-election. Now, the answer for those of us who've been watching politics for the last 20 years is pretty obvious. You did it. Democrats, you did it. You decided to scorn the American people. You decided to label all the people in America who disagree with you bitter clingers and deplorables.

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Not even differences on spending or government programs themselves. What lies behind all of this is a belief by Americans, correctly, that the value system of the left, which is defined by Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York, that that value system is at odds with the value system held by most Americans, the vast majority of Americans.

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In fact, it's why so much of what President Trump is doing right now sounds simply commonsensical, and yet he's being opposed every step of the way by radicals on the left. Perfect example is what's happening up in Maine. So up in Maine, the governor, Janet Mills, 77 years old, She has challenged President Trump's executive order relating to keeping men out of women's sports.

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Maine's principal association executive director, Mike Burnham, declared on February 7th that they would not comply in any way, shape or form with the executive order from the White House that said men are not allowed in female sports. Instead, he said Maine would follow the Maine Human Rights Act when it comes to gender identity.

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Then, President Trump, on February 20th, was speaking to the Republican Governors Association meeting, and he said, Maine, I hate to tell you this, they're not going to get any federal money. If they want men in women's sports, they're just not going to get the cash. On February 21st, he had a gathering of all the governors, and he directly tore into Governor Mills in Maine.

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He's right about this. He's right about this. This is an 80-20 issue. Americans do not believe that men should be competing in women's sports. But again. Government is a tool of social transformation, according to the left. That's what it is for. It is an elite tool of social transformation. And if Americans don't like that, well, then Ilhan Omar will label Americans stupid.

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Well, President Trump is not going along with this. So the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has now launched a Title IX investigation in Maine. And again, there are a bunch of these other investigations that are currently going on. And the governor of Maine refuses to back down, quote, I've spent my career standing up for the rule of law in Maine and America.

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To me, that is fundamentally what is at stake here, the rule of law in our country. No president can withhold federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold. Okay, so this is going to go to court, presumably.

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But the idea that strings are attached to federal funding, that has a long storied record in American politics going all the way back to federal dollars being attached with strings to, for example, raising the driving age in particular states or getting rid of drunk driving in particular states. So we'll see how that plays out.

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But again, all this is just commonsensical and the left opposes every bit of it. The same thing is true when it comes to illegal immigration. The truth is that there is in the United States a sort of wide consensus on illegal immigration.

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It's a consensus that I have been preaching for my entire political career as far as I'm aware, which is shut the border, figure out what to do with the people here. That's pretty much what it is. Shut the border, figure out what to do with the people here. And that means a lot of people are going to have to go. Most Americans are on board with that and always have been, right, left, and center.

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I'm old enough to remember a time when even Bernie Sanders was an immigration restrictionist because he understood well enough that actually you can't have an endless welfare state piled atop the back of an open border. Those two things do not go along with one another. In fact, actually smart leftists all over the globe understand this.

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Perhaps the only reigning left-wing party in Europe right now is in Denmark. Very successful left-wing party. Why? Because they've maintained all of their socialist stances, except that they've gone hard right on immigration. They say we can't have a social welfare state with an open border. It's like saying free donuts and leaving the door wide open at the front of the store.

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Yeah, it must be the stupidity. It can't be that you guys chose every wrong position as possible to take in American politics, and now the American people have rejected you. It can't be that at all. Now, the perfect example of this came out yesterday, courtesy of our friend Chris Ruffo, who's going to join the show in a moment and break some more news on this particular story.

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Everyone's going to come in for a free donut. But the left in the United States has decided that they want both open borders and endless welfare. Well, now all of that is coming to a crashing halt. So yesterday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that there would be a raid near Houston at a place called Colony Ridge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And we've been reporting on this here at Daily Wire extensively for months, if not years, at this point. Governor Abbott tweeted out, Colony Ridge is being targeted today. Texas DPS troopers and special agents are assisting Homeland Security investigations with an operation in Colony Ridge this morning. They are targeting criminals and illegal immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I've worked with Tom Homan on this for months. Again, that is an unincorporated subdivision northeast of Houston that has basically become a haven for illegal immigration. Joining us on the line to discuss is Daily Wire investigative reporter Spencer Lindquist. Spencer, why don't you give us the background on Colony Ridge? Why is this a big issue?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, Spencer, as The Daily Wire has reported, the Colony Ridge website is called Terrenos Houston, which advertises no credit needed, various payment options, access to water, electricity, and sewage. And it's been financed with legal loans where the homebuyer doesn't actually need a Social Security number.

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So when we're talking about means that are used in order to attract illegal immigrants, I mean, this was all ready to go, basically.

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So Spencer, what exactly changed here? Because obviously we've been covering this for a year and a half over at Daily Wire and the state of Texas really didn't do a whole hell of a lot about it. At one point, the Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Colony Ridge, but there certainly weren't anything like the kinds of raids that we're now seeing under Governor Abbott.

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So the job of the National Security Agency is to collect, analyze, and share intelligence to protect the United States from foreign enemies. That is the job of the intelligence community. As it turns out, it, like many other institutions in American government and American public life, has been honeycombed with leftist nonsense. Absolute tripe.

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So what exactly changed?

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Well, thank you, Spencer, for your hard work reporting on Colleen Ridge. I'm glad to see that it's finally bearing some actual policy fruit. I'll keep checking in with you as this progresses.

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With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, We'll be right back. What does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you will get 10 opinions. Bull market, bear market, inflation up or down. We need a crystal ball. Well, until we have one, over 38,000 businesses have found a way to future-proof their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP.

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Real-time insights, forecasting, check. It's like peering into the future with actionable data at your fingertips. And here is a game changer. You'll be closing your books in days, not weeks. That means less time drowning in paperwork, more time focusing on what actually matters, steering your business toward success.

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And in this case, perverse, disgusting, pornographic leftist tripe. According to Chris, quote, we have cultivated sources within the NSA. One current employee and one former employee who have provided chat logs from the NSA's interlink messaging program.

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At The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they're leading the way in future proofing operations for businesses around the world. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, NetSuite adapts to your needs, helping you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

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Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. Meanwhile, chaos continues to reign in the media. It's hilarious to watch MSNBC have a full-scale meltdown over Joy Reid's departure.

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So MSNBC announced that Joy Reid, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, would be ousted at MSNBC because her show was terrible and had no ratings. The readout had like two viewers and probably one of them was just from our show. Meaning that the right used the readout as more of a source than the American people use the readout. It was great.

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You decided that going to church was a mark of your stupidity. You decided that Americans were in the cockles of their heart, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes. You decided that all of the auspices of American government had to be brought to pressure Americans into your version of virtue, complete with signaling, like pronoun signaling and all the rest of this.

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I enjoyed the readout because anytime I wanted sort of the apotheosis of the nutjob left-wing perspective, Joy Reid was there. Well, Joy Reid has now been ousted. Joy Reid was weeping openly on the social medias over her own heroism after having been fired from MSNBC. Okay, lady, I'm sorry. MSNBC is the most left-wing network in America. If they fired you, it's because of ratings.

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It's not because they disagreed with your bizarro world left-wing principles. It's because you stink on air. But according to her, it's because she's been targeted... She's been targeted by, wait, wait for it, wait for it, racism and sexism and all the rest.

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According to an NSA press official, all NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Interlink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action. Nonetheless, these logs dating back two years are lurid, featuring wide ranging discussions of sex, kink, polyamory and castration. Well, they're doing all these crazy things on taxpayer time.

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Indeed. Indeed. My cup overfloweth. It is a wonderful moment because she, of course, was a terrible host and a terrible person who believes terrible things and foments the ideas and actions of other terrible people.

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But what's hilarious about this is it has now led to a full-scale insurrection over at MSNBC, where the other DEI-aiming left-wing hosts came out from the woodwork to explain that they were very sad that Joy Reid was going. This included, of course, Rachel Maddow, who isn't sad enough to give up her $30 million a year salary at MSNBC or anything, but a little sad, you know?

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Get them, Rachel. Do it. Do it. Yes. I'm here for it. Taking a brick bat to management while drawing a $30 million a year salary to now go back to a once a week Monday night spot. Rachel Maddow. Oh, love it. Love it. Just call them all racists. That's going to work out amazing for you. Left wing, you guys broke it and you bought it. And this is what happens.

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You wonder why Americans think that you are a bleep show? The reason they think you're a bleep show is because of this. It's because they look at how you run institutions, including your own. And they say, are you insane? So you run the NSA so the transgender identified people can talk about getting their buttholes zapped. And then you actually run a network called MSNBC.

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And at MSNBC, you can't hold it together. between all of your extraordinarily left-wing communist bordering hosts. You can't even hold it together there. So you fired Joy Reid for having no ratings. And then you fire a couple of other hosts. And now you've got Rachel Maddow, the face of your stupid organization, out there calling you racist. Love it. Enjoying it.

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By the way, anytime she wants, she can give up her show again for Joy Reid, presumably. I mean, she's a white lady. Sure, she's a lesbian, which gives her some, you know, added affirmative action points. But she also is white, I noticed. Right? And again, seems very happy to draw down that salary. This is why you guys lose. So you want to keep going down this path? Really, I encourage you to.

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I'm enjoying it. I think that it's really, really good. And meanwhile, the Trump administration. is going up against the Associated Press. So the Associated Press has now sued the Trump administration because the administration said that they can't come on Air Force One.

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And the reason for that is because the Trump administration is mad at the AP for not renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. So they've barred AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other official White House events. And now the AP is filing a lawsuit in the U.S.

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District Court for the District of Columbia against Trump administration officials, including the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budwich, the White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, and the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

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This isn't them on their weird kink websites, you know, like in their off hours. This is during their government employment using government networks. They're talking about their particular fetishes. And this is supposed to be part of the equity agenda, right? The equity agenda is to make sure that people who are sexually diverse staff the NSA.

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The complaint objects to the White House ordering the wire service to use specific words in its reporting and stated it had filed suit to, quote, vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

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Now, the reality is that if the White House said the reason that you're ousted is because you won't say the things we want you to say, probably the White House loses in court on that because that would presumably be a First Amendment violation. What they actually should just say is, listen, we're not even going to give you a reason. Right.

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The White House under Joe Biden didn't include any of the alternative media at all. And we're going to treat all media equally, which means the AP does not get a leg up on, say, the Daily Wire or Breitbart or Daily Caller or anybody else in the online media.

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However, if you want to lose the sort of momentum that Trump has, and this is again, I'm concerned with this because I want to see President Trump victorious. Distractions are the enemy.

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Yesterday, Edward Martin, who's the US attorney for the District of Columbia, he put out a statement, quote, as President Trump's lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our president, and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first. He put that out as like a full-on graphic statement. That is just conceding the actual legal case.

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Because if the case that you are making is that the media have to reflect the perspective of the president of the United States to be given access, you're going to lose in court. Also, it sounds rather tyrannical and stupid. There is no reason to do that sort of stuff. The important thing is to continue pushing forward where common sense ought to prevail. This is the mandate.

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The mandate is common sense. The mandate is to stand against the Ilhan Omars and the insane employees of the NSA and the nut job whack jobs over at MSNBC. That's the mandate. And any time the Trump administration strays from that mandate, they will get less popular. And any time they fulfill that mandate, they'll get more popular. It is, in fact, that simple.

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In just a moment, I'm going to get to the economic risks facing the United States, plus The French President Emmanuel Macron visited the White House yesterday. First, this is one you don't want to miss. Tuesday, March 4th, President Trump is addressing a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m.

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Eastern, laying out his America First vision, tackling immigration reform, economic revival, and national security. You know we're not going to sit this one out. Join us for Backstage Live at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, our pre-show breakdown with me, Matt, Knowles, Klavan, Jeremy. We'll watch the entire speech together live at Daily Wire Plus.

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And when Trump is done, we're back with unfiltered, no BS reactions you're not going to get anywhere else. This is the event shaping America's future, so be there or be square. Watch it all live on Daily Wire Plus next Tuesday night. Subscribe right now at dailywire.com. Meanwhile, if we're talking about threats to the Trump administration, obviously the economy ranks at the top of the list.

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The economy right now is chugging along. As we discussed yesterday, the inflation rate is too high. And disproportionately, the economy is consumer-based. It needs to be investment-based. The question is, what are the awesome new inventions that are going to drive prices down and drive productivity up? Those are the things we ought to be focused on.

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It is also worthwhile noting that America's national debt is reliant on the continued usage of the American dollar as the currency for nearly all foreign trade, and used an international denomination. That is the thing that allows us to continue selling our debt into the markets, that people want the US dollar and use the US dollar. One way to drive that down is, for example, giant trade wars.

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That's the important thing, not stopping foreign threats. not monitoring terrorist groups. The important thing is that weirdos who think that it's some sort of turn on to cut off their genitals can talk to one another. That is the biggest, that is the most important thing at our institutions.

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Giant trade wars lead people to invest away from the American dollar and instead try to form their own trade coalitions. This is why the economic policy of the United States right now must be focused on deregulation. It must be focused on cutting taxes, and it must be focused on actually exacerbating and increasing trade with our allies. I'm very much in favor of terrifying China.

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I think China is an enemy that is going to have an economic impact on the United States, and that's going to have to be offset by increased trade with other parts of the globe. President Trump right now seems to be pursuing more tariff policy. Again, if Trump is using tariff policy as a lever, I'm totally fine with it.

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If he's using it to force other countries to make concessions in particular areas that then leads us to relower our tariffs, that's good. If the idea is that tariffs are in and of themselves of benefit to the United States consumers and investors, that isn't true. Here's President Trump yesterday on tariffs.

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OK, well, I mean, again, I'm hoping that this is a leverage play rather than a principled play in favor of tariff policy. Tariff policy is an excellent way of undermining the credibility of the American dollar on foreign markets. And it is also an excellent way of increasing prices in the middle of an inflationary spiral that has been several years long.

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At this point, President Trump's number one threat, the threat to Trump right now is some sort of economic recession. It is to every president. It's not just unique to President Trump. And the truth is that President Biden left Trump with a rather hard hand to play. He left him with an inflationary economy that, as we discussed yesterday, is inflationary in the stock market.

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Understand that for the left, our institutions are about reshaping the human beings who go into them and then using those reshaped human beings to reshape the United States of America. They are not about actually fulfilling the delegated functions of those institutions. The Department of Education is not about educating children.

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It's inflationary in real estate. There's a reason Warren Buffett is holding out his cash right now. So that is a hard hand to play, and President Trump does need to play that well. And meanwhile, on the foreign front, lots of controversy yesterday over the war in Ukraine. So a couple of things happened with regards to Ukraine. One was the U.N.

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attempted to push yet another resolution condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. Now, number one, that was always going to get vetoed by Russia in the Security Council, obviously. Because when it comes to the Security Council, Russia's on it. They're going to veto it. So this was not a Security Council resolution. Those are the only binding resolutions from the United Nations.

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Instead, it was a general resolution that was designed to demonstrate a worldwide condemnation of Russia invading Ukraine. The question is, what's the purpose of that? Like, seriously, what's the goal?

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The UN General Assembly puts out a wide variety of such condemnatory measures, and none of them ever have any impact because the UN is a terrible organization that should be burned down and the ground salted. The UN, the United States should just withdraw from the UN. It's trash. The UN has always been trash. It is trash today. It is a waste of money.

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It invests the international community with a moral credibility it has never had. But it is leading a lot of people to be very upset with the Trump administration because the Trump administration... voted against that UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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According to Barack Ravid, stenographer for Democrats, the US sided against this resolution, instead siding with Moscow and other non-democratic countries like North Korea, Belarus, and Sudan. Now, to be real, the actual breakdown is that 65 member states, including both China and Iran, abstained from the vote. 93 member states voted in favor, including much of the EU.

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18 countries voted against the resolution. This also controversially included Israel. And people are like, why is Israel voting against a resolution condemning Russia? Again, there are a couple of reasons. One, Ukraine has voted in favor of every single General Assembly resolution condemning Israel. So Israel's like, why? You want us to stay? We're not, no. That's one.

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And two, it turns out that Israel actually has to deal with Russian presence in the Middle East. And this is the thing about the UN. It's all virtue signaling crap.

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The UN is constantly passing resolutions that virtue signal and very often virtue signal in the wrong direction, condemning the United States or condemning Israel or condemning European allies, condemning whatever a majority of the General Assembly wishes to condemn. Does any of this foment actual peace in Ukraine?

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The Department of Education is about creating pipelines to left-wing interest groups that then reshape the nature of the American body politic. And apparently the NSA is about providing a safe space for people to discuss having their buttholes zapped with lasers. I'm not even kidding.

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Does a UN General Assembly resolution where the United States votes in favor of the idea that Russia was bad, does that make peace more likely? I'm just struggling to see how. Even if I agree with the general principle, I'm struggling to see how this is useful. It's the equivalent of Michael Scott wandering into the middle of the office and shouting that he's declaring bankruptcy. Who gives a...

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Who cares what the UN General Assembly says, that useless, terrible organization? But it's leading to all sorts of consternation. How could the United States not vote in favor? All right, if you want to burn the midnight oil freaking out about that, go for it. But it's not going to change any of the underlying facts on the ground in Ukraine.

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So President Trump had a joint press conference with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. Yesterday was a bit awkward, obviously. President Trump talked about his policy in Ukraine. He says, I ran against the foreign policy establishment.

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He is not wrong about that. And then Trump was asked whether Vladimir Putin was a dictator. This, of course, came in the aftermath of Trump suggesting that Vladimir Zelensky was a dictator. Here was President Trump's answer.

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Okay, so there's Trump basically saying, I'm not going to rhetorically get into a fight over labeling Vladimir Putin a dictator or anything like that, because what's the point of that? Now, again, I wish he had not labeled Vladimir Zelensky a dictator, because it's hard to say, I take these terms very seriously after labeling Zelensky a dictator, but not Putin.

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That removes all meaning from the word dictator, obviously. But Trump's entire approach here is, I'm not really going to get into these sort of rhetorical games calling Russia names, because it doesn't actually drive forward the process. Trump said he would be meeting with Vladimir Zelensky in the near future. Here he was.

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And then presumably being able to use their access to foreign intelligence and apparently domestic intelligence in order to target political enemies. According to Chris, one popular chat topic was male to female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina.

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Okay, President Trump also talked up his partnership with France. Macron was sitting here kind of awkwardly during the entire process. There's one picture that went rather viral in Europe, actually, of Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk, and J.D. Vance was sitting to one side, Trump was sitting in the center, and Macron was kind of like bunched up in the corner of the Resolute Desk.

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This is something President Trump likes to do imagistically. But here he was talking up the partnership with France.

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Okay, so then Macron took center stage. And here's the thing about what Macron was saying. And here's, I think, one of the central pieces of Trump's actual strategy with regard to Ukraine. He's saying to the Europeans, listen, you want more done there? Great, do it. The combined EU economy is 10 times the size of the Russian economy. So if you want to do it, then cool, do it.

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Like step up and do the thing. Your words of condemnation are much less useful than actual activity. And so Macron is now coming to the table and he's saying, we know we need to do more.

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Now, Macron reiterated that Ukraine is not going to come to the table unless they get some sort of serious security guarantees, which, of course, is absolutely true. Now, the Russians are taking the absolutely untenable position there can be no European peacekeepers on the border, and so they want, like, Brazilians or Chinese. That's not going to happen.

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Quote, mine is everything, said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery. I found that I like being penetrated. Never liked it before GRS, but all the rest is just as important as well. Another Intel official boasted that genital surgery allowed him to, quote, wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.

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Ukraine won't sign on to anything that basically ensures that Russia three years from now decides to reinvade. Here's Macron making this clear.

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And Macron also had a bit of a tête-à-tête moment with President Trump. Trump was claiming, falsely, that the EU is being reimbursed for all of its spending in Ukraine, while the United States is somehow not being reimbursed for all of its spending in Ukraine. Macron stepped in and corrected him.

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Okay, well, here's the thing. Despite all of the talk and the loose talk and many things that are said that I disagree with, obviously, from the Trump administration, things are moving toward an actual settlement in Ukraine.

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According to the New York Times, Ukraine and the United States are closing in on an agreement that would grant Washington a share of Q's revenues from natural resources, according to both President Trump and Ukrainian government official. Trump said Zelensky would come to the White House to sign the agreement.

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Earlier in the day, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, a person named Olha Stefanyshia, posted on X that Ukrainian and U.S. teams are in the final stages of negotiations regarding the minerals agreement. Now, of course, this is something that President Trump is very big on, is the idea that if we spend in another country, we ought to get something back.

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It would always so be good for Ukraine, for the United States, to actually be involved in the raw negotiations minerals deal with Ukraine, the rare earths minerals that we're talking about here. According to a draft obtained by Axios, the U.S.

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These employees discussed hair removal, estrogen injections, and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration. Quote, getting my butthole zapped by a laser was shocking, said one trans-identifying Intel employee who spent thousands on hair removal. Look, I just enjoy helping other people experience boobs, said another about estrogen treatment.

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and Ukraine are closing in on a minerals agreement worth hundreds of billions of dollars under which the United States would express its desire to keep Ukraine free, sovereign, and secure, according to a draft obtained by Axios. So again, it appears that Trump's approach is going to actually bear fruit here. And meanwhile, Europe is going to stand up on its own two feet.

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In fact, in Germany, the future German Chancellor, Friedrich Mörs, who just won the last election in Germany, he came in first place with about 29% of the vote. The AfD, which is the so-called far-right party, came in with about 21% of the vote. And the Social Democrats dropped down to like 14% of the vote.

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Mayers said that his goal was to do, quote, everything in my power to conserve this good transatlantic relationship with the United States.

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But he says signals make clear that Washington's interest in engaging with Europe is dwindling and suggested that it was time for Germany to take a front row seat with regard to steering policy in Europe, which, of course, is something that President Trump agrees with. So it seems that President Trump's goals are, in fact, coming to pass.

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These are all things that are happening that President Trump is pushing. And so whether you like his rhetorical approach, whether you don't like his rhetorical approach, the proof is going to be in the pudding.

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And the if the if the actual end game here is a rare earth minerals deal with the United States in which the United States is basically providing security guarantees to Ukraine, along with our European partners, who are the ones actually putting soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to preserve the peace. If that's the way this goes, that's just a win. It's just a win.

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And as I've said for a very long time, President Trump is very much invested in simply winning. All right, in just a moment, we're going to get to other news, including Vivek Ramaswamy announcing for Ohio governor. Kathleen Kennedy is going to be out apparently in the Star Wars universe. It's only like years and years and years beyond time. First, you actually have to become a member over at DW.

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And of course, we have all sorts of our own wonderful content ranging from our amazing documentaries to all access with me to all of the other behind the scenes content that we do. You're going to want all of it. Become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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One of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when I pee, I don't have to push anything down to make sure it aims right, said a Defense Intelligence Agency employee. Do you feel safer? Do you feel that your synagogue, church, school...

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Public arena, now you're protected from the terrorists because after all, defense intelligence employees are very, very happy that they can sit when they pee safely. Very exciting stuff. Apparently, according to the sources, the sex chats were legitimized as part of the NSA's commitment to, quote, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Activists within the agency used LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign employee resource groups to turn their kinks and pathologies into official work duties. According to the current NSA employee, these groups, quote, spent all day recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as privilege, ally awareness, pride, and transgender community inclusion.

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And yet you seem absolutely puzzled as to why Americans aren't buying what you're selling. I'm not sure I've seen a better example of the sort of continued scorn that Democrats have for everyday Americans than what was exhibited last night on Mehdi Hassan's show. So Mehdi Hassan, for those who don't remember him, was an MSNBC host. He was terrible there.

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And the NSA leadership supported every aspect of this, declaring the DEI was, quote, not only mission critical, but mission imperative. Yes, the mission of the NSA, monitoring foreign terror threats. That mission would have been endangered if we did not have intelligent chats between various agents. discussing the pleasures of polyamory.

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Quote, last January, chatroom members discussed their practice of polyamory or ethical non-monogamy. One employee explained, a polycule is a polyamorous group. A is my girlfriend and BG are her partners. And B and C are dating, but not C and D, nor E, F, or G with any of the others, though there are several MWB, metas with benefits, connections.

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Another employee claimed to be part of a nine-member polycule, adding, quote, some of our friends are practically polymers with all the connected compounds. Many of the conversations became particularly explicit. One former NSA source recalled being disgusted by a particularly shocking thread discussing weekend, quote, gangbangs. Very exciting stuff happening inside the federal government.

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Really important and exciting stuff. All righty, in just one second, we're going to get to my interview with Chris Ruffo himself. He's giving our listeners an exclusive on this insane NSA story. But first, obviously, the people who are monitoring everything that you do, you know, they're not always the best people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And during tax season, your sensitive information travels through countless hands and systems from payroll to tax preparers to data centers before it even reaches you. The IRS. Each stop is a potential vulnerability. Your W-2 contains exactly what identity thieves need to wreak havoc on your life. It's no surprise the IRS reported a 20% spike in tax-related identity theft last year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2145 - The NSA's Secret SEX CHATS?!

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And then before that, he was an Al Jazeera host where he was a mouthpiece of Qatar. And he was joined on the air by the execrable congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, terror sympathizer extraordinaire. And there she, with her vocal grind, decided to lay into the American people who have given her aid and sustenance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, joining us on the line to discuss is Chris Ruffo, the predominant activist journalist of our time, also senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute for more breaking news.

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So, Chris, you keep coming up with these scoops week after week, which suggests both you're very good at your job and also there's an enormous amount of trash happening at the federal governmental levels. We've been talking about the NSA and these horrifying secret sex chats in which they've been engaged, but We talked about that.

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I want to talk about a couple of new things that you're uncovering today with regard to talk at the NSA, which, again, is an agency designed specifically to target foreign enemies about apparently domestic enemies. And yours truly comes up apparently.

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So the CIA has already come out and said that they're going to look into this. What do you expect the outcome of this is going to be? I mean, the NSA has incredible powers to look into all sorts of information, foreign as well as domestic. We've had a bunch of scandals involving the NSA actually targeting people domestically before. What do you think is going to be the outcome of all of this?

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So, Chris, one of the things that I think we need to focus in here on is the fact that this is, in fact, a reflection of bad policy. It's easy to go, well, it's bad apples who have gotten involved in various chats with their kinks and their anger at various conservatives. But there really is something else going on here.

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Remember, she was originally a refugee to this country and was elected to Congress on the basis of yelling at Americans about how terrible they are. Here she is explaining that Americans are just stupid. That's the big problem. That's why Trump was reelected. Not that she blew it. Not that Mehdi Hassan blew it. Not that the rest of the Democratic Party blew it.

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And that is that throughout our federal government, when Joe Biden said that equity was going to dictate all policy throughout these federal agencies, he was not joking. And that is reflected in this kind of insanity at the staffing level. Yeah.

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I mean, it also includes the fact that when you have all of these radicals who are motivated to actually go after their enemies and they have the tools to go after their enemies, the possibility of actual malfeasance using the tools of law enforcement starts to grow pretty exponentially.

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Well, folks, Chris Ruffo doing amazing work each and every week. You can check him out over at ChristopherRuffo.com or you can follow him over at RealChrisRuffo at X.com as well. Chris, really appreciate the time as well as the breaking news. Thank you. Okay, so what does all of this mean in practical terms? Well, what it means is that Americans are not fond of their institutions.

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It's that Americans writ large are just dumb. These people are just idiots.

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They believe their institutions are fundamentally broken. This is where the popularity of Doge comes in. It's not that Doge, as we discussed yesterday, is taking an actual chainsaw to government spending. They're not. The numbers are not all that high. I mean, the numbers are in the low billions, maybe the tens of billions, certainly not enough to transform the trajectory of American spending.

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But what Doge is doing is uncovering the rot at the center of so many of these institutions. That's why it's employee based. That is why it is a targeting of particular employees in particular sectors, because the idea is that personnel make policy. If you don't like the policy, the best thing to do is to clean out the personnel. Here's President Trump explaining the popularity of Doge.

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And of course, it is massively popular because Americans do not like this sort of crap. They understand that their taxpayer dollars, the things that they work hard all day to earn, are now being used to subsidize trans discussions at the NSA. They are not into this. They don't want this. They think that it is bad. And the Democrats are puzzled. Why would people think that's bad?

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That's just part and parcel of what government is for. Government is part of a transformative process directed at Americans' values. That is what government is. Government drives how Americans think about life. That is what the left believes. And they cannot believe that Americans are rejecting their entire worldview. That is what lies at the root of all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, folks, tons of news to get to, and we'll explain sort of why we are abroad in the very near future. First, The Daily Wire doesn't just bring you the stories you need to know. We bring you to the center of the story. While legacy media filters the truth through bias and spin, we deliver it unfiltered, ad-free, politics, culture, entertainment. We don't just cover the fight. We are in it.

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And we can have arguments about each of those industries, but that would be the purpose of a tariff. Or you could put a tariff on a country because you're attempting to get that country to lower its own tariffs, to escalate, to de-escalate. However, launching a trade war on the entire world all at once turns out not to be something that helps the American economy.

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It is not a well thought out policy, and you are seeing that in the markets nearly every day. According to the Wall Street Journal, stocks fell with the Dow Industrials dropping almost a thousand points and on pace for the worst April since 1932. By the way, for no reason. Again, not for good reason. The underlying health of the Trump economy was good.

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the attempt to declare a trade war, if you're going to do so, and you're going to orient against China, as I've laid out, there are smart ways to do it. You have to first do the preconditional work in order to do a successful tariff war on China. You can't just launch the tariffs up to 245% and hope everything's going to work out okay.

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Because it turns out you then have to blow holes through the middle of your tariff on things like auto parts, or pharmaceuticals, or for Apple, which is what President Trump has already done. If you actually want to fight a successful tariff war with China, a few things have to be done before you even start the tariff war with China.

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First, you need to sign terrific free trade deals with everybody else in the world in order to orient them toward you and away from China. Two, you actually have to gradually raise the tariffs so as to allow people time to reshore their key industries away from China to Vietnam or to Indonesia or to Malaysia or wherever else they're going to reshore.

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Three, if you have really crucial industries, you have to take the time and cut the regulations such that those crucial industries have already reshored in the United States before the supply gets cut off from China. Four, you actually have to have rare earth minerals, right? All the things you need from China need to be sourced elsewhere.

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So when you cut off China, you're not cutting off your nose to spite your face. And five, you actually have to build up your military sufficient that if China feels boxed in and they go for Taiwan, you can deter them. You can do all that work before you actually launch a well-calibrated trade war with China. Virtually none of that work was done.

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It was just sort of dumped out on the table that we're going to do a giant trade war. And then everything else was backfilled. And the markets are reacting to that. If they thought that this was well thought out, the markets, if people in the investment game thought that all of this was well calibrated and well thought out, you wouldn't see the markets moving up and down wildly.

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The volatility is the indicator. I mean, overall, you're seeing a decline, but you're also seeing volatility. On a day-to-day level, people don't know what's going on. One of the reasons that the market dumped yesterday is because President Trump decided that it would be a wonderful idea to attack Jerome Powell again.

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And what that meant is that on economic issues, on issues ranging from migration to distribution of resources to the environment, he put heavy focus on a very left-wing perspective. Now, what people in the media like to ignore was the fact that Pope Francis actually was still traditional on issues ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion to transgenderism.

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He put out a series of truths in which he slammed Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, slammed him again. And then he went on a sort of truth spree, talking about how people don't understand tariffs. Quote, the businessmen who criticize tariffs are bad at business, but really bad at politics.

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They don't understand or realize that I am the greatest friend that American capitalism has ever had. Well, listen, I think that he's a friend to American capitalism, but you know what the markets react to? The policy. They don't react to just the perception of who they believe the president is. They react to the policy.

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And right now, again, it is unclear whether President Trump is ratcheting up tariffs to ratchet them down, whether he's just attempting to protect key industries, or whether he thinks trade is bad, like his advisor, Peter Navarro, who is, in fact, not good at this.

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And if you want the markets to rise again, what you actually need to do, Mr. President, is fire Peter Navarro, who is quite bad at this, and let your Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, negotiate a bunch of great trade deals. That is the best way out of this situation. President Trump openly went after Jerome Powell again, suggesting that Jerome Powell needed to lower the interest rates.

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Jerome Powell is not going to preemptively lower the interest rates in the middle of a tariff war that is likely to increase prices. President Trump calling on Powell to do this is like his get out of jail free card. I'm not going to change my policy. Maybe Jerome Powell will do it.

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Jerome Powell isn't going to do that because Jerome Powell is not going to lower the interest rates in the middle of an inflationary cycle. So President Trump put out a big statement on truth. Quote, preemptive cuts in interest rates are being called for by many with energy costs way down. Food prices, including Biden's egg disaster, substantially lower than most other things trending down.

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There is virtually no inflation. Again, that's true. But those are back looking numbers. The question is, looking forward, will there be inflation if you break the supply chains?

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He says, with these costs trending down so nicely, just what I predicted they would do, there can be almost no inflation, but there can be a slowing of the economy unless Mr. Too Late Powell, a major loser, lowers interest rates now. Europe has already lowered seven times.

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Powell has always been too late, except when it came to the election period, when he lowered in order to help sleepy Joe Biden later commonly get elected. How did that work out? Now, I agree with him on that last part. I criticized Jerome Powell for lowering the interest rates just before the election, which I saw as at least partially political.

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The reason, by the way, that Europe is lowering its interest rates right now is because it wants to dump a bunch of spending money into its own flailing economy. The European economy is falling into stagnation, and so they want to try to inflate their own economy.

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Plus, they're about to spend a lot more money, you would think, on the war in Ukraine because the United States is withdrawing its support gradually and not so gradually from Ukraine. We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, There are a lot of things in life that are inevitable. The biggest one, of course, is death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He said many of the same things that Pope Benedict had said before Pope Benedict resigned back in 2013. That is when Pope Francis took over But the media, of course, very celebratory of Pope Francis in a way they never were of Pope Benedict, specifically because he said things that sounded different than the papacy had in the past.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Also, tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is unfortunately just beginning. If you missed that April 15th deadline or you still owe back taxes, the IRS is ramping up enforcement. Every day you wait only makes things worse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, in a sign that, again, the United States did not do the kind of necessary work before launching the trade war that it should have done, China is cutting trade deals with everybody. This is the thing. If you're going to try and box in China, you actually have to work on the box.

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You have to work on everybody who's around China and cut excellent trade deals with all of those people so that if you say to them, choose between us and choose between China, they don't just say, hey, how about both? How about both?

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Okay, well, according to the New York Times, the Chinese government on Monday warned other countries against curbing trade with China in order to win a reprieve from American tariffs, promising to retaliate against countries that do so.

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The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said it was responding to foreign media reports that President Trump's administration was trying to pressure other countries on their trade with China as a negotiating tactic. The ministry said in a statement, quote, appeasement will not bring peace. Compromise will not earn respect.

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Seeking so-called exemptions by harming the interests of others from one's selfish gain is like negotiating with a tiger for its skin. In the end, it will only lead to a lose-lose situation. China said that it would resolutely take countermeasures. Now, the United States is significantly more powerful economically than China. It is. Just as a global power, we are significantly more powerful.

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Investment dollars flow into the United States and from the United States. There's a reason why the GDP per capita of the United States is a high multiple larger than that of China. China, in aggregate, is a strong country. But of course, 1.4 billion people live in China, whereas only 330 million people live in the United States.

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According to the New York Times, which of course was celebrating Pope Francis, Francis steadily steered the church in another direction, restocking its leadership with a diverse array of bishops who shared his pastoral welcoming approach as he sought to open up the church. And this is, of course, the way that the left-leaning media treats Pope Francis, is that he opened up the church.

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However, where China does have an advantage when it comes to fighting a trade war, for example, which is a centralized government policy, is that China is a centralized government. When I say they are a centralized government, I mean they are not subject to elections. So China can fight a trade war, impoverish its own citizens. Hell, if its own citizens die, China's done that before.

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The Great Leap Forward killed 40 million people. China is no stranger to human rights violations against its own people. So if the question is who's going to break first in a game of chicken between the Chinese Communist Party and the Trump administration, which, again, is subject to the outside will of the American people, we're going to have midterm elections in a year and a half here.

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I mean, this is why you better have your ducks in a row before you do something like that. According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea that you can break trade and not break the capital flow side is a fantasy, said Stephen Blitz, chief U.S. economist at Global Data TS Lombard. Markets settled down in recent days as Trump pulled back from a maximalist stance on tariffs.

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Volatility soared after the president unspooled his fluid and unpredictable trade policy on April 2nd. A brutal bond market sell-off unfolded with 30-year yields notching their largest weekly increase since 1987, despite decent bond auctions. The sell-off occurred against the backdrop of a weakening dollar, which normally strengthens during bouts of stress.

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People invest in what they think is going to bring at least a solid return in bonds. That's not happening. People are moving away from bonds, they're moving away from the dollar, and they're moving away from stocks, which demonstrates lack of faith in the current economic policy or in the economy of the United States. The president can still course correct here. Make deals. We were promised deals.

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Make the deals. Seriously, we need like deals now. Okay, well, that's what we need in the market. What we need are those excellent trade deals President Trump was talking about. And by the way, we need the headlines on the trade deals because the reality is that our trade relationships, let's say Mexico or Canada, they weren't so bad. You know why they weren't so bad already?

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They weren't so bad already because President Trump already negotiated the USMCA with Mexico and Canada. There's a lot of danger here for the Trump administration, not just in a sinking economy, but in the impact that could have on the Republican brand in the midterms and in the future.

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After the last election cycle, most analysts basically declared the Democratic Party in cardiac arrest situation. The EKG looked pretty terrible for the Democratic Party. If you want to inject electricity into the Democratic Party, you want to paddle the Democratic Party back to life, a bad economy will do it.

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Harry Enten at CNN talked about the possible collapse of the Republican brand if the economy continues to go the way it's going.

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He made it broader and more appealing to people. Now, What we are seeing in the United States, actually, in terms of the numbers, is that more young Americans are turning toward Catholicism, but it's more traditional forms, not in these sort of left-leaning forms that Catholicism seems to be taking these days, but going back to things like Latin Mass.

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OK, now this right here is the question. If you want President Trump to succeed, then you want his policy to be geared at reality. And that means a trade policy that makes sense to the markets that they can intuit because the markets do have real world impact. If the markets drop, there's less liquidity available for businesses. Credit dries up.

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Join us right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So we were off yesterday, as I say, for travel. We'll know why in very short order, however. While we were off, the Pope passed away. That, of course, was long expected. He'd been sick for a while.

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Small businesses which operate on margin are going to go under. There is a lag effect between the stock market going down and the economy cratering. But to pretend that you are utterly disconnected is ignorant of economic history. Let's put it this way. There's never been a time when the economy was booming where the stock market was radically declining.

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There have been times where the stock market declined and then went back up, declined, went back up. But when the stock market continues to go down and to the right, name me a time in American history where the economy was doing amazing work while the stock market continued to go down and to the right for a prolonged period of time.

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And meanwhile, the president of the United States, his signal policy, the one that actually is working the best for him is immigration. On the polling, President Trump's immigration policy is highly popular. It's not just because Americans are sick and tired of the open borders policy of the Biden administration.

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It's also because Democrats continue to take the worst possible tack when it comes to this sort of stuff. The tack they should be taking on immigration right now is that President Trump is right to close the border, that President Trump is correct to unleash ICE to go find criminal illegal immigrants and deport them. But we need to obey the law.

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That would be the actual smart approach to this particular issue. But Democrats have decided that the smart approach is to shove their heads directly up their own, you know. And so what that means is that they are instead basically going out of their way to praise MS-13 members and suggest that President Trump is wrong to try and deport all of those people.

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And this leads to the awkward situation of absolute dolt Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has the IQ of a turnip, going down to El Salvador to meet with a man named Kilmer Abrego-Garcia. who is a likely MS-13 member and an alleged wife beater by his wife, okay? Like not a good guy. And he was deported to El Salvador. Again, that was done mistakenly according to the Trump DOJ.

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And that was a process issue. So the way that the Democrats should have protested that is they should have said, listen, everybody deserves due process. If you are here on a green card, you deserve whatever the due process is for a green card holder. If you are here as an illegal immigrant, you deserve whatever due process is due to you under the law. And due process shouldn't be violated.

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It's sacrosanct in the United States. That's the argument they should have made. Instead, because they have, I don't know, it's an internal emotional necessity to valorize people who are quote unquote victims of the Trump administration.

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They've decided to treat people who are actually quite bad with sympathy, which leads to the awkward spectacle of Chris Van Hollen being asked if the person he visited down in El Salvador and had drinks with was MS-13, and he can't answer the question.

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And my friends who are Catholic, many of our staffers who are Catholic, Daily Wire is disproportionately Catholic, actually. Many of the people who work for us are people who go to traditional Latin Mass and go to more traditional Roman Catholic churches. However, according to the media, the importance of Pope Francis is that he was essentially moving the entire church to the left.

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OK, sad and traumatized. The likely MS-13 member. Great job there, Chris Van Hollen. You can see he's trying to backtrack now. Now he's trying to turn it into a due process argument. Again, the due process argument is a better argument for Democrats. It just is. The Supreme Court, over the course of the last 72 hours, handed out an order this early Saturday morning, 7 to 2.

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They handed down just an order. There was no actual text to the order. It didn't explain its reasoning, but it ordered the Trump administration to respond to an emergency appeal and said the government is directed not to remove any members of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.

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That would be the people who are being detained under the so-called Alien Enemies Act, which is an 18th century act designed at allowing the expeditious removal of people who are declared wartime enemies by the executive branch of the government. There was a dissent by Justices Alito and Justice Thomas in this particular case.

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Saying, quote, shortly after midnight yesterday, the court hastily and prematurely granted unprecedented emergency relief.

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Although the order is not to find the putative class, it appears the court means all members of the class the habeas petitioner sought to have certified, namely all non-citizens in custody of the Northern District of Texas who were, are, or will be subject to the March 2025 presidential proclamation entitled Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua.

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And then they criticized the court for doing all this, even though it's not clear the court had jurisdiction. It's questionable whether the applicants complied with their obligation to seek emergency injunctive relief in the district court. The Court of Appeals was already considering the issue of emergency relief.

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The papers alleged that the applicants were in imminent danger of removal, but there was no concrete support for that suggestion. So...

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Alito and Thomas both complained in some literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule without hearing from the opposing party within eight hours of receiving the application with dubious factual support for its order and without providing any explanation for its order.

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I refuse to join the court's order because we had no good reason to think that under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate. Now, again, I think what the rest of the court would say is.

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We wouldn't think that was necessary or appropriate either, except for the fact that we've now had situations in which the Trump administration has allegedly ignored the orders of lower courts not to do a deportation and then just did the deportation. That's the argument that is being made on the other side of the aisle.

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According to the New York Times, many rank and file Catholics approved, believing the church had become inward looking and distant from ordinary people. Now, again, do they have any polling data to support the idea that the leftward leaning moves of the church have somehow been A salutary good for the church? They do not. It's just many people believe.

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One of the things that should become clear to Republicans at this point is that doing things in meticulous fashion is likely to lead to longer lasting victories than doing them as sort of one-offs and in quick fashion. Because on the morality, the Trump administration is not only correct, they are unbelievably correct.

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Tom Homan, who is our bulldog that borders are, criticized, for example, Chris Van Hollen for his sympathy for MS-13 members, saying how many angel moms and dads has he met with?

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Again, on the politics, Republicans are right. But do the law right also, and you'll have longer lasting victories because otherwise, many of the things the Trump administration is trying to do are going to get reversed on appeal. And that would be really bad for the Trump administration as well. Again, I'm rooting for the Trump administration to do all of this right so its policies actually work.

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The same thing holds true with regard to Harvard. So the Trump administration is admirably going after the endowment of Harvard University, which is great. They should. Harvard University is a travesty. Again, that is my alma mater. I went there for law school. They're very rich. And there's no reason why Harvard University should be treated with kid gloves. Their endowment is $53 billion.

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Massive endowment. And these major universities have the GDPs of small countries. It's unbelievable. The Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal, has now grown so furious with Harvard University after a week of an escalating dispute between the two sides.

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It is planning to pull in additional billion dollars of the school's funding for health research, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump administration officials thought the long list of demands they sent Harvard last Friday was a confidential starting point for negotiations. Instead, Harvard released the letter to the public.

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Before Monday, the administration was planning to treat Harvard more leniently than it had Columbia University. Now officials want to apply even more pressure to the nation's most prominent university, according to those people. There's a lot of talk about the attempt to remove nonprofit status from Harvard University. The task force thought Harvard would concede.

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Instead, Harvard decided to make itself the centerpiece of this issue. Now, the Trump administration could have won a very easy victory here, and they still may win a victory here. It'll be harder fought. They could easily have simply said to Harvard University that unless it complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the necessary consequences would follow.

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Francis reached out to migrants, the poor, the destitute, the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members, and to alienated gay Catholics. He traveled to often forgotten and far-flung countries and sought to improve relations with an antagonistic Chinese government, Muslim clerics, and leaders from across the fragmented Christian world.

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Its aid would go away, for example. And then been very meticulous about the list they put forward. And so they put forward a very broad list of things they wanted Harvard University to do, including reconstitute its board, reconstitute its professoriate. And listen, those are all things that are good and should happen to Harvard University. Absolutely. Will they be upheld in a court of law?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is a little unclear. Again, Harvard, For all the problems with Harvard, there's some good lawyers who work there and very expensive lawyers who work there. I want to see the Trump administration's measures against Harvard University maintained, which is, again, why meticulousness should be the order of the day. We'll get to more of that in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, if you're not able to watch those old family videos anymore because, you know, they're on a VHS tape in your garage, moldering away. Well, and you don't have a VCR. You really should get all that transferred over and digitized. And that is what Legacy Box is for. Legacy Box is wonderful. I've used it for my parents. I've used it for my in-laws.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Since Legacy Box is proudly 100% American-made, every tape, film, reel, and photo stays right here to be digitized in the United States of America. Legacy Box offers a comprehensive, cost-effective, thoughtfully designed approach to memory preservation. You put those outdated tapes, films, photos into Legacy Box, ship it off, skilled technicians carefully digitize every item by hand.

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Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Their all-inclusive service makes preserving your treasured memories absolutely effortless. My dad was so happy with it, he actually made copies of all the material and made sure the kids could get it. Protect your memories. Take advantage of Legacy Box's all-American sale. Visit LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro shop. Their $9 tape offer, digitized by hand in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Get 90 days of free access to Legacy Box Cloud. That's LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro. American-made, trusted by families. Okay, meanwhile, the Defense Department continues to roil with its own level of chaos. Now, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears to be under assault from people who are very much opposed to Pete Hegseth's view on the universe.

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And here I'm talking about isolationists within the Defense Department. There's this sort of bizarre narrative that's now being retailed that Hegseth is under assault from people who are, quote unquote, more interventionist in sort of their directionality. It's precisely the opposite. You can tell this from social media.

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The people who are currently assaulting Pete Hegseth are people opposed to Pete Hegseth because Pete Hegseth is too much in favor of peace through strength. So some of the people who are fired over the course of the last couple weeks, allegedly for leaking to the press, are people who are very much allied with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

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And again, the sort of extraordinarily positive view that the media hold of any pope is dependent on that pope doing what they believe to be the bidding of the political left. This is why they were puzzled when the day before the pope passed away, Vice President J.D. Vance visited. Now, they're very happy that the pope seemed to give him a bit of a lecture on migration. But the fact that J.D.

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And then many of them have been going around and mouthing off about it in public. That includes Dan Caldwell, Dan Caldwell, was a member of the Defense Department, a top member of the Defense Department. He was appointed by people inside the Office of Personnel Management. The Office of Personnel Management is staffed by people who are very sympathetic to this point of view, apparently.

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Caldwell was fired after allegations that he was leaking to the press, presumably people with whom he has friends like Tucker Carlson on whose podcast he appeared recently. And that is the kind of generalized suspicion. I don't know if that's true or not.

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Dan Caldwell went on Tucker's podcast on Monday and said he was not responsible for leaks that were used as, quote, justification for a purge that has caused turmoil at the Pentagon and prompted calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resign. And it is not quite a wonder as to who actually is calling for his resignation on the right.

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It's people who don't like the sort of Trumpian peace through strength argument and are much more friendly to the sort of paleo conservative isolationist wing of the Republican Party. Caldwell said, quote, I was out there advancing things a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment didn't want. It doesn't justify what's happening to me, but let's just be honest.

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That's the nature of the games played in D.C. So he's claiming to Tucker Carlson that he's basically ousted by, quote, unquote, the neocons, which is weird because he isn't naming who did the ousting precisely. He thinks his views contributed to his ouster.

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What's weird about that is, of course, there were a couple of other people who were fired from the Pentagon who actually don't hold those exact same views. Now, Caldwell himself is making very strong isolationist arguments, and he accuses there of being people who are just desperate for another war in the Middle East, which, again, is simplistic thinking.

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The idea that, for example, if you wish for Israel to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, this means you want another war in the Middle East. That's just wrong on its face.

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The idea that you want another war in the Middle East if you want to stop the Houthis from, you know, stopping all traffic in the Red Sea, which is something that Peter Hegseth has expressed support for, that that means that you're a warmonger. That is an Obama-level foreign policy.

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The press attacks on Pete Hegseth, though, because, again, they agree with the Obama-level foreign policy is a horseshoe theory here. The New York Times and Dan Kald will largely agree on foreign policy in a wide variety of ways.

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According to the New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details about information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15th in a private signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat. And so now this is being used as another excuse to go after Pete Hegseth.

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Rumors started flying around yesterday that the Trump administration is going to look to alternatives for Hegseth. For the White House's part, they're denying that. Caroline Leavitt at the White House yesterday said this is not true.

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The Pentagon is working against Pete Hegseth specifically because, by the way, recruitment numbers are up because Pete Hegseth is cutting the waste and the fraud and the abuse over at the Pentagon because Pete Hegseth is a different kind of sect f.

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Vance, who's a fairly recent convert to Catholicism, was meeting with the Pope was somewhat puzzling to them in the first place. They don't have any trouble understanding why Nancy Pelosi, an extraordinarily pro-abortion, pro-transgenderism, pro-same-sex marriage person,

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The fact the White House is standing by Hegseth, that is, of course, the right move. Pete Hegseth yesterday was talking about his relationship with the White House. He says, listen, we're trying to fire leakers. That's what we are doing here.

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So the White House should stand by Hegseth. He was their pick. He was an out of the box pick, and he remains the right pick for secretary of defense. Meanwhile, speaking of wrong picks, Steve Witkoff, again, he's been tried out there as some sort of negotiating genius. I would love to see the actual negotiating genius at some point of Steve Witkoff.

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So right now he's leading negotiations over Ukraine and he continues to make proposals that are geared presumably at granting carrots to the to the Russians. That is the only way to sort of read how Steve Witkoff is approaching these particular negotiations. The Ukrainian, I mean, Zelensky already came to the table.

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If the idea was get Zelensky to the table, the Trump administration has already accomplished this. And I took the Henry Kissinger position back in 2022, which is the Ukrainians needed to be brought to the table. But then so did the Russians. I mean, if you're going to have a deal, you need the Russians at the table, too.

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And right now, all the focus of the Witkoff wing of the administration is get the Ukraine. The Ukrainians already came. Zelensky already said he wants a 30 day ceasefire. Zelensky already is granting this rare earth minerals deal, which is extremely, extremely favorable to the United States. He's already doing all of those things. The question is, what exactly is going to get Russia to the table?

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Witkowski seems to be that if he makes more overtures to the Russians, then magically Vladimir Putin is going to come to the table.

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is a Catholic, or Joe Biden, even though they violate Catholic doctrine at every turn, but they had some sort of hangup when it came to J.D. Vance. According to the Wall Street Journal, in his final hours, Pope Francis met Vice President J.D.

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So he wants the Ukrainians to basically declare that all the areas that Putin has occupied, even some areas that Putin has not occupied actually yet in the east of the country, that all those areas ought to be taken off the table and declared Russian annexed territory. He wants the Ukrainians to also agree that they will effectively never join NATO.

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and give up their sovereignty, because that's what that means. It's not that NATO has to accept Ukraine, but if Ukraine can never try to orient itself toward the West in order to appease Vladimir Putin, that's one of the things that Putin is looking for. Now, the question is, does Putin even want an off-ramp? Because right now, the other side of the table is, let's say you're Vladimir Putin.

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Just switch the sides on the chess table for a second and play the other side of the chess table. You're not the United States anymore trying to get to an arrangement. You're Vladimir Putin. And what you've seen so far is that the United States is putting extraordinarily heavy pressure on the Ukrainians. And so far, no actual pressure on the Russians.

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In fact, the United States has cut off intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians. The United States is threatening to cut off aid to the Ukrainians, threatening to leave the negotiating table entirely. If you're Vladimir Putin, why don't you just wait out the United States? Why don't you just wait them out? Seriously, just wait them out. The Europeans probably can't fill the gap.

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Wait for the United States to get frustrated and leave. and then redouble your efforts and go harder. Now, I don't think that's in the interest of the United States. I don't think that's in the interest of President Trump. President Trump correctly believes one of the most humiliating moments in American foreign policy history was the Taliban strolling through Kabul.

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That the Taliban taking over a country that the United States had abandoned, where we abandoned our allies under Joe Biden was shameful and ugly and wrong. Well, the United States allowing Vladimir Putin to stroll through Kiev would have a significantly worse impact on America's foreign policy. I don't think President Trump wants that.

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And so what that means is that Steve Witkoff should start conveying messages to the other side of the negotiation as well that they need to come to the table and spell out some actual consequences. Now, President Trump himself has said that. President Trump himself. has said that there will be consequences to Russia if they don't come to the table. But those consequences need to be spelled out.

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Vance and delivered an Easter message on a theme that was central to his papacy, an appeal for better treatment of migrants and other vulnerable and marginalized people. In his final Easter message, read out by an aide, Francis called for an end to the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, and condemned hardline immigration policies again. Now, again, it's very nice for the Pope to condemn war.

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In the meantime, other countries around the region are feeling very uneasy about this. This ranges from the Baltic states all the way up to Finland and Sweden, according to the Wall Street Journal. For a long time, the Nordic countries were better known for their peace efforts and cozy living than militarism. Now they're shedding that persona.

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The Norics have emerged as a model for Europe's defense. They're leading efforts to reverse decades of military drawdowns to counter both Russian aggression and uncertain security guarantees from the Trump White House. The four main Nordic countries are among Europe's top donors of military aid to Ukraine by population.

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They're taking steps to usher in a new regional security architecture that's less reliant on the United States. Listen, that's great for the United States. If Europeans can shoulder more of the burden, that's wonderful. That'd be good. The question is, how much of the burden are the Europeans actually willing to shoulder?

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Because the United States, in fact, has security interests in Ukraine that are not just European security interests. The question is, what are Russia's actual ambitions?

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A little bit later this week, I'm going to go into extreme detail about what I believe Russia's ambitions are, because I've been spending the last week or so delving into the writings of the man known as Putin's brain, Alexander Dugin. And so I think I have a pretty good insight into what exactly Russia is looking for here. And it is not an off ramp.

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Meanwhile, with regard to Ukraine and Russia, Vladimir Putin made the cynical move of declaring a 24-hour ceasefire around Easter, which apparently he then violated by not sending missiles, but sending tons and tons of drones into Ukraine and sending off air raid sirens every five minutes over the course of Easter. According to the Washington Post, Kiev is expected to respond to a new U.S.

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proposal and talks in London starting Wednesday, and including representatives from the United States, Britain, and France. The talks will take place in the shadow of the apparently futile 30-hour truce. Now, again, Zelensky said, let's turn that into, you know, like a 30-day truce. And maybe that turns into an armistice, which, by the way, is the most likely outcome here.

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There will be no peace agreement. There will be no peace agreement because Ukraine is not going to simply cede the territory in the east of the country and the Crimea to Russia. And Russia is not going to settle for that. So the most likely outcome here, if you were to get to any outcome at all, looks sort of like the Korean War, which, by the way, is still technically ongoing.

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There was an armistice agreement signed in 1953, but there's no actual technical agreement by South Korea that North Korea is not its territory. And there's no agreement by North Korea that South Korea is not its territory. It's just there's a hardened battle line right there. And then it's basically been set up as a demilitarized zone.

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That is the most likely scenario and outcome in what's going on in Ukraine. But in order to even get there, You have to have a perception by the Russians they're not going to get much more. Everyone needs to go weapons down because the costs of not going weapons down are too high.

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There's been a lot of focus placed on, for example, the rare earth minerals deal that the United States is now going to sign with the Ukrainians, that this is going to essentially provide for an informal security arrangement with the Ukrainians.

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You can see why the Ukrainians are a little bit skeptical of that, considering that in 2017, the United States actually did sign a rare earth minerals deal with Afghanistan. And within a few years, Afghanistan was totally overtaken by the Taliban. So again, I'm waiting to see the negotiating genius of Steve Witkoff. Like, bring it, dude. Let's see it.

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All right, coming up, we'll get to Coachella, which unleashed a rather shocking message over the weekend. Plus, Klaus Schwab has now resigned as head of the WEF. So something good at least happened over the course of the last 72 hours. But in order to watch, you actually have to be a member. If you are not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Also, it would be good if, you know, maybe he took a moral stance on some of those wars, which actually do have a moral component. It turns out that the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, these are not just conflicts that randomly break out across the planet. They actually have moral underpinnings. And speaking as a critic of Pope Francis, because I believe that the Pope

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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We talked about it on the show just a few weeks ago with my friend Michael Knowles, who explained how the conclave will work and what the Pope's legacy is. Pope Francis's legacy, according to the left media, is that he was leftist. That is how the left media are playing it. They played it all the way this weekend.

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was not morally clear on a wide variety of conflicts and on a wide variety of issues, ranging from economics to international politics. I wish he had said more about the actual underlying morality of, say, the conflict in Gaza.

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And by that, I mean, it would have been nice if he had not done a nativity scene at the Vatican that posed baby Jesus as a Palestinian, for example, or if he had suggested that maybe Hamas needed to go. And in Ukraine, it would have been great if the Pope had actually said, Russian aggression in Ukraine is evil and wrong. That would have been great. I would have liked more of that sort of thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The same thing holds true with regard to economics. I wish that Pope Francis had not been so in thrall to, as the Wall Street Journal editorial board says, ideologies that keep the poor in poverty.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The Pope was a radical environmentalist and so he was constantly criticizing capitalism when the reality is that poor people across the world need more capitalism and better property rights, not the opposite. The Wall Street Journal editorial board says his papacy was marked by anti-Americanism and not merely against Donald Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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He seems to believe Latin America is poor because the United States is rich. That, of course, is a hallmark of liberation theology, which is a left leaning mashup, as I said, of sort of Marxist economics with Catholic social teaching. As the Wall Street Journal said, some attribute his hostility to free Marcus to his Latin American background.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Born in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis at a young age was made the provincial superior for a Jesuit order in Argentina during the time of the military junta. This is a hard line to walk. Some in his order accused him of unfairly being too friendly with the regime. And Argentina, of course, during Pope Francis's tenure when he was in Argentina, was run by Juan and Evita Perón.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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And Peronism was a Marxist brand of centralized politics. And of course, it's also true that the Pope reached out, Pope Francis reached out to the Chinese Communist Party in unique ways. He attempted to make common cause with the Chinese Communist Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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He actually gave the Communist Party in China influence on who exactly would be the bishops in China, which is not a great way to do your religion. And one of the kind of great things about the history of Catholicism is that when Catholics were sending priests all over the world to minister to people, they weren't actually changing the underlying logic of the Catholic Church.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you're making your pick for bishop subject to the Chinese Communist Party, which hates God and hates Catholicism and hates religion, that is not a great way to do it. Now, again, I'm being very critical of the Pope here because the media decided that the Pope's politics were the thing that made him who he was. You can also make the case that what made the Pope who he was was his empathy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The entire left media was basically united in the idea that Pope Francis was important because he isn't President Trump. Here is a compendium of various members of the media basically suggesting that his sole importance lies in the fact that he opposed many of the Trump administration agenda items.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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And this was sort of the other strain of coverage of the Pope's death was the fact that Pope Francis was very clearly empathetic to the poor. He spent an awful lot of time with the poor, ministering to the poor. And that, of course, is a wonderful thing. In a world in which However, the big issues of the day are so much in turmoil.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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And when moral leadership has never been more wanting, I'm hoping that the next Pope, and again, I'm speaking as an outsider because I'm not a Catholic, but the Pope is a large moral voice to a billion people. I'm hoping that the next Pope provides more moral clarity with regard to the things that matter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Because if the church is going to stand for anything, if it's going to gain adherence, then it has to maintain the sort of moral center of eternal values upon which it has been based. So I write a lot about the Catholic church in my book, The Right Side of History, because the Catholic church for a thousand years was the preserver of Christendom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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I mean, that's what it was until the rise of Protestantism. And even after the rise of Protestantism, it was the sort of battle between... Catholicism and Protestantism that made Europe what it was. The Peace of Westphalia was based on the idea, religious toleration was based on the idea that no one was going to win the war between Catholics and Protestants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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And so religious diversity should bloom within a certain framework. All of this makes a huge difference in the history of the West. And so a robust and useful Catholic church would be a good thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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The Catholic church has been fading in recent decades, not just because of the assault of secularism, but because like pretty much every mainline religion, it has been imbibing from the well of modernity and casting out its own spiritual values, and that is not going to have long-term good impact on faith, on those eternal values themselves. We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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First, you know what I hate? Big government, right? You know what else I hate? Being overcharged. There's just a few things that I hate. It's like the reverse of the sound of music. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is helping you save money on your cell phone bill. That is correct. Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network and America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited Talk texts 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part, right now you get a free one-year membership to the Daily Wire Plus, which is a lot of great stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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That's uncensored, ad-free daily shows, the free leftist tears, like the whole deal. And with Pure Talk's US customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Go to PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to PureTalk at PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. PureTalk is wireless by Americans for Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Their coverage is excellent. I use them all the time. Obviously, you should too. Go check them out right now. PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Also, if you're a homeowner, you should listen to this. Did you know somebody can literally steal your house? This is real and it does happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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A scammer can forge your signature in one document, use a fake notary stamp and spend about 40 bucks to file that at the county recorder's office. Then they take out loans by using your home as collateral, which unlocks all the value in your home. You won't even know that that's happening until you start getting collection and foreclosure notices in the mail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Most people don't check on their home title once escrow closes. That's why it's critical to find out right now if you're already a victim by heading on over to HomeTitleLock.com. They'll give you a free title history report, provide you with million-dollar triple lock protection to help keep your home and equity safe. That is one of the reasons I recommend Home Title Lock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Many people, including our senior video editor, Adam, trust Home Title Lock to protect their assets. If you want a feeling of safety and security about this particular issue, Home Title Lock makes it happen for you the same way it does for Adam.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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You get 24-7 monitoring of your title, urchins alerts if there are any changes, and if fraud does happen, their US-based restoration team will spend up to a million dollars to fix the fraud and restore your title. When you go to hometitlelock.com, Go there right now. Use promo code Shapiro. You get free 14-day trial and title history report. Find out if you're already a victim.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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That's hometitlelock.com. Promo code Shapiro. Now, what comes next? Well, the conclave comes next. The conclave, of course, has been made famous in literature and film. Essentially, the College of Cardinals gets together and then they vote on who ought to be the next pope. The idea being, it's kind of a beautiful idea, that God sits in the midst of the quorum.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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And not an idea that is unique to Catholicism. We have that sort of analog of that in Judaism. The idea is that if you have 10 men who are praying together, then God kind of sits on that quorum. The same thing, I suppose, happens with regard to the College of Cardinals. The idea that God acts through man in history.

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Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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According to NPR, with the death of Pope Francis, the elaborate mechanism will now begin to decide who sits in power at the Vatican, the seat of the last absolute monarchy in Europe. It centers around the conclave, a gathering whose name stems from the Latin for with key, which comes from the 13th century.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Because back in 1268, the church went nearly three years without a pope, so they actually locked the cardinals in and they put them on water and bread until they could come up with a new pope. Cardinals in the conclave will be locked away within the Vatican. They are cut off from the outside world, so it's kind of like sequestering the jury.

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Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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As they deliberate, news outlets point cameras at the papal chimney, and then you find out who was the pope, who's the new pope, when the white smoke emerges from the chimney in the conclave. There are a number of candidates who are up for the papacy. Some are more conservative, many are not.

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Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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Pope Francis stacked the top levels of the College of Cardinals and the Vatican with people who are like-minded. The Washington Post has a rundown on some of the top contenders, including a man from Stockholm named Anders Arborelius, who is 75.

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Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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My guess is they're going to go with somebody younger because after having two very elderly popes, I think that it would probably behoove them to go with somebody who is younger. Arborelius is 75. He's actually born a Lutheran and then converted to Catholicism when he was 20. He has suggested the creation of a special advisory body of women. He advocates openness to refugees.

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And again, he is more left-leaning. There's Charles Mongbo from Myanmar. He's 76. He has been outspoken against the violence inflicted by the country's military junta, according to the Washington Post. And again, he was made a cardinal by Pope Francis. You have candidates from France, from Congo. You have candidates from Manila.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Perhaps the frontrunner right now, at least in the mind of the media, is a man named Luis Antonio Gokim Tegel, who is from Manila. He is 67. He's considered closely aligned with Francis. He has criticized the harsh and severe rhetoric Catholic clerics use to describe members of the LGBTQ plus community, divorced people and unwed mothers. He was born in Manila. His mom is of Chinese heritage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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His father is Tagalog from Philippines. So again, he was proclaimed a cardinal by Benedict, but the idea here is that he would continue the sort of left-leaning march of the Vatican. And then you have some nominees who are more conservative. So for example, Peter Erdo from Budapest. He is the Metropolitan Archbishop. of Estergom Budapest in Hungary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2183 - Pope Francis Dead, What Comes Next?

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He's one of the more conservative members of the College of Cardinals. So when Pope Francis declared in December 2023 that Catholic priests could bless but not marry same-sex couples, Erdo appeared to oppose the decision in his Christmas Eve sermon. He has opposed allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion as well. So he's sort of more traditionalist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So it'll be fascinating to see who emerges as the next pope. And of course, the whole world does have a stake in that because the pope is the spiritual leader for a billion people. Our condolences go out, obviously, to all Catholics today, because whether you agree with Pope Francis or not, when the Pope passes away, that means an enormous amount to our Catholic friends and neighbors.

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And may his memory and his work be a blessing to them. Meanwhile, when it comes to the United States, the economy continues to roil and tumble. Yesterday, the stock market had a pretty terrible day. It was down about 1,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Gold was up Bond yields were up, meaning people are moving away from bonds. They're moving toward gold.

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They're moving away from stocks. All of this demonstrating lack of faith in the underlying health of the American economy. D-dollarization is happening. People are moving away from the dollar in international trade. A huge amount of this is due to the tariff war, of course, that President Trump declared. Since that tariff war was declared, the stock market is down markedly.

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Over the course of President Trump's presidency, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off somewhere between 13 and 15 points. In something like 11 days in modern history in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dumped 1,000 points, four of those have come since President Trump declared his tariff war. Now, as I've said many times, when it comes to tariffs,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There are some things that tariffs are good for. So if you want to actually punish a country, say like China, then a tariff is a useful thing if well calibrated. If you want to protect an industry that is crucial to national security, then tariffs are useful. And you might use it to protect, say, your shipbuilding or your steel industry if you feel that's crucial.

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And again, the reason that the left-leaning media like Pope Francis is because, again, I speak as somebody who really does not have a dog in this particular fight. It's because he was a liberation theologist. He is somebody who believed in a sort of Marxism mix-up with Roman Catholicism.

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Alrighty, folks, tons to get to today, including all the fallout from the Joe Biden senility and now cancer scandal. We'll examine the latest with the big, beautiful bill and President Trump trying to get those Ukraine negotiations going. But first, when you are a Daily Wire Plus All Access member, you're not just watching the daily live shows. You are part of the conversation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The media, the best you can say for them is maybe active omission rather than commission, meaning that they never would have taken Donald Trump's word for it if you were clearly losing his mind on camera. And everybody's like, he's totally fine behind closed doors. He's doing backhand springs and reciting the Gettysburg Address.

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In Swahili, like nobody would have taken that for granted if they were the media. They would have been asking serious questions. So with the Democrat media complex blown up, the Democrats are in real trouble here. They're in real trouble. They basically have two possibilities. One is wait for Donald Trump to fall down on the job. Maybe that happens. Maybe that doesn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The second would be actually start saying things that are interesting and popular. They cannot do the latter. They are so wedded to their woke base that they are now stuck. I mean, truly stuck. Let's take a few of their leaders as examples. So Tim Walz, who for the only reason Tim Walz was ever a vice presidential pick is because he wasn't the Jew from Pennsylvania.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Josh Shapiro was clearly the better vice presidential pick for Kamala Harris. Instead, they picked this oddball weirdo from Minnesota who has the affect of the Kool-Aid man if he had taken too much ecstasy. And they decided to trot this guy out as an example of American masculinity, bopping around, making weird hand motions, doing jazz hands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, Tim Walz is still out there haunting the American political landscape and calling ICE, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the modern-day Gestapo.

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It is a scandal about the Democratic Party writ large, as well as the media. And that Democrat media complex has been the thing that has kept Democrats relevant and victorious for decades at this point in the public narrative. But time after time after time, particularly over the course of the last five years, the Democrat media narrative has fallen completely apart.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So again, Tim Walls claiming that ICE are like the Gestapo. Good luck with this argument. Like, this is the best you guys have. Really, this is the best you guys have. How about Hillary Clinton? She's still out there. She's basically turned into a Charles Dickens character, wandering around in her 2016 wedding dress like a ghost.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She's the Miss Haversham of American politics, wandering around saying the same things over and over. Now she's calling female Trump voters handmaidens of the patriarchy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Handmaiden of the patriarchy. By God, this woman, I can't imagine why she lost to Donald Trump. Handmaiden of the, can you imagine, by the way, a woman in American history who's been more of a handmaiden to the patriarchy than Hillary Clinton? Literally, she allegedly threatened accusers of her husband, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She had this marriage with her husband in which her husband was plausibly accused of sexual assault rape, and other crimes against women. And she allegedly threatened them in order so that she could be eventually a senator from New York and then secretary of state and then run for president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Hard to imagine a bigger handmaiden to the patriarchy than Hillary Rodham Clinton, who's only famous because her last name is Clinton in the first place. But like, this is the best the Democrats can try it out. Well, then there's the actual resistance. mode of the Democratic Party now. The young resistors. And well, the problem is they're getting themselves arrested.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the Department of Justice charged Democratic Representative LaModica McIver with assaulting federal law enforcement during a chaotic melee that erupted outside of an ICE detention facility in New Jersey, according to acting U.S. Attorney Alina Haba on Monday. This is according to CNN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The scuffle outside the detention facility occurred as protesters, lawmakers, and Homeland Security officers pushed against each other. And that all happened, of course, as Democrats were outside a detention facility for illegal immigrants claiming that their rights were being violated. And now she's going to be prosecuted. So who's it going to be, guys?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Everything that they have labeled a conspiracy theory has turned out not only not to be a conspiracy theory, it's turned out to be largely true. So just to go back briefly in history, it was the Democrats in the media who claimed that Donald Trump was an actual cat's paw of the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, that he had been elected in 2016 on the basis of Russian gaming of the election.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's going to be Mr. Potato Head Cory Booker in 2028 shouting at the windows? Is it going to be AOC and her oddball approach to politics backed by Bernie Sanders. Who you guys got? Seriously. And how do you presume to overcome the gigantic boiling scandal at the heart of the Democratic Party, the cover up of the former president's senility and possibly cancer?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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And again, AOC actually is the best place for this, right? She can always claim that she was an outsider. She didn't have a lot of contact with Joe Biden. She hates the Democratic Party anyway. And there is something to that. So again, advantage AOC if you're looking at the 2028 Democratic primaries. But it is amazing how the Democrats are struggling for footing against President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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And it is all their own fault. Now, President Trump has a magical ability to draw the worst out of his opponents, legitimately the worst. And Democrats are falling right into it. Speaking of the worst out of his opponents, James Comey is still wandering the landscape in search of relevance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's only in the headlines because he decided to take a photo of a shell array on a beach that said 8647, generating outsized questions about whether he was calling for violence against the president of the United States. Well, it did get him a slot on MSNBC, which is probably what he wanted in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, yeah, it was very clever. Very, very clever, says James Comey. By the way, he's always a victim, according to James Comey, as always. Remember, this is the former FBI director who basically laundered into public view the erroneous and disgusting Steele dossier targeting President Trump. Here he was suggesting the only reason he's under fire is for walking on the beach with his wife.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You made this happen, my dude. This was you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Well, I mean, it happened because you did it. That's the reason why that happened. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, I always assumed that restless sleep was inevitable. Night after night of tossing and turning, waking up with an aching back, I'd convince myself that's just how sleep was supposed to be. Then I tried Helix Sleep and everything changed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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It's truly been transformative for my sleep quality. Now, I easily fall asleep in minutes. What makes Helix different is they don't just sell you a random mattress. They actually match you with the perfect one for your body and sleep style. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, somewhere in between, they have you covered. They make it so simple to get your best night's sleep every night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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All you have to do is take their sleep quiz and get matched with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. And trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else. Now, there's tons of benefits to my mattress. It happens to be firm and breathable, which is exactly what I need to sleep well right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Helix is offering an incredible Memorial Day sale. Visit helixsleep.com slash Ben. Get 27% off site-wide plus a free bedding bundle that includes a sheet set and mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 27% off site-wide plus a free bedding bundle with any Lux or Elite mattress order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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And this turned into a four years long investigation into Donald Trump and everyone surrounding him about how he was almost certainly on the Russian payroll. And allegations were made about everything from money changing hands to prostitutes urinating on President Trump. All this sort of stuff was trotted out by the media for four years as breaking news.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer. Also, I've discovered an incredible tool. It gives me real-time insights into my metabolism through something as simple as my breath. It's called Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. All you need to do is breathe into it first thing in the morning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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You'll know exactly what's happening with your metabolism, whether you're burning fats or carbs. Based on your measurements, Lumen creates a personalized nutrition plan just for you. What's great about Lumen is that I can breathe into it before and after workouts and meals So I know exactly what's going on in my body in real time. That's a fantastic feature.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Then Lumen can give you tips based on those readings to keep you on top of your health game. Since your metabolism is basically the engine behind everything your body does, when it's working really well, you get all kinds of great benefits. You'll find it easier to manage your weight. You'll have more energy throughout the day. You'll see better results from your workouts. You'll even sleep better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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It all connects back to having a healthy metabolism. The warmer months are coming. Spring back into your health and fitness. Go to Lumen.me slash Shapiro to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Shapiro for 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. And meanwhile, in other more relevant news, you know, things that actually matter in the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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President Trump had a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin yesterday. He then came out and he announced that some progress had been made. Now, again, it's kind of interesting to watch the shift in the tone, the vacillation in tone inside the Trump administration with regard to Putin and Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky has been playing this much smarter over the course of the past few weeks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The leader of Ukraine has been basically doing whatever the White House wants him to do. They say 30-day ceasefire. He says, no problem, 30-day ceasefire. They say rare earth minerals deal. He's like, no problem, rare earth minerals deal. They say, why don't you go to Turkey and have direct conversations with Putin without a 30-day ceasefire? He's like, fine, I'm in there. I'm at Ankara.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is sitting there doing none of these things. Zero of these things. And you can start to see the irritation from the Trump administration. J.D. Vance, the other day, he said, listen, Vladimir Putin seems to be unable to end the war. Here was the vice president of the United States, one of the bigger Ukraine support skeptics in the administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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No ads, exclusive access to live Q&As where you ask us the questions directly. The first look at what's coming next. That includes parenting. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series coming this Sunday exclusively at Daily Wire Plus. You get the full entertainment library, every original film and documentary, and early access to major announcements before anyone else.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, that happens to be correct. I mean, Putin does not know how to unwind this, nor does he really have an intention to unwind this. He just hopes to outlast. His goal is to outlast. So President Trump, after this very long phone call with Vladimir Putin, did not come away with any commitment by Putin to do anything, which, of course, is not a surprise. That's not Trump's fault.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I remember being in the gym for literally years. And every day there'd be some sort of new breaking news on Wolf Blitzer about how Russiagate was going to break wide open. It turned out that was a conspiracy theory on their part. But they suggested, of course, that to say that there was, in fact, a deep state that was promulgating this lie, that that was a conspiracy theory. Then

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Vladimir Putin doesn't have an interest in actually negotiating an end to the war because he believes that if he just lasts long enough, the West will walk away from the war and he'll walk through Ukraine. That's what he's gambling on. Here's President Trump in the Rose Garden trying to suggest that some progress had indeed been made during the phone call.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, it's not just a shame that it got started in the first place. It is Vladimir Putin invading a sovereign country. Trump said that he had spoken with Putin and he said, when are we going to end this, Vladimir?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, so that's the part where I have some problems. What evidence do we have that Putin wants to end this? like one shred of evidence, seriously, one. I would love one shred of evidence that Vladimir Putin has any intention of ending this war. Right now, there is no evidence of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I understand President Trump is in deal-making mode and he wants deals, but in order for a deal to happen, both sides have to come to the table. President Trump is suggesting direct negotiations in Rome. He wants Pope Leo XIV to actually host the talks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, again, all that may be well and good. The question is, what does Vladimir Putin want? I did an episode a couple of weeks ago where we went through the writings of Vladimir Putin's so-called brain, Alexander Dugin.

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And what he makes very clear and what Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, has made clear and what Putin himself has made clear is that the Russians see the existence of a sovereign Ukraine that could even possibly align with the West as an existential threat to their imperial domination of the region. which is their end goal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Russian end goal for Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov and Alexander Dugin is Russia as imperial state, not Russia as regional power. They explicitly reject that. They do not want to be hemmed in. They want domination of Eastern Europe. They want domination of Ukraine. They believe that NATO is a sort of thorn in their side.

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That is a threat to their imperial aspirations for a Eurasian dominated continent. That is the problem. And what that means, the only way to get Russia to the table is to make very, very clear that the West is going nowhere. And that remains the open question here, because a lot of the verbiage from the Trump administration can be interpreted both ways.

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We moved into the COVID era. And when we got to COVID, again, it was labeled by the left a conspiracy theory to suggest that the virus had originated at a Wuhan lab, that that was some sort of wild conspiracy theory that was rooted in conjecture. It was not rooted at all in relevant suspicion. Probably it was just some Chinese guy ate a bat. That was probably where this came from, a live market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, for example, President Trump told reporters at the White House, quote, I think something's going to happen. And if it doesn't, I just back away and they're going to have to keep going. Well, I mean, don't threaten Vladimir Putin with a good time. There are two ways to interpret that. One is he backs away from the negotiations and we up our support for Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Europeans up their support for Ukraine. And it just continues until Vladimir Putin gets the message. That would be the glass half full version of this. The glass half empty version of this is when he says, I just back away and they're going to have to keep going. He doesn't just mean with regard to negotiations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He means with regard to any form of support for Ukraine at all, which basically damns Ukraine to a slow loss to the Russians because the Russians do have more manpower. The Russians do not care about casualties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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One of the amazing things about the way that Russia does war, this has been true for several hundred years at this point, is that while the West cares very much about casualties among their own troops, the Russians just don't. This has been true since the Napoleonic era, and it was certainly true during the Stalin era.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Vladimir Putin is perfectly willing to throw hundreds of thousands of men into the maw of death for the imperial ambitions of his country. He's perfectly willing to do that. And one of the giant mistakes the West constantly makes, and it's over and over and over again with regard to all of our geopolitical opponents, is projection. We assume that their interests are the same as ours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The West does this all the time. And because we are projecting our own sort of moral viewpoint on the world, our worldview on other people, we then can't understand why they don't do the things we want them to do. And the answer is they are working from an entirely different framework. This is why, for example, in the Middle East, the idea of a two-state solution was always ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It was always nonsense because it turns out that the people who are not the Israelis in that equation do not want a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution that involves the destruction of Israel and the death of the Jews.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it turns out that in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is not looking for some sort of territorial off ramp where everybody kind of goes weapons down and Ukraine becomes more pro-European and the eastern parts of Ukraine become more pro-Russian. That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for a Ukraine that is turned into a sort of Belarusian proxy state for the Russian regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is the goal of the Russians. In the same way, the goal of the Chinese was misinterpreted for literally decades by the United States. We assumed, okay, we will help open up their economy. We will make them richer. And then in sort of gratitude at them being richer, they will reorient toward the West. They'll liberalize their regime. And China will eventually become our global friend.

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And it turns out that's not what the Chinese are about at all. It turns out the Chinese leadership is about hegemonic domination of an entire region of the world and a completely different vision opposed to that of the West.

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It turns out that contra many of these so-called foreign policy experts on both left and right, people in the world have their own independent interests that are not in fact aligned with those of the United States. Not everybody wants peace, security, and material prosperity in the way that we in the West interpret that. Many have other aspirations that are different, just completely different.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And those aspirations range from the spiritual to the religious, to the geopolitical, to the imperial, And those ambitions exist, whether or not the United States exists. It's just that we are the gigantic roadblock in the way of those ambitions extending to people who don't want to be part of a regime that does that sort of thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, meanwhile, again, we're talking about geopolitical regimes that are opposed to the United States. China, of course, is the big one. President Trump has been right on this, totally right on this. You're talking about areas where President Trump really has shifted the sort of global consensus. China is one of those places.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it turns out that that was not a conspiracy theory. It was actually probably true. And then there was the suggestion by people on the right that it was conspiratorial at the top levels of government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, to shut down dissent with regard to everything from masking to lockdowns. And it turns out that wasn't a conspiracy theory either.

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So before Donald Trump, there was sort of a bipartisan consensus that China was a strategic competitor, possible future friend. President Trump came along. He said, hold up. They steal our IP. They engage in some of the grossest human rights violations. They are seeking to box us out of particular markets.

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They have basically artificially boosted areas of their economy so as to hollow out our manufacturing base. They're not our friends. They're actually our geopolitical opponents. And members of both parties actually now agree on this. This is one of the rare areas of bipartisan consensus between Republicans and Democrats.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In the same way that Republicans and Democrats for a long time actually both believed, at least the mainstream of the parties, that the Soviet Union was an enemy, Republicans and Democrats now understand that China is in fact a rising threat.

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The problem, of course, is that China is moving very quickly to consolidate its power and they are dumping resources into key areas so as to out-compete the United States. He's by Kyle Chan, researcher at Princeton University who focuses on Chinese industrial policy over at the New York Times. And he points out that China may in fact be winning, for example, the AI race.

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He says China's trajectory is very different from that of the United States. He says that President Trump's sort of autarkic ambitions with regard to his tariff war, his attempt to reshore manufacturing through tariffs not on China, but on all sorts of other countries as well, is not going to run down to our benefit. China is doing something different, he says.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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China already leads global production in multiple industries, steel, aluminum, shipbuilding, batteries, solar power, electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, 5G equipment, consumer electronics, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and bullet trains. It is projected to account for 45%, nearly half, of all global manufacturing by 2030. Beijing is laser-focused on winning the future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In March, it announced a $138 billion national venture capital fund that will make long-term investments in cutting-edge technologies like quantum computing and robotics and increased its own budget for public research and development. And he points out that China is fast catching up on the technological front.

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When the Chinese startup DeepSeek, he writes, launched its artificial intelligence chatbot in January, many Americans suddenly realized China could compete in AI. The Chinese electric carmaker BYD, which Mr. Trump's political ally Elon Musk once laughed off as a joke, overlooked Tesla last year, overtook Tesla last year in global sales. And they're building new factories around the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In March, they reached a market value greater than that of 4GM and Volkswagen combined. China is charging ahead in drug discoveries, especially cancer treatment, and they've installed more industrial robots in 2023 than the rest of the world combined.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, in semiconductors, where China's weak because, of course, Taiwan is the chief producer of semiconductors and they don't own China, they're building a self-reliant supply chain led by recent breakthroughs by Huawei. So the question is, what does the United States do to fight all of this?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, the big problem right now is that the way that you actually fight China is by isolating China and creating massive network effects with everybody else. The entire theory of Hayekian capitalism, the theories of F.A. Hayek, the famous Vienna school economist, and the basic capitalist theory is that diffuse knowledge among a thousand sources

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Anthony Fauci was, in fact, doing those things. He was literally attempting to use his power to quash narratives ranging from the Wuhan lab leak to the The so-called Great Barrington Declaration would have been put out by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya over at Stanford, among others. Bhattacharya is now the head of the NIH under Donald Trump.

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in the aggregate is significantly higher than any sort of centralized knowledge in one place. This is why, for example, the centralized economy of the Soviet Union, which was directed from above, setting prices, setting goals, was never going to be able to out-compete the rest of the world combined through its trade systems, its diffuse knowledge systems.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The movement of goods, services, people, and knowledge meant much higher competitiveness. And this is why In virtually any situation, you are going to choose the field versus, say, one company in terms of how will things go over the next 10 years in any field. You can say, okay, I'm going to take Facebook. I'm not going to take the rest of the field.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the reality is that it is actually quite rare for any company in the United States to maintain market dominance for longer than 10 years, certainly for longer than 20 years. The constituency of the so-called Magnificent Seven, for example, like the Magnificent Seven, which are these high-tech stocks,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Those stocks, would you have imagined for even half a heartbeat that, for example, Nvidia would be among the Magnificent Seven 15 years ago? Highly unlikely. Tesla, would that be among the Magnificent Seven 10 years ago? These are all newer companies that have developed. And why is that? Why is there such churn in, for example, Fortune 500 companies?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The answer is because the sort of competitive, roiling, chaotic nature of capitalism means that new insights can come from anywhere and can network with other insights. The biggest problem that you have with regard to the new approach by the United States is

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pursuing a sort of autarkic view of the economy is that if you cut America off, what you end up doing is actually giving the advantage to other autarkic states that are larger and more command and control. You get the worst of both worlds. The magic of the American economy, historically speaking, was free movement in terms of goods, services, and knowledge. And we saw it the best.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We saw it the best immigrants, right? They're the people who actually knew the most. Elon Musk, immigrant. Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, immigrant. These are all people who come to the United States or their parents come to the United States and then they build amazing things. If you want to out-compete China, you actually do need those people here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Or at the very least, you need to trade with those people if they're not located in the United States. You need to actually lower your trade barriers. with other countries that are competing with China. Because otherwise, China is simply going to take its gigantic share of the world economy, suck it dry, and channel it toward one purpose. Now, maybe China makes a mistake, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Maybe China has some sort of path dependency mistake where, for example, they go down the wrong path in AI and they end up in a box canyon And we, because we are more diffuse, we are able to kind of move around that. Maybe that's what happened with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, because it went down so many bad pathways in the economic maze, ended up cut off at every front.

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Again, if you called out Fauci at the time, you were considered a conspiracy theorist. And it turned out that many of the allegations were true.

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And eventually, they just couldn't compete anymore. They were relegated to stealing American technology. But China is not working like that right now. China is a deep competitor. And again, China has systemic problems. I did a YouTube video maybe a year and a half ago talking about the problems with China. They range from the demographic to the debt-driven.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But in order for the United States to continue to out-compete China, we have to do the thing that made America an economic powerhouse in the first place. One of the key aspects of making America into the world's hegemon was the fact that we were an empire of economic liberty.

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meaning that we built an entire world system involving free trade, freedom of navigation in the seas, freedom of movement and knowledge. If we cut ourselves off from that, we're not doing ourselves any real favors. That also means we have to keep our own economy less regulated.

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One of the things China can do that the United States can't, China does not care whatsoever at all about any sort of regulations that are designed as a hamper on business or development. They don't care. This is why they're developing energy way outstripping that of the United States.

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China right now has something like triple or quadruple the energy capacity of the United States because they've built all of it in the last 10 years and they don't care if it gets a little dirty out there. They don't care. The United States, meanwhile, is dealing with regulatory overreach. Also, our tax system is screwy, Louie. It has been for a long time.

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If you suggested that the BLM narrative around George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, that that actually was false, that actually George Floyd in all likelihood died of some sort of pre-existing health condition that was triggered by the fact that he was arrested. that he didn't die because Derek Chauvin, quote unquote, choked him out or anything like that.

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Now, China, they don't really have a tax system in the same way that we do in the sense that the party just controls everything. So they suck money out of the private sector, they put it in the public sector, and then they ram it back into certain areas of the private sector. It's pure economic fascism over in China. It's a sort of mercantilistic approach to the economy.

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In the United States, the complexity of things like our tax code, the fact that we've run up massive debt, that makes it very difficult in the future for us to sell our debt, raise new capital in the bonds market, for example. That is a real problem. And this is why the United States, if we wish to outcompete China, we need lower taxes, lower regulation, higher productivity.

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That is the way out of this mess. And yes, eventually a restructuring, a serious restructuring of entitlements. Well, joining us on the line is Congressman Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts. He currently serves on the Armed Services Committee, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Select Committee on China. Seth, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So obviously a lot going on in the news. Going to start with some domestic politics and then move on to the sort of foreign arena. So obviously the big question for Democrats right now, President Trump's approval ratings remain pretty high at this point. Democrats in Congress have a pretty low approval rating.

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One of the issues, obviously, that seems to be hovering over the Democratic Party at this point is all the questions surrounding what people knew when they knew it regarding Joe Biden's mental health. Now questions about his physical health. What do you make of that? How should Democrats deal with

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with Americans lingering questions about what everybody knew and when they knew it about Joe Biden's declining mental health during the last couple of years of his presidency.

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So let's talk about that. Where are the issues do you think the Democrats can actually change? Because obviously a lot of what's happened over the past several years has been culture war driven. A lot of talk about intersectionality and race and sex and various sort of hot button cultural issues that Democrats pushed into the public view and then Republicans responded to.

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And those culture war issues obviously have been sort of front and center. But, you know, as we move into a new era as President Trump is president, as Democrats look forward, it seems there's a bit of a split inside the Democratic Party along a wide variety of lines. Where do you hope the Democratic Party puts its focus?

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And that the overarching BLM narrative was a lie. That was a conspiracy theory as well. And the Democrats in the media labeled it as such. If you said, hey, wait a second, the statistics do not show that black people are being disproportionately targeted for death by the cops. And that actually, if you remove cops from these particular areas, the crime rates are going to go up.

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So, Congressman, I want to talk about the economy and then I want to talk about the foreign policy things that you've just mentioned. So when it comes to the economy and the so-called big, beautiful bill, it seems to me that one of the big gap between the parties seems to be the tax rates, not the spending.

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I mean, just realistically speaking, the Republicans are spending a boatload of money in this bill. They're not radically bending the cost curve. If they do bend the cost curve, it is kind of at the at the margins. which with things like work requirements for Medicaid, which may phase in in three years or may phase in in four years.

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Democrats, I've yet to see a serious cut to anything the Democrats have ever proposed in my entire lifetime. It's always an expansion of government benefits and government spending. And then the only difference is that Democrats suggest higher taxes and Republicans suggest lower taxes.

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So what is what is the Democratic plan for solving what appears to be a looming debt crisis that both parties seem to be running toward a cliff with regard to?

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That was considered a conspiracy theory too. And then that entire narrative fell apart. And then as if that weren't enough, Everybody could see Joe Biden degrading in real time in front of all of us. And we were told that that was a conspiracy theory as well, that if you pointed out that Joe Biden was obviously going senile, then that too was a conspiracy theory.

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I mean, I think that the big debate is going to be in the future, and it's going to have to be between either raising taxes, inflating the currency, or cutting a lot of these services. I mean, that is really the only way to do this. And the truth is that you can't just tax the people at the top end of the spectrum and hope to actually fix this.

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The United States has perhaps the most progressive income tax system in the world. The reality is that the highest tax rates apply in Europe.

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What's that? I mean, we can have an honest discussion, but I think the real honest discussion is not about the top marginal tax rate of the 1950s. The true honest discussion is if you want European-style social services, you need European-style taxes. And that means that the top tax brackets kick in at 60 grand a year in Denmark. They kick in at around that in France, in England.

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So the reality is that increasing taxes at the top specter Look, I don't think the bottom line is that the real honest conversation about taxes would involve vast increases on the middle class, not just on the top.

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And then all at once it blew up and it blew up on one day specifically. And that was the day that Joe Biden did a debate with Donald Trump. And it didn't just wreck Joe Biden's presidency. It didn't just wreck Joe Biden's legacy. It didn't just wreck Joe Biden's run for office and Kamala Harris's run for office. It wrecked the Democratic Party and the media wholesale.

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As an advocate of a zero percent corporate tax rate, because the reality is that all that money ends up being paid to somebody who then has to pay an income tax on it. We can agree to disagree on this approach. But the reality is that bottom line is both parties are really throwing that deficit and debt bomb down the road without any real solutions being offered.

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And I think we can agree that there need to be some serious conversations in which people actually acknowledge that there are tradeoffs to these policies and in which actually some pain is going to have to be suffered by somebody.

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Well, I mean, and one of the reasons for that is because every time we cut the taxes and then grow the economy, then also increase our social spending.

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So the social spending always goes in one direction faster than the tax revenues taken into the government continue to increase overall, except for, again, the Clinton era, which is when you actually had a Republican Congress and a Democrat president who are talking about all this stuff together. Exactly.

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we're talking about areas that bipartisanship is actually necessary, you know, the challenge of China is a very real one. And, you know, you and I have talked off air about this before. Obviously, this is one area where President Trump actually did shift a lot of the debate. And during the Obama era, even during the Bush era, there was sort of a bipartisan idea that China was

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was a strategic competitor, maybe even a possible friend in the future. But that has pretty radically changed. China obviously has taken an incredibly oppositional viewpoint with regard to America. They've been spreading their tentacles outward and they are racing toward AI supremacy. They are racing toward manufacturing supremacy.

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Because finally, all at once, you could see the myth-making apparatus exposed once and for all. And that is why the Biden senility scandal and now likely the Biden cancer scandal is actually a real scandal that is deeply damaging the Democrats right now.

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What do you think would be the best way to work toward containing China and defeating China in the battle for the future? Because again, if you look right now at China's energy production, if you look at their shipbuilding, if you look at their AI production, if you look at their microchip production,

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And if you look at the possibility of a serious threat to Taiwan, all of those are very much on the table. And it feels like we're playing catch up.

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Become an All Access member today at dailywireplus.com. Plus, we filmed it, we edited it, and somehow no one stopped us from releasing it. Ben After Dark is what happens when I start saying the things that probably should have stayed in the group chat. We've got unfiltered takes, deeply questionable decisions, and clips like this. That is a former member of Congress right there.

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Well, that is Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts, perhaps one of the last vestiges of a Democratic Party that might regain its sanity. Congressman Moulton, really appreciate your time.

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Democrats are once again now attempting to suggest that you are a conspiracy theorist if you are suspicious of the narrative that Joe Biden just found out five minutes ago that he has stage four cancer, stage four prostate cancer that is now metastasized to his bones. And again, the science suggests that this was a long time coming. Prostate cancer is a very slow developing cancer.

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Well, the Republicans are still trying to figure out how to get this House bill passed. There are a lot of factions in the Republican Party. Some are on the more tax cut side, but also big spending side. Some are deficit hawks. Trying to cobble all of that together is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, House Republicans set course Monday for a midweek vote on passing President Trump's agenda of tax cuts and spending reductions, giving them just days to work out deep disagreements among members of their fractious conference. They're banking on President Trump to help them. Trump, on Monday, met with GOP lawmakers one-on-one.

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He is planning to speak to the broader House Republican conference today on Capitol Hill, according to people familiar with the matter. The House Rules Committee is planning to meet shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning to try to then send the package later that day to the House floor. Speaker Johnson says of the Wednesday target, that is the plan.

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But fiscal conservatives like Chip Roy of Texas are very concerned. They are pointing out, of course, that we have basically a debt time bomb here in the United States. That is something that Moody's has been pointing out as well. The House Republican leadership have said that there are still major disagreements over cleaning, over cutting clean energy tax breaks.

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There are a bunch of sort of green tax breaks that need to be phased out sooner. Lifting the SALT cap, again, a bunch of Republicans in purple districts want a SALT cap deduction increased. Basically, again, the amount of your state taxes that you pay should be taken off your income before you pay federal taxes. That's what they want.

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And also, there's big debate over how quickly to start new work requirements for people receiving Medicaid. One House GOP leadership aide told reporters Monday, everything is on the table right now. And this is extraordinarily difficult. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said on Steve Bannon's show that passage of the bill is not 100% guaranteed. It is far from it.

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He said the bottom line is we don't get significant spending reduction. This bill is not going anywhere this week. And again, even if you're talking about significant spending reduction, the reality is until you completely restructure the entitlements, everything is trimming around the edges, everything. But these debt concerns are quite real.

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The possibility of serious downgrades in the future of American debt, that is quite real. Ralph Norman, Republican from South Carolina, he said, if we don't have a wake-up call now, all of us, Democrats, Republicans, I don't know what it's going to take.

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Trump's National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett, said the downgrade by Moody's in our bond rating reflected former President Joe Biden's fiscal policies. He argued tax cuts in the mega bill would position the United States for further growth. And he also cited increased tax revenue from tariffs.

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And the problem with that, of course, is that the tariffs are, in fact, going to slow the economy somewhat. There's a point that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was making just yesterday.

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It beggars the imagination that the president of the United States, a man who was the vice president of the United States not all that long ago, never got a PSA test any time during this period. It just beggars the imagination. It makes no sense at all. The president is the most important person on planet Earth, politically speaking, and in terms of just pure power.

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Now, again, these are all real problems. The answer for President Trump, if he wants to keep those approval ratings up, which obviously he does, deregulation of the economy, movement toward a more free trade system than those 10% tariffs, the network effect of free market capitalism across the globe directed, oriented against China and oriented toward defeating China.

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And yes, that tax bill does in fact have to pass. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has now declared that President Trump can, in fact, revoke the temporary protected status for Venezuelan immigrants that President Biden put into place.

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According to NBC News, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light on Monday to revoke special legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, which could pave the way for at least some of them to be deported. This, of course, is the proper answer.

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The only person who would have denied the application is the terrible Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who's utterly incompetent, the worst justice on the bench at this point. And that's saying a lot because Sonia Sotomayor is still on the Supreme Court.

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And the reality, of course, is that if you sign an executive order granting TPS, temporary protected status, to Venezuelan migrants en masse, the next president can undo that. That is the nature of executive power. This also gives the lie to the idea, by the way, that the Supreme Court is deeply oriented against President Trump in some way. I've heard this from people on the right. No, it's not.

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It's not. I'm sorry. Again, you may disagree. I may disagree with some of the decisions coming out of the Supreme Court of the United States. But this idea that overall the Supreme Court is basically like a David Souter Supreme Court or Sandra Day O'Connor Supreme Court, that is just not true.

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The Supreme Court is a more originalist, conservative Supreme Court than any Supreme Court of my lifetime. And what that means is that President Trump and his team should, in fact, be very meticulous and careful about how they go about doing policy, because if they go about doing policy correctly, they will likely get what they want out of the Supreme Court.

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If, however, they rush headlong into a wall, the Supreme Court will probably tell them no. That seems to be the way all of this is operating. And meanwhile, in sort of fraught legal questions, there's a pretty horrifying story out of Georgia. The story that's horrifying is not what the state is actually doing there. It's just a horrifying story because of the human tragedy involved.

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According to the Washington Post, a pregnant woman declared brain dead months ago is being kept on life support in Georgia until her baby can be delivered. A decision doctors made to obey the strict state abortion ban, according to her family. Now, again, this makes some sense, honestly, like just on a pure pro-life level.

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Adriana Smith, 30-year-old Atlanta nurse, was about nine weeks pregnant when she was declared brain dead in February, according to her family. Doctors said that maintaining life support was the only legal option because Georgia outlaws abortion after cardiac activity can be detected in a fetus at around six weeks of pregnancy. And the state's law says that a fetus is a person with legal rights.

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The notion that you wouldn't do one of the most basic tests that is done during a physical for people above the age of 50, is ridiculous. And so suspicion about that is not, in fact, a conspiracy theory. But Democrats are still trying to trot out the idea that this is, in fact, a conspiracy theory.

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The hospital has plans to keep Smith alive until the fetus is at least 32 weeks old. The family says the decision should have been left to us. But really... It's unlikely that the decision should have been left to them. Now, it's unclear at this point whether the baby's status is going to, whether the baby survives, whether the baby does not survive.

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According to the Washington Post, medical experts said they know of no cases in which maintaining life support for a fetus whose mother was declared brain dead so early in pregnancy has led to a healthy, successful delivery. Usually this happens in the second trimester or early during the third trimester.

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But obviously, this is a tragic situation, but just on a pure moral level, I'm not sure why on a pure moral level, it would be better for two people to die instead of one. The pro-life position, of course, is that rights attach at conception. And so if you do wish to protect the baby with all sympathy for the family, obviously, it's horrifying on an emotional level for everybody involved.

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But I'm not sure why the death of the baby somehow improves the situation, certainly not for the baby. but for the family in general as well. So again, a very fraught situation. These sorts of edge cases are very often used to argue against pro-life laws. But I think that the case in this particular case on a moral level is quite strong.

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If the baby has a chance at survival, why you would kill mother, pull the plug on the mom, knowing that it will also kill the baby. I'd like to hear the sort of moral justification for that, assuming that there is a chance that the baby actually lives and goes on to lead a life. That's, I think, the question at issue here.

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Okay, meanwhile, in media news, CBS News' president has now been forced out amid tensions with President Trump. So CBS News has been having a very difficult time lately. The reason being that CBS News is, of course, owned by Viacom. They merged back in 2019. Viacom has sort of been on the sales block for a while. Sherry Redstone is the controlling shareholder, wants to sell Viacom.

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And she also would like for the company not to be in sort of open wars with the Trump administration while that is happening. The president of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, has now been forced out of her post on Monday, according to The New York Times. Ms. McMahon told her staff in a memo, it's become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.

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So Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House, he says that it's a conspiracy theory to suspect that perhaps people knew more than they were talking about last year with regard to Joe Biden's condition. Or even worse, by the way, they avoided giving a PSA test to Joe Biden because they were suspicious that he might actually be sick.

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Executives at Paramount informed McMahon on Saturday they wanted her to step down. Paramount is currently in talks to settle a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Sherry Redstone has been saying that she wants to settle the case.

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Now again, settlements do not mean, for example, that you are admitting guilt. It is quite possible that what Sherry Redstone here is saying is, hey guys, If this goes to trial, we might lose the case and then we might have to owe billions of dollars. Let's just settle this thing out of court and basically be done.

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But the situation prompted the executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, to resign last month. And so what you're seeing now is sort of a media resistance to Sherry Redstone. Here's the thing. She owns the company. If you don't like it, you can go work someplace else.

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60 Minutes has been targeting the Trump team and administration for years on end, and 60 Minutes happens to be a particularly biased program for a very, very long time. It is not Sherry Redstone's obligation to keep hiring people who she feels are going to report falsely or in radically biased ways against the Trump administration.

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It's always amusing to me to see people who believe that they are owed jobs. You are not owed a job. It is not, in fact, censorship for somebody to say, you do not agree with my vision at this company. You don't work here anymore. That's not censorship. That's just called real life. And it happens in companies literally all the time. So should Wendy McMahon have been fired?

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I mean, listen, if Sherry Redstone believes she should have been fired, then I suppose that she should have been fired. Apparently, McMahon is going to remain at the network for a few weeks to support the transition. She's going to be succeeded for now by a pair of veteran network executives. But of course, the media are playing this as a deep wrong. It is not, in fact, a deep wrong.

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It is just the normal way that business is done. If the boss doesn't like the job you're doing, you're likely to find yourself out on your butt. Meanwhile, it's kind of fun to watch people who are on the left suddenly discover conservatism as reality sets in. So the piece of the day is, that is sort of dedicated to this proposition, is a piece by Christina Emba.

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To be fair, Christina Emba, who writes over at the New York Times, has made a habit of this. She'll say conservative things that she's sort of discovered. She'll be like, oh, hey, you know what's great? Marriage. Marriage is kind of great. Well, she has a piece today at the New York Times titled, The Delusion of Porn's Harmlessness.

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Glad to see people on the left finally actually realizing that porn is bad for you. Some of us have been saying this literally our entire careers. I wrote a book when I was 20 called Porn Generation, all about the evils of pornography. And so that was like 2005. And I was calling for local regulations on pornography and warning of the consequences to American society should porn become ubiquitous.

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And I was mocked at the time. I was treated as some sort of Puritan pariah for pointing out that pornography might in fact be bad. It has in fact crippled an entire generation of men, pornography. It's also crippled women who have fallen into the trap of believing that they need to subject themselves to awful treatment by men in the name of quote-unquote consent, in the name of being sexy.

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So Christine Emba has this fascinating piece in which she struggles with the fact that the left's only value is consent. And it turns out that actually human beings need more than consent to feel good about their own actions. They actually need a sense of spirituality and fulfillment. So she has this entire piece pointing out pornography floods the internet.

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A 2023 report from Brigham Young University estimated pornography could be found on 12% of websites. Porn bots regularly surface on X on Instagram in comment sections and in unsolicited direct messages. Defenders of pornography tend to cite the existence of so-called ethical porn, but that is not what the majority of users are watching.

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So it turns out that an enormous number of people who are watching pornography are now engaging in activities in pornography that are pretty vile in real life. She points out, it's hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors like choking, slapping, and spitting that become the norm even in early sexual encounters and young women's distrust in young men.

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In the future, porn will become only more addictive and effective as a teacher as virtual reality makes it more immersive and artificial intelligence allows it to be customizable.

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And then she cites a book titled Girl on Girl, How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by a woman named Sophie Gilbert, who pointed out that the mass objectification of women in the 1990s and 2000s was bad.

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And she points out that easy-to-access hardcore pornography, quote, trained a good amount of our popular culture to see women as objects, as things to silence, restrain, fetishize, or brutalize, and it's helped train women too. But here's the part that EMBA points out that's quite fascinating. She says, while Ms.

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Gilbert is unsparing in her descriptions of pornography's warping effect on culture and its consumers, she's curiously reluctant to acknowledge what seems obvious. Porn hasn't been good for us. While her descriptions of the cultural landscape imply the mainstreaming of hardcore porn has been a bad thing, she pulls her punches.

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So she writes, quote, I'm not interested in kink shaming and I'm not remotely opposed to porn. Immediately after describing a 2019 study that found 38% of British women under 40 reported having experienced unwanting, slapping, choking, gagging, or spitting during sex.

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That data point came at the tail end of a chapter that draws a disturbing and convincing line from the emergence and popularization of violent, extreme pornography in the late 1990s to photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib in 2004 of prisoners being sexually humiliated. And here is the central point that EMBA makes, and this is totally right.

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Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful, and open-minded. There's a dread of seeming prudish, boring, and uncool. More generously, there's a desire not to indict the choices of individuals who create sexual content out of need or personal desire or allow legislation to harm those who depend on it to survive.

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But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. Yes, we call this conservatism and traditional values. Yes, it turns out that non-judgmentalism is in fact a value system all its own. And it turns out quite rapidly and actually is identical with moral relativism, suggesting that we cannot judge people's quote unquote kinks. Well, it depends what the kink is.

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Some kinks are bad, as it turns out. Bad for them, bad for their partners. Yes, you can judge other people's activities. Doesn't mean there needs to be legislation directed against it. But the popularization of such activities in the mainstream is, obviously is going to have an impact on how people live.

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They want us to look backward. OK, let me just point this out. It's not a conspiracy theory if there is some evidence to support it. There is good evidence to suggest that his very late stage cancer did not develop overnight and was not diagnosed one moment ago. And you have not earned the trust of the American people that you get to say things like it's a conspiracy theory to wonder about that.

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EMBA points out most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious and so are instantly discounted, often by being disparaged as such.

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But cracks are beginning to appear in the wall, as shown by sources as varied as the recent of quiet revival of the anti-porn feminist Andrea Dworkin and the heartfelt podcast of Theo Vaughn, who frequently discusses his decision to stop watching porn. And members of Gen Z seem more willing to openly criticize it than their careful elders. Well... Yes, but I have a question. Why is it?

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Here's the problem. This is actually a real problem. She says, well, it's really bad because, you know, it's kind of awkward because the only people who have been consistently anti-pornography, like from the beginning to now, the only people who have been right on this stuff are people who are right-leaning or religious. That's true. That's true.

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Literally, my entire career has been anti-pornography. All the new converts that I'm seeing on the right or on the kind of heterodox center or left are like, hey, you know what's bad? I never had to go through a period of my life where I thought pornography was good or decent or amoral even.

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I always thought pornography was wrong because I have a traditional worldview which suggests that the human soul is besmirched by this sort of activity. That it makes people treat women worse and see women in a worse way. And it is bad for men and it is bad for women to treat them as sexualized objects only. That people have souls and ought to be treated as holistic human beings.

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But a left that said, hey, but you believe in gods. That's bad. You can't say that anymore. So now it's like, oh, well, we're rediscovering that porn is bad. First of all, thanks for that 20 years in the wilderness. Really enjoyed that. That worked out great. But second of all,

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I noticed that when you strip the traditional values worldview from this argument, it's like you have to reprove every element of the traditional values worldview. This is a broader problem that's happening, not just on the left, but also on the right. It turns out the traditional values worldview has a bunch of positions that are rooted in basic human nature.

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That's why they developed over the course of 2000 years. This is why the biblical values that undergird Western civilization and were guarded by the religious are the basis for our civilization today. And when you strip out the religious values and when you say, well, let's just explode all of that, we'll rediscover from the beginning.

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Well, what you end up with is an awful lot of chaos and suffering before those values are rediscovered. and also no language with which to discuss why this stuff is bad. Religious people can explain to you at length why pornography is wrong, why it is bad, and why consent is not the only indicator of whether something is good or bad. Religious people have the language to describe this.

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People with traditional value systems have the language to describe why something might be bad outside of the sort of classically liberal consent context. But the kind of nouveau right doesn't really have the ability to do that because they didn't grow up with any of this worldview. Like have them explain why pornography is bad. They'll say it's because it feels icky.

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Okay, but for a lot of people, it doesn't feel icky until it does. Or they'll say, you know, it made my life materially worse, sort of utilitarian approach. But what if it was bad, even if it didn't make your life worse in a utilitarian way? What if some things are just morally wrong? What if it doesn't have to be all about you? It turns out that sin is sin.

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That is not just asking questions. The medical evidence would suggest that it would be almost impossible for for there to be no evidence of his cancer, medically speaking, unless you were actively not taking the tests. Okay, Donald Trump, when he has his physicals, takes a PSA test. That is in his presidential records. Barack Obama had PSA tests. Why did Joe Biden not have PSA tests?

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What if that, when you discard the entire religious, traditional moral framework, you end up having to rebuild it ersatz and it doesn't have the same binding effect as a traditional view of God, sin, and human nature have. Those are holistic, comprehensive worldviews that define how people live. And kind of trying to parachute into these various issues. Hey, you know what?

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We just found out that pornography is not all that great. Okay, on what basis? For you personally? Or like on a utilitarian social level? How do you define the good, right? Why is it bad if people act in... atomistic individual isolation sexually. Why is that bad? Religious person can explain why that's bad because that's not what you're meant to do. God did not create you to do that thing.

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God created you to leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife and form a new family unit And he says so in the book of Genesis. And I understand, oh my God, you're citing that terrible book. You're citing the Bible. How could you possibly cite, you know, that book about the big sky, man? Well, here's the deal.

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If you don't have a premise that says that things are moral or immoral on the basis of some objective reality, And what you end up with is a utilitarian calculus about, well, maybe pornography is okay. And maybe it's okay for some. And maybe violent pornography is okay. And now we have to prove all over again the things that human nature have already shown us to be true.

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Let's take the perfectly secular view of what the Bible is for a second. Okay, perfectly secular. Let's take God out of the picture. Just assume for a second that what the Bible actually is and the biblical corpus and doctrines that spring from the Bible. We won't talk about God. Let's just assume. That those are pieces of time-tested wisdom that have lasted the ages because they are true.

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Forget about the miracles. Forget about God on a mountain. Or if you're a Christian, God taking human form. Forget about any of that. Just look at the moral principles that are spelled out by this religion. and the biblical corpus that have lasted into today's world. Why have they done so?

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Thomas Sowell, who is, as far as I'm aware, an agnostic or an atheist, says that treating the only form of data as like sociology studies is idiocy. Another form of data is the received wisdom of the past. And if you have to keep remaking the wheel every generation, you know what you end up with? An awful lot of lost young people.

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I'm sorry, the people who are now discovering that pornography is bad are not people you should have trusted in the first place. I'm just telling you this. I know that there is this attachment among young men, particularly to this. Well, you know, we're all on a journey now and we're all discovering together. But you know what?

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Maybe the person who is telling you, the people who are telling you pornography was wrong all along, maybe they were right. Maybe you should turn to them, not the people who said, you know, let's experiment with pornography and we'll determine maybe later whether it was a good idea or a bad idea. Maybe those people shouldn't be trusted because their worldview was deeply flawed.

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And if you spend your entire life trying to remake the moral wheel just because you didn't trust your grandfather, maybe you're doing it wrong. Maybe our civilization is doing it wrong. Maybe grandpa had some interesting things to say. And yeah, maybe him sitting over the fire reading the Bible, one of the worst thing in the world. Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

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We'll jump into the mailbag and answer your questions. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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These are real questions. But the goal, as always for the Democrats, is not to actually stop conspiracy theories. It's to stop actual, real, relevant questions that point out actual conspiracies. The difference between a conspiracy theory and just a conspiracy is that a conspiracy theory has plausible evidence to suggest its truth, like actual plausible evidence and a mechanism

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by which the conspiracy theory is actually effectuated. That turns it into an actual allegation of a conspiracy, or at least a plausible allegation of conspiracy. A conspiracy theory is something where you can't connect points A and point B. You just jump immediately to a conclusion without any intervening logic.

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You say, for example, the globalists are responsible for the death of black men in the inner city. I need to see the chain of how that works. You need to show me the evidence of the people who are controlling the policy and why that policy is responsible for X, Y, or Z. But

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Raising a question about whether or not people knew about Joe Biden's health situation when we know for a fact they covered up his senility. They actively covered up his senility. This is not speculation. That is real. That is being reported by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios in the book Original Sin. It is being reported publicly now that everything people were asking about is true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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You have not earned the trust of the American people that you get to now suggest that it's conspiracy theory. What is this really about? It's about shutting down any questioning of any of it on his senility, on his cancer. I go for the sympathy play. It is just another form of what Joe Biden himself used to do as president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Yep. You know who, though? Well, I mean, I don't know what his name was when he was doing this, but that is former representative George Santos, is it not?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Every time he would get in a bad political situation, he would mention the tragic death of his son, Beau, from cancer. Anytime there's a bad situation, he would mention this like a get out of jail free card. It was really quite gross because not that he would mention his son's death, but in the context in which he would mention his son's death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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So after the Abbey Gate bombing, for example, he would bring up his son, Beau's death as though that justified the activities that led to the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan. Now Democrats are doing the same exact thing. They say, well, you have to have sympathy for the, you can have plenty of sympathy for Joe Biden as a human being who's ridden with likely terminal cancer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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You can have all sorts of sympathy for him, but that does not change the underlying question that must be asked. Who knew what, when? Who was president of the United States for the last couple of years of his administration? But you can see how Democrats are attempting to spin this into stop asking questions at all. Here's David Axelrod doing that routine yesterday, the former Obama advisor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Why should they be more muted and set aside? Actually, it exacerbates the questions because if he is this far gone, if he is in this bad of a health condition, who knew what, when, and none of those people should ever be trusted again in any political context. That is the issue. As the Wall Street Journal points out, latest revelations about Biden's acuity put Democrats in a tough spot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Yeah, no bleep. According to the Wall Street Journal, Continued revelations about Biden's mental capacity in office have led to awkward questions for prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidates. For Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, both part of the administration, the topic is especially fraught.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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But everybody who is in a top position of power in the Democratic Party Everybody who's dealing with Joe Biden, that includes Bernie Sanders, it includes Gretchen Whitmer, it includes Gavin Newsom. Anyone who had dealings with Joe Biden on a personal level is now suspect as part of a broader cover-up of his senility. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Head on over to PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, that's PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, PeerTalk. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, let's be real about this. There's one thing that is inevitable, and that, of course, is death. I know, pretty dark, pretty dark.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Also this, for reasons I'm still not clear on. They renamed their Chubby Hubby flavor to Hubby Hubby in celebration of Vermont's legalization of same-sex marriage, which is just terrible branding because Ferry Garcia is just right there in front of you for the taking. It's the show no one asked for, but we made it anyway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Their licensed experts are with you every step of the way, answering questions, handling paperwork, advocating for you so you can get the coverage you need and get back to living your life. Check life insurance off your to-do list in no time with Policy Genius. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description. Compare free life insurance quotes from top companies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. According to the Wall Street Journal, the days since Trump's election have been some of the most challenging Democrats have faced in decades as the party has struggled to land on a clear message or a leading messenger.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The most recent Wall Street Journal poll showed just 37% of voters viewed the Democratic Party favorably compared to 45% for the GOP.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Not just that, by the way, Donald Trump's approval ratings, which had been kind of down in the dumps since Liberation Day, have actually increased over the course of the last several weeks, partially due to his very productive trip to the Middle East and partially due to the fact that there is a lot of focus right now on the fact that Democrats covered up the senility of the president of the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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The latest Harvard Caps Harris poll shows that for the first time since July 2021, a majority of voters now believe the U.S. economy is strong. Split about 50-50. 51% of voters say it's strong. 49% say it's weak. That is a major difference from just a few weeks ago when he declared that massive tariff war. Not only that, his overall approval rating has been jumping, like really spiking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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According to one poll, the Insider Advantage poll, he is currently at plus 11, like 55% approved, 44% disapproved. These are unbelievable numbers for President Trump. And that's partially about President Trump. And that is partially about the fact that his opponents are quite terrible at this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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President Trump, for his part, as usual, is not going to be silenced about the speculation regarding Biden's senility or about his cancer. Here's President Trump yesterday saying, you know, it seems to me that somebody probably knew about this stuff early.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Ben After Dark, episode one with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Riley Gaines and more is out right now only on DW Plus, only for members. You're welcome. Well, folks, the Joe Biden senility and cancer scandal is not going anywhere anytime soon. And the reason for that is because it's not just a scandal about the Joe Biden family and the people immediately surrounding Joe Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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I mean, again, he is right about this. J.D. Vance is saying something very similar when he's talking not just about the cancer, but about the senility. Like the president of the United States was not all there for years at a time. And that's not J.D. Vance's fault. That is the fault of the Democratic Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2203 - The Democrat-Media Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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I mean, that is just accurate. That is just correct. I mean, and Democrats can complain about that all they want. They can call it a conspiracy theory all they want. It doesn't matter. In the end, the American people understand that they were lied to for years while Joe Biden was president and that everyone was complicit in it. The Democrats, the media, they're all complicit in this lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

What if everything you were told about the trial of Derek Chauvin was a lie? Today, we're launching one of the most important multi-part series we've ever produced at this company. We're examining the terrible miscarriage of justice that took place in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. This will be a comprehensive multi-episode breakdown of the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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In 2007, Chauvin received one of his only formal disciplinary actions for a traffic stop involving a female driver from Minneapolis who was allegedly going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Despite Chauvin being accused of being too aggressive, this was a complaint about a traffic stop, no one was injured, the discipline was a letter of reprimand, not a suspension, not a demotion, not criminal charges, a letter. In 2008, Chauvin responded to a 911 domestic assault call. When he arrived, he and his partner confronted Ira Latrell-Toles, who was hiding in a bathroom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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According to the police report, when Toles tried to flee, he grabbed at Chauvin's gun, forcing Chauvin to fire twice, hitting Toles in the stomach. Toll survived. Chauvin was placed on paid leave during the investigation. Again, that's standard protocol. The subsequent investigation cleared Chauvin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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His actions were deemed appropriate when confronting a domestic violence suspect who attempted to take his weapon. In fact, he got another Medal of Valor for that incident. In 2011, Chauvin was part of a group of five officers who chased down a man named Leroy Martinez in a housing complex after they spotted him running with a pistol. One of the officers, Terry Nutter, shot Martinez in the torso.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Martinez survived. All the officers were placed on leave. They were ultimately absolved of any wrongdoing. Police Chief Timothy Dolan explicitly stated the officers acted appropriately and courageously. Again, this counts as a complaint against Chauvin, according to the media, despite the fact he didn't fire his weapon and was officially commended for his actions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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In 2013, Chauvin and another officer witnessed a white male teenager shooting a Nerf dart out of a car window as part of a Nerf gun game among teenagers. When the teenagers arrived at the home of 17-year-old Christopher Berg, Chauvin and the other officer confronted them. According to Berg, at least one officer drew a gun.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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They allegedly forced him into their car, shouting obscenities and berating him. Clearly, the police officers were responding to what could have initially appeared to be a real weapon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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They had a predetermined narrative of the race-based guilt of Derek Chauvin, and according to the left, of white people everywhere. Taking stock of these larger forces at play helps to make sense of the bias that continues to this day. The George Floyd narrative was set. A racist white police officer murdered a black man in cold blood, case closed. Evidence to the contrary, irrelevant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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When Chauvin observed what appeared to be something fired from a moving vehicle, he was operating in a context where unfortunately drive-by shootings were not abstract possibilities, but regular occurrences that did injure and kill Minneapolis residents, including kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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His initial threat assessment, while it was wrong in this specific case, reflected the dangerous reality of policing in an area where objects fired from vehicles frequently meant bullets rather than foam darts. In November 2013, Minneapolis police pulled over LaShawn Braddock shortly after midnight based on a warrant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Braddock claims when he hesitated to get out of the car, an officer aggressively hit his window with a flashlight, and then other officers tried to pull him from the car. Braddock admittedly hesitated to comply with police command, so it makes sense that after he hesitated to comply, officers used necessary force to subdue him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Noncompliance with police orders, even if you have a good reason, typically results in officers escalating their use of force. That is standard procedure nationwide. Another complaint stems from February 15th, 2015, when Chauvin arrested Julian Hernandez at the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub, where Chauvin worked as an off-duty security officer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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According to Chauvin's report, Hernandez tried to leave the club through the wrong door and Chauvin escorted him down a stairwell. Hernandez, who admitted he had been drinking, claims Chauvin pushed him down the stairs. Outside, Chauvin reported that Hernandez tried to turn around as he was preparing to handcuff him, so he pushed him away by applying pressure toward his lingual artery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Hernandez claimed Chauvin told him, you just need to leave, but wouldn't allow him to leave and then choked him. He said he tried to sue the department, but no lawyer would actually take the case, so he let it go. So here's the situation. An intoxicated patron at a nightclub trying to exit through the wrong door, escorted out by security, allegedly resisting being handcuffed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Chauvin applied a restraint technique to control the situation, which is typically what security personnel are supposed to do. The fact Hernandez couldn't even find a lawyer willing to take his case speaks volumes about the credibility of the accusations. In April 2016, Chauvin was involved in an incident with a man named Jimmy Bostic at the Midtown Global Market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Private security guards had asked Bostic to leave after he was accused of panhandling. Bostic argued, Chauvin was called in. Chauvin escorted Bostic outside, writing in the arrest report that Bostic had threatened to spit on the owner. "'I closed distance with Bostic,' Chauvin wrote, "'and secured his neck head area with my hand.'"

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Bostic claimed that his Chauvin and private security guards attempted to put him in cuffs. He yanked his arm back, and then Chauvin wrapped his arms around his neck." After being released from police custody, Bostic said emergency medical workers took him to the hospital, where he stayed for over a day due to an asthma attack. The disorderly conduct charge against him was eventually dropped.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Bostic admitted to pulling his arm away when officers were trying to handcuff him. That is called a resisting arrest, and it typically justifies the use of physical restraint techniques. He was treated and released at the scene, deciding on his own to go to the hospital. This complaint, like all the others, resulted in no disciplinary action because Chauvin was following department protocols.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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In June 2017, Chauvin responded to a call where a woman named Zoya Code had allegedly tried to strangle her mother with an extension cord. Code claimed that her mom was the one swinging the cord around and that she merely grabbed hold of it. According to prosecutors, based on Chauvin's report and body camera video, Chauvin told Code she was under arrest and grabbed her arm.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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When she resisted, the two officers placed her in handcuffs, then picked her up and carried her outside the house face down. Chauvin then knelt on the side of Code's neck for less than five minutes until backup arrived, as per Minneapolis police protocol.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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MPD, training protocols, dismissed. Toxicology report, ignored. Medical examiner's findings about contributing factors, conspiracy theories. Consider, for example, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, who last week dismissed my call to revisit the Chauvin trial by declaring on his show that he, quote, doesn't care about the autopsy, effectively admitting he doesn't care about the facts or the truth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges filed against Code were ultimately dropped, but no disciplinary action was taken against Chauvin because he was following department protocols for subduing a non-compliant suspect in a domestic violence situation, one of the most volatile and dangerous calls officers respond to.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In March 2019, Chauvin was involved in an incident with a man named Sir Riley Peet. According to the arrest report written by Chauvin, Peet was wandering around a gas station asking officers for a ride. After Peet refused to take his hands out of his pockets, an officer tried to grab him and they scuffled.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Chauvin then sprayed Peet with pepper spray and restrained him, pinning him face down on the ground by kneeling on his lower back. Peet was arrested on charges of misdemeanor obstruction of the legal process and disorderly conduct, but court records are unclear about the outcome. Records show Peet has a history of court-ordered treatment for mental illness.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Again, this is a situation where a suspect refused to take his hands out of his pockets when ordered to do so by police, a major red flag that could indicate the presence of a weapon. Chauvin used appropriate force to subdue a non-compliant individual who could have posed a threat to officer safety. So, that's it. He's supposedly damning 18 complaints against Derek Chauvin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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What do they actually show? What they actually show is an officer working in high crime areas for 19 years, dealing with noncompliant suspects, domestic violence situations, armed suspects, intoxicated individuals. In all but one or two minor cases, investigations cleared Chauvin of wrongdoing. Most importantly, none of these complaints suggest racial bias.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Of the incidents where the race of the individual is mentioned, we have complainants who are white, black, Latino, Native American. There is no pattern suggesting Chauvin targeted people of color. He was an equal opportunity enforcer of the law who operated in a diverse high crime area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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The left would love you to believe these complaints prove Chauvin was sort of a ticking time bomb which should have been removed from the force years ago. When you actually examine the details, what emerges is a portrait of an officer doing a difficult job in challenging circumstances operating within departmental guidelines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Now, the left would rather you not know these details because they contradict the narrative that Chauvin was a racist monster who deliberately murdered George Floyd out of some sort of racial animus. But facts don't care about their feelings. The facts show Chauvin's record was typical for a veteran officer working in a high-crime urban environment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Chauvin's then-wife, Kelly Chauvin, a Hmong American who won the Mrs. Minnesota pageant, described him in a 2018 profile as such a gentleman and just a softie beneath his uniform. Derek's marriage was further collateral damage in the wreckage following Floyd's death and his own conviction.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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After revealing she hasn't been able to find work or resume her career as a realtor because of threats and her own fear of exposure over the case, experiencing vandalization of both the Chauvin's homes in Minnesota and Florida, and facing significant online harassment, receiving hateful online remarks, with some labeling her a self-hating Asian, making derogatory comments about her interracial marriage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She ultimately ended up filing for divorce just one day after Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder, also requesting to change her last name. Now let's discuss the other side of the coin, the alleged victim, George Floyd. George Floyd was born on October 14th, 1973 in Fayetteville, North Carolina to George Perry and Larsonia Sissy Jones Floyd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When Floyd was two years old, his mom moved with Floyd and his four siblings to Houston, Texas after his parents separated. The family settled in the historically black neighborhood of Houston's Third Ward in the CUNY Homes public housing complex.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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To understand George Floyd's background, you really need to understand the reality of CUNY Homes, the public housing complex where Floyd spent his formative years. This wasn't some idyllic community with a few challenges. This was Houston's oldest public housing development, a crime-ridden environment that residents themselves describe as horrible and like a hellhole.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This cavalier dismissal of medical evidence perfectly encapsulates how much of America approaches this case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The statistics are staggering. Eight homicides in just the last 12 months, a four-year homicide rate of nearly 62 per 100,000 residents, and approximately 25 homicides in the vicinity over just four years. Gang activity is so prevalent, residents report being approached by gang members warning them to go inside because they're about to start shooting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Residents live in what they describe as rat-infested apartments, with one resident explaining she's too afraid to report the violence, fearing retaliation. This is the kind of environment that shaped George Floyd's early life. A place so troubled, it recently received a $50 million federal grant just to demolish and rebuild it entirely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Floyd was known as Perry as a child, later Big Floyd due to his height. At the time of his death, he was six feet, four inches tall and weighed 223 pounds. He showed athletic promise in high school. He played basketball and football. His football team even advanced to the Texas State Championships in 1992.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He graduated from Yates High School in 1993, and he received a basketball scholarship to South Florida Community College, making him the first of his siblings to pursue higher education. Later on, he was transferred to Texas A&M's University Kingsville campus in 1995. Eventually, he dropped out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He worked as a truck driver, a security guard for the Salvation Army shelter in Minneapolis, and as a bouncer at a bar. At the time of his death, he had five children with different women, ranging from 22 to six years old. As he entered adulthood, Floyd's life took a really troubled turn. By the time of the incident with Derek Chauvin, Floyd had accumulated a really lengthy criminal record.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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He had been incarcerated multiple times, 10 months in 1998 for theft with a firearm, eight months in 2002 for cocaine possession, 10 months in 2004 for cocaine again, from 2009 to 2013 for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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that last conviction stemmed from a home invasion in which Floyd pressed a gun to a woman's abdomen while his accomplices ransacked her home Floyd had been arrested a total of nine times let's examine each of those arrests and incarcerations chronologically this is not about demonizing George Floyd it's about understanding the full context of who he was something the media has actively worked to prevent

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Floyd's documented criminal history begins August 1997 with his first drug arrest in Houston. He was charged with delivery of a controlled substance, specifically less than a gram of cocaine, that's still a felony in Texas. This wasn't just possession, it was distribution. He was released on a $4,000 bail bond. On October 20th, 1997, Floyd pled guilty to this charge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All the facts, all the evidence, all the political context. We're going to tear this case apart piece by piece. By the end, I think you'll agree with me that President Trump should immediately pardon Derek Chauvin for his federal convictions. New episodes of this series will be dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He received a sentence of 180 days, six months in Harris County Jail. Records show he received 29 days of time served credit. He still spent approximately five months behind bars for this first documented offense. So let's pause here to note by age 24, Floyd was selling cocaine. This wasn't some youthful indiscretion or minor mistake. It was a serious felony. It involved distribution of narcotics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Just one year later, Floyd was arrested again. This time he was arrested for aggravated robbery with a firearm. It's a pretty serious violent felony. This was released on a $30,000 bond, a substantial amount reflecting the seriousness of the charge. Floyd ultimately pled guilty to theft rather than armed robbery, likely as part of a plea bargain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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On February 11th, 1999, he was sentenced to 10 months in state jail. Records show he received credit for 70 days of time served. On October 22nd, 1998, while presumably still out on bond, Floyd was arrested yet again, this time for theft, classified as a Class B misdemeanor in Texas. He pled guilty to that charge on December 14th, 1998. He was sentenced to 10 days in Harris County Jail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Records indicated he served two days of that sentence. On August 29, 2001, Floyd had another brush with the law when he was arrested for failing to identify himself to a police officer that's a Class B misdemeanor in Texas. He was released on $3,000 bond. Two days after his arrest, on August 31, 2001, Floyd pled guilty and was sentenced to 15 days in Harris County Jail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Records show he served only three days of that sentence. On April 23rd, 2002, Floyd was arrested for criminal trespassing and sentenced to 30 days in jail. On October 29th, 2002, he was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, again, less than a gram of cocaine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He was initially released on $5,000 bond that was later increased to $15,000, probably due to the violations of his release conditions. Floyd was formally indicted December 10th, 2002. He pled guilty March 3rd, 2003. He was sentenced to eight months in state jail. Records show he received credit for 92 days of time served. It's noted he waived his right to appeal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We don't have to go there. A proper analysis of any case requires examining all the available evidence, not just the parts that confirm preexisting narratives based on the first available information. The media, the politicians, the prosecutors, they had no interest in presenting the complete picture, judging by their reaction to the announcement of this series. They still don't.

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The mention that no permission to appeal granted suggests there may have been some attempt to challenge aspects of the case. Floyd ultimately pled guilty. He received a 10-month state jail sentence. Floyd was then arrested again in December 2005, charged with possessing less than one gram of cocaine.

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According to court records, prosecutors later increased the charge to possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, alleging that Floyd actually had more than four grams of cocaine. It's a much more serious offense. The charge was eventually reverted back to simple possession of less than a gram.

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Despite that reduction in charges, Floyd received a 10-month sentence in state jail that marked his fourth drug conviction in less than a decade. Now we come to the most serious crime in Floyd's record, which the media has been particularly reluctant to discuss in detail. In 2007, Floyd participated in a home invasion robbery that can only be described as terrifying for the victim involved.

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According to the court documents, Floyd was part of a group of six men who targeted a home for drugs and money. One of the men posed as a water department employee, wearing a blue uniform to trick the female resident into opening the door. When she realized the deception and tried to close the door, a struggle ensued. At that point, a Ford Explorer pulled up.

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Five other men, including Floyd, exited the vehicle and approached the house. Floyd, who is identified as the largest member of the group, forced his way inside the residence and forced her into the living room. The court report says that while Floyd held the gun on the victim, another armed suspect struck her in the head and sides with his pistol as she screamed for help.

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The group searched the home for drugs and money. When they didn't find what they were looking for, they took the woman's jewelry and cell phone before fleeing. Police later tracked down the vehicle based on a license plate number provided by a neighbor who witnessed the robbery. They found Floyd behind the wheel.

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The victim later positively identified Floyd as the large suspect who had held the gun to her abdomen. Floyd was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, a first-degree felony in Texas. He played guilty in 2009. He was sentenced to five years in prison. He served his time. He was paroled in 2013. In total, Floyd was arrested at least nine times.

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He was convicted of at least seven separate criminal offenses, including four drug crimes and a violent home invasion robbery where he held a gun to a woman's abdomen. This was obviously a persistent pattern of serious criminal behavior spanning for more than a decade. Floyd spent significant time incarcerated, By this calculation, he served approximately 10 years in various jails and prisons.

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Between 1997 and 2013, Floyd actually spent more time incarcerated than he did as a free man. The media have engaged in a deliberate attempt to sanitize Floyd's background to present him as something other than what his record shows. They painted a picture of a gentle giant whose only crime was passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

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That portrayal is demonstrably false based on the extensive criminal record that we've just detailed. The police officers who encountered him on that last day were not dealing with a citizen who just made a minor mistake one day. They were dealing with somebody who had a long history of criminal behavior, unfortunately, including violence and resistance to police.

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We've covered a lot of ground today in this first episode of our five-part series on the case for pardoning Derek Chauvin. We've examined the backgrounds of both Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. Not the filtered versions you've been fed by the legacy media, but the actual facts about who these men really were.

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You're not going to hear it from CNN. You're not going to hear it from MSNBC. You certainly won't hear it from politicians who built their careers on the back of this case. But you'll hear it here because unlike those who rendered judgment and moved on, I believe truth emerges when we're willing to revise our positions in light of new information.

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We've looked at the serious problems with the narrative surrounding Chauvin's complaint record. We've looked at George Floyd's criminal record. In episode two, we're gonna dive deep into the powder keg that was Minneapolis in May 2020.

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We'll examine the radical progressive politics that had taken hold of the city, the defund the police movement that was already gaining steam, the specific tensions in the third precinct where this fateful encounter occurred. Then we'll go moment by moment through the actual footage

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not the selectively edited clips you saw on CNN, the complete unedited video that shows what really happened that day.

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You'll see for yourself how Floyd was saying he could not breathe while he was still in the police car before he was even removed and put on the ground, how he actively resisted being placed in the vehicle, how Chauvin was following MPD-approved restraint techniques throughout the encounter. In episode three, we'll analyze the autopsy findings and medical evidence in excruciating detail.

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In episode four, we'll relitigate the jury and trial. And in our final episode, we'll bring you up to date on Derek's case. And I'll continue to beat this drum. This is about more than just Derek Chauvin. This is about whether we're going to be a nation of laws or a nation where mob justice prevails.

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President Trump has begun the critical work of reversing the evils inflicted on our country over the past several years. DEI is being dismantled. Merit is being restored. American values are returning to our institutions. But this work can't be complete until we address the original catalyst that sent our country spiraling into woke madness in the first place, the railroading of Derek Chauvin.

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Stand up for the rule of law. Go to pardonderek.com today. Sign our petition. We'll also put up the website to donate to Derek Chauvin's legal defense fund in the description. Join us right here on The Ben Shapiro Show on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next few weeks for future episodes in this series. Okay, meanwhile, a lot happening in the news.

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The big controversy of the day is all about the Trump administration deporting members of Tren de Aragua over to El Salvador to be kept in a prison over there. And this apparently is the end of the republic. Now, I understand that the Trump administration is certainly attempting to drive a narrative here. and Democrats are falling right into it.

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The narrative the Democrats are trying to suggest is that President Trump is willy-nilly ignoring the law, that he's running roughshod over the lower court judges, and that he's going to just destroy the judiciary and all of this sort of thing.

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Well, the problem is, of course, that the precedent has already been set for ignoring the judiciary, considering the Biden administration did it with a high level of regularity with regard to, for example, student loans, and not just lower court judges, but actually like the Supreme Court of the United States. Every time the Supreme Court would say,

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You are not allowed to simply alleviate student loans. The Biden administration would say, but we are. And then they try to find a different way around the Supreme Court. They did the same thing with, for example, affirmative action. And so the precedent has been set there.

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But this particular case is the one that the left is focusing in on because they say it's all about the willingness to ignore law. President Trump is tyrannical demagogue and all the rest of this. The argument by the Trump administration is we're not ignoring the law. We are actually fulfilling the law. We are doing what we are supposed to do.

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On March 4th, 2025, I launched a petition at PardonDerek.com calling on President Trump to exercise his constitutional authority to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin from his federal convictions in the death of George Floyd. This isn't just about one man, though the unjust conviction of one man should be enough.

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And no district court judge is going to orally tell us that we have to turn around an airplane in the middle of its flight and have it come back to the United States while it's over international waters. That's not how airplanes work. It's possible they didn't have the fuel to turn around and get back to the United States.

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The planes that were already on the ground, by the way, never left the United States. So the idea that the Trump administration is sort of wholesale defying federal courts, that is not particularly true.

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The narrative that the right is attempting to drive, and it's a narrative that I think is going to have some teeth, is why are you guys defending so strongly Tren de Aragua members not being deported? These are members of a Venezuelan murderous gang. Do you want them in the United States? You guys seem to want an awful lot of bad people in the United States.

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You want Hamas supporters like Mahmoud Khalil in the United States. It now turns out that the left wants fans of Hezbollah in the United States. There's a big controversy that broke out yesterday because there was a Brown University professor who was deported And the left claimed that this was yet another horrifying violation of First Amendment rights.

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The problem is that the reason this person was deported, her name is Rasha Alawiya. The reason is because she had pictures on her phone from a visit to Lebanon where she went to the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. If you go to the funeral of a terrorist, pretty sure we don't need you in our country. The left tried to jump to the defense of this person.

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The suggestion was that she had done nothing wrong and that she followed his teachings, quote, from a religious perspective, but not a political one. He was the leader of a massive terrorist group responsible for murders of Americans. and others. So yeah, you should go. But the Democrats seem to be totally unable to dissociate from the worst kinds of immigrants to the country.

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So they're totally underscoring what President Trump has been arguing all along, which is they don't just want an open border. They want the worst people in the world coming to the United States, apparently. So we'll get to the legal theory in a moment, but you can see the narrative fight that is building up. So Caroline Lovett has just been clubbing people about the ears with this narrative.

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She's very skilled at this. Here she was at the White House yesterday saying, you know why we are deporting members of Trendaragua? In order to save people's lives.

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This is also about restoring the rule of law after a disgraceful period of politically motivated race and identity obsessed weaponization of the justice system. Since returning to office, President Trump has been taking historic action to dismantle the radical ideological framework infecting our institutions.

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As for the implication that there are going to be mass deportations and everybody's going to get deported, Caroline Levitt said, well, you know, I have another suggestion, which is if you're here illegally, maybe you should self-deport.

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She, of course, was referencing the fact that yesterday the White House put out a video showing many of these Tren del Agua members being taken off the plane in Venezuela and basically celebrating that fact. Okay, so the French, there's a French MP, and count on the French to be as obnoxious as humanly possible.

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A French member of parliament suggested that the Statue of Liberty should be disassembled and taken back, given the United States' lack of warmth toward illegal immigrants, poor members of gangs, as well as terror supporters. And she had some words for the French. And listen, I'm always here for dunking on the French. The French always deserve it.

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There's never a situation which the French do not deserve to be dunked upon.

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Fact check. True. Absolutely. By the way, twice. So, again, very enjoyable. This this whole narrative, the Democrats seem again, they keep to just stumble. They're stumbling headlong into it is the idea that they want the worst people in the world staying in the United States.

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And many of the angles that are being used in order to attack what the Trump administration is doing here are really stupid political angles. So, for example, Tom Homan, who I love Tom Homan, he's the border czar. On a personal level, I find him just amusing and charming. He's wonderful. The president has invoked, in order to deport Trenada Agua members, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

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In just six weeks, he signed nearly 100 executive orders and taken over 400 executive actions declaring that America will be woke no longer. He's systematically dismantling DEI programs across the federal government. He's targeting what he calls the tyranny of diversity and forced so-called inclusion in our institutions.

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And so many people are saying, well, that's a really, really old act. You're calling it an invasion. Venezuela isn't really invading. How can you invoke an act this old? And Tom Holman's like, well, actually, we use old laws all the time.

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I think the thing I love the most about Tom Homan is he's absolutely out of central casting. He does not give any bleeps at all about how the media think of him. And so he just walks in right off the set of a 1957 Western and just starts applying the law. It's really funny.

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Homan was asked about these flights that are being sent from the United States to other countries containing illegal immigrants. And he's asked what his plans are. And his answer is pretty great.

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Now, meanwhile, Stephen Miller, who's the architect of much of this immigration policy, and Stephen's a super smart guy. He's a deputy in terms of policy for the president. He's senior advisor to President Trump. He's on CNN with Casey Hunt. And Stephen Miller goes on cable shows and beats up hosts and chews gum, chews bubble gum. And he's all out of bubble gum today.

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So he was on CNN with Casey Hunt. And she was asking him about the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. And here was Stephen Miller taking her to school.

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He's banned men from women's sports, returned education to a merit-based system, declared there are only two genders in America. But all of this... All of it will remain incomplete if we don't address the original sin that kickstarted the entire woke revolution. The match that lit the powder keg of woke insanity that then spread through every American institution like wildfire.

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And he's right. What he is suggesting there is if there is an invasion by a foreign nation and if Trendaragua is being sent by the Venezuelan government and he suggests there's documents that show this. to the United States in order to create havoc, in order to export them from Venezuela here, then that constitutes an invasion by definition of the president. This is the other point he's making.

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He's saying that authority for interpretation rests with the president, now with the district judge. Now, if it gets to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court interprets it differently, then maybe that changes the rules. That is the argument that is being made by the Trump administration. A lot of bother is done.

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being disseminated about the sort of angle here by the Trump administration with regard to all of this. Andy McCarthy has a breakdown of this over at National Review. According to Andy McCarthy, he points out that the president ordered the deportation with no court process purportedly pursuant to that Alien Enemy Act, which is a late 18th century statute.

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It's been invoked three times in American history, 1812, World War I, World War II. He says that there may, in fact, be some legal problems with what the Trump administration is doing.

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He said it's near certain the administration knowingly defied an order issued Saturday evening by Chief Judge James Boasberg to suspend the initiative to deport the Venezuelans, which included an admonition to turn around any deportation flights that had already departed and returned detainees to the United States.

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While a prosecutor temporized about whether he had information necessary to answer Judge Boasberg's questions about whether those deportation flights had taken off, the flights were already underway and continued on their path to El Salvador, it turned out. The Justice Department then tried to end run further proceedings before Boasberg by filing an immediate appeal to the D.C. Circuit.

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That circuit issued an order on Sunday directing at the filing of a brief tomorrow by the ACLU and other lawyers for the Venezuelans. The Justice Department has been directed to respond the following day. Meanwhile, Boasberg ordered the administration to appear at a hearing he planned to hold at 5 p.m. on Monday in order to probe whether those Trump officials knowingly defied his order on Saturday.

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And apparently the Justice Department has asked Boasberg to cancel the hearing because, quote, the government is not prepared to disclose any further national security or operational security details about the deportation flights to plaintiffs or the public. So, you know, they could theoretically say that they don't need to deal with Boasberg.

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They could deal with the upper court, the appellate court. They already appealed it. Instead, the DOJ is basically saying that they are not going to tell this judge anything. We'll see how that works out for them on a legal level. And again, it's a bit of a complicated legal case because it's unclear exactly the interpretation of the Aliens Enemy Act.

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It is not clear exactly what level of jurisdiction is applied here to a district judge who's talking about, for example, national policy. Whether that district court judge has the ability to halt a flight that is already in mid-progress over the Atlantic Ocean or anything like that, Bottom line is the left is losing their mind over all of this.

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President Trump's war on wokeness cannot be considered complete unless he addresses the fundamental injustice that started it all.

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And again, I'm just not willing to hear it from people who spent all day every day defending the various illegalities of the Biden administration. It seems strange to me that many of the same people who are willing to defend every legal access to the Biden administration are now black letter law when it comes to the Alien Enemies Act. You found a weird a weird hook to hang your hat on.

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Here, for example, is ex-prosecutor Andrew Weissman, who you'll remember from his non-stellar work in the intel community, clashing with the Trump administration.

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Okay, well, I mean, she can say whatever she wants. She does have a right to free speech. Who is she to say that? The same kind of person that you are to say anything. I mean, that would be the actual answer. By the way, Weissman was the person who was second in command in the Mueller report, in the Mueller investigation. So stellar job there, sir.

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Partnering Derek Chauvin is about making a definitive statement that the rule of law matters more than mob justice, that America is finally ready to correct the catastrophic error that sent our country spiraling into years of racial division and leftist cultural supremacy. And of course, I understand that this is politically radioactive. I get it.

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Meanwhile, CNN's Elliot Williams is also flabbergasted by the Trump DOJ.

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Okay, so one of the questions here is that the judge apparently issued an oral ruling before the flights took off for Venezuela, but the written ruling didn't come until after the flights had taken off for Venezuela. Boasberg says that the oral order should count as much as a written one. A Justice Department lawyer told Boasberg no flights took off after the written order.

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and said he couldn't share information in open court. He said, I'm not at liberty to provide any information about the flights. The bottom line here is that there is the politics and the law. The law will be decided presumably by the Supreme Court here as to whether the Alien Enemies Act applies.

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The Supreme Court is going to have to speak at some point about what jurisdiction district court judges have to provide temporary injunctions over national policy. This is becoming more and more of an issue because more and more district court judges are signing into chat to basically bar action by the Trump administration. They never would have barred under the Biden administration.

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And being able to issue these temporary restraining orders sort of willy-nilly is going to hold up the business of government unless the Supreme Court rules that they actually have the ability to do so. The Supreme Court deferred action on that just a couple of weeks ago. So they need to reverse themselves. They actually need to start talking about this pretty openly.

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Meanwhile, President Trump has been upping his language with regard to Iran. President Trump said on Monday that he would hold Iran specifically responsible for any future attacks by the Houthis in Yemen. He posted to social media, quote, every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of Iran.

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Iran will be held responsible and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire. This, by the way, is the correct approach. The Houthis are, in fact, a proxy terror group for Iran, and Iran has been hiding behind those proxy terror groups for literally decades, doing untold harm, chaos, chaos, damage, carnage, Two Americans, by the way.

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And so threatening the Iranians directly, you better cut this out or your nuclear facilities are not going to exist tomorrow morning. That makes perfect sense. Again, I'm going to say it for the thousandth time here. No one is looking for a boots on the ground war with Iran. Good news. That's not what it takes in order to actually damage Iran, both economically and militarily.

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I understand the entire American left will melt down completely if President Trump were to do this. I get that the media will lose their collective minds. And frankly, I don't care because justice should matter more than political expediency.

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Iran's skies are completely open right now. All it would take is one single B-2 sortie over Iran to finish its nuclear facilities, finish them, like into the ground, finish them. That does not spur a broader regional war because Iran doesn't have the resources to pursue that war right now.

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It certainly does not pursue a war with the United States in which the mullahs are all dead in the first 24 hours of the war. That is not a thing that is going to happen. And people who are telling you otherwise are lying to you full stop. That is not a thing the Trump administration wants. It's not anything anybody wants.

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A full-scale war with Iran is certainly not something the Iranians want at this point. Meanwhile, senior Houthi politician Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, in a public rally on Monday, decried the U.S. strikes as terrorism. He said it's not terrorism when you fire drones at random shipping companies. lines. It is terrorism when you kill the people who are firing drones at the ships that carry cargo.

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He said to Trump, we say, you have failed and you do not scare us. Do as you wish. We fear no one but God. Well, hopefully he can be united with God as soon as humanly possible. It seems like that would be a useful thing. Meanwhile, the ceasefire in Gaza is officially over. It is over because Hamas continued to walk away from all efforts to extend the ceasefire.

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Hamas basically insisted that as a condition of the release of the remaining hostages that it is holding, including an American, Idan Alexander, that in exchange for that, Israel would have to end the war and leave Hamas in control of Gaza. And Israel said no, and the United States also said no. And then Hamas continued to maintain that, and they were dragging out the process so they could rearm.

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Late yesterday, there was news that broke that Hamas was planning, apparently, some sort of ground incursion into Israel again. They're going to try and break through the border between Gaza and Israel. And Israel responded with heavy fire in Gaza, specifically targeting terror leaders. These were highly targeted strikes. Immediately, Hamas released their usual false bevy of statistics.

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300 people. We have no evidence of how many people actually were killed. That is unclear at this point. The IDF took out some of the top leaders of Hamas. They took out some of the top leaders of Islamic Jihad as well. And they put out a statement saying that these will intensify. The strikes will intensify until you are back at the table talking about the release of these hostages.

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Watch them, share them, join the discussion with Daily Wire members and Ben Shapiro Show producers inside the Daily Wire Plus app. The truth matters and justice matters, and you're not going to hear this anywhere else. This is The Case for Derek Chauvin, Episode 1, The Background.

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The IDF had issued evacuation orders for some areas of Gaza. Naturally, the Europeans condemned all this because the Europeans have a very easy time condemning the Israelis for defending themselves and going after terrorists. And they have a very difficult time condemning actual terrorists. They're too busy standing for them.

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The spokesperson for Palestinian Islamic Jihad was killed in the IDF strikes, apparently. So, too, was one of the top leaders of Hamas in those strikes. And, of course, it was going to have to go this way because Hamas was never going to give up the hostages, short of some unpalatable deal in which they remained in control of Gaza. And Israel was never going to allow that.

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As I said all along, when it came to these hostage negotiations brokered by the United States under President Trump, All along, there was never going to be a phase two. Phase two was not a possibility. Phase one was the release of certain hostages for a certain amount of time.

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At a certain point, that was going to hit the end of the road, and Israel was going to have to go back in and finish off Hamas. And that appears to be what is happening right now, short of Hamas making some sort of major concessions by releasing more of the hostages.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The media, by the way, are trash and continue to simply report whatever false numbers are put out by Hamas as soon as humanly possible. Well done to our legacy media who've been eating up the propaganda like the latter end of the human centipede for decades now in this particular conflict. All right, coming up, we're going to jump into the Vaunted Ben Shapiro Show mailbag.

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First, you have to become a member. We have so much great stuff. Pendragon is coming. And, man, I've seen some of the cuts. Unbelievable. So good. Really, like, amazing, amazing stuff. We've got everything. We've got Backstage Live. We've got Morning Wire. Am I racist? What is a woman? All of our other run, hide, fight. We've got all access with people like me.

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But the only way you can do any of that stuff and join us is to join Daily Wire Plus. If you're not a member, become a member. Use Coach Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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For the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage and set race relations in America on their worst footing in my lifetime was the death of George Floyd, of course. The evidence demonstrates conclusively Officer Derek Chauvin did not commit murder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There were no accusations, even at a state trial, that Chauvin had committed a hate crime against George Floyd or targeted him because of his race.

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Nonetheless, on the basis of extraordinarily scanty evidence with massive pressure on the jury, the mayor of Minneapolis spoke out in support of a $27 million settlement approved by the Minneapolis City Council to the Floyd family immediately before the trial. Joe Biden suggested Chauvin was guilty before the verdict. Jurors were being openly threatened.

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Derek Chauvin was convicted on state charges and then pled guilty to federal charges on unreasonable use of force.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now critics will argue, and they have argued, what's the point? Even with a federal pardon, Chauvin would still serve his state sentence. After all, A.G. Ellison is still in charge over in Minnesota, and so is Tim Walz.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is technically true, of course, but it fundamentally misunderstands the critical differences between federal and state incarceration that would make a presidential pardon extremely significant. Chauvin was arrested four days after Floyd's death. At first, he received a third-degree murder charge, which would have required proof of intent or premeditation. But public pressure kept increasing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Like everyone else in America, I first saw the tape of Derek Chauvin and George Floyd on May 25th, what appeared at the time to be nine minutes of a police officer's knee on George Floyd's neck. Given the tape alone, I drew the same conclusions most Americans drew. I tweeted that the police officer's behavior was abhorrent. I called for his prosecution.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The mob demanded retribution. A Change.org petition to raise the degree amassed nearly three million signatures online, and hashtag raise the degree trended number one on Twitter on the day of Chauvin's arrest. State prosecutors, knowing they could not successfully argue a first-degree charge, decided to simply add a charge instead.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Less than a week later, Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder, which doesn't actually require intent. Coleman Hughes' meticulous 2024 analysis of the Chauvin case via the free press exposes precisely why a pardon is morally imperative.

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Simply put, the prosecution failed to meet the constitutionally required burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt, the absolute cornerstone of our criminal justice system. When two plausible explanations exist for Floyd's death, one implicating Chauvin and one pointing to Floyd's severe heart disease and fentanyl levels, the legal standard would be acquittal.

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The case against Chauvin collapses under proper scrutiny of the evidence. To make matters worse, by May 2021, Merrick Garland's DOJ brought down civil rights charges against Chauvin for unreasonable force under the color of law. Having been found guilty on all counts in a state trial just a few weeks prior, Chauvin took a plea deal so he wouldn't have to face trial again.

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When basic judicial standards aren't met, when reasonable doubt clearly exists, as Hughes and others have meticulously documented, it becomes not just appropriate, but essential for the president to exercise his constitutional power of clemency.

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The federal charges should never have been issued in the first place, which is exactly why the presidential pardon power exists, to correct fundamental miscarriages of justice that occur within the federal system. Here's an additional and integral detail that aside from me, ironically, only CNN has mentioned.

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Derek Chauvin is currently serving concurrent sentences, 22 and a half years on state charges, 21 on federal charges. Under Minnesota's state sentencing structure, inmates typically serve only two-thirds of their sentence behind bars. The remaining one-third is under supervised release.

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That's codified in Minnesota Statute 244.101, which stipulates that for felony offenders sentenced to a fixed executed sentence, the executed sentence consists of two parts. First, a specified minimum term of imprisonment that is equal to two thirds of the executed sentence. And second, a specified maximum supervised release term that is equal to one third of the executed sentence.

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That means Chauvin would serve approximately 15 years of his 22 and a half year state sentence in actual confinement. But the federal system operates differently. Federal inmates earn good time credit that reduces sentences at a much lower rate than state systems. According to federal guidelines, prisoners can earn up to 54 days of good time credit per year for good behavior.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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On a 21-year federal sentence like Chauvin's, the maximum reduction would only be about 3.1 years, resulting in approximately 17.9 years of actual incarceration, three years longer than what he'd serve under Minnesota's more lenient system.

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I stated that nobody is defending the actions we all witnessed. So it's not as though I was initially a believer in Derek Chauvin's innocence. And then over time, new evidence emerged, a lot of new evidence. And I realized I had done something absolutely wrong. I had rushed to judgment.

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Additionally, Minnesota recently enacted the Minnesota Rehabilitation and Reinvestment Act, which could potentially allow prisoners to be released after serving about half of their sentence rather than two-thirds if they demonstrate good behavior and participate in rehabilitative programs.

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While there are questions about Chauvin's eligibility under the specific exclusions of the MRRA, this could potentially reduce his incarceration time to 11.25 years if he qualified. So a federal pardon from President Trump wouldn't just be symbolic. It could potentially reduce Chauvin's actual incarceration by several years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Aside from all of this, he should have, through the appellate process, been granted a new trial due to the prejudicial pretrial publicity, jury intimidation, the trial court's abusive discretion in failing to change venue, which collectively violated his constitutional right to due process and a fair trial.

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Before we continue, it's now essential to understand who Derek Chauvin was before that fateful day, because the media has shown absolutely zero interest in presenting a fair portrait of the man they've demonized. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, you could be saving a fortune every month by switching on over to pure talk. That's right. Pure talk.

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My cell phone company is cutting the fat. from the wireless industry. For just $35 a month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data with Hotspot on America's most dependable 5G network. The average family of four saves over $1,000 a year when they switch on over to Pure Talk. That is real money back in your pocket. Plus, it's back.

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When you switch to Pure Talk's super low $35 plan this month, you'll get one year of Daily Wire Plus for free. Access the library of DW Plus movies, series, and documentaries, including Lady Ballers, What is a Woman, Mr. Bertram, Run, Hide, Fight, and much, much more. Uncensored ad-free daily shows. One year free of DW Kids platform, Benkei, plus a free Leftist Tears Tumblr.

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The only way you can get all that stuff is by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk. Wireless by Americans for Americans.

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Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

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Also, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2160 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 1: The Background

750.472

GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and creates a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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763.057

Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others, that's yours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As new information was released, the full body camera footage, the complete autopsy findings, the Minneapolis Police Department training materials, my viewpoint changed and it changed dramatically. But for most Americans, their only opinion on the case was formed in the hours after the original tape broke. They didn't know about the new evidence or they didn't care.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. You know there are enough bad higher institutions of education out there in the country. GCU is not one of those. It's great. Go check them out right now. gcu.edu. That's Grand Canyon University. gcu.edu. Derek Chauvin was born and raised in the St. Paul area of Minnesota.

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He attended Park High School in Cottage Grove, a predominantly white suburb where he later lived as an adult. Although he didn't initially complete high school, Chauvin persevered. He obtained his GED, he attended several community colleges, and ultimately he graduated from Minnesota's Metropolitan State University in 2006 with a bachelor's in law enforcement.

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Chauvin's dedication to service extended beyond law enforcement. He served as a military police officer from 96 to 2000, stationed in Rochester, Minnesota, and Hohenfels, Germany. His career included work as a security guard, as McDonald's cook, before he joined the Minneapolis PD as a community service officer in January 2001, eventually serving 19 years on the force.

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Throughout his career, Chauvin received recognition for his service. He was awarded two Medals of Valor, one in 2006, another in 2008, as well as two Medals of Commendation in 2008 and 2009. In 2006, Chauvin was specifically recommended for a Medal of Valor for his role in a shooting incident involving a man who aimed a shotgun at officers.

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The exact kind of courageous action the media conveniently ignored when they were crafting their narrative about the deeply evil cop. The left wants you to believe that Derek Chauvin was a rogue officer with a history of brutality.

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They breathlessly reported that he had 18 complaints over his 19-year career, as if that's some sort of smoking gun proving he was a racist monster waiting to kill somebody. When you actually examine the complaints one by one, what you find is not a pattern of abuse, but rather the normal course of what tends to happen when you're policing high crime areas for nearly two decades.

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The third precinct, where Chauvin worked, had dramatically higher complaint rates than other precincts in Minneapolis. It's critical to understand that increase was not due to worsening officer behavior, but rather to changes in the complaint filing process that made it significantly easier for citizens to report perceived misconduct. Further context comes from understanding disciplinary outcomes.

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Only about 1.5% of complaints filed against Minneapolis police resulted in suspensions, terminations, or demotions between 2013 and 2019. When including letters of reprimand, that rate rises to just 2.6%. This means the overwhelming majority of complaints were found by the Minneapolis Police Department to be specious.

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When we consider all these statistical factors, a department with a civilian review board with 80% more complaints, working in the highest complaint precincts in the city, with an exceptionally low rate of disciplinary findings, a statistically realistic benchmark for an officer in Chauvin's position over 19 years...

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should probably be significantly higher than the national average of 1.8 complaints. Yet the media continues to utilize that last number to distort the national view of Derek Chauvin. So let's go through the complaints chronologically so you can see exactly what we're dealing with here. In 2006, Chauvin was one of six officers who responded to a stabbing.

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The legacy media were deeply complicit in this. They didn't cover the details of the autopsy, the details of the complete body camera footage, the defense presentation at trial. They let that original impression sit in the minds of the American people forever. for years, and they did that for a reason.

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A suspect named Wayne Reyes, who had allegedly stabbed his girlfriend and a friend, was shot dead when he pointed a shotgun at officers from his truck. This wasn't an unarmed suspect gunned down in cold blood. This was an armed, dangerous suspect who had already violently attacked two people and was threatening to kill police officers with a shotgun.

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All the officers, including Chauvin, were put on paid leave during the investigation. That's standard protocol. And of course, they were then cleared because they acted appropriately in the face of a deadly threat. In fact, Chauvin later got a Medal of Valor for his response in this incident. The media conveniently admits that Chauvin was commended for this incident.

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They prefer to count it as a complaint without providing the context that would show that he was doing exactly what police officers are actually supposed to do, protect the public from violent criminals. That same year, in 2006, Chauvin and seven other officers were named in a federal lawsuit filed by an inmate at the Minnesota Correctional Facility.

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This is the type of frivolous lawsuit that gets filed against police officers all the time. How serious was it? The case was dismissed the following year. The media still counts that as a complaint against Chauvin. Now, the fact the lawsuit was dismissed tells you everything you need to know about its validity. That doesn't stop the media from including it in that running tally of complaints.

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Well, folks, it was a very busy President's Day weekend. In the news, we're going to get to all of it. Ongoing negotiations over Ukraine between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia. President Trump at the Daytona 500. J.D. Vance giving off some pretty strong, aggressive vibes in Germany. Lots of stuff happening.

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And instead of Europe actually getting its act together, Europe just continued to live on the largesse of the United States. We helped prop up all of their security arrangements. We helped prop up NATO, for example. And meanwhile, they themselves got more and more robust in their stupidity. they decided that they could basically play with house money.

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And by playing with house money, I mean they could be as left-wing as they wanted to be while knowing that the United States would provide an almost endless security guarantee to them. And so they decided open immigration from radical Islamist countries would be a great idea.

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They decided to actually pass essentially forms of blasphemy laws in their own country in order to facilitate their idiotic notion that a post-colonialist society ought to be invaded by many of the areas that it had once colonized. They were going to take those policies, put them in place, and there would be no negative side effects. Well, over the weekend, Vice President J.D.

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Vance spoke in Munich, and the Europeans were very angry at him. He spoke at the Munich Security Conference. He gave a very important speech. And at the speech, he said, listen, there are some problems in Europe. Those problems include things like China and Russia. But the biggest problem in Europe is that Europe has forgotten what Europe is about. Now, the Europeans don't like being told this.

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The Europeans like to believe that they are the sophisticates on the block. They like to believe that they are more nuanced and knowledgeable than these brash, annoying Americans. But what J.D. Vance says here is 100% true. He says, you guys decided to let terrorists into your own borders. You guys decided to crack down on free speech. You guys decided to crack down on free market economics.

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That was your choice. Why should we have to pay for it precisely?

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And again, this should be combined in how it's viewed with his speech at the Paris AI Action Summit, where he chided the European Union for being so risk averse that they were basically cracking down on their own ability to innovate in the AI space.

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There's a very good piece of the Wall Street Journal by a person named Dominic Green, who's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, talking about these speeches. He says, combine those two speeches. You have the classic American one, too. Economic and individual freedoms support each other.

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Innovation, competitiveness, and risk-taking are the natural partners of liberty, free speech, and democracy. Europe should be the natural partner of the United States and a key link in the emerging American-led alignment. But Europe is divorced from reality. And this is right.

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Now, this has not stopped anybody on the left or in the media from immediately blaming the Trump administration for a plane crash that happened in Canada. which maybe this is the start of our invasion of Canada, actually. This is the inciting event.

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And so one of the policies, it seems, of the Trump administration is to force the Europeans to actually own their own policies or to dissociate from their own stupidity of the past. And that stupidity is very, very real. And by the way, there's a threat that that stupidity starts to cross the water.

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So, for example, 60 Minutes did an entire piece over the weekend about Germany and about free speech law in Germany, in which German officials openly acknowledge that they will criminally prosecute people for insulting other people in public, for example.

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So again, this is not just 60 Minutes interviewing people in Germany about what hate speech looks like in Germany. This is 60 Minutes pushing for this kind of stuff. How do we know? Because this is the overall view of the legacy media. The overall view of the legacy media is that only things legacy media likes being said should actually be said.

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Margaret Brennan, who recently off being face-planted by J.D. Vance on the news, she's on CBS News when Face the Nation, and she's interviewing Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And she was chiding J.D. Vance for going to Europe and saying that Europe might want to value free speech a little bit more.

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Right now, again, in Europe, if you say something insulting about Islam in Britain, you might go to jail for as long as some of the people engaged in trafficking of young white girls in Rotherham. Depends on what kind of prosecutor you get from the Crown Prosecution Service in Great Britain. But here's Margaret Brennan saying that the real problem is this whole free speech thing.

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But in any case, here was NBC News trying to blame Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Doge for a plane crash in which it is pretty obvious that the pilot screwed something up here.

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Okay, and by the way, there actually was not a lot of free speech prior to Nazi Germany. The Weimar Republic actually had many, many laws on the books that restricted speech. In fact, Hitler ended up spending some time in jail not because of his speech, but because he tried to lead a revolt. And then afterward, he wasn't allowed to speak for several years publicly.

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Goebbels was actually forced to not speak publicly. There were like 40 lawsuits against Joseph Goebbels, who was the publicist for Adolf Hitler. In fact, hate speech laws in Weimar Germany did not prevent the rise of the Nazis. In many ways, they actually facilitated the rise of the Nazis because people felt like, hey, maybe they have something to say.

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Maybe these people are being silenced because they have something to say. Sort of normal human tendency to buck against censorship by trying to suggest that there is something to the thing that the person is trying to say.

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But again, this is all about this sort of left-wing perspective that you can shut down opinions you don't like and this will magically protect you from the impact of those opinions. So what J.D. Vance was saying in Europe is, guys, you've given up the thing that made you Europe in the first place. I will say I took some personal enjoyment in J.D.

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Vance just slamming the door on the fingers of Mehdi Hassan. Mehdi Hassan, of course, is the front man for very often Qatari opinions. He tweeted out, quote, Hey, J.D. Vance, I know you're busy lecturing the Europeans on free speech, but have you seen this?

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He was referring to President Trump's decision to limit AP reporters' access to White House press briefings because they refused to use Gulf of America. And J.D. Vance wrote back, Yes, dummy. The thing about J.D. is that J.D. is an online troll, so J.D. definitely uses the online troll language. Yes, dummy.

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I think there's a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the White House press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech. The former is not. Hope that helps. So, again, J.D., very good at this. But all of this is part and parcel of a much broader attempt by the United States to force the Europeans to stand up on their own two feet.

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And that is taking particular front row when it comes to Ukraine. Well, Europe, they don't have American values, but you should have American values. Most American universities are no longer teaching those, but there is one that is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come by honoring your career calling you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

1483.104

Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others, that's yours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. I've been to their campus. It's a beautiful place. Terrific faculty. Excellent student body. Go check them out right now. Grand Canyon University. Visit them at gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu for Grand Canyon University. Also...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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When you're covering breaking news and political developments the way I do, you can't always stick to a normal nine to five schedule. Stories break at all hours. Having the flexibility to manage my time effectively isn't just a luxury. It's essential for delivering the news people need to hear. That's why I appreciate tools that let me handle business tasks on my own schedule, not someone else's.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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Take Stamps.com. It's revolutionized how you and your business can handle all mailing and shipping needs. Whether you're sending out important documents, promotional materials, or packages, you can do it all right from your computer or phone any time of day or night. No lines, no traffic, absolutely no waiting.

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Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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Plus, if you sell products online, Stamps.com seamlessly connects with every major marketplace and shopping cart. And here's what makes it even better. Stamps.com Rate Advisor takes all the guesswork out of shipping costs. It automatically calculates the best shipping rates and shows you options you're not going to find anywhere else, including up to 88% off USPS and UPS services.

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Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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All you need is a computer and printer. They'll even send you a free scale to get started. Have more flexibility in your life with Stamps.com. Sign up at Stamps.com. Use code Shapiro for a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and free digital scale. No long-term commitments, no contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Code Shapiro again. That's Stamps.com.

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Code Shapiro for that special offer, including a four-week trial plus free postage and free digital scale. So when it comes to Ukraine, Ukraine, you may have noticed on a map, is very, very close to the rest of Europe. In fact, Ukraine is right in the middle of Europe, just spatially speaking. Ukraine borders a number of European countries, including Hungary, Poland, and Romania, among others.

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And it turns out that the Europeans, while they've increased their defense spending, have been rather hesitant to actually take further actions. They want the United States to foot the bill. And the Trump administration has been saying to the Europeans, listen, we're tired of footing the bill. This is on your continent. Why don't you take a leading role here?

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And if you want to take a leading role in the negotiations, perhaps you should step up to the table and increase your defense spending. Perhaps you should make the kinds of moves that might lead people to take you seriously when you guarantee, for example, Ukrainian security. Why is it that the United States always gets dragged in to your domestic squabbles? Why is that precisely?

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Now, again, this is not a case that the United States should leave Ukraine to the predations of Vladimir Putin. It is a case that cuddling the Europeans to actually, you know, do what they're supposed to do is not a stupid tactic. In fact, it is very often a smart tactic.

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So top diplomats, according to the Associated Press from Russia and the United States, met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. talks that reflected a major and rapid change in American foreign policy under President Trump.

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No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago. President Zelensky has said his country will not accept any outcome from this week's talks if Kyiv doesn't take part.

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European allies have also expressed concerns that they are being sidelined as well. According to Secretary of State Rubio, he said the two sides agreed to pursue three goals, quote, to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukrainian peace talks, and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.

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So what is this really about? So if you just read this on the surface, maybe this is about the United States cutting Ukraine out of the loop. Or perhaps what the United States is doing here is what the United States might have had to do all along, which is make a deal that they then cram down on Zelensky.

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Because remember, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, can't go back to his own people and say, I gave up Donbass and Crimea. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, and I gave up Donbass and Crimea. He has to make the case to his people that they're going to win back these areas that pretty much everybody, including the Biden administration, recognized they were not going to win back.

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And so the idea of the United States cramming down the deal and playing bad guy in this particular scenario might actually be an off-ramp for Zelensky. Because both sides need an off-ramp here. Putin needs an off-ramp that allows him to go back to his people and say that they won something for this enormous cost.

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And Zelensky needs an off-ramp so that he can say to his people, listen, I didn't want to go along with the deal. The deal was forced upon me. I've been saying this for literally three years. For three years, I've been saying this. Meanwhile, This is also a way of forcing the Europeans to the table. They say we want a slot and the United States is saying, fine, you want to come to the table?

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There is zero evidence that had anything to do with the FAA or firings at the FAA or anything remotely like that. In fact, a CNN safety analyst named David Susi admitted as much, said, yeah, we've had a bunch of plane incidents lately, but there's not really one factor tying them together or anything.

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Why don't you bring a purse? Seriously, you want to come to the table? What is it that makes you valuable in this conversation? According to the Associated Press, the recent U.S. diplomatic blitz on the war has sent Ukraine and key allies scrambling to ensure a seat at the table amid concerns that Washington and Moscow could press ahead with a deal that won't be favorable to them.

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Kiev's absence at Tuesday's talks has rankled many Ukrainians. France called an emergency meeting of EU countries and the UK on Monday to discuss the war. And again, forcing the EU to actually come together to prove that they ought to be part of the conversation is not a terrible idea.

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We begin today with the latest on this insane situation up in Toronto where a Delta plane landed and then flipped over onto its roof. Here's a video that is just breaking as of this morning.

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Again, there's this attempt to sort of play it as though what the United States is doing is cutting some sort of soft deal for Putin. But this is also one way of getting the Europeans to actually step up and do what they are supposed to do.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea that the fate of Europe might be decided without direct European participation has alarmed the continent's capitals. European governments weaned their economies off Russian fuel exports and poured billions of military aid into Ukraine as part of the war effort they regard as crucial to the region's security.

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Now, the snub from Washington has raised pressure on Emmanuel Macron of France, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and other leaders to define how they plan to contribute to any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

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In recent days, the Trump administration has asked European governments to fill out a questionnaire clarifying whether they are willing to send troops into Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force and what other capabilities they can provide as part of a security guarantee for Ukraine. The leaders must also discuss how to increase European military spending and fund longer-term assistance for Kiev.

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And again, all of this makes perfect sense. Saying to the Europeans, listen, you want a slot at the table, you don't get to free ride anymore. It doesn't get to be like the UN, where France has a seat on the Security Council without doing anything for collective security. If you want part of this conversation, you should have some skin in the game.

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After Monday's meeting, NATO Secretary General Mark Rudy said Europe was, quote, ready and willing to provide security guarantees to Ukraine and to invest a lot more in our security. Now, with that said, it is also true that Poland has said they don't want to actually put their own people on the ground as a security guarantee for Ukraine.

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So we're going to find out very quickly who's willing to put their money where their mouth is. Meanwhile, President Trump is putting severe pressure on the Europeans to step in. How? Well, apparently, he has now made a very controversial demand, this is according to the UK Telegraph, a demand for $500 billion in payback from Ukraine. Essentially,

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The Telegraph obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract marked privileged and confidential dated February 7th, 2025. It says the U.S. and Ukraine should form a joint investment fund to ensure hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.

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The agreement covers the economic value associated with resources of Ukraine, including mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, and other infrastructure as agreed. The U.S. would take 50% of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, 50% of the financial value of all new licenses issued to third parties for the future monetization of resources.

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There would be a lien on such revenues in favor of the United States. It says, for all future licenses, the U.S. will have a right of first refusal for purchase of exportable minerals. So basically, the United States is saying, listen, you want us to support you? What you need back is you need to give us a giant chunk of your future revenues, essentially.

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Now, the United States cumulatively has given about 120 billion euros in aid. So this is much larger than the amount that the United States has actually put in. However, one of the things the United States is saying is if you drag us into an economic relationship here, if we go into an economic relationship, it better be worth our while because essentially it's a security relationship.

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And once the United States is tied in terms of economics to rare earths minerals coming from Ukraine, well, we're going to have a pretty good incentive to actually come to the defense of Ukraine if Russia gets in. So are the Europeans going to offer you a better deal? And if the Europeans are willing to offer you a better deal, great.

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That means the United States is not on the hook for nearly as much. This is the game, I think, that the Trump administration is playing. It's not a game where the United States abandons Ukraine. It's not even a game where the United States impoverishes Ukraine.

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This is all a negotiating tactic to get the Europeans to step up and do the thing they always should have done, which is take the lead on all of this, rather than simply waiting for the United States to do the dirty work as they have been doing since essentially 1945. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, was asked what the process is moving forward. Here he was explaining.

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OK, so we'll find out where exactly this goes. Meanwhile, President Zelensky is attempting to butter up President Trump. He says, listen, I trust President Trump. Obviously, he was voted in. He's the person we're dealing with.

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By the way, meanwhile, the United States in our own hemisphere is getting significantly more aggressive. In just a moment, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to Elon Musk's latest child and the controversy surrounding all of that. First, if you were with us for election night or the inauguration, you already know the Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over now.

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We are headed back to Washington, D.C. to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring all on stage live Thursday night, February 20th. No scripted talking points, no corporate approved narratives, just real conversations that actually matter streaming live on Daily Wire Plus. And we are taking your questions as well.

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Don't just watch CPAC, be a part of it. live Thursday night, February 20th on Daily Wire Plus. Joining me on the line is Senator Tom Cotton. He is, of course, Senator from Arkansas and best-selling author of Sacred Duty and Only the Strong. He has a brand new book out titled Seven Things You Can't Say About China. It is out today, available everywhere. Books are sold.

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Senator Cotton, thanks so much for the time. Thank you, Ben. So let's talk about the situation with China right now. Despite the fact there's been a ton of talk about China, it still seems as though we are actually underestimating what China is doing in the world. There's almost this sort of soft belief that China isn't going to take aggressive action against Taiwan.

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They won't do anything that really damages world trade in the South China Sea. There's even a sense by some on the right that if we sort of abandon the world in terms of foreign policy, that China won't attempt to fill the gap. First of all, what is China's strategic vision? What are they attempting to do?

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So Senator Cotton, let's talk about Taiwan because obviously that's a hot-button issue. They have projected power certainly across the Taiwan Strait, which is incredibly narrow.

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The big issue with Taiwan, not just in terms of the fact that it's a democratic country that essentially constitutes its own polity, but also TSMC, which is the world's leading manufacturer of superconductors, sophisticated superconductors, microchips – is located there. If that were to be taken by China, it would be a serious danger to the world economy.

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How seriously should we take what China is attempting to do with Taiwan? What is their goal? Are you more worried about an invasion or a blockade?

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Senator Cotton, one of the things that you say in the book is that China could actually win. And I know there's been a lot of skepticism. I'm one of the skeptics of China's sort of generalized ability to project power. I look at their demographics. Their demographics are upside down. I look at their economy. It's incredibly debt-laden.

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They've been building empty cities to the loss of billions and trillions of dollars for years now. So for people like me, who are skeptical that China is as powerful as it sort of seems on the world stage. What's the case that China could actually win? How would they achieve victory? Or would it mainly be that they just burn everything down and what happens next? You know, who knows?

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Now, the way that the media are attempting to spin this as a problem with Elon Musk or Doge, the reason they're doing this is – and this is going to be the approach for the next several years – is that every time there is an incident, it is going to be tied to some sort of broader spate of cuts.

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Senator Cotton, one of the things that actually kind of meets between what you're talking about, what I'm talking about, is it could be that they feel like their window is closing. So even if they are weaker than popularly perceived, that weakness could in fact be a spur to action.

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Because if the idea is that their window is closing, they need to move fast, their demographics are upside down, their economy is going to collapse, then that does give them added incentive to get incredibly aggressive right now because the situation is going to be better for them three years from now.

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It's going to be difficult to link the incident to the cuts, but that's going to have to be the argument because in reality, when bad things happen, somebody has failed. And that somebody is usually a person who's there, not a person who's not there. So it is much harder generally to blame something on, quote unquote, understaffing than on the people who are there failing to do their jobs.

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So Senator Cotton, it's not just that China is a threat externally. China also has obviously been infiltrating our government. They have been stealing our IP. And of course, they've been deploying apps like TikTok to infiltrate the minds of our children. Maybe you can talk a little about the sort of domestic threat of China inside the United States.

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So Senator Cotton, given the threats, what are the best ways for the United States to counter those threats, particularly militarily? I mean, when we talk about being able to deter China from taking Taiwan, what sort of projective power do we have that's capable of deterring that sort of action? How well armed is Taiwan? What are the steps we need to take there?

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And what sort of steps ought we be taking domestically in order to prevent Chinese influence operations?

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It's not as though there's nobody at the controls of this plane, for example. But that is going to be the case that the left makes. In any case, thank God everybody is alive. We'll find out how injured everybody was, I'm sure, as time goes on. Meanwhile, one of the big controversies of the weekend. was Bill Burr. So I've spoken about Bill Burr on the program.

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That's Senator Tom Cotton, his new book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Senator Cotton, really appreciate the time. The book is a must read. And thanks so much for your efforts on behalf of its cause. Thank you, Ben. Meanwhile, the United States is taking a much harsher look at Mexico.

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Apparently, according to the Washington Post, the CIA is poised to take a larger, more aggressive role under President Trump in the battle against the Mexican-based drug cartels, devising and evaluating plans to share more intelligence with regional governments, train local counter-narcotics units, and possibly conduct covert actions, according to people familiar with the matter. Which, um, yes.

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Yes, I mean, there are like 100,000 Americans who are dying every year from fentanyl poisoning. So yes, it makes sense to maybe go after the drug cartels that have been single-handedly responsible for the death of those American citizens. By the way, illegal immigration is down to some of the lowest levels ever recorded.

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We are down to less than 200 border encounters a day across the entire southwestern border of the United States. That's crazy. These numbers are insanely low. Why? Because everybody understands. If you come right now, you're getting turned away. Or you're going to end up being arrested and deported. I mean, that's what's going to happen.

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According to the Washington Post, the expanded focus on cartels represents a new and potentially risky priority for the spy agency, which in recent years has made espionage against China, counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and Africa, and support for Ukraine its main concerns. Why is that risky? Presumably. I mean, it seems like that's actually the thing that the CIA should be doing.

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The emphasis will be on increased U.S. support to anti-drug forces within Mexico and elsewhere inside the hemisphere. And again, this makes perfect sense. This is our southwestern border. The attempt to pretend that that didn't exist for years got a lot of Americans killed. So good for the administration for taking that seriously.

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And as I've said before, Bill Burr has completely lost the thread. Absolutely lost the thread. So Bill Burr has decided as a very rich individual who makes money by saying funny things sometimes. And again, this is coming from somebody who really enjoyed, for example, his Red Rock special. I think that he's done some really funny stuff in the past.

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Speaking of taking important things seriously, apparently, according to Breitbart, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that he has already picked investigators who will look into the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. He says, I don't have a timeframe on it. I don't want to wait any longer, but I always want to get it right.

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So there will be a full investigation now into the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Presumably, some people are going to lose their jobs for the decision-making process all along the way. And all of that is, of course, quite good. Meanwhile, Doge continues to make significant inroads into the federal government.

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According to the Washington Post, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with Elon Musk's U.S. Doge service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said on Monday. Michelle King, who spent a bunch of decades at the agency, left her position Sunday after the disagreement.

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Now, again, this bizarre idea that Elon Musk is like combing through individual data because he's desperate to see your credit card is just silly. Or your social security number. It's really, really dumb. The White House has now nominated a person named Frank Bisignio to lead the Social Security Administration.

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In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career social security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner. Martin O'Malley, the Social Security Commissioner under the Biden administration and former Maryland governor, obviously longtime Democrat, said at this rate, they will break it and they will break it fast. There'll be an interruption of benefits.

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That is the last thing that's going to happen here. Doge is not going to interrupt Social Security benefits of all Republican administrations. This administration understands. Do not touch the entitlement third rail. Do not do it. Meanwhile, Doge is seeking access to IRS systems, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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An agreement with the IRS could give the team access to the integrated data retrieval system. That system allows anyone with access the ability to have instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts. Democrats are warning about the risks to taxpayers if Doge is allowed to access those sensitive taxpayer information without legal guardrails. I have a question.

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Didn't you guys leak Donald Trump's tax returns? I noticed. I'm sorry. All this craziness about how Doge is going to invade privacy after the massive invasions of privacy that took place under the Biden administration, they ring rather hollow. Okay, so, so many important things happening. So many important things happening.

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And I think that it is very important, as I said earlier, for the Trump team to continue to be successful. And they are doing so many things that are necessary, delving into the waste, fraud, and abuse of government agencies, finding improper payments, finding that thousands of people who are dead still receiving Social Security benefits, digging up USAID fraud and mismanagement.

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telling the Europeans where to get off and how to restructure. These are all deeply important things. Looking at peace in the Middle East. Okay, so what that means is no distractions. No distractions. Distractions are the killer here.

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Getting involved, getting high in your own supply to the point where you do things that end up clawing away your popularity rating in very kind of slow but telling ways, that is not what you want to be doing here. Politics... as I was saying to one of the producers earlier, politics is like a marriage. The public marries the politician.

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And then he decided that he was going to go not just woke, but the wokest of the woke on everything from race to economics. So... On his Monday morning podcast, he decided that he was going to sound off about billionaires again. Now, again, this is not his first rodeo on this particular topic. We talked about this a few weeks ago.

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And like a marriage, marriages go bad over a course of time and then all at once. So if you ever meet a couple that gets divorced, even before they get divorced, they're kind of picking at each other and they're going to pick at each other and they kind of say nasty things. They're kind of small and you're like, ah, that's not, it's not great.

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But you know, maybe they, maybe they'll just let it go. And then something big happens and all at once, the bottom just falls out because all of the systemic supports for the marriage have already been ground away. And all of the, all of the stability, stability, has been removed from the situation. And all it takes is some sort of big fail for the entire system to collapse.

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It's like that with public approval and presidents as well. Joe Biden, he had an approval rating that was high 50s, mid to high 50s when he took office. He then proceeded to do an awful lot of things that people didn't like. He did these vast spending programs. He started to put equity in all of his programming. He started appointing people who were incompetent to positions of high office.

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He was pushing for the transing of the kids. And all this had sort of an incremental effect on his popularity rating. If you take a look at his popularity rating, it kind of hovered in the high. And then it started to decline. Then it was in the low 50s and it was hovering right around 50. And then the Afghanistan debacle on the bottom falls out.

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He spends the rest of his presidency at 40 percent in the approval ratings. OK, why? Because all of those kind of small things that weren't so small, as it turns out, just like a divorce couple, all those things that people think that they've forgotten and dismissed, they all end up in the divorce papers when the big thing happens.

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So every president encounters a big thing, a big bad thing that happens during their presidency, during President Trump's first term. Obviously, that was both the BLM riots and COVID. Those are huge things that happened in 2020. And the bottom sort of dropped out of the presidency.

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And all of the other things that have been niggling and annoying and everything from the false, fake nonsense of Russiagate to the dumb tweets, all that sort of stuff came back to haunts, right? And the bottom went out. That's the stuff you want to avoid. You want to avoid that stuff because those are unforced errors. In tennis, it's an unforced error. You weren't forced to do the thing.

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You just decided that you wanted to go for a risky play and you did the thing. I bring this up because there are some indicators that these sorts of things are being put out there and it's a warning sign. It shouldn't be done because we need Trump. The alternative is so bad. The alternative is Bill Burr on economics and Trevor Noah on race. And Randy Weingarten on gender.

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I mean, these are these are the alternatives. And everybody on the right who's very confident that the country will never swing the other way, that sort of confidence never pans out. Democrats have been confident before and they got hit with Trump twice. Republicans, I remember, were very confident after 2004. And by 2006, Democrats had taken over Congress.

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He suggested that Luigi Mangione, who is the shooter of Brian Thompson, who is the head of UnitedHealthcare, he's the CEO over there, the murderer of that guy on the street, Bill Burr had suggested that he basically had it coming because he ran a health insurance company. Well, now Bill Burr has expanded his critique out to all billionaires. Apparently, according to Bill Burr,

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Okay, so when President Trump, for example, tweets out things like, quote, he who saves his country does not violate any law. I understand he's trolling. I understand. The phrase was apocryphally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. This is a dumb thing to tweet. It just is. There's no reason to tweet that. Because, again, it's not true. He who saves his country does not violate any law.

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Well, who defines saving the country and in what way? The whole purpose of the rule of law is that it's supposed to apply equally to everybody. And I understand that as always, and this is the consistent theme of President Trump, Trump 1 and Trump 2, he is almost always the coroner and never the murderer, meaning he comes upon the body of American democracy and he says that this body is dead.

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And then everyone blames him for having killed American democracy. That's not right. Now, Trump is using executive authority in vast ways. Why? Because those executive authorities had already been established. He came upon them and he said, hey, look, giant executive authorities here. I can use these things. Okay, this attitude, he who saves the country does not violate any law.

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That was precisely the attitude of Barack Obama. It was precisely the attitude of Joe Biden as well. So he's not saying anything the Democrats haven't already said, but it's the kind of statement that comes back to bite you if, for example, the economy takes a tank, right? That is a problem. Why waste – really, why waste any level of sort of public scrutiny on that sort of stuff?

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Why, for example, deploy people to Romania to lift travel restrictions on Andrew Tate, who is an admitted pornographer and alleged pimp? What exactly is the purpose of that?

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According to the Financial Times, the Trump administration is urging Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate as they await trial on charges, including human trafficking, sexual misconduct and money laundering. He's currently under house arrest in Romania. Now, is there an accusation that his rights as an American are being abused?

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Is that the accusation? If so, what's the substantiation? And sure, he's a dual citizen, although I will say that he's a dual citizen who is currently – UK and US – who is currently seeking, by the way, to run for political office in the UK. So I'm not sure why this is, you know, like top priority for America. He also happens to be a complete –

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Derelict of a human being, Andrew Tate, the kind of person who tweeted out over the weekend that if you only have children by one woman, then you are not a conqueror. Quote, if all your children come from one woman, you're not a conqueror.

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I understand this kind of like pseudo macho nonsense from a complete grifter and con man like Andrew Tate has some level of popularity and it's found some level of popularity in circles surrounding President Trump, apparently. Rick Grinnell, who again, I like Rick generally, but he came out and he said, I support the tape. What do you think most Americans do? Really?

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Like, is this something you wish to expend political capital on truly? Or is it a principled stand about the abuse of power by the Romanian government? And if so, can you substantiate that? Same thing with Eric Adams. So Eric Adams, mayor of New York, and he was put under indictment for apparently taking bribes from Turkey.

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Simply earning a lot of money in the United States or anywhere else means that you should be murdered. This means that Bill Burr is both a moral and an economic idiot. This is not actually how economics works. The way that you become a billionaire in a free market capitalist system is by generating new goods, products, and services at a price enough affordable that people want to get it.

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Eric Adams then attempted to turn that into a referendum on his illegal immigration policy. He sort of changed after the indictment came down to suggest that it was because he was being harsh on illegal immigration in New York City that he was being targeted. That was for political purposes.

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The reality, of course, is that a year prior to his shift on illegal immigration, the investigation started into his sort of penny anti-crimes with regard to Turkey, his alleged penny anti-crimes with regard to Turkey. OK, so the Trump administration dismissed his case, the DOJ. Now, the problem with that, you want to dismiss it, fine.

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You want to dismiss it and say that it was a political prosecution. I'm not sure that I see the evidence for that. I also don't think that the case itself was a big deal in the first place. As Andrew McCarthy over at National Review says, I wasn't blown away by the case against Adams. That's mainly because Adams appears to be a bumbling small timer and often incoherent loose cannon.

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But one of the things that they are doing here is they are dismissing without prejudice. If you're going to dismiss the case and say that it's a corrupt political case, then you really should dismiss with prejudice. With prejudice means you can't bring the case back. That's what that means.

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If you're saying the case could be brought back, the suggestion seems to be that if he goes the wrong way politically, then maybe the case comes back. That's the accusation that Democrats are making. Now, even if that accusation is false – Even if the accusation is not true, why allow that accusation to live out there just to what? Dismiss the case without prejudice?

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Dismiss it with prejudice if you're going to do it. Doesn't make any sense. Maybe the goal here is political in the sense that it puts pressure on Kathy Hochul to get rid of Eric Adams because she has the ability to do that as the governor of New York. Maybe the idea is to pressure Eric Adams politically. Either way, that's not stuff the DOJ should be doing.

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The DOJ should only be dismissing cases if they believe that the case is, in fact, political. And if it's political and based in reality, you should dismiss it with prejudice. Again, the DOJ assessed that the main justice had not even assessed the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which it was based. Is this something that the Trump administration should be distracting itself with?

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On a practical level, put aside the moral for a second. On a practical level, is this something that they should be spending time on or effort on? It seems to me the answer is no. And again, these are the kinds of little things that don't matter in the moment. But are they going to be brought up again? You're not going to have heard the last of these.

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Political scandals and accusations don't just die. They go underground until they're brought out. Once the sort of popularity rating has been eaten away enough, you can break the now hollowed out shell. That is the thing that I am concerned about here. Okay, meanwhile, other scandals broke over the weekend. So, the big sort of buzzy scandal of the weekend is that Elon Musk has another baby.

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Alright, well, you know, it's another weekend, another Elon Musk baby. Elon has now 13 children by a wide variety of other women. And It's not as though he's hiding the ball here. Elon has been doing this with many women for a long time. He's artificially inseminated, I believe. The former CEO or currency of Neuralink.

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He has a bunch of kids by a bunch of different baby mamas, ranging from Grimes to his first wife. Apparently, he has a new baby mama. Her name is Ashley Sinclair. She is an online conservative influencer. According to the UK Daily Mail, she went public about their child over the weekend. Why? Well, because he ghosted her on Valentine's Day, according to her acquaintances.

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So she put Musk on blast on Friday. She publicly posted at him on X, saying she'd been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded. While ghosting Sinclair, Musk was pictured on Thursday with another woman, mother of his three children, Siobhan Zillis, who he brought with their offspring to a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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That is it. That is how you make a lot of money. Back in the old days of feudalism, the way that you made a lot of money is by robbing poor people and taking all their stuff. And you had to do that to a lot of poor people because they didn't have a lot of stuff. And it turns out the people in those days who were rich actually weren't all that rich by modern standards.

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Sinclair told the world she had Musk's baby in a shock post the following day on the evening of Valentine's Day, claiming she'd been forced to reveal her secrets due to tabloid media probing her personal life. But an acquaintance says that the real reason that she came for, she has another kid, by the way, with another person, was a disagreement with the billionaire.

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Trump activist Kylie Kramer posted on X, quote, seems like she wasn't getting what she wanted, was emotional and hurt on Valentine's Day, decided to parade her crazy on the front porch, thinking people would be sympathetic to her as a victim of a powerful, wealthy man. Well, that seems not particularly good.

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Sinclair's spokesperson named Brian Glitglitch released a statement over the weekend saying Sinclair and Musk have, quote, been privately working toward the creation of an agreement about raising their child for some time. And he rubbished those claims as ridiculous and wrong. Her statement, Ashley Sinclair's, was, quote, five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world.

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You can see this plane is completely on its roof.

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Elon Musk is the father. I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety. In recent days, it has become clear tabloid media intends to do so regardless of the harm it will cause. I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment. For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy and refrain from invasive reporting.

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And then the plot thickened because Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a muckraker extraordinaire, shall we say, he dug up a tweet from Ashley Sinclair. It was then replied to a person named Greg Price, who said, he's got a kid with a woman already, seems unlikely to work out. And she wrote back, well, he actually has seven kids and goes through women pretty fast.

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So that's what turned into this bizarre online conversation. She was apparently receiving a $15,000 a month apartment that she clearly was affording, presumably because Elon was paying for it. And she also apparently over the weekend had been doing a photo shoot, I believe.

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So she invited the New York Post into her house the next day to do a full spread, which is typically not what you do when you are attempting to avoid all sorts of public scrutiny. So how do we analyze all of this? Well... Let us begin with this. No one in this situation is a victim other than the child. First of all, it is always good when a child is born. Children are good. We'll start with that.

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They didn't have any modern conveniences. There was no innovation or anything like that. Okay, but billionaires of today, generally speaking, are billionaires because they created something that's awesome for everybody. But Bill Burr obviously doesn't understand economics.

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So I saw a lot of online influencers congratulating Ashley Sinclair and Elon on the kid. Fine. Fine. Whenever a kid is born, that is a good thing. Better that a kid is born than that a kid is not born. That's good. Also, everyone else in this situation is acting badly and no one is a victim. How about that? It is bad to impregnate women

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to whom you are not married, because it is bad for the child not to grow up with a father and a mother in the home. Period. My principles have not changed on this, ever. It turns out traditional conservative principles on this, super clear and have been for several thousand years at this point. Man, woman, child. That's the thing that you want.

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Anything that gets in the way of that is bad for the child. So when a man has a child with a woman and is not there living in the house with mother, does not love mother, mother and dad do not love each other. They do not take care of the kids together. That is bad for the child. This is all very simple stuff, but I feel like it's bizarre that people apparently need to be reminded of this.

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But yeah, that's actually the way that, you know, those of us who have been part of the biblical virtue system have been on board with this for like a super duper long time. I feel like the fact that I even have to say this demonstrates the sickness at the root of many of the things in our society. But it's not great when Antonio Cromartie has a thousand kids by a billion different women.

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And even if a person I like does it, it's still not great. Okay, so there's that. So principle number one, children, good. Principle number two, the best situation for a child is mom and dad are married. And now, is anyone a victim here? The answer here is no. Presumably Elon, when he was sleeping with Ashley Sinclair, knew that she was not on birth control.

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In fact, there are some indicators that he knew that she was not on birth control and he was paying her bills. So obviously he doesn't feel like he was taken for some sort of long rift here or something. So Elon apparently went in knowing full well what the situation was, and that's on Elon. He's not a victim. Ashley Sinclair is not a victim either.

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Anyone trying to portray her as a victim, I'm sorry, that's nonsense. She's a grown-ass woman. She's a grown-ass woman who knew exactly who Elon Musk was. She knows he's the richest man on Earth. He is in his 50s. She is in her 20s. This did not appear to be a love match that was likely to end in marriage, folks. That is not Elon's way. OK, so she knew this is a caveat emptor situation.

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He doesn't understand morality either, because his suggestion is that if you, apparently, if you are worth $999 million, you're good to go. If you make a billion dollars, you should be murdered on the streets, according to Bill Burr.

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He's not a victim. You know what he was getting in for. And she is not a victim either. And her attempt to portray herself as some sort of victim in this scenario is ridiculous on its face. It's silly on its face. Like you are not a victim.

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You literally went and slept with a man who is twice your age and extraordinarily wealthy and took an apartment from him worth tens of thousands of dollars a month. And now you're acting as though you are some sort of victim in this situation. Again, the only victim in the situation is a child who is going to be deprived of a father in the home. That is the actual victim in this situation.

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It is much better for a child to be with a mother and a father. It is quite frustrating, frankly, that we even have to have these sorts of conversations. It's bizarre to me that we now live in such a post-morality era that saying the perfectly obvious, is somehow considered controversial or an insult to the people involved. But she's not a victim. He's not a victim. Kids deserve mom and dad.

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That's all. That's all. And her going public, I got to say, not in love with it. Like it's, what is the purpose? What is good for the child? See, this is my only standard here. Now what's good for her? Now what's good for Elon? What's good for the baby? What's good for the baby?

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It's kind of bizarre to put out an entire statement to the world, have reporters over to your home and then be like, yeah, man, I just want to keep private. She's arguing that, you know. that she had to release it preemptively because the tabloids were after. Okay, fine. If that's the case, that's also a bit of a different story.

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Although, again, welcoming tabloids into your home doesn't tend to add credibility to that particular allegation. But let's assume that's true. Let's assume that, you know, it's still an amazing thing to do. Be quiet. You could still do that, actually, it turns out. You could still say nothing.

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And then it would be on the tabloids because you know how all of us, you know how I would react if the tabloids did that? Not by bashing you. I would then react by bashing the tabloids because I would say that's between mommy and daddy. But you kind of lose my sympathy when you announce to the world and then start subtweeting Elon directly and he's tweeting you.

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And again, imagine this kid is 10 years old reading these exchanges, which is what's going to happen. There's a kid in the picture. Once the kid is in the picture, I no longer care about your wants, needs, or desires.

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If you didn't want the world to know about it, you know it's an amazing way for the world not to know about it, to not talk about it on Twitter while actually tweeting the father of your child and then inviting reporters to your home for a photo shoot. Now, listen, maybe she's having emotional issues. Whatever. And if that's the case, I hope she gets the help that she requires.

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But it is amazing to me that we'll have conversations about her and we'll have conversations about him. And no one seems to have conversations about what is good for the kid. which to me is like the main issue here and maybe the only issue here, because once you're an adult, whatever happens next is on you.

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Meanwhile, over the weekend, SNL did its 50th anniversary tribute, and there was one moment that seemed to stand out. That was a moment where Tina Fey and Amy Poehler called out Ryan Reynolds in the audience. And it was a little awkward.

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This is supposed to be a joke about Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively now being widely derided as not particularly good or nice people because they, of course, have been attacking Justin Baldoni. They accused him of sexual harassment. She had basically attempted to take over his film and rewrite the script. And she brought Taylor Swift in as support and Ryan Reynolds.

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And they tried to bully Justin Baldoni. And then Justin Baldoni basically ended up as a character apparently in the new Deadpool movie. And so now Ryan Reynolds is going to try and joke his way out of it. And it didn't go over amazing. The audience that's seated around Ryan Reynolds looks awkward.

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Particularly keep your eye on Kevin Costner who kind of looks like he wants to crawl through the floor during this one.

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Hi.

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Some people in the background are not looking happy. Okay, so, you know, joking about how you and your wife essentially tried to leverage a director By accusing him of sexual harassment is not amazing. It's not an amazing look. I think it's going to do serious career damage to Ryan Reynolds. And by the evidence, it probably should.

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If the entire shtick of Ryan Reynolds is garrulous, fun-loving, nice guy, what's his reputation after all of this? Seriously, what is the reputation after you and your wife basically...

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attempt together to take over a movie where she was simply hired as an actress and then put together a spate of allegedly defamatory accusations against that same guy because you didn't like the publicity that was being spread about you. What does that say about you? And Ryan Reynolds, his entire brand is rooted in this sort of fun-loving dude that you'd want to have a beer with.

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But what if that fun-loving dude is actually just acting as a tool of his wife as she attempts to take over random movies in which she appears, even though she's really not that big of a star? And SNL trying to sort of whitewash Ryan Reynolds with that joke is not a particularly good look. That wasn't the only not amazing look on SNL this weekend. So SNL did an episode of Black Jeopardy.

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This was a very funny sketch when it first appeared, Black Jeopardy on SNL. And this version, they had Tom Hanks appear as a white contestant on Black Jeopardy. wearing a MAGA hat. And the implication seemed to be that he's kind of a racist. So here we go.

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So that was a joke that didn't play at all. So, again, he's playing Doug sporting a mag I had. That's Tom Hanks. And apparently they had a bunch of shared sentiments about distrust of government and other issues, but then was thrown by having to shake the hand of a black man. So there are two ways to read that.

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And one way to read that would be to suggest that Tom Hanks is playing the MAGA guy as a like overt racist who doesn't want to shake the hand of a black man. The other way to read that is maybe as a joke about his sort of perception of black criminality, which is still calling him kind of racist, but not quite as sort of Terrible, I guess. Either way, not a good joke.

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And some people were offended by it. Again, Hollywood basically insulting the MAGA supporters is not a great look. But, you know, to be fair, that's a pretty mild jab. I think people may be overreacting to that particular one. Honestly, the Ryan Reynolds thing is way worse. The Ryan Reynolds thing, like bringing out Ryan Reynolds to joke about an ongoing controversy with Justin Baldoni.

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Like, where's Justin Baldoni there? Why didn't they bring Justin Baldoni and have him do a joke? I feel like that's just another indicator of the power imbalance, as the lefties among us like to say. All right, guys, coming up, the United States versus Canada in hockey. And yeah, we're taking it to the Canadians before we annex their country. Also, horrible news from the Middle East.

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where Hamas is announcing who they are releasing dead this week. Plus, Pope Francis is in the hospital. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. We have tons behind the paywall for members, including Run, Hide, Fight.

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And then he added, they are rabid with effing greed and they're going out and dividing everybody. Well, there's certainly no divisiveness I'm sensing from Bill Burr there talking about how people should be legitimately murdered for earning too much money in the United States. It's this sort of terrible economic analysis that leads to Bernie Sanders-dom.

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We have tons of fantastic movies, great entertainment, stuff for your kids as well. Go check it out right now. Again, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans and click that link in the description and join us.

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You just say, you know, in a free country, nobody should have to live on more than one salary. Okay, well, thanks for your statement about realities that you wish didn't exist. Now, what is your alternative? Because it turns out that government ownership and redistribution of resources makes everyone extremely poor.

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It turns out that massive tax rates, confiscatory tax rates, kill the very businesses that people need to work for. It turns out that high levels of government regulation and intervention in the real estate market tend to generate higher prices in real estate, including in rent. That's what rent control does, for example.

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A misbegotten attempt to punish developers who are quote-unquote billionaires. by controlling the rents. And what you end up with is less production of buildings. The economy is dynamic. People like Bill Burr believe that the economy is static. And so billionaires are just taking a bigger chunk of a fixed pie, but that is not how the economy works.

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But where that shades over into truly evil thinking is when you start translating that into violence. That billionaires, because you misunderstand economics, need to be killed because they're suddenly centralizing all the resources. Please, name me the person from whom Elon Musk has stolen money. Seriously, I'd like to hear the name of that person so Elon Musk can repay that money.

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For that matter, I would love to know from whom Bill Burr has stolen his money. Bill Burr has a net worth apparently around $20 million. From whom did he steal that money? What's the cutoff for being a bad person? Is it like $21 million or something? It turns out that Bill Burr charges a lot of money for his comedy special. Shouldn't he give it out for free?

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I mean, there are a lot of working people who really like Bill Burr, and they now have to choose between paying the rent and getting a Bill Burr ticket. So, you know, maybe he should give away all of his product for free. Maybe Bill Burr should do all of his comedy shows for free. Maybe we should have the government force him to do those things in the name of economic justice.

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You know, when they're not killing the billionaires. Or maybe we should do none of those things because this country was founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Great Britain?

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Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com. Shapiro, you can make that switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company.

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Ep. 2140 - Trump & Vance WRECK Europe

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Visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. Again, I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. The coverage is excellent because they have the same tower network as one of the big guys. Go check them out right now. Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase.

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anywhere worth going it's worth going in a good pair of boots find your perfect pair with takovas the first time i put on my takovas boots it was like they were already broken in which makes sense because every single pair goes through over 200 meticulous steps of hand crafting with every stitch on point takovas boots are made for a good time in a long time talk about attention to detail i used to think western boots were just for cowboys since these folks started in texas back in 2015 they've been changing that story

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Whether you're a lifelong rancher or you're just looking for your first pair of Western boots, Takovas makes it feel easy. You can wear these beauties from sunup to sundown. They're built tough enough for long days, but stylish enough for those big nights out. Now, do I look like the typical kind of guy who wears boots? But here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so we do actually have some video of the moment of impact. This looks like pilot error. I mean, there really is no other way to read this. This is an insane crash landing. Basically, the plane comes down so hard that it rips off part of the landing gear and flips the plane completely over. One of the wings comes off the plane.

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I actually enjoy wearing the Takovas boots and they look cool. They are subtle. They are not loud. or at least they don't have to be unless you want them to be. No matter your size or your style, they've got the perfect boot waiting for you. Plus, with Tecovas' Best in the West guarantee, you get free returns and exchanges for 30 days. Pretty hard to beat.

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Right now, get 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. When you sign up for email and text, that's 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. tecovas.com slash Shapiro. So you cite, forward details, Tecovas, point your toes west. The reason this matters is because I have a fear. Here is my fear. The American body politic tends to pendulum from side to side.

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This is how you end up with Trump and then Biden and then Trump again. But I think that the next pendulum swing, and there will always be another pendulum swing, is going to be to the far left, to the economic populist far left, to people who agree with Bill Burr. If there is an economic downturn in any way, shape, or form,

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because the American people have not been made aware of the realities of how economics works, because our education system has failed them completely on all of this, this sort of zero-sum ugly thinking is going to eventually gain victory in the United States at some point, not permanently, but at some point, because of all of the broken systems of education that have been put in place in this country, because people have become so comfortable with the bizarre idea that rich people are stealing from poor people,

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Now, for the moment, it's really unpopular and it should remain really unpopular because it is a stupid, terrible idea. And the same thing happens to be true in terms of the sort of zero-sum thinking that some people have on race in this country. It turns out that in a free country, people of all races should do better. But there are some people who don't believe that.

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People like, for example, Trevor Noah and Princeton professor Ruha Benjamin. who have now basically come all the way, they've horseshoed around to the racist right, and they are now arguing in favor of segregation because the races can't get along with one another, according to these geniuses on the left. I know what your shout means.

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So it is not as though it flipped around in the air or anything like that. This is not an FAA issue. This is not a coordination issue between various planes. This is a pilot who's going to have some splaining to do. Here is the video. That is not good. Miracle that nobody was killed in this. Again, there are 15 people who have been injured.

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I mean, this is how pathetic the left has become. So they are arguing in favor of fixed pie economics, which has been debunked by literally all of human history in every country. And they are arguing in favor of sort of a fixed pie with regard to racial reconciliation, that the races can't get along. It's a white supremacist system.

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This is why it is so important that President Trump succeed, truly. Because if these are the two sides and only one side can win, If the left continues to follow the Bill Burr economic populist path and the Trevor Noah, Ruha Benjamin racial path, and if that pendulum tends to swing, it is very important that President Trump continue to be successful.

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It is really, really, really important because if he is not successful, if he does not succeed, the alternative is this trash, this ugly, immoral trash. And I'm obviously hopeful that that President Trump continues to succeed for precisely that reason. That's why it's important that he do smart things, which thank God so far he is. President Trump's popularity remains at all-time highs for him.

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The latest public opinion poll has President Trump riding at a 51% approval rating compared to 45% disapproval rating. In fact, the politician that Americans like the least right now is Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is stuck at a minus 10. Only 32% of Americans actually like Chuck Schumer at this point. This is according to the new SurveyUSA poll.

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President Trump is also making himself culturally ubiquitous. So he went to the Daytona 500 over the weekend and actually used the Beast as the pace car. And here is some of the radio traffic that was happening while he was pacing the field.

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Again, this is kind of awesome. This kind of stuff is cool and good. President Trump at the Super Bowl getting big ovations. President Trump at the Daytona 500 getting big ovations. All of that is quite good because the alternative is really, really bad. And meanwhile, the administration is making some fairly serious moves.

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And one of those moves involves pushing Europe to actually, for the first time in decades, nearly a century, stand up on its own two feet. So since the end of World War II, the United States has essentially been the bank roller for European security. And you understand why that is. Europe had basically destroyed itself during World War II.

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The United States had to prop up Europe afterward so that it didn't become a communist-ridden hellhole. And then Europe became essentially a sick man, reliant on the ministrations of the United States and our taxpayer dollars in order to uphold itself against the Soviet Union. And then the Soviet Union fell.

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Well, folks, tons happening in the news. The Trump administration going after Harvard. Nayib Bukele from El Salvador stops by the Oval Office. And the latest in the trade war. Becoming a member of Daily Wire Plus isn't just a subscription. It's a statement. And you need to be here with us because, I mean, let's be real about this. The news is breaking all the time.

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OK, now, again, the president continues to say he's going to abide by the laws here. He's not going to just willy nilly pick American citizens up and throw them in a Salvadoran prison.

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This, of course, has driven the left insane because whenever President Trump says something like this, even though he is caveating at 10 times that he's going to look at the legality, they immediately jump to he's going to start rounding people up off the street and sending them to Salvadoran prisons. And meanwhile, the administration continues to be extremely strong in pursuing means for the.

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deportation of non-American citizens who are here for no reason other than to agitate. According to Politico, authorities have now detained a co-founder of Columbia University's Palestinian Student Union as he was completing the final steps toward gaining U.S. citizenship. His name is Mohsen Madawi. He had permanent U.S. residency.

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He was taken into custody Monday in Vermont when he went to a federal office building for his naturalization appointment. Why? Well, because he has expressed open sympathy for the October 7th terrorism. like described his empathy for it. So people were complaining about the deportation of this person. If you check his Instagram, what you will find is tributes to actual terrorists.

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So there's a picture, for example, of his cousin who actually is in like a terrorist outfit with a gun and he's paying homage to him. His posts include the following.

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This morning, I received the news of the martyrdom of my cousin, my derby companion, my brother, and my love, Masra Suleiman Masharka, after a clash with the traitor Zionist force who tried to assassinate him along with his companions, the resistance team, Husam Khazam and Arafat al-Amer. It didn't work until the planes entered and bombarded them. He was a leader of a fierce resistance fighter.

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So yeah, this guy is just a terrorist sympathizer. I mean, that's all there is to it. Pretty amazing stuff. And the media are finding a way to defend him too. Because as always, our politics is kind of the stupidest form of our politics. We shouldn't want people who are un-American not to be here in the United States. Also, we do have to follow the due process for all of that.

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And I think President Trump agrees with that, although we'll have to see how this case of the Salvadoran citizen plays out. And meanwhile, the stock markets continue to be unsure about what to do given the current tariff war. Every day brings a new surprise in the tariff war. Stocks rose yesterday, more than 300 points. Stock futures were down a little bit today.

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This amount constituted about 68% of the university's total sponsored research revenue and accounted for roughly 11% over its overall operating revenue, which is a lot of money. I mean, that's a lot of money that they are receiving. Most of it goes to various science programs,

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The reason, again, was because it is totally unclear what is coming next in the trade war. So on Friday night, President Trump drove a hole through the middle of his tariff regime. I had suggested for a couple of weeks this was going to happen. I believe I said it on the All In podcast. I believe I also said it on this podcast.

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The most likely scenario was that President Trump was going to realize the dire economic impact this was going to have on core American industries, and he was going to have to start making significant exceptions to his own tariff rules. Now, again, I think that before we get into the details of what exactly President Trump is trying to do, We have to try to figure out exactly the general goal.

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So it is pretty clear at this point that President Trump wants to box in the Chinese, which, again, is a goal with which I wholeheartedly agree. We talked about this at length with former Representative Mike Gallagher, now of Palantir, talking about what we could do to box in the Chinese with regard to the markets.

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Because obviously they're stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of IRP every single year. They're growing their military at exorbitant rates. They're flexing their muscles in the South China Sea. They're building connections all over the world, ranging from Africa to the Middle East to Latin America and all the rest.

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So absolutely agree with President Trump's orientation toward the containment of China and the reversal of their economic growth. I totally agree with that. If you're going to do that, you have to have a few preconditions. There are certain things you have to do. Number one.

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You have to have allies on board because if China just increases its trade with everybody else, then you get in macro scale basically what's happened with Russia during the Ukraine war, where there's an attempt to cut Russia off from the world economic system.

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Russia formed greater alliances economically with places like Russia and even places that are sort of oriented between the United States and Russia, like India. And they've been able to economically survive. So you really have to box everybody in. It's really, really important to box China in by having a bunch of allies around because that's step number one. You got to have allies.

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Number two, you have to make sure that your own supply lines are durable, that China can't break your supply lines because China has certain things that they can do to really hurt the United States economy and put us on the wrong foot with regard to even things like military readiness.

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So that means we need alternative supply lines with regard to everything from semiconductors to rare earth minerals. That would be step number two. And then step number three is you would actually have to gradually increase the tariffs so that you don't destroy American businesses in the process. Give them a chance to adjust.

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There are a lot of people who I've been talking to, business people, who have after 30 years, 40 years of working with the Chinese, they were hit overnight with 145% tariff. Many of those businesses are likely to go under. because there is no actual replacement supply chain for those businesses at this point.

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outlets like Harvard Medical School or the School of Public Health, but it also does go to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Department of Health and Human Services, the largest federal funding, they provide $520 million in fiscal year 2024. Now, again, this is a lever.

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Prices are likely to skyrocket, demand is likely to then fall, and then you are likely to see an actual economic recession if that sort of thing was to continue. So the administration... went whole hog. They put tariffs on everybody, but most of all on China. Then they backed off the tariffs on the rest of the world to a certain extent, but not all the way.

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10% tariffs are still quite high by historical standards. 10% tariffs across the board. The United States was charging an effective 2.7% tariff on the rest of the world. That would have included China before all of this. And now it's 10% on everybody who's not China and 145% on China. So it's a pretty radical escalation.

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And so now it seems that they're trying to walk their way back into what would look like a good tariff policy. The question is whether they're going to be able to effectively do that. So on Friday night, President Trump created exemptions for semiconductors and iPhones.

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This led to a late afternoon spike in the stock markets on Friday, and it led to mild gains on the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday. Now everybody is unsure of what comes next exactly.

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According to Newsweek, President Trump's reciprocal tariffs as of a Friday night update spares smartphones, computers, and other electronic products that had been expected to face steep duties under sweeping new levies, particularly those targeting Chinese imports. Now, again, some of this looks like favoritism.

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It looks like some of the big companies that President Trump has been working closely with, companies like Apple or NVIDIA, that those particular companies got carve-outs specific to them. And this is one of the problems when you have tariff policies that are not specifically calibrated.

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What you end up with is that the people with the best lobbyists get the exemptions and everybody else gets screwed. So the small business owner who doesn't have lobbyists in Washington pledging to spend $100 billion in America, those people are going to get totally jacked by the tariffs.

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Whereas if you are a big company, then you're going to be able to go to the Trump administration and get a carve-out. So it's not particularly fair. It's also true that it's going to take longer than just a few months to reshore crucial industries like, for example, semiconducting manufacture.

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If you're a semiconductor manufacturing facility, that's going to take you five, 10, maybe 15 years to build in the right way, particularly in the United States, where it's very, very difficult to build. What you really need is radical deregulation inside the United States, making it easier to build. The exemption list includes the products the U.S.

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heavily relies on for overseas production with limited domestic manufacturing capacity and high consumer demand. The administration rolled that out Friday night and everybody said, OK, well, maybe this is the start of a loosening or recalibration. And then on Sunday, President Trump put out a statement saying, no, no, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding me.

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It's not as though all of this money is going into the pockets of the English professors at Harvard, but money is also fungible. So money that would have been spent on the medical facility is now being spent instead on the English faculty. And this is sort of the point the Trump administration is making.

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Nobody gets off the hook, which is weird because Apple and Nvidia seem to get off the hook. He said nobody is getting off the hook for the unfair trade balances and non-monetary tariff barriers that other countries have used against us, especially not China, which by far treats us the worst. There was no tariff exception announced on Friday.

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These products are subject to the existing 20% fentanyl tariffs. They're just moving to a different tariff bucket. The fake news knows this, but it's refusing to report it. We're taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronics supply chain in the upcoming national security tariff investigations.

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What has been exposed is that we need to make products in the United States and that we will not be held hostage by other countries, especially hostile trading nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American people. We also cannot let them continue to abuse us on trade like they have for decades. Those days are over.

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The golden age of America, which includes the upcoming tax and regulation cuts, a substantial amount of which was just approved by the House and Senate, will mean more and better paying jobs, making products in our nation, and treating other countries, in particular China, the same way they have treated us. The bottom line is that our country will be bigger, better, stronger than ever before.

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We will make America great again. Now, again, it is not totally clear what President Trump means by the idea that this is going to fall into a different tariff bucket. Presumably, he means that these will be covered by 232 tariffs, which are basically investigations into product manipulation, essentially. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows for sectoral tariffs.

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Basically, you start an investigation into importing products. and you see whether it's being manipulated, and then you can do tariffs under that provision. He's saying that we need an investigation. The truth is we actually don't need an investigation with regard to the import of semiconductors. We know a lot about that particular area of the supply line.

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It looks more like an excuse to hold off on the worst impact of what the tariffs would be if we were to actually include electronics products, semiconductors, iPhone manufacturer, and all the rest in the tariffs. So mixed messages coming from the administration on this particular point. Howard Lutnick is the Commerce Secretary.

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There's no reason at all that your federal taxpayer dollars should be going to Harvard University, which has a massive endowment, billions and billions of dollars in its endowment, $53 billion at last count. There's no reason your taxpayer dollars should be going to fund Harvard in the first place. And maybe that's the overall fight that we actually should be having.

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Here he was on Sunday saying that tariffs are in fact coming on semiconductors.

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We'll get into more of this in a moment. First, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours.

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. That's gcu.edu. There are so many universities out there that are going to actively make you worse. Don't do those. Instead, check out Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Also, tax season is now here.

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While we may be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention. $16.5 billion in IRS refunds, flagged for potential identity fraud last year. Identity theft tax fraud surged by an alarming 20% in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Americans. But there's hope in these numbers as well.

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LifeLock vigilantly monitors 100 million data points every second, creating a shield around your financial identity when it matters most. Their sophisticated systems work tirelessly to protect your personal information. Should the worst happen, their dedicated U.S.-based restoration specialists will make it right, backed by their comprehensive million-dollar protection package.

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They don't just promise help. They guarantee restoration or your money back. No questions asked. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock, and she knows that that peace of mind, well, that means that she is protected. This tax season and beyond, don't face the growing threat of identity theft alone.

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Find peace of mind and unmatched security with LifeLock Identity Theft Protection because your financial identity deserves nothing less. Join now. Save up to 40% on your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK. Use promo code BEN or go to lifelock.com slash BEN for 40% off. Terms apply.

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OK, meanwhile, Peter Navarro, who, again, should not be inside the administration since he doesn't know what he's talking about on trade and has single handedly helped crater international bond markets, for example. He says that there are no exceptions to the tariff regime, which is weird because there's a giant exception to the tariff regime, at least for now.

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But that's a fight that has to be had in Congress as opposed to inside the executive branch. The executive branch is now making the claim that Harvard University should have its funding removed because it is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

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Meanwhile, Stephen Miller laid out the best case for why the administration was doing what it's doing again. Miller is the best expositor of what the administration is thinking.

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When you join Daily Wire Plus, you're joining millions of Americans who share your values, respect our history, and are committed to building a stronger future. Members get ad-free, uncensored access to our daily shows from the most trusted names in media, in-depth investigative journalism and entertainment that actually reflects the things you believe.

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Okay, I wish it were more sophisticated and elegant and explicable because the reality is that the markets have no idea what's coming next or what exactly is going on. And that's being reflected in the bond markets as well as the stock market. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board says, what happened and what's the real policy? Who knows? Perhaps Mr. Trump didn't like the reporting.

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The tech giants like Apple and Tim Cook were getting exceptions. Other winners in the CBP notice would be Dell Technologies' Michael Dell, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, and the executives and shareholders of Hewlett-Packard and TSMC. These exemptions would be good news for consumers who are otherwise facing much higher prices for smartphones that are a staple of modern life.

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But after President Trump's broadside, tech companies and electronics firms are left wondering exactly who is going to get a reprieve. on AI in the United States. Now, do I think those two things are disconnected? I absolutely do not.

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Harvard, for its part, says it is now going to resist the Trump administration's demands to change its governance structure over campus anti-Semitism concerns. And so the government then responded by announcing a $2.26 billion freeze of Harvard's multi-year grants and contracts. That's according to the Wall Street Journal.

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I think that what you are seeing is major companies basically coming to the Trump administration and saying, if we pledge that we're going to spend X number of dollars in the American economy, can we get an exemption from the tariffs for the moment? That's what it looks like, which is why tariffs provide for political chaos, and they also provide a heavy dose of lobbying.

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The lobbyists are going to do real well when you have regulations that basically can be relieved with one stroke of the pen. Apple apparently is also studying potentially bringing some iPhone production into the United States.

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Or Apple could produce an ultra-expensive version of the phone that have lower mass market appeal, sort of like the Mac Pro that was assembled in the United States during the first Trump administration. President Trump is now saying that he wants to extend exemptions into, wait for it, the auto industry. Again, all of the crucial industries.

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By the way, these are the industries that China is most likely to be able to make inroads with its economy into. I should be clear about this. China makes an awful lot of money on these particular exports. So we are exempting large swaths of its export industry. We're still keeping the tariffs on like stuffed animals, but we're not keeping tariffs on iPhones or on computers or on car parts.

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That is a very large chunk of the Chinese export industry to the United States. So let's just be clear about what exactly is happening here. President Trump is, in fact, cutting holes in the middle of his tariff regime. Now, again, you may say this is necessary because we need time in order to adjust to President Trump's larger tariff regime. OK, that's fine.

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But then we should be explaining that that's exactly what is happening here. Here's President Trump considering a pause on auto tariffs now.

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OK, so again, cutting holes in the middle of this tariff regime. I've been saying this for a couple of weeks, really, since President Trump announced that this was the most likely outcome is that he was going to have to back away from the strongest parts of the tariffs because they were not well calibrated or well adjusted. And hopefully this is a better form of these things.

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That is sort of the half glass half full version of what's going on with the tariffs. The glass half empty says that basically the administration laid out a set of of tariff priorities that were uncalibrated and now is rushing to try and fix them as best it can.

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And basically they're spackling over many of the cracks in the edifice in order to prevent complete collapse of the global international trading system. The reality is that many of the theories upon which the Trump administration is predicating itself here may in fact be mistaken.

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However, President Alan Garber put out a statement complaining about the federal government and suggesting the federal government was wrong for involving itself in this way. How dare the federal government actually attach strings to the things it has always attached strings to? However, President Alan Garber said the university.

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So for example, the idea that when you erect tariffs, a bunch of companies are going to come reshore in the United States. The question is whether they're actually going to do that. According to a new CNBC supply chain survey, if China loses some manufacturing as a result of President Trump's tariffs, the U.S. manufacturing sector is not going to be the place where people reshore.

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People aren't going to reshore from China to the United States. They're going to reshore from China to, say, Vietnam. Over half of those surveyed said cost was the top reason for saying they would not be reshoring production. 21% said their top reason was the challenge of finding skilled labor. The Trump administration is promising tax cuts for companies that bring back manufacturing.

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The survey found taxes 14% lower in companies' ranking of factors that impact manufacturers' site decision-making. Taken together, the majority of respondents estimated the price tag of building a new domestic supply chain would be at least double current costs, or more likely, be more than double.

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Instead of moving supply chains back to the United States, according to 61%, again, these are people who are manufacturers, they said it would be more cost-effective to relocate supply chains to lower-tariffed countries. So you will get people moving away from China to Vietnam. That's fine, by the way.

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Moving from China to Vietnam would be great, so long as we actually are negotiating trade agreements with these other various countries to cut off the Chinese. The question, of course, is whether, in fact, those other countries will cut off the Chinese or whether they will continue to trade with both sides.

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So this raises the question, of course, as to whether the countries we are attempting to cut deals with on trade are actually going to move away from China, because those are two different questions. It is clear that President Trump wants to negotiate what he calls better deals with a variety of these countries, and maybe we'll get some of them.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, there's a rule inside the administration, by the way. Every time Peter Navarro appears on the television, the stock market goes down. Every time Scott Besson appears on the television, the stock market goes up, which is why President Trump should listen to Scott Besson and not Peter Navarro or Howard Lutnick on this sort of stuff.

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Scott Besson has been out there saying that we are moving fast to do deals.

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Okay, so good. I mean, we need to move faster than fast on this stuff. Kevin Hassett, who again is another one of the members of the administration, who is looking at a smarter tariff policy. He's of the National Economic Council. He says, we're being contacted by everyone.

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Now, if you want to understand what's going on in this trade war, you have to also understand what's going on on the other side of the chess table. So the United States is making moves and China's not sitting still. If, as I said, the goal of the United States in cordoning off China and boxing them in, if the goal is one, activate your allies and make sure that they're not trading with China.

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Two, make sure that you have reshored key industries such that you're not reliant on Chinese exports. Those are the two big things. And three, you really have to build up your military. What China wants is to counteract those things. So what they are going to attempt to do, presumably, is to make friends with all of the people that we are attempting to militarize against them.

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will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. The Trump administration said the school's response, quote, reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges, that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws. What exactly are the demands?

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The bad news for the Trump administration is it seems like that actually is happening quite quickly. And the reason for that is, again, the original approach here, which should have been, let's be great friends with all of our friends. Let's be really bad enemies to our enemies.

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Instead, it was like, what if I just run around the room slapping everybody in the face with this rubber chicken and then we'll walk it back? Again, that was not a good plan. Now, it may reverse back into something that looks like a better plan. But in the meantime, that sort of attitude is leading other countries to say, well, you know, maybe we'll triangulate.

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Maybe we'll take a better deal from the from the U.S. and maybe we'll also continue to trade with the Chinese. What's the U.S. exactly going to do about that? Unless the U.S. is willing to place secondary sanctions on the EU or something for trading with the Chinese, which would just drive the EU deeper into the heart of the Chinese sphere.

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As the Wall Street Journal pointed out over the weekend, U.S. allies are sitting out Trump's trade war with China. Some 70 countries currently negotiating tariff relief with the United States should approach China as a group together with Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said last week.

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But the problem is many European and Asian partners aren't sure to what extent they're still allied with Washington. Trump's initial Liberation Day order, after all, slapped them with sky-high tariffs that made no distinction between long-term adversaries and faithful allies. The shock from this attack, partially reversed only as a result of the U.S.

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market route, with additional exemptions quietly adopted on Friday, has added to months of concerns about how much Trump's America can be relied upon in an increasingly brutal world. Again, if the idea is that China is our geopolitical enemy, we need to box them in. You don't want to slap around the people who you're considering your allies.

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It is thus no surprise to see Vietnam, which is one of the states that the Trump administration originally slapped with a 46% tariff and then walked it back all the way down to 10%. Vietnam is now making common cause with, wait for it, China. They're trying to triangulate between the United States and China.

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According to the Washington Post, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called on Southeast Asian countries Monday to join him in resisting President Trump's unilateralism and protectionism, part of his effort to present Beijing as a more reliable ally and trading partner. So again, this is what you would do if you were the leader of China.

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You would try to escape the box being created by the Trump administration by making alliances or at least trade relationships with all the people that Trump is trying to alienate you from. Xi arrived Monday in Vietnam. He got a very, very warm welcome, apparently. His strategy aims to expand China's friends and trading partners in the region to better insulate itself against Trump's tariffs.

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It also is part of China's efforts to unseat the United States as the preeminent superpower in the region and establish a world order more in line with Beijing's interests. Xi wrote an editorial for the official newspaper of Vietnam's Communist Party, saying Asia faces both unprecedented opportunities and challenges. China will ensure continuity and stability of its neighborhood diplomacy.

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Well, they asked for nine actions. Most of the demands concerned how the university operates. The government was asking for a comprehensive mask ban, as well as changes to governance, leadership, and admissions, and an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI program. So DEI programs are in violation of the Civil Rights Act. There's no question that DEI, which is predicated

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So again, China is doing all the things you would expect them to do. That includes, by the way, pressing its finger directly in the wound that is America's supply line. So for example, China, as I said they would last week, and not that I told you so, but I totally told you so. This is the benefit of listening to the show as you're a couple of days ahead of the news.

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China is now stopping its shipping of some heavy rare earth metals and magnets, critical to U.S. production of everything from cell phones to fighter jets as the trade war simmers, according to the New York Post. Effective April 3rd, China is no longer exporting seven heavy rare earth metals processed exclusively in China, as well as heavy rare earth magnets.

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of which about 90% of the world's supply are also synthesized on Beijing's territory. The export halt applies to all countries, but access to elements like dysprosium and yttrium is critical to U.S. industry, especially in tech, electric vehicle, aircraft, and defense sectors, according to Drew Horn, who served as the top U.S.

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official on strategic minerals and energy supply chain development under President Trump the first time around. Rare earths earn everything, he said. The EV, autospace, everything from cell phones, defense key components, space travel.

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China, he said, has essentially created an all-powerful monopoly with them, which, again, is the reason why the United States, for example, should be drawn closer to, wait for it, Canada, because Canada does have access to some of these critical rare earth minerals.

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So instead of alienating and slapping around the Canadians, we should have been trying to draw closer to them to make sure that our supply lines were actually reshored. Horne said the Chinese have been threatening this because they do have that leverage to basically cut us off and cut the world off, which essentially cuts us off through all sorts of different means, and now they're doing it.

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So again, Beijing is doing exactly the thing that you would expect them to do. Beijing is also trying to cut off American companies from doing business in China, including Boeing. According to Channel News Asia, China has now told its airlines to stop taking deliveries of jets from American aviation giant Boeing. Apparently, China is also ordering airlines to halt deliveries of Boeing planes.

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Beijing has told its carriers to suspend purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from U.S. companies. So China is, in fact, pretty good at manufacture, right? Basically, we took all of the service sector and China took a large swath of the manufacturing sector. And so China is now attempting to damage the United States.

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And they can do damage to the United States, which is why you actually have to have a plan for what you want this trade war to look like, how you want it to go. Meanwhile, there are significant problems in the bond market. The reality is that the U.S. 10-year Treasury Yield Index has been climbing sky high. People are moving out of bonds, which shows lack of faith in the American market.

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Meanwhile, the price of spot gold is going up because, again, people don't know where to put their money, and so they're figuring that precious metals is a pretty good place to put it. If you're worried about the dollar, if you're worried about bonds, if you're worried about stocks, where exactly do you put your money? You put it in gold.

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The United States, meanwhile, the trade representative, Jameson Greer, he's saying that China didn't have to retaliate, which is like, I'm sorry, that if you don't like what China did in response, maybe you shouldn't have put your pawn there. Honestly, if you're playing chess, you can't blame the other side for taking your pawn if you put it in a vulnerable position.

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on the false notion that inequality of outcome by group must be due to discrimination and therefore must be rectified by reverse discrimination, that that is in violation of the Civil Rights Act. It's certainly in violation of Supreme Court standards with regard to affirmative action.

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Well, yes, they do have agency. But why would they not retaliate considering you slapped them with a 145% tariff and made clear to the rest of the world that you wish to go to trade war with them? And there are better ways of approaching this and worse ways. As I say, I agree with the overall global strategy that Trump is pursuing.

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The question is, what are the tactics you use to achieve the strategy? The idea for a war can be correct, but if you pursue it in the wrong way, you can still lose the war. And this here is the problem.

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And meanwhile, speaking of areas where the Trump administration foreign policy is riding a razor's edge, I have to say the Trump administration continues to deploy Steve Witkoff as though he is some sort of negotiating savant. And I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that Steve Witkoff is a negotiating savant.

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Steve Witkoff is a business person who has now been thrust into an arena in foreign policy he knows literally nothing about. And he continues to show it pretty much every time he appears on television or talks about it. This is the same Steve Witkoff, the special envoy. President Trump has appointed him special envoy to Russia, Ukraine.

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And when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, I should point out that literally nothing has happened with Russia, Ukraine. Russia over the weekend fired missiles into Ukraine again, killed some 34 people, including civilians, because Russia doesn't care about killing civilians like at all, at all. It's not targeting anything. And Steve Witkoff pressured Zelensky to come to the table.

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Zelensky, because President Trump and J.D. Vance basically yelled at him, came to the table and said, we're willing to do a ceasefire now. And Russia has done zero things. Zero. Russia has done nothing. So if Steve Witkoff is a negotiating genius, why isn't Putin at the table? Where is he? Now, President Trump seems fed up with Putin, as well he should be.

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Now, President Trump's peace through strength foreign policy is not being well served by Steve Witkoff, who appears to have no capacity whatsoever to actually threaten the use of the fist. Instead, it's all velvet glove and no fist, which is definitely not the way that Trump has historically approached foreign policy.

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As far as things like a comprehensive mask ban, the idea there is that you don't want people who have shown up to campus on student visas, participating in anti-American activity that would otherwise get them deported, and the university is facilitating all of that.

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Here's President Trump yesterday blaming Vladimir Putin predominantly for the war in Ukraine and then Biden and Zelensky.

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Okay, so again, he's angry at everybody. He should be angry at everybody because again, but here's the thing. He got Zelensky to the table. Where's Putin? Where's Putin? Well, now Witkoff is saying that he had a meeting on April 11th in St. Petersburg, he said it was a compelling meeting and that Putin had shown a willingness to work toward a permanent peace.

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But he said it took a while for us to get to that point. He said this peace deal is about these so-called five territories, but there's so much more to it. I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very important for the world at large. Okay, suffice it to say, I do not trust Steve Witkoff's judgment when it comes to cutting deals because so far the deals that he has cut

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have been effectively useless. The only deal that he cut was the deal to release some of the Israeli hostages from Hamas very early on. And frankly, that deal was maybe the mediocre deal I have seen. Everything else that Wyckoff is doing, he says that there's a broader aim behind the talk, suggesting economic cooperation could help stabilize relations between the U.S. and Russia.

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He said, I see the possibility of reshaping the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that gives real stability to the region, too. OK, let's see. what exactly Witkoff is arguing here for. Because it seems like every place he goes, he just proceeds to lather up whomever is the dictator and then treat them with kid gloves.

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So I'm really, I'd love to see what exactly is the compelling offer that Vladimir Putin is making. Because so far, Vladimir Putin has not stopped for one iota of one second with regard to his war in Ukraine. Again, Zelensky said, I'll do a ceasefire, full ceasefire today. We are now weeks into this and nothing from Putin. So where is Witkoff? Speaking of which,

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Meanwhile, Witkoff is saying stupid things with regard to Iran as well. So President Trump, again, he trusts Steve Witkoff on a personal level, I take it, but I have yet to see why Witkoff should be trusted with matters of foreign policy of which he understands pretty much nothing. I mean, truly nothing. So Witkoff was on Fox News last night with Sean Hannity.

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The government is also demanding necessary changes be made to address bias, improve viewpoint diversity and end ideological capture, fueling anti-Semitic harassment, according to the task force's letter.

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He was talking about the negotiations that are happening, not direct negotiations, indirect negotiations happening with the Iranians. And he proceeds to spell out here The Obama Iran deal as though this is a win. This is not what Trump ran on. This is not what Trump did during term one.

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Trump has used extreme measures in order to contain and destroy the Iranian economy to bring the Iranians to the table. The skies over Iran are clear right now. Never has the United States had more leverage. Never has the West had more leverage over Iran.

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And yet he's deploying Steve Witkoff to apparently make offers that sound exactly like Barack Obama's cowardly, ridiculous offer that ended up as the JCPOA, the Iran deal that basically gave Iran money and a pathway to a nuclear bomb. Here's Witkoff.

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Okay, so just to point out here, the original demand by the Trump administration was total denuclearization. That means no fissile material in Iran, because it turns out it's actually quite easy to spin up fissile material from 3.67%, which was the Obama era limitation, to 60%. The goal would be no nuclear development in Iran. That was Trump's stated goal. It was President Trump's stated goal.

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Lawyers for the university said Harvard has made and will continue to make lasting and robust structural policy and programmatic changes to ensure the university is a welcoming and supportive learning environment. But the task force is making demands, quote, in contravention of the First Amendment and say that they are ignoring due process.

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It's been his stated goal for a decade at this point. The kind of notion that Steve Witkoff is going back to the original JCPOA framework is wild. And it's a betrayal of what President Trump, I would assume, wants. Because President Trump doesn't just want any bad deal. He doesn't just want Obama 2.0 and then you slap a Trump label on it and magically it's good.

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Presumably he wants actual disarmament, like Libyan-style disarmament. As in, like, all of the nuclear material gets shipped out of the country, as in missile verification. And by the way, as in, if we are going to reopen the world's economy to Iran, they don't get to use that to fund terror regimes all over the region. That was the problem during the JCPOA.

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John Kerry openly admitted that all the money we allowed back into Iran was then used for missile development and terror support all over the Middle East, which eventually led to a multi-front war over the course of the last year and a half. So I know what Steve Witkoff thinks. Again, maybe it's not coming from Witkoff. Or maybe it is.

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But I've yet to see the sort of genius negotiating capacity of Steve Witkoff in either Ukraine-Russia or in the Middle East. If the president wants to get things done, maybe he should actually, you know, let his secretary of state do the work. Maybe he should let his secretary of defense do the work. There are plenty of other people inside the administration. who can have these talks.

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I do not understand for the life of me why real estate developer Steve Witkoff is leading these talks. It makes no sense to me. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had some very different words over the weekend.

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I mean, that is the person who should be talking about this, not Steve Witkoff, apparently. I mean, again, maybe Witkoff changes his tune. Maybe he misspoke on Fox News.

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Now, again, this will all get played out in the courts, presumably, but the idea that Harvard University is somehow owed federal money is absurd. It's absurd on its face. There's no reason that the Trump administration should not be able to attach strings to money that it is sending out the door to a university with a $53 billion endowment. You know what's an easy way for Harvard to

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I will say that it was Witkoff's aide who originally proposed a hostage deal so bad that it would have forced Israel to give up literally all the Palestinian murderers that they are currently holding in prison in exchange for one tranche of hostages, leaving all the other hostages to die. So I've yet to see Witkoff's expertise. Maybe it will display itself sometime in the near future.

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Movies, documentaries, series reshaping the culture in real time. Join right now, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Alrighty, so the big story over the course of the last couple of days that the United States government has now frozen. billions of dollars in funding to Harvard.

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It would be nice to see that at some point. Meanwhile, in other news, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, his house was actually torched. The governor's mansion was torched over the weekend in a really, really scary attack. Josh Shapiro, of course, is a Democrat.

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He said that he, his wife, their four kids, two dogs, and another family had celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover at the residence on Saturday. They were awakened by state troopers pounding on their door at 2 a.m. on Sunday. Apparently, a man scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police, broke into the Pennsylvania governor's mansion.

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He then set fire that left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family, and guests to evacuate the building. The man who was arrested will face charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson, and aggravated assault. He appears to be a crazy person. I mean, that's probably the best descriptor of him at this point. It's not clear exactly what his political motivations were.

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We are entering an era in which political violence is now being widely approved by an enormous number of people, up to and including Taylor Lorenz, who used to report for The Washington Post over the weekend. She was asked about her obsession with Luigi Mangione.

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This is the murderer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO who's been treated as a hero by dullards like Taylor Lorenz, immoral dullards like Taylor Lorenz. Here she was on CNN praising Luigi Mangione for murdering an American for the crime of running a business.

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I mean, she is a psychotic. She is an ambulatory psychotic who works for Madi Hassan. Great hire there, over there. But it's that sort of attitude that is going to lead to actual increased violence against a wide variety of figures in the United States. Stupidity and radicalism, a dangerous combination. Speaking of which, Bernie Sanders is still touring the country along with AOC.

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By the way, I warned you that AOC is rising in the polls. She is. There's a brand new poll out of Democrats showing exactly who is leading the way in the primaries. And right now, she is clocking in like third. Cory Booker had a brief spike to maybe 11% in the latest polling. Kamala still leads, but Kamala is not going to be the nominee. That's basically just a holdover.

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In third place at 7% is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she is touring with Bernie. So Bernie decided that a great way to stand up for socialism was to show up at Coachella, where people pay $600 to dress like morons. Here's Bernie.

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continue its policy of independence from the federal government to be independent of the federal government. It turns out that's an excellent way. Don't get in bed with the government if you don't want to get screwed. It tends to be a pretty good way of approaching life.

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Oh, the rich socialists at Coachella, they love Bernie.

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Oh God, I can't even listen to this schmuck anymore. It's unbelievable. And this is why it's very important for the Trump administration to succeed in its agenda and not be bogged down by distractions because what's coming around the corner is an AOC truck. I'm just warning you right now. That's the way this goes.

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If the Trump administration fails in its actual agenda, what comes around the corner is a left-wing populism led by whomever Bernie taps on the shoulder. Speaking of Coachella, my producers, because this is their job. They have now decided to torture me with some of the outfits from Coachella.

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Again, remember, these are the proletariat, the proles that Bernie is saying need to rise up and destroy the bourgeois. So some of these outfits at Coachella. By the way, Bernie was introducing a singer named Claro. I promise you that Bernie has the same idea who Claro is that I do, meaning none. But he was introducing Claro, so that happened, which is great.

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You want your socialist politicians introducing rich pop singers. Here are some of the outfits compiled by my producers. So Paris Hilton showed up as apparently a hooker. She was wearing a very Paris Hilton outfit. It appears to be that she got trapped in some sort of netting, that she was at one of those children's fun zones where you're jumping on a trampoline and she accidentally just...

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The faculty put out a statement on Friday saying, quote, that the federal government's actions overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the university to punishing disfavored speech. Well, no, actually, they're just saying that if you engage in antisemitism, then that is in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

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bounced directly into the netting and then was stuck there for a while. They had to cut her free, but unfortunately she's still tied up in it. She also seems to be having some sort of angel wings or something. I don't know. She's got some sort of white thing that she's carrying around and she's wearing the Hamburglar's mask as well. So that is definitely an outfit from Paris Hilton at Coachella.

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Dylan Mulvaney showed up. How this man is still famous is beyond me, but here we are. Oh, no.

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That is a performative gay man. That is. And Dylan Mulvaney wearing apparently a pink teddy, which is great. Then you had James Charles show up. I will admit I do not know who James Charles is, nor did I care until this very moment. Apparently, James Charles is an American YouTuber and makeup artist who is a man who likes to dress up as a woman, I suppose, or dress like a woman.

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And so he's wearing apparently like a J-Lo outfit from 1997. And then posing in front of a white picket fence. Is he supposed to be the world's most glam rancher or what? What are we going for here? I can't say I fully understand the look. But then again, I don't understand much of what goes on at Coachella. Julia Fox also showed up. Julia Fox is an actress and a model, apparently. Yeah.

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Um, and she showed up with her ass hanging out. That's, that's pretty much, so she, she was wearing a, uh, what, what looks like some sort of long, was it just a lingerie competition or what? Like, I don't, what has Coachella become? She, she's a, a steampunk dancer. Again, the hooker, I guess, is the look here. I didn't realize that just putting your bum out there is now a form of fashion.

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If so, then my small children are high fashion. Because, you know, my nearly two-year-old removes his diaper and runs around the house. So apparently he is high fashion now. Yeah, there's been an Indiana Jones vibe or steampunk vibe that's going, Indiana Jones hooker? Okay, maybe. I could see that. 1890s Victorian, post-Victorian hooker? Something like that. These are looks, guys.

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And what I always love about these kinds of looks is we go, oh my God, this Slade. Really? Are you gonna go down to the store and buy one? And like wear that in public today? If so, you will be arrested for indecent exposure. So good luck to you. Lola Young, another human. And I have to be told who these people are. A British singer-songwriter dressed up as Fozzie the Bear.

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It's funny to watch all these universities that for years were willing to expel students for saying that boys were not girls. that went after Harvard University. I was there when they went after Lawrence Summers, who at the time was the president of Harvard University.

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Fozzie the Bear lingerie happening in Ewok. Perverse Ewok is the look here. Now, to be fair, Lola Young's most famous song, I guess, is called Messy, which I guess, I mean, that fits. Yeah, that fits. So she rolled out of bed wearing her brown sweatpants here. And then she murdered an Ewok, took his outfit, and it doesn't fit her the same way that it fit the Ewok.

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Good stuff there from this human who's no longer a human. And finally, Noah Cyrus. Is Noah Cyrus related to Miley? Sister. Okay. So here is the less famous Cyrus sister. And again, the look here is, what if I wore basically nothing as a dress? So totally sheer see-through stuff. Man, did they just not get enough attention as children from their parents or what? Like, what happened here?

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What was the failure of parenting that led to this sort of stuff from both Miley and then her sister? Or maybe they got too much attention. I don't know what it is. Okay, so that's Coachella. I'm so glad that, by the way, all these outfits I'm sure cost a fortune. So maybe Bernie should eat those rich people first.

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As long as we're going to eat the rich, maybe Bernie should go after those people first. I feel like that would be a good look for Bernie. That's an actual populism that I can at least emotionally get behind. Meanwhile, speaking of very rich people doing very stupid things, Blue Origin sent a rocket to space containing a bunch of semi-famous women. The semi-famous women

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were apparently Katy Perry, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bao, and film producer Carrie Ann Flynn. They became the first all-woman crew to visit space. Well, they weren't flying the thing. I mean, that like, You think Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez was flying the thing? I don't think that counts as a first all-female crew.

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They got angry at him because he made the mere suggestion that perhaps the lack of women in scientific institutions might be due to the fact that women are less interested in scientific pursuits overall as opposed to men, and also that the ends of the bell curve with regard to scientific performance on tests tend to be heavily male. He was ousted from his position for that.

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That's like saying that if you have a plane filled with I Love Lucy impersonators, that it's an all-female – it's like an all-female crew on the plane. Unless they're flying the plane, I don't think that counts. That's not – what is happening here? Okay, so here is some video of these people flying above Earth for about three minutes. Apparently, Katy Perry – was singing while this happened.

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And I guess that we narrowly escaped people attempting to rush for the exits. If I were in space with Katy Perry and she started singing, I might actually just jettison myself into space. It might be a better choice, a better life choice. Here was some video of these people.

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Here's Katy Perry holding a daisy.

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Now listen, very cool. I mean, honestly, like a cool thing. Also, clown show. So a few things happening at once there. And apparently she then said, Katy Perry was singing to people, what a wonderful world. And again, no jokes about people floating off into space. First of all, great premise for a film, right?

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Is that you send all these people to space and then they lose connection with Earth and somebody has to go save them. Presumably Bruce Willis and a team of all men to go save them. I do love some of the comments. Some of the comments are really funny. So... One of the, Gayle King said, quote, anybody criticizing it really doesn't understand what's happening here.

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We can all speak to the response we're getting from young women, from young girls about what this represents. What does it represent? You didn't fly the thing. I'm sorry. That's not the same thing. That's like you were a passenger with Charles Lindbergh and you were a woman and you're like, I flew across the Atlantic. No, you didn't. Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic.

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Can we stop with this? Seriously. Apparently, Lauren Sanchez said that it only got her more fired up. She said, I'd love to have them come to Blue Origin and see the thousands of employees that don't just work here, but they put their heart and soul into this vehicle. I mean, I agree with that. But guess what? That's a lot of men. That is a disproportionately male company.

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So why you have to like slather over all of this with wokeness is very silly. Now. There are people who are criticizing these people for paying money to go to space. And all I can say is that everything in human life starts as a luxury good and then eventually becomes a common thing for normal humans.

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The way that you actually spin up a company like Blue Origin to the point where normies can fly to space is first a bunch of people who are really rich pay a lot of money to go to space. And then other companies start getting into it. And then you have competition. The price goes down. This is true for literally every product you have in your life.

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Rich people used to be the only people with cell phones. And if you had just yelled at them for buying the cell phones, you would not have a cell phone today. So I'm not angry at these people for being rich and then buying a flight or being put on a flight. And frankly, that's fine with me. However, I am kind of annoyed at the like first females in all female crew. Really?

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So don't give me your free speech concerns. when you guys have been cracking down on free speech yourselves for a long time. At the very least, if you want to say that free speech doesn't apply, they're a private university, all right, then you have to be a private university. You can't have it both ways. You can't say free speech applies to us. We are a free speech institution.

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What was Gayle King's training to be an astronaut? Precisely. Well, guess what, guys? There's even more show. So apparently SNL went full anti-woke. We'll get to that in a moment. Plus, you're going to have to join if you want to actually have your questions answered in our vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag. Become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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Also, we want your taxpayer money. That's not the way that it works. At least it shouldn't work that way. However, Professor Nicholas Bowie says, this is authoritarian. No, what seems authoritarian to me is you seizing my taxpayer money, shoving it in your giant endowment, and then cramming down a bunch of left-wing agitprop on your tens of thousands of students.

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I'm confused. How is it tyranny to say you don't get federal dollars if you violate the Civil Rights Act? The Trump Task Force on Antisemitism has been investigating Harvard, among other universities, because, again, during the gigantic anti-Semitic protests that erupted last year after October 7th, and many of them were, in fact, openly anti-Semitic. We're not just talking anti-Israel.

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The reason for this is because Harvard refuses to go along with the federal government's demands that it abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act dictates that universities and any business that actually receives federal funding must abide by anti-discrimination law.

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We're talking about full-scale screening for Jews walking through courtyards. Shabazz Kestenbaum is a student at Harvard University. He sued the university. His case is currently in court right now based on all of this sort of stuff. And he has many stories to tell about what happened at Harvard University while he was there.

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The idea that Harvard did not violate the Civil Rights Act is ridiculous. Now, does that mean that every demand that the Trump administration is making is going to get upheld in court? No, I'm sure that some of those demands will be held to be extraneous to the Civil Rights Act complaint the Trump administration is voicing on Harvard.

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However, Harvard does not have any moral grounds to stand on when they insist that everyone else pay the bills at an incredibly rich university so that they can continue pushing whatever nonsense it is they are pushing. Well, the Trump administration is looking for places to cut fat. Well, you should be cutting fat from, you know, your cell phone company.

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Pure Talk is the cell phone company I use for business every day. They are cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is correct. Pure Talk says, I don't think so. It's $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this.

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Unlimited talk, text 15 gigs of data, plus mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. And the best part, right now you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus. Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored, ad-free daily shows. As always, your free Leftist Tears Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S.

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customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now.

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puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with that qualifying plan. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also... Now, there are a lot of problems that you have in your life that you can't take care of preemptively, just things that arrive on you that you can't see coming.

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Well, one of the things that actually you can see coming a long way off is something that will happen to us all. That, of course, is death. And that means you need to secure your family's future against that with PolicyGenius Life Insurance. They make finding coverage simple, giving your loved ones a financial safety net to handle debt, expenses, even build wealth over time.

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Ep. 2179 - Trump SMASHES Harvard

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Their licensed experts are with you every step of the way, answering questions, handling paperwork, advocating for you, seeing if the coverage you need and get back to living your life. 40% of people wish they'd gotten life insurance earlier. Get ahead today, give you and your loved ones peace of mind knowing they'll be financially protected if something happens to you.

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Now, you cannot like some aspects of the Civil Rights Act, its attempts to intrude into the private sphere, for example. But the Civil Rights Act is, in fact, the Civil Rights Act. And the fact is that if a university had facilitated anti-Black racism to the extent that Harvard University has facilitated anti-Semitism, there is no question that removal of its federal funding would be on the table.

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Don't just take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation. Secure your families tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today.

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Ep. 2179 - Trump SMASHES Harvard

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Head over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click that link in the description and get your free life insurance quotes. See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. Okay, meanwhile, in other sort of hot legal fights, Yesterday, Nayib Bukele, who's the head of El Salvador, stopped by the Oval Office with President Trump.

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And they were talking about a very controversial case surrounding a man named Kilmer Armando Abrego Garcia. That person is a Salvadoran national who lived illegally in the United States. And he was adjudicated as credibly accused, not just of being an illegal immigrant, but of being a member of MS-13. by a variety of courts. That doesn't mean they found that he was, in fact, a member of MS-13.

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They were saying that there was credible evidence that suggested that he might be a member of MS-13 and the executive branch has the ability to deport him. That was found several years ago. Then there was a withholding order that was put on him because he made a claim that if he were deported specifically to El Salvador, that he would be killed. Well, the Trump administration then deported him.

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In court, they claimed in their filings that they'd made a mistake in deporting him. They admitted they'd made a mistake in deporting him, not because he shouldn't be deported, but because they didn't realize that the withholding order was still good and they had to go through the process. So he ended up being deported. He goes down to El Salvador.

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He's currently being held in prison in El Salvador. And the Supreme Court found nine to nothing, not that he couldn't be deported. They found nine to nothing, that the process by which he was deported was flawed. And the Supreme Court suggested that a lower court clarify its directive with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.

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And they said the U.S. government had to, quote, facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. So the question legally here rests on what it means to facilitate his return from El Salvador. Again, this is not about him ending up in the United States.

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So yesterday in the Oval Office, Large-scale controversy broke out because Bukele was there. Bukele is the head of the prison that is holding this particular Salvadoran national. He is doing so under the terms, by the way, of an agreement between the United States and El Salvador. As Andrew McCarthy over at National Review points out, there's actually an agreement between the U.S.

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government and El Salvador. It's for temporary detention for a period of one year. By the conclusion of that period, the United States is supposed to make a final decision on the detainees' long-term dispositions.

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The idea here is that the United States still does have some level of control over the detainees that we are sending there because there's still supposed to be some sort of final disposition of those people. Do they get sent back to Venezuela? Do they get sent back to Mexico? Wherever it is they're supposed to be sent back to.

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So yesterday, members of the media started asking about this particular national. They started asking about, is he being brought back? Why won't you send him back? Pam Bondi, the attorney general, she was in the oval office. Here's what she had to say.

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Okay, so that's not quite what they ruled. They ruled that he was credibly accused of being a member of MS-13 and that the executive branch had the ability to deport him. So that part of what she's saying is true. Stephen Miller, as always, makes the most credible case for what the administration is doing. Stephen is obviously incredibly articulate and very hard on this issue. Here we go.

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Now, we can also be real about the politics of the situation, which is that federal funding should not be going to these universities anyway. So how much money does Harvard actually get from the federal government? I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity exactly how much money does Harvard University receive on an annualized basis from the federal government?

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Okay, now, it's true he's a Salvadoran citizen. The question is whether he went through due process in the United States before we deport him. This is a separate issue from whether we should deport him. The answer is, presumably, we should deport him, and the Trump administration does have the power to deport him.

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The question is whether he went through the due process to which pretty much everybody in America is actually, oh, it's not the same due process. If you're not a citizen, the process is different than if you are a citizen, for example. For his part, Bukele, who is a strong ally to President Trump, particularly on immigration and crime, He says he's not going to return the prisoner.

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OK, now, of course, that's a bit of a red herring. The reality is that the United States is not actually going to request that Bukele smuggle him back into the United States. The question is whether under the Supreme Court's ruling, we have to facilitate his return so that he can be adjudicated, not here legally, and then he gets sent out of the country.

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And so facilitation might mean that we request it of Bukele. The idea we have no control over the people that were shipping down to this prison in El Salvador is obviously not particularly true. And nobody has taught what we're paying El Salvador right now, some $6 million for the current arrangement. So again, this is an interesting legal issue.

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As far as a moral issue, the fact is that this is a loser for Democrats. It's a loser for the left. People do not want to see MS-13 members in the United States. And if the idea is that he didn't get his day in court, I mean, his case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. If the idea is that he must be returned so that he can have a one-day hearing and then deported again,

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I don't think that's something most Americans are going to lose sleep over one way or another. President Trump, however, he says, because President Trump is always going to go to the limit. He says the homegrowns are next. Not clear what he means by this.

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They said Harvard University receives substantial funding from the federal government each year, primarily to support its research activities. In fiscal year 2024, Harvard received approximately $686 million from federal agency.

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Well, folks, enormous amount to get to on today's show. Wild controversy over a new refugee program for Afrikaners, white people, from South Africa. Plus, the latest on President Trump's Middle East trip and some good economic news. But first, a new trade deal with China, big changes on prescription drugs, a first look at House Republicans' tax cut legislation, and much more happening this week.

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And he's holding his hands in the symbol of a gun. It means an entire stadium. Okay, so he seems like a delightful fellow, a bunch of communists who are shouting to kill the boar because never in the history of humanity have we ever seen communists attempt to exterminate an entire class of people. I mean, except for pretty much every communist regime everywhere.

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So yeah, you might see why South Africans who are white feel that they themselves are under threat. So why is it a big deal that Afrikaners are being granted refugee status to come to the United States? Well, the reason is because the left is utterly puzzled at the idea that white people can ever be refugees. Ever.

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And they're absolutely puzzled at the idea that has been expressed by, for example, the State Department Deputy Chris Landau, that Afrikaners might have an easier time assimilating in the United States than, say, Afghan refugees. Here's Chris Landau talking about this yesterday.

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Because that last statement that the left is freaking out about. Why are Afrikaners? Why is it that they can assimilate easily to our country? Well, believe it or not, it isn't about the fact that they are white. They all speak English. They are by and large capitalists. They agree with fundamental constitutional rights, which are being violated in South Africa. Those would be the reasons.

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Why do these refugees get in when, say, Afghan refugees are not getting in? The arrival represents a drastic reversal, says the New York Times, in the United States' refugee policies, which have long focused on helping people fleeing war, famine, and genocide.

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It has nothing to do with the color of their skin and everything to do with the ideas that they hold and the cultural hallmarks that they bear in common with the United States that may not hold true for, for example, Afghan refugees, where you literally have no idea what their ideas are. They don't speak English.

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There are a lot of things culturally they do not have in common with Americans, up to and including a belief in constitutional rights. So yes, I mean, are we going to just pretend that all potential immigrants to the United States have an equivalent level of assimilative capability? Is that what we're going to pretend now? That's obviously untrue. It's clearly untrue.

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But the left is going insane about this. So the New Republic put out an entire piece just enraged about this. Trump official says quiet part out loud on white Afrikaner refugees. And so they say the deputy secretary's language indicates the Trump administration is willing to admit refugees who are more culturally and ethnically cohesive with the predominantly white U.S. population.

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Trump has repeatedly attempted to blow up perceived cultural differences between U.S. citizens and immigrants as a basis for installing blatantly racist immigration policies. Well, again, I'm not sure why this is chiefly about ethnicity. I mean, President Trump explicitly said it was not about ethnicity. It does have to do with the fact that, for example, they speak English.

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And for example, they believe in constitutional rights, like for example, property rights and freedom of speech. That makes them much better candidates for assimilation than your sort of rando from the Middle East. Because they are coming from, again, a country

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where they have been attempting to preserve, in the same way that, for example, Cuban refugees who are coming to the United States because they hate communism are going to be more assimilatable than people who are coming from regimes with giant government services and they're coming here for the welfare. Like, we can't pretend that everyone is equally capable or interested in assimilation.

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That's silly. And by the way, it's not just President Trump who believes that. Keira Starmer, who's a full-scale leftist in the UK, put out a tweet yesterday, quote, if you want to live in the UK, you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements across every main immigration route. That's Keira Starmer. Is that the Labour Party?

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The South Africans say they've been discriminated against and now job opportunities have been subject to violence because of their race, though the specifics of their cases are unclear. So President Trump said farmers are being killed. He's talking about in South Africa, there've been a spate of murders of farmers in South Africa.

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Does that mean that he's a brutal racist? How does this work exactly? But you can see why the left is upset because the truth is that the left believes many of the same fundamental things that the ANC, the modern ANC believes in South Africa, which is to say that the world is basically just South Africa writ large. That the United States is South Africa writ large. That essentially,

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Any population that is white and successful owes it to the rest of the world, literally the rest of the world, to import people regardless of assimilative ability because there is some sort of peculiar reparative guilt that must now be enacted. You can see that in much of the language that is being provoked and pushed forward by the left here. The Episcopal Church, by the way,

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has now withdrawn from its own working with the refugee program. They put out a statement saying, quote, in light of our church's steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step.

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Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the federal fiscal year, we'll conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government. So again, the idea is that if they're white people, then the Episcopal Church is out. which is an amazing statement. Why can't there be white refugees from a country that is clearly enacting racialist policies? Why is that?

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It's bizarre. Well, Yamiche Alcindor of MSNBC was doing the same routine, singing from the same hymnal. Here she was.

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Okay, so again, it's got a lot of people appalled, according to Yamiche Alcindor, to say that perhaps Afrikaners are going to be more easily to assimilate.

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So it has people appalled, according to Yamiche Alcindor of MSNBC, to say that it's easier to assimilate Afrikaners from South Africa than it would be to assimilate people from third world countries who have no history whatsoever of engagement with Anglo-American ideals, constitutional frameworks, property rights, or the language of English.

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Farmers in South Africa, people who own land in South Africa are disproportionately white compared to the surrounding population, which means that many of the farmers who are being killed are in fact white. And yes, there have been enormous numbers of farmers who are killed for racial reasons.

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Now, what's amazing about this is this is actually a widely held belief inside the Democratic Party.

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And it has been since the 60s, this sort of idea that America bears some sort of bizarre blood guilt for its success, that the West bears a blood guilt for its success against all sorts of peoples who are unsuccessful and therefore owes an obligation to import people from all over the world from these countries that actually do not share a cultural history with the Anglo-American sphere.

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This, in fact, is one of the driving forces behind the shift in immigration in the United States. So here is a chart. This is a chart based on the yearbook of immigration statistics and crafted by a woman named Talia Bronstein, showing the point of origin, the country of last residence for immigrants throughout American history.

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And of course, what you see here is that if you go back to the 19th century, predominantly you are seeing immigrants from Europe. You're seeing enormous number of immigrants in say 1850 from the UK, an enormous number from Ireland, a huge number from Germany. Now it's worth noting at the time that there were still major concerns in the United States about the assimilation of Germans and Irish.

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I mean, there was open anti-German and anti-Irish discrimination in the United States during this period. The Know-Nothing Party, which was actually a rather large force in American politics, was created as a response to immigration largely from Ireland.

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I mean, Gangs of New York, the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis is based specifically on this thing, based on anti-immigrant sentiment against what we would now call white people. So there's always been questions in the United States about how easy it is to assimilate people from various countries. And what does that mean for the people who are born in the United States?

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But what you see... is a massive shift in the immigration status of the United States and how immigration is done in the United States beginning in about 1965. So all the way up until 1965, you see, first of all, enormous growth in the U.S. population via immigration, basically all the way up to the early 1920s. And most of that immigration, again, is from Europe.

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You're talking an enormous number from Austria-Hungary, from Ireland, from Italy now, from Russia. There's a shift toward Eastern and Southern Europe as opposed to Western Europe. But all those people, you know, would now be considered, quote unquote, white.

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I mean, at the very least, the sort of evidence left on scene at the murders suggests that race played a part. President Trump had this to say about why he was allowing the refugees to enter the United States from South Africa.

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And again, there are serious considerations in American immigration history with regards to how do you assimilate, for example, Jewish immigrants from Russia. This is a major issue. And it led to some rather discriminatory policies at, say, country clubs, for example. Okay, so in the 1920s, there was a radical downshift in terms of immigration.

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That's what on this chart, you can see a giant decline in immigration that stretches from about 1920 all the way until basically the end of World War II. And then following World War II, in 1965, there was an immigration bill sponsored by Teddy Kennedy, the so-called Immigration and Nationality Act. And it radically shifted how immigration was done in the United States.

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You wonder why it used to be all European immigrants and now it is almost no European immigrants. And the answer is because of Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So it used to be that the United States had a system of quotas, and those quotas were largely based on who can assimilate most easily.

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And so it preferenced people who were from, for example, Western Europe, and then it went to people who were from Eastern Europe, and then went into people who were from Africa or from Asia. And there were quotas based on country. In 1965, those quotas were completely exploded. And instead, it established a new preference system that was based on family reunification, chain migration.

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So if you got in, you got to bring your entire family. And it obliterated all sort of quota systems with regard to Europe. So the law set annual caps at the time, 170,000 visas for the Eastern Hemisphere and a cap of 120,000 visas for the Western Hemisphere. Now, again, the Western Hemisphere would be South and Latin America.

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And you can see the predictable result, which is that over the course of time, you now see a massive uptick in the number of immigrants from Mexico, a huge number of immigrants from the Caribbean and other Americas like Latin America, Central America, huge uptick from Asia as well. European immigration basically plummets to almost zero. I mean, really, really, really down.

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And the question is, why exactly did Teddy Kennedy do this? And the answer is that Teddy Kennedy, like many members of the left, did believe in this idea of a sort of European guilt toward the rest of the world and an American guilt toward the rest of the world. And so what he said is that the existing quota system was fundamentally an unfair and inconsistent with American values.

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This is where you get the Democrats today saying that the sort of credo of Americanism is the Statue of Liberty where we welcome your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free. That that is how immigration needs to be done. As opposed to, you can come here, but there will be no welfare system to support you.

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And this is a huge difference, by the way, in the pre-World War II era in the United States versus the post-World War II era in the United States. The type of immigrants who are drawn to the United States change over time. America in 1900 basically had zero welfare system for people who are coming here.

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So when my great, great grandparents got to the United States in the early 20th century, there was no welfare system, essentially. They came to the United States. They had to, by dint of necessity, learn English and assimilate because if they did not, they would not make enough money to survive. And so they assimilated.

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This is very common, by the way, in Jewish households in the early 20th century is that they would come speaking Yiddish and then they would tell their kids they were not allowed to speak Yiddish in the house so that their kids would learn to speak English with more alacrity and assimilate more quickly. And that is for both cultural reasons, you're leaving behind the old country.

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And also because the idea is that you need to assimilate to American culture. That's why you came is to be part of the American dream, not to bring the European or Eastern European or Russian or Lithuanian dream to the United States. The American dream is a different thing. It's about upward mobility, assimilation to a commerce-driven culture that has at its basis Anglo-American law.

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After World War II, the growth of the American welfare state and the availability of that welfare changes the kinds of people who are coming to the United States, not in terms of race, but in terms of who's trying to get in. There's a difference between a job-available sign in the window of a store and a free donuts sign in the window of a store.

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A jobs available sign is likely to draw people who want to work and get a job. A free donut sign is likely to draw everyone who wants a free donut. And the United States totally changed its immigration system for the free donut crowd.

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And again, the reason that Teddy Kennedy did this, and he literally said this openly, is that he believed it was unfair and un-American to have quota systems based on the assimilative capacity of the people coming in. By the way, he also lied. He said that the bill would, quote, not flood our cities with immigrants or upset the ethnic mix of our society.

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So it's all based on the sort of fairness and justice and reparative fairness and justice. And this is why you're seeing so much heartburn over the possibility of Afrikaner immigrants, because what President Trump is saying is the truth, which is that not everybody is going to assimilate to American values at the same rate. Not everybody has those same ideas.

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We should probably check before people come into the country. All of that makes perfect sense. The fact that the left is resisting that speaks to a bizarre idea about what America is and what it needs to be, which is basically an open door free donut shop to everybody who wants to get in.

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And somehow America owes that to the rest of the world because America is only successful through some form of exploitation. that in the same way that there needs to be reparative justice in South Africa because whites used to harm blacks, America somehow owes it to the rest of the world to let anybody in.

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And if you say that that's not true, then you're undermining the left's perception of Americanism. And that, of course, is wrong and destined for failure in the United States. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just starting.

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If you miss the April 15th deadline or you still owe back taxes, the IRS is in fact ramping up. Enforcement every day you wait only makes things worse. With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, The IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years.

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Acting now could stop penalties, threatening letters, and surprise levies before they escalate. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. You may have missed April 15th, but you haven't run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help before the IRS makes their next move. Again, you don't want to face down the IRS alone. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

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That's tnusa.com slash Shapiro. I always used to assume that restless sleep was inevitable. Tossing, turning, waking up with a bad back. I convinced myself that's just what sleep was as you got older. And then I tried Helix Sleep, and now everything is better. It's truly been transformative for my sleep quality.

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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I easily fall asleep in minutes, even when the news would be keeping me awake normally. What makes Helix different is they don't just sell you a random mattress. They actually match you with the perfect mattress for your body and sleep style. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, somewhere in between, they've got you covered. They make it so simple to get your best night's sleep every night.

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All you have to do is take their sleep quiz and get matched with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Trust me, when you find the right match, no wonder how you ever slept on anything else. Most people just go down to that big box mattress store. They lie on the thing for like two seconds and like, ah, this one's probably good enough. It isn't.

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Again, just visit helixsleep.com for this exclusive offer. Well, joining us online is Ernst Roots. He, of course, is executive director of the Pioneer Initiative, as well as an activist on behalf of Boers and Afrikaners living in South Africa. Dr. Roots, good to speak to you.

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So let's discuss what exactly is happening with President Trump and the South African refugee plan. So first of all, I just want to get some facts on the table for folks who are not familiar with the situation there. There have been claims that there is a quote unquote genocide against whites in South Africa. There have been claims with regard to the targeting of white farmers in South Africa.

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What's true? What's false? What is the threat level to whites, particularly Afrikaners who are living in South Africa?

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OK, the last part is actually the relevant part. We'll talk about whether, in fact, there's a quote unquote genocide of whites in South Africa in just a little while with Dr. Ernst Root, who is the deputy CEO of Afroforum. And we will talk with him about what exactly is happening there, because obviously he's the guy on the ground who's been on the show before and wanted to get an update.

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So let's talk for a second about these sort of kill the board chants. So those have been obviously issued over and over and over by Julius Malema, who's the head of the EFF, which is a radical communist party in South Africa. The ANC government, which has been running the place, the ANC has been running the place since the end of apartheid, essentially since 1994.

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They sort of want to play both sides. On the one hand, they'll say that they oppose Malema, that the kill the board chants are, you know, they might not be the best thing. On the other hand, they've obviously made overtures to many of Malema's supporters and to Malema himself. What is the relationship between all of those parties? Yeah.

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So there's been a lot of talk, obviously, in the United States about taking in Afrikaners to the United States, the refugee plan. There's been opposition from many of the usual suspects who suggest that perhaps they don't deserve refugee status or people who are offended by the idea that whites can't be refugees, which, of course, is absurd. What do you make of the refugee plan?

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Is it the right idea? What is the longer term solution in South Africa?

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But in order to understand why the United States is bringing Afrikaners to the United States, we actually have to know a little bit of the history. So Afrikaners, Boers, have been in South Africa since 1652. That's when the Dutch East India Company established a station at the Cape of Good Hope. What does this mean?

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And as you and I discussed when last we spoke, you're the executive director of the Pioneer Initiative. Your goal is to essentially have more sort of dissemination of rights to local government so that people can actually be protected in the areas in which they live instead of having an overarching, very strong government at the top that essentially presides over a racialized system.

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Instead, just evolve more authority to a local system that actually allows borders to preserve their property rights, their rights, their culture and all the rest.

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Well, Dr. Roos, if people wish to help out beyond, obviously, the refugee issue, how should they help you out?

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Well, it means that for legitimately 350 years, there have been white people in South Africa. Originally, the Afrikaners were Dutch. Eventually, they were joined by both German and French citizens. The British Empire came in the early 19th century to establish its own colonies in South Africa. Eventually, this led to conflict. The British expanded their reach.

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Dr. Root, really appreciate your time and your insight and good luck with that.

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Okay. Meanwhile, President Trump, his trade thought is sparking a massive stock rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average It's kind of hanging around after its big jump yesterday. Again, everything is momentum driven in the stock market right now because of all the uncertainty.

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As I suggested yesterday, it was my feeling the stock market would not continue to rapidly increase on the basis of President Trump rolling back the tariff regime. Because the reality is that before Liberation Day, we had a certain tariff rate and we've now probably quadrupled or quintupled that average tariff rate. And that is going to have some impact on the American economy.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, stocks are surging, but Wall Street isn't ready to declare victory in the trade war just yet. The Dow Industrials ended yesterday with a gain of 2.8% and settled above 42,000, which is above where they stood on Liberation Day. But investors remain cautious because they're not really sure what the impact of the continued tariff regime is going to be.

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President Trump yesterday talked up the total reset with China. Here he was.

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Okay, now, the reality is the United States gained very little kind of in general terms from this mini trade war with the Chinese. I mean, we are not ending in a better position than we started with the Chinese, per se. We could have put a 30 percent tariff on them in the first place. So all the kind of talk where people say, well, this is all strategery. It wasn't. It wasn't strategery.

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Liberation Day was quite real. And then reality hit and they walked back Liberation Day by giving Treasury Secretary Scott Besson control of the vehicle, which is the correct move. There are some downside effects to what's been going on, namely a lot of heartburn with regard to our normal trade partners who are now triangulating with China.

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Also, Beijing now knows that if the United States threatens a thing, it is probably pretty easy to back the United States off that threat. If the idea is economic sanctions, if, for example, they blockade Taiwan, well, how long would that last? Unclear at the very least. And as far as where we currently stand,

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Basically, where we are now is a 10% global tariff and higher for China, probably 30% for China. There aren't these big substantial trade deals quite yet. It's better than it was. It's not amazing. And I think that's where the markets are currently sitting. Now, Scott Pesant is laying out the future of the Trump economic plans. And this, of course, is more salutary for investors.

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The Boers made their way inland because they didn't actually want to be under the the edict of the British Empire. Eventually, there were some conflicts. The biggest conflict was the Second Boer War. That was because the Afrikaners were in an area called the Transvaal. The Transvaal, it turned out, was a region very heavy in gold.

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He says, yes, it's about trade, but mostly it's going to be about tax and deregulation. That's the stuff the markets are waiting for, is the tax bill to go forward and deregulation of the economy.

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Okay, so again, all of this is good. All of this is necessary. It should be noted at this point that the trade war that President Trump has declared is not by any stretch of the imagination over. Austin Goolsbee is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

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He says, yes, the new tariff regime that we sort of backed into is definitely less impactful stagflationarily than the path they were on, stagflation being higher inflation and lower growth. But it's three to five times higher than it was before. So it's going to have a stagflationary impulse on the economy. It will make growth slower and make prices rise.

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With that said, core price inflation, core CPI, continues to move in the right direction. Consumer prices rose 0.2% in April. Core CPI was up 0.2%. That is below the 0.3% forecast. So we are, again, moving toward normality in terms of inflation. So all of that is quite good. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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First, don't mistake what I'm about to tell you for another injectable weight loss solution. This is entirely different. These impressive weight loss results come from a physician-developed dietary supplement called Lean. Lean was developed by medical and academic professionals as an alternative to GLP-1 medications, eliminating the need for injections.

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Research on the components in Lean demonstrates their ability to regulate glucose levels, significantly decrease hunger sensations, and enhance metabolism by utilizing fat stores as an energy source. Real people have seen real results and have shared their experience. Patty S said, I finally found a weight loss product that works. I wanted to lose 20 pounds and Lean really curbs my appetite.

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Today, you hear about the BRICS nations and you hear about the reliance on gold. South African gold has been a very big thing for a century and a half. The finding of gold in the Transvaal essentially incentivized the British Empire to try and expand its holdings in South Africa, leading to the Second Boer War that eventually ended with the British Empire victorious.

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Kelly F said, amazing. I immediately noticed an energy boost and a healthy loss in weight. I would promote this product to anyone. One of my producers has been getting set up with Lean, told me he's excited to see the results. If you or someone you know is struggling to lose weight, and a healthy diet and exercise don't seem to be doing enough for you, lean is for you.

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Let's get you started with 20% off. Just use code BEN20 at takelean.com. That's code BEN20 at takelean.com. Again, takelean.com. Results vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It is not a substitute for care from a healthcare provider. All right, so how about that tax bill?

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So the latest on the tax bill is that Republicans are now, in fact, looking to raise the debt limit substantially, like a lot. The House has unveiled a plan to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion, according to The Hill.

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The proposal, which was included in legislative text unveiled by the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday, is in line with House instructions outlined in a blueprint adopted by congressional Republicans last month to kick off the process in order to push forward the big, beautiful tax bill.

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Including the debt ceiling in the broader bill allows Republicans to avoid Democratic demands in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit. So that also means they need to move faster because you actually have to push the debt ceiling in a faster timeline. You have to do it by July, essentially. Obviously, this is going to happen.

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Again, this idea that the Congress is ever going to get spending under control, let's just be real about this. They're really, really not. Unless they're willing to full-scale restructure entitlement programs, nothing is going to change about the debt trajectory of the United States. Anybody who's telling you differently is lying to you.

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It ain't going to be done through cutting, quote, waste, fraud, and abuse. That is not enough. What actually needs to happen is restructuring the entitlement programs. Meanwhile,

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House Republicans have released a highly anticipated plan, according to the New York Post, late on Sunday to slash roughly $900 billion in spending over the next decade that is supposed to, quote unquote, pay for the tax cuts. How are they going to do this? By doing something they should be doing anyway, imposing work requirements on Medicaid.

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Now, this actually is a structural change that is good and useful. And Medicaid is a means-tested welfare program. An enormous number of people on Medicaid claim that they can't work when actually they probably can. The committee's main job has been to figure out what to do about Medicaid. That'd be the energy and commerce panel.

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They're supposed to come up with more than half of the $1.5 trillion in total cuts that House Republicans were eyeing for the legislation. So Medicaid, of course, is a means-tested welfare program that is directed at the poor. So what exactly are they proposing? Well, they're mandating an 80-hour-per-month work requirement on able-bodied adults aged 19 to 64 enrolled in the program.

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Volunteer work and school would count toward the requirement. First of all, it's insane we don't already have this. 80 hours per month? Per month? I mean, let's just chart that out, gang. That's 20 hours per week. That means that if you wanna be eligible for Medicaid, then you have to work for four hours per weekday. Four hours.

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And you can do it via volunteer work or by going to school also to be eligible for Medicaid. That does not seem like too big a push for me. Unless you're on full-scale disability, in which case you can show a disability and you'll still be eligible. Yeah, you should have to work like a little in order to get Medicaid. States that enrolled in the Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid

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In 1948, fast forward half a century, the National Party came to power and adopted a formal regime of apartheid. By 1950, the races were being categorized by law with special privileges required. for whites as opposed to blacks. In 1960, the so-called Sharpeville massacre ended with the death of 69 anti-apartheid protesters.

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would see a federal reimbursement rate drop from 90 to 80% if illegal immigrants are part of the program. So again, the goal there would be, why should the federal government pay for a state that is essentially taking care of illegal immigrants? Because then they're just passing that cost onto the federal government.

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Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes over the federal poverty line would have to pay up to $35 per medical service. And again, it's a means-tested welfare program, so that makes sense. It required eligibility checks on expanded Medicaid enrollees every six months as opposed to annually.

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State Medicaid programs cannot reimburse healthcare providers like hospitals more than Medicare does because then you're basically competing against yourself. So if the idea is that Medicare is paying for a reimbursement of a state hospital and Medicaid is coming in at a higher rate then obviously that leads the hospitals to take Medicaid more than Medicare.

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It thrusts people onto Medicaid rather than Medicare. And that is not salutary. It would put a ban on Medicaid and CHIP, that's Children's Health Insurance Program funding, for transgender nonsense. And it bars middlemen, pharmacy benefit managers, from charging higher prices to Medicaid than if they were to actually just pay for the drugs straight up.

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Now, of course, the CBO is freaking out about this. They're saying it could lead to 8.6 million Americans losing health insurance and $715 billion worth of cuts over a 10-year period. But in reality, the program was designed for people who are disabled, for people who are truly poor. I mean, that is what it was for.

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For the working poor and people who are severely disabled and the elderly and children and mothers. Democrats are going to demagogue this, of course, because they have to. But the truth is that it is foolishness for them to have to tie this to a tax bill in the first place. I mean, they should really just do this anyway.

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I mean, this is essentially just a form of welfare reform that Bill Clinton would have signed into law in 1997. There are some Republicans on the Senate side who are very much in favor of a sort of big government European rightism. Josh Hawley is one of them, the senator from Missouri. He called the proposal, quote, morally wrong and politically suicidal.

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He writes in the New York Times, quote, a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans call it the party's Wall Street wing is urging Congress to ignore all of this and get back to old time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance. That is not social insurance. If you are not working and if you're not trying to work, that's not social insurance.

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That is just mooching. Unless you have a severe disability, obviously, or you're unable to work for some other reason. And again, we have provisions for that in law. Medicaid, says Chip Roy, the excellent congressperson from Texas, said was never meant to be this expansive. We have a duty to safeguard taxpayers and ensure Medicaid does not bankrupt us. Cut the waste, cut the fraud, cut the abuse.

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So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out with various dynamics in the Senate and the House as well. Meanwhile, speaking of deregulation, I'll tell you what is not deregulation is this Trump executive order to quote unquote lower drug prices by essentially cramming down Medicaid prices on pharma companies. That is not in fact deregulation.

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In 1961, Nelson Mandela, who you'll know from all the movies, of course, and the fact that he's one of the most famous men who ever lived, declared the end of nonviolent resistance and actually began engaging in violent activities directed against the government. He was arrested the next year.

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That is in fact a brand new regulation and a very heavy regulation. Here's President Trump explaining his plan yesterday.

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Okay, now, in reality, what is this actually going to do? According to Axios, it's not quite as clear cut as President Trump just yelling at pharma companies. The order calls for drug makers to voluntarily cut their prices or face the threat of a most favored nation pricing regime that would peg the cost of their medicine to what's paid in other wealthy nations where they often sell for less.

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Again, he's applying the pressure in the wrong place. It shouldn't be on the pharma companies in the United States. The pressure should be on foreign countries to pay what the price would be in a free market. That's where the pressure should be applied. Now, President Trump loves clocking our European allies. How about do that? Clock them over that. That would be worthwhile.

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Clock the Canadians over that. You want to talk about the Canadians and the Europeans cheating us? That is an area where they actually are cheating us, where you have nationalized healthcare systems that are basically cramming down pricing on America pharma companies. And then by squeezing the price balloon at one end, the EU forces the price to inflate in the United States.

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President Trump could reverse that He could force other countries to pay what the going market rate would be for these drugs. Instead, he's pressuring the pharma companies, which again, just kills R&D in the United States. This is not the kind of deregulation that the Trump administration should be seeking at this point.

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The EO does call for other countries to increase what they pay for drugs to share the cost for biomedical innovation, but there are no actual methodologies attached to forcing all these other countries to actually do it. So it'll be fascinating to see how all of that plays out as well. Meanwhile, President Trump is in Saudi Arabia today to kick off his Middle Eastern trip.

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He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and he would end up spending nearly the next three decades in prison. In 1965, South Africa finally gained its independence, but as Rhodesia, with a white-only government. So the regime of apartheid, black people had no say in the government. They had no say over the direction of the country.

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He's going to be visiting the Saudis, and then he's going to head on over to the UAE, and then finally to Qatar. Of course, massive controversy breaking out over Qatar, as we discussed yesterday on the show.

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And when it comes to his trip to Saudi, he's bringing with him an enormous number of business and tech leaders, the goal being to get the Saudi royal kingdom to actually invest in American tech. which is wonderful. Getting Saudi money to invest in American business is great. The question is what concessions lie on the other side of that and what can actually be done in the Middle East.

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And President Trump's signal contribution to Middle Eastern history in his first term was the recognition that there are a lot of countries there that actually care more about the economy than just hating Jews. That was the basis of the Abraham Accords. It's why, for example, the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco all joined the Abraham Accords.

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The idea was economic development, tech development in the region would be better served than a sort of cross-religion hatred. That was also pushed forward by the fact that Iran was deeply threatening. Well, now the question in the Middle East is whether President Trump is going to maintain that very wise strategy in the Middle East or whether he's going to shift off of that toward something else.

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The reality is that America could easily push into Abraham Accords 2 by linking many of the things that are happening in Saudi, UAE, even Qatar, with what's happening in Israel. The United States seems to be simultaneously linking and delinking. It's kind of a strange strategy. Honestly, it's kind of unclear what the strategy is with regard to

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Saudi Arabia and Israel with regard to some sort of Abraham Accords? Are they going to try to speed run and end the war in Gaza? Are they going to let Israel finish the job in Gaza and then approach an Abraham Accord? What is happening along those lines?

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But the idea that President Trump is bringing along business leaders to meet with the Saudis or the UAE to actually invest in American business without the possibility of, say, policy concessions on the other side by the United States, that's fine. That's fine. Again, more investment in American business, better.

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The concessions from the United States should not be particularly rich to countries that historically have not had a particularly wonderful record with the United States. President Trump was asked about all of this yesterday when he was still in Washington, D.C., while signing an executive order by a member of ABC News.

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Over time, international pressure led to the eventual end of apartheid, with the ban on the African National Congress, which was Mandela's party, ended in 1990. Mandela was freed from prison in 1994, who was eventually inaugurated as president of South Africa. And according to the media, that's where the story basically ends.

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Okay, well, beware of Qatari's bearing gifts. Well, meanwhile, something I do love. Okay, President Trump did, in fact, through Steve Witkoff, broker the release of Idan Alexander, the last American hostage who was left in Gaza. Again, I know the family. I introduced the family to the Trump, to President Trump himself.

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Yesterday, in video that has to move you, Idan Alexander greeted his family for the first time.

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So that's his mom. Guys, big hugs for those who can't see. He was held in captivity for well over 500 days. Reports are that he was tortured and held in a cage by Hamas, which is why it would be ridiculous for Hamas to have any role in governing the Gaza Strip any time in the future.

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Yadon Alexander, obviously extraordinarily grateful to President Trump, held up a sign for President Trump on his way back into Israel from the tunnels that Hamas was holding him in for well over a year, saying, thank you, President Trump. I'm Israel. Hi. Meaning the nation of Israel lives. And he was a member of the Golani Brigade. So he has a he has a saying there in favor of the Golani Brigade.

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Again, thanks to President Trump. And yes, thanks to Steve Witkoff, who I've criticized a lot on this program. I think deservedly so. And we'll see what deal Steve Witkoff tries to cut off the back of all of this. With that said, big credit for freeing Edan Alexander, obviously. Now, meanwhile, again, the relationship with Qatar continues to be a problem.

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The Palestinian Authority obviously is now working in coordination with Qatar, which is a bad thing. The Palestinian Authority is slightly better than Hamas. I say slightly because the Fatah wing of the Palestinian Authority is, in fact, a terror group.

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And the Palestinian Authority still has on its books pay for slay, meaning that if you kill a Jew in Israel in a terror attack, the Palestinian Authority will pay your pension. The Palestinian Authority had a ban on Al Jazeera because Qatar was so radical that it was sponsoring Al Jazeera in order to push pro-Khamas propaganda, and Palestinian Authority didn't like that.

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Well, now, as the days of Hamas seem to be waning, now the Palestinian Authority is warming up to Qatar, according to the New York Times. The Palestinian Authority said late Monday it would lift a ban on Al Jazeera in the West Bank that it put into effect after accusing the outlet of inciting sedition and interfering in internal Palestinian affairs.

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And now it's not just a terrible segment. It's a full-blown disaster. That's right. We took a perfectly short, manageable late-night bit and we turned it into a full-length show. Why? Because no one asked us to. And that felt like the right reason. Now exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members, Ben After Dark delivers more of everything.

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So I think this may be the prelude to a sort of rapprochement between Qatar and Palestinian Authority to use the Palestinian Authority as the new tool to attack Israel, which, of course, the Palestinian Authority historically was. Joining me on the line is Jerome Spielman, born and educated in the United States. He moved to Israel in 2000.

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He serves as international spokesperson in the IDF reserves with the rank of major. And he is also working to transform the City of David, which is an amazing site, full disclosure, I'm a donor, into one of the world's most significant archaeological and historical sites.

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And one of the reasons I donate to City of David is because of the archaeological work they are doing, which is truly incredible. He has a brand new book titled When the Stones Speak, The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel's Enemies Don't Want You to Know. Jerome, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

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because we're not supposed to talk about anything that happened after the end of apartheid. Apartheid, bad apartheid, ends everything hunky-dory from here on in. Now, two things can be true at once. Apartheid was an evil system. It was wrong morally, and it was bad. Also, things that happened after apartheid, lots of bad things have happened after apartheid.

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So why don't we actually start on current events? Obviously, a lot going on in the Middle East. We've seen the release of the last American hostage by Hamas. A lot of discussion about what's going to happen next in the Gaza Strip. There are some people who are suggesting that Hamas should be allowed to remain in some sort of governance structure in the Gaza Strip.

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Seems like a lot of confusion on all sides. What do you make of it?

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Well, that gets to the topic of your book, When the Stones Speak, which is about the sort of archaeological history of the land of Israel and the attempt by the Palestinian authority and much of the Arab world to deny the connection between Judeo-Christian heritage and the land of Israel. So why don't you talk a little about what City of David is for people who don't know?

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There are lots of bad things in the world, and one of the dumb ways to cover politics is to suggest that because a bad thing is happening in one direction, that means no bad things have ever happened in the other direction or will ever happen in the other direction. So since the end of apartheid, there has been a radical upsurge in the amount of racial discrimination against whites.

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I think that one of the things that's so fascinating about your book, When the Stones Speak, and about this entire controversy is if you really want to understand what happened on October 7th, you have to understand that it is not a territorial issue.

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It is really, in its essence, a historical issue in which you have one party that basically denies the historicity of the entire Bible, suggests that everything that is Jewish-related or Christian-related in Jerusalem is an overt falsehood. And that that is why the land ought to belong to the Palestinian Authority or to the Muslim Brotherhood or to whomever.

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I mean, the stuff that you're uncovering, the reason it's controversial is specifically because it connects the history of Jerusalem to an ancient past that predates Islam by several thousand years.

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I mean, it truly is kind of incredible that you actually have an entire group of people who deny that the Temple Mount has anything to do with the temple, which is truly, I mean, it beggars the imagination to make that argument. But that argument is constantly made, which is why if you're wondering why they care about a pilgrimage road.

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So there's a giant road that people at City of David have uncovered that goes from the Siloam Pool, which is a place where people used to essentially cleanse themselves before going to the temple. And then they would walk up by two thirds of a mile. from the Siloam Pool all the way up to the Temple Mount.

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And you guys have actually uncovered this gigantic staircase that goes all the way from the bottom of the city of David up through. And in order to preserve Arab housing and shore it up, actually, you built this entire extraordinarily expensive tunnel. In the United States, we would just declare eminent domain, blow up whatever was on top, and then uncover the staircase.

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In Israel, because of the political sensitivity, billions of dollars have been spent in order to preserve the housing on top and shore it up against earthquake. and built this entire tunnel. And still you have the Palestinian authority and advocates for Palestinian Arab domination of the land and Muslim domination of the land.

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Now, we have to discuss the sort of population of whites in South Africa. How many whites are there? So let's talk about the population breakdown of South Africa by race. I turn to our sponsors over a perplexity to answer that question. What is the population breakdown of South Africa by race and how has it changed since 1900?

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You have those advocates suggesting that this staircase is somehow fake or unreal. And folks should understand that this staircase is certainly, when Jesus was yelling at people as they were going up to the temple about corruption in the temple, he was literally standing on the staircase. You can watch. I did a documentary with Jordan Peterson about the foundations of Western civilization.

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You can watch us walk this road and stop by a stone that almost certainly Jesus stood on while yelling at his fellow Jews not to corrupt the temple.

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Well, that is Daron Spielman. You can check out his brand new book, When the Stones Speak, The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel's Enemies Don't Want You to Know. Daron, I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Ben. All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

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We'll be getting to Alex Jones suggesting that world leaders are doing cocaine, plus Diddy and Diddy Watch. Yes, there's a lot on that. Remember, in order to watch, you actually have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So today, black Africans represent about 81.4% of the population of South Africa colored, which is a reference in South Africa to people of mixed race ethnicity. represent 8.2%. Whites represent 7.3%. That is a massive change since about 1900.

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So if you look at the population in 1904, for example, according to our friends at Perplexity, 67.3% of the population was black African, but fully a fifth, 21.6%, was white. Even as of 1960, those population percentages were relatively similar. That's 68% of the population of South Africa was black African. Almost 20% was white. By 1996, those percentages had shifted dramatically. Suddenly, 77%

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of the South African population was black, African, as opposed to 11% white. And today, obviously, the white population has dropped dramatically even further than that. The government has increasingly started to pass laws that are directed against whites in South Africa. Most famously, just this year, the South African president, a guy named Cyril Ramaphosa, who again is the head of the ANC.

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The ANC has been the governing party in South Africa since literally 1994, which should be strange to you. I mean, usually you don't have one party that governs an entire country for 30 years, but that's what's happening in South Africa. He has now turned a bill into a law allowing land seizures by the state without compensation.

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More uncensored takes, more cultural chaos, more unvetted questions from celebrities who should know better, and more segments that probably should not exist. This week, we ask Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee if he knows about Bill Belichick's new girlfriend. I found out if America actually has talent, and someone let a mystery guest ask me whatever was on their mind, totally unfiltered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is one of the things that is driving so much angst and the possibility of violence in South Africa is the great fear that South Africa is going to do the same thing that Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe, in which Zimbabwe basically just expropriated all land from whites and then targeted them as a government because land ownership in South Africa is still disproportionately white.

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And what that means is that South Africa, in an attempt to enact reparative justice. This is why reparations are always a problem. Because you are taking away from a living human being because of something their grandparents did. When you do that, what you end up with is a system of racial discrimination.

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According to the BBC, back in January, black people own only a small fraction of farmland nationwide more than 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid. The majority remains with the white minority. This has led to frustration and anger over the slow pace of reform. Ramaphosa's ANC party hailed the law as a significant milestone in the country's transformation.

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Some members of the coalition government say that they might challenge it in court. The law outlines how expropriation can be done and on what basis by the state and replaces the pre-democratic expropriation act of 1975. Now that expropriation act of 1975 put an obligation on the state to pay owners that it wanted to take land from under the principle of willing seller, willing buyer.

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Now it's basically just the state coming in and saying they will take your land and they can pay you zero, literally zero. The new laws allow for expropriation without compensation. What is the limitation? The government is only supposed to be able to do this in circumstances where it is, quote, just and equitable and in the public interest to do so.

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which means basically anytime the government wants. I mean, that is not a limitation at all. Just and equitable and in the public interest, Ramaphosa can simply say it's in the public interest to rejigger land ownership in South Africa. We are now taking all the land of white people in South Africa in response to South African apartheid.

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The Pro-Business Democratic Alliance, which is part of the current government, says it strongly opposes the law. It was consulting with its own lawyers, but they've not yet left the government. So this has been just one indicator of how bad things are getting for the white citizens of South Africa.

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Again, the sort of hunky-dory version of South African history says that everybody got together and gave a big group hug after the end of apartheid, and that is actually not what happened. The government has not done a particularly wonderful job of growing the economy, ending crime, or not discriminating against one entire class of its citizens.

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There are a lot of laws on the books in South Africa that were originally meant as quote unquote reparations after apartheid. Those included the Employment Equity Act, which basically acts as affirmative action for employment. It says that the government is supposed to mandate that certain numbers of black people be included in particular job sectors.

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There's the broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act, That actually says that governments cannot give loans, except if there is a certain level of black ownership, management or employment.

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There's the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act that requires government entities to prefer suppliers that have high points ratings, again, based on the amount of black ownership or black employment. According to one source, as of October 2023, there are 141 acts of parliament in the statutes that were openly preferential based on race.

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Oh, and there's a brand new Ben Destroys because it's either this or I start throwing things at my TV. It's the all new, definitively worse, absolutely more Ben After Dark, Friday night only at dailywireplus.com, only for members. You're welcome. Well, folks, every day a new controversy, this controversy particularly stupid. So the Trump administration has decided to grant

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, this is the great danger of these sort of racial reparations logic that you've seen people try to enforce in the United States too. This is what so much of Black Lives Matter was about. The idea was that America needed to enact its own system of racial preferences as a reparative to the sins of the past.

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And what you end up with is actual sins of the present in order to try and react to the sins of the past. In the immediate aftermath of apartheid, there was actually a slight decline in race-based law, but by the mid-90s, that had reversed dramatically. Now, as I say, the ruling ANC, the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, has been in charge of the country since 1994.

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They have never lost an election. In 2017, Jacob Zuma, the corrupt former president of the country from 2009 to 2018, adopted ANC policy that included, quote, fundamental change in the structures, systems, institutions, and patterns of ownership and control of the economy in favor of all South Africans, especially the poor.

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That's coded language for we're going to completely redo all the structures on a racialized basis. That policy included The expropriation of land bill that eventually became law on the basis of race. The ANC is a deeply corrupt party. Again, you don't have to be speaking about Mandela to talk about the ANC. The modern ANC is closely tied with the Chinese Communist Party.

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They receive money from it. They're also closely tied with Vladimir Putin's Russia. They are closely tied with Iran, which is it's now suspected probably bribed the country to initiate an international court of justice case against Israel just last year. The ANC has been losing electoral support over the years. It doesn't have a sheer majority in the legislature.

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It's in a national unity government with Democratic Alliance, which again opposes some of these things. But Democratic Alliance isn't standing up to the point that they can actually stop this agenda. Get some more on this in a moment. First, the American dream is under attack. Hardworking patriots like you are drowning in debt. That's exactly how creditors want it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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They love trapping you with high interest rates, endless student loans, crushing mortgage payments. When you're broke, you're easier to control. Are you ready to fight back and take control of your financial future? That's where PDS Debt comes in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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They've helped thousands of people break free from debt by understanding your unique financial situation and creating a personalized plan that actually works. There's no minimum credit score required. They're genuinely focused on helping you save more payoff debt faster and put money back where it belongs, in your pocket. What sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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PDSTAT holds an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and boasts a five-star rating on Trustpilot. Those aren't just numbers. They represent hundreds of thousands of real people who've escaped debt and reclaim their financial freedom with PDS Debt's help. And I know a lot of people in my own life who have serious debt problems. It can wreck your life. I get it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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You are 30 seconds away from being debt-free. Get your free debt assessment and find the best option for you right now at pdsdebt.com. That's pdsdebt.com. Go check them out right now. Folks, when I started Daily Wire, it felt like I had to figure everything out with minimal help. Editorial guidelines, studio setup, production schedule, branding. It was overwhelming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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New decisions were needed daily. Finding that one tool that simplifies everything when starting a business becomes a game changer and a lifesaver for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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Some white South Africans refugee status. Why? Well, because the government in South Africa discriminates against white South Africans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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We even use it for our own daily wire shop to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently so you can get the goods. You might be asking, what if I can't design a website or I'm worried people haven't heard of my brand? Not a problem.

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Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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And meanwhile, the outsider parties, you know, people like Julius Malema, you've seen Julius Malema on X, particularly as the head of the EFF, which is a radical party in South Africa. And he is most famous. They're called the Economic Freedom Fighters. They're communist black nationalists.

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They're also in 2018, by the way, I should point out that the head of the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa, allegedly said he wanted Malema back in his party. Malema used to be a member of the ANC. Here is a giant rally just a few years ago in which Julius Malema is leading an enormous crowd enchanting, kill the boar, the farmer, which is in fact the language of genocide.

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Ep. 2198 - Left FREAKS As Trump Accepts White Refugees

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According to the New York Times, dozens of white South Africans arrived in the United States on Monday on a charter jet after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration, which has made it virtually impossible for any other refugees to seek safe haven in America. And this, of course, is the problem that the left and the media are having.

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If you're talking about just kill the boars, that's no different than kill the blacks or kill the Jews. I mean, that That is what it is. Everyone who's attempting to read some sort of crypto message in there that somehow lets Julius Malema and the people who are chanting this off the hook substitute any other race for Boers and tell me that this isn't genocidal language. It just is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

Well, folks, a lot to get to today on the show. Everything from the stock market dump of yesterday and the state of the economy to the White House deciding to deport a Hamas sympathizer from the United States, green card holder. First, the mainstream media thinks you're too dumb to see through their lies. They like to twist the narrative or manipulate the headlines, bury the truth. We know better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The person who just replaced Justin Trudeau as head of the Liberal Party is a Davos boy. He's a World Economic Forum guy, and he is now riding high in the polls thanks to this tariff war that we're having with Canada. And fourth, says Balaji, MAGA sees the billions of dollars flowing from the United States to foreign recipients, but isn't grasping that the U.S.

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That is largely due to the widespread and correct perception that in immigration he has totally changed the ballgame. We are experiencing the lowest levels of illegal immigration ever recorded in the United States as far as I'm aware.

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can only print those dollars in the first place so long as it's the hub of a global empire. This is the point that I was making last week about the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Is that, yes, we fund a lot of places and a lot of places fund our debt. That is just the reality.

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He says, basically, MAGA is hyper-focused on cutting off any apparent flow of funds from red Americans to blue Americans and non-Americans. They're trying to quickly shut off imports, close down institutions, and exit all wars. Except the reason imports exist in the first place is because the United States products are not competitive relative to other products or Fed printing.

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The reason those institutions exist is because the United States set them up to run the world. The reason those wars are happening is not because of American leadership per se, but because of the absence of good leadership by America. If you shut all that down at once, you shut down American empire and with it the ability to print money, fund your debt or anything like that.

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This is a correct analysis. And if the world perceives that as the program, it is not going to be beneficial to the markets. It's not going to be beneficial to American citizens. Again, this is not America needs to be the world's global police person involved every single place. This is not America needs to trade with everybody at the same rate.

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This is if there is a generalized perception in the markets and across the world that America is withdrawing. That is not going to be beneficial for the United States because an American-led world order is better than a non-American-led world order. Beyond that, there are going to be some real downsides here in the United States. We need President Trump to succeed, particularly economically.

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We need him to succeed particularly economically. This picture, I think, is going to be the story of the next four years one way or another. This is a picture from the inauguration. You'll remember it because it was obviously a pretty famous picture. This is a picture of all of the tech bros arriving at the inauguration.

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And you can see it's Elon Musk, it's Cinder Pichai, who's the head of Alphabet. It's Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon. It's Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, Meta. They were all there at the inauguration. They were flanking President Trump.

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But when it comes to the economy, which is the thing that most people vote based upon, make their political decisions based upon, if President Trump is blamed for an economic downturn, the effects of that could be disastrous, not just obviously for the Trump administration, but for many of the things that are important for the United States, including free markets more generally.

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And it was sort of an amazing moment because you had all these business leaders, many of whom were not, in fact, allied with President Trump over the course of his career here. We're at the inauguration. Now, the only downside to that is that if the economy sinks, what do you think is going to take the blame? What President Trump is doing right now with tariffs, that is not free market oriented.

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Tariffs are not free market oriented. They're a government control on imports and exports. That's what they are. They're effectively a tax on consumers. If the economy dips, if the economy dips, the American people are going to perceive that business itself is to blame for what happens next.

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Regardless of the fact that many of the measures that are currently being taken by the sort of nationalist conservatives in terms of economics, measures like subsidies, new regulations in certain areas, tariffs, which are a form of regulation, that all of these sorts of battles really are not oriented toward free markets.

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They are more of a Bernie Sanders economic program in some ways than they are in a sort of traditional libertarian free market program. The perception of President Trump correctly is that he is a businessman and that he is capitalism oriented.

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If the economy sinks while he is president in a serious way where Americans turn against him, and again, he's underwater on the economy right now, if that happens, It is not just going to damage Trump, which would be terrible, and damage the Trump administration and the Republican future, which would be terrible. It is going to be used as a club against all of business, all of it.

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There will be a blowback against business, capitalism, and free markets, despite the fact that it wasn't business, capitalism, and free markets that brought us to this point. It was overweening government spending and a bunch of pseudo-corrective measures that are attempting to be taken by the Trump administration in the form of autarkic reshoring.

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The sort of popular response is something that I've learned over the course of watching politics at a granular level for almost a quarter of a century. I've been doing this since I was 17. I'm currently 41.

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One of the things that I've noticed, and this is true for everybody in every industry, when you're in an industry and you know the ins and outs of a thing, when you know the details of the thing, you think everybody else knows the details of the thing. You think everybody else follows the ins and outs. That's not true. And let's say that you are Leonardo da Vinci and you're painting the Mona Lisa.

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You know where every single brush stroke went. You know the amount of effort it took in. What did people take away from the Mona Lisa for most people? They walk into the Louvre. They look at the Mona Lisa. They see it's a lady with no eyebrows. They kind of shrug and they walk away. That is most people. And the same thing is true in every industry.

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If you're an accountant, you know the ins and the outs of the tax laws. And so you figure maybe everybody else kind of has a general idea. The answer is no. They just know whether they're paying more or whether they're paying less. And when it comes to politics... I may know, or you as a listener to shows like this one, may know the ins and outs of global geopolitics and economics.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, worries about a trade war, signs of flagging growth, splinters in the artificial intelligence trade have taken some of the shine off prior optimism. President Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a recession this year. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%. NASDAQ lost 4%. Bank stocks slid along with shares of smaller companies perceived to be sensitive to the economy.

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You may follow this stuff at a closer level than 99% of the rest of America. Most people only see line go up, line go down. And if line goes down while President Trump is president, the blowback is going to be not just against tariff policy. It's going to be against business. It's going to be against capitalism.

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It's going to be against Elon Musk and Pichai and Zuckerberg and Trump and everyone associated. The American public does not see issues in terms of nuance. The American public sees good or bad. If the economy goes down, then what you're likely to see is an upsurge in left-wing populist sentiment against free market capitalism.

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You're likely to still see the sort of Bill Burr perspective on economics, which is totally ignorant. And by the way, utterly hypocritical, given the fact that he's a millionaire himself who makes money saying used to be funny things on TV. But here, for example, is Bill Burr going after Elon Musk.

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Okay. Now, again, this sort of attack on Musk, this sort of neo-Nazi, he raised his arm stuff is nonsense, but the populist, anti-capitalist, anti-free market, anti-business attitude is going to be extremely common if the economy sinks. That's going to be a real, real problem. Well, he is not a genius, but you know what is genius? Policy genius.

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $292 per year for a million dollars in coverage. Some options are 100% online, let you avoid those unnecessary medical exams. The process is fast and simple. Their licensed support team handles everything, answering your questions, managing paperwork, advocating for you throughout the entire process.

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Bonds rallied. That's where money tends to go when people are uncertain what to do. They start buying bonds because at least they feel like they're going to get paid off at a certain point. While the US's strength is in question, other countries are ramping up efforts to revive their own economies. China is unleashing more stimulus to meet its economic growth target.

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Don't take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius will help you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation. Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description.

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Get your free life insurance quote, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. Also, what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market, inflation, up, down. Well, until we know for certain what's coming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Over 38,000 businesses have found a way to future-proof their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP. Imagine having your accounting, financial management, inventory all seamlessly integrated into one fluid platform. That's NetSuite. With this unified business management suite, you're not just juggling numbers.

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You're wielding a powerful tool that gives you visibility and control to make quick, informed decisions. It's like having a map in a maze of market uncertainties. Real-time insights and forecasting, check, is like peering into the future with actionable data at your fingertips. And here's a game changer. You'll be closing your books in days, not weeks.

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That means less time drowning in paperwork, more time focusing on what truly matters, steering your business toward success. At The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they're leading the way in future-proofing operations for businesses around the world.

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Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, NetSuite adapts to your needs, helping you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro.

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Now, one of the theories here is that one of the things President Trump is trying to do actually is devalue the American dollar so as to boost our exports for purposes of fixing the trade deficit. So I went to our friends over at Perplexity. And I asked a simple question, and Perplexity does a good job of explaining this sort of stuff.

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Quote, what are the effects on the ability of the United States to sell our debt if the value of the dollar drops? Because this is sort of the biggest single question. You heard Elon earlier talking about the fact that we pay more interest on our debt than we are currently paying on the defense budget. So what happens? Can we raise new debt if the dollar is devalued?

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And here is perplexity's excellent answer. Negative effect. Reduced foreign demand for U.S. treasuries. A weaker dollar may lower the appeal of dollar-denominated assets, including U.S. treasuries for foreign investors. If the dollar depreciates, foreign holders of U.S. debt could face losses when converting interest payments or principal back into their own currencies.

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Germany has announced a spending splurge on its military and infrastructure. Now, again, all of that is fake, meaning that if you just borrow to spend, which is what the United States has been doing for a very long time, you end up with an artificially inflated economy. This has happened in the United States. It's way more true for Germany and China, actually, than it is of the United States.

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This could lead to reduced investment in U.S. debt markets. Two, higher interest rates. To attract buyers for its debt amid declining demand, the U.S. government may need to offer higher yields on Treasury's increasing borrowing costs. Rising interest rates can also exacerbate concerns about debt sustainability and put upward pressure on real yields. Three, loss of confidence.

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A sustained drop in the dollar's value could signal broader economic instability, potentially triggering a loss of confidence among investors in U.S. financial assets. This could result in a sell-off of U.S. treasuries and further depreciation of the currency.

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In other words, everybody else who's holding our debt thinks that the new debt actually is going to be less valuable than the old debt, and they start selling it off. Four, inflationary pressures. A weaker dollar increases the cost of imported goods and services, potentially fueling inflation.

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Higher inflation erodes the real returns on fixed income assets, like treasuries, making them less attractive to investors. Now, what President Trump could be focusing on theoretically is the positive effects of a weaker dollar. And President Trump talks about how he wants the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates and inject money into the economy. Increased competitiveness.

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A weaker dollar makes US exports cheaper and more competitive internationally, which could boost economic growth and improve trade balances over time. However... The reality of a weaker dollar is that America can be competitive without doing that. You don't need to upend America's ability to raise debt by increasing tariffs, by lowering the value of the dollar.

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Those are not things that are necessary right now. We're already in an inflationary spiral. We don't need more inflation on top of all of this. And as Perplexity points out, the major long-term effects would be things like de-dollarization.

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So again, something I was mentioning last week, the entire American economy is reliant on other people buying our debt on a continuous basis to fund our government spending. Countries might diversify away from dollar-denominated assets, reducing their reliance on U.S. treasuries as reserve holdings. And concerns about sanctions or asset freezes might further reduce foreign official demand for U.S.

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debt. I totally agree with Perplexity's conclusion here. And while a weaker dollar could stimulate certain aspects of the economy, it poses risks to the U.S. 's ability to sell its debt efficiently by increasing borrowing costs, undermining investor confidence in Treasury securities. That is correct. Thanks to our friends at Perplexity for sponsoring that search.

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Well, again, in the search for some sort of sobriety and stability in the economic space, The Congress right now is looking to push forward a continuing resolution. We spoke with Representative Chip Roy, again, a very strong fiscal conservative in Congress yesterday on the program.

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Speaker Johnson is now eyeing a House vote today on a six-month funding extension that was crafted on a partisan basis. He's going to rely on only Republican votes to pass it in the House and dare Democrats to try to oppose it. It looks as though there's a strong shot that it is going to pass. The shutdown countdown is down to three days because the shutdown happens on Friday.

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Many, again, of the more conservative members of the caucus are on board. There's one who is obviously not going to be, and that, of course, is Thomas Massey, who's reliable no vote on everything. Like on everything. He's essentially Ron Paul, but from Kentucky. Same voting record, same general worldview, all of it.

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Well, this prompted President Trump to go after Massey, correctly noting that Massey basically has no interest in governing almost ever. And in a situation like this, what you actually need is Republicans who are willing to govern. Again, the job of being a congressperson is not the same as the job of being a podcast host or the job of being a CNN commentator or something.

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However, there is something else happening and it's deeper, and that is a widespread perception. that the Trump team is trying to reshape the global order in a way that will not be good for the American economy or the global economy. This is a widespread perception that is beginning to sort of percolate into the markets. And And I'm talking to many of the market makers.

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It is literally your job to try and go for 80% of the pie. This is why, again, I think that Chip Roy does a good job of this. Chip actually tries to push the ball as far as it will go while recognizing that the ball eventually is going to have to be kicked. Something's going to have to happen. He will push the line as far as he can without falling into the trap of just saying no to everything.

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Well, President Trump put out a statement yesterday saying that he will lead the charge to oust Thomas Massey for his refusal to support the government funding bill. He put out a truth social post. He said, Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything. He said, Massey should be primaried and I will lead the charge against him.

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At The Daily Wire, we're going to bring you the facts, what I do here professionally, and then You get in on the conversation. Join the live chat during our daily shows, 100% uncensored, ad-free, packed with fans who actually think for themselves. Plus, every day, a producer from our show will be there to talk to you about the news.

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Now, Trump had also prior times tried to unsuccessfully oust Massey. Massey responded by saying, I've had a challenger who tried to be more maggot than me three times. None busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance. Again, totally fair for Massey there.

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However, it is a reality that Massey is reliable no vote on everything that would be sort of effective for Republicans to do. And even though I agree with Massey, actually more than many other Republicans, on his generalized spending proposals, is Trump wrong to target Massey about all of this? I mean, if the continuing resolution fails and we get to Friday and the government shuts down,

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the downside effects are going to be very, very strong for the Republicans, including Republicans in Congress. And it's easy for Massey to say, since he's not in a purple district. He's not somebody who's going to battle his way back to the Congress. His district is like a plus 20 Republican district. So, all of this, you would think, might provide an opening to Democrats, right?

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This would be the moment where Democrats start to make their economic pitch. Oh, look at the oligarchic Republicans with their business ties, and yet they're sending your 401k spiraling down. If you were a smart Democratic politician, this is the thing you would be doing, correct? You would be focusing in like a laser beam on the economy.

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Because if the economy continues to decline, if we fall into recession, that's going to be your move. And yet Democrats... are apparently complete idiots. They fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down because they're focused in laser-like on the defense of a Hamas sympathizer whose green card is going to be removed.

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This is the thing they have decided is absolutely vital for them to stand against. It's unreal. I mean, seriously, it's just political malpractice at this point. So this person's name is Mahmoud Khalil. Yesterday, the White House announced that they would be moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil. Who the hell is Mahmoud Khalil?

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Well, he's an anti-Israel pro-Khamas activist, and he's an actual pro-Khamas activist who led protests at Columbia University when all those buildings were occupied and the Tent of Fatah was taking place. It was announced by the White House that ICE would be arresting him and removing him.

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The White House put out a meme reading Shalom Mahmoud, which of course is a reference to President Trump's statement, Shalom Hamas, telling Hamas they needed to give up all the hostages or they would cease to exist. Obviously, the connection there has to do with the fact that this person is extraordinarily pro-Hamas.

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President Trump said we will find, apprehend and deport terrorist sympathizers from our country never to return again, which seems like a pretty commonsensical policy that if you're here on a green card and you support terrorism, probably you shouldn't be here. We don't need you here.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was the first to be arrested by Homeland Security agents for his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. President Trump vowed he would not be the last. And again, that is a misread by the news department at The Wall Street Journal, which is to the left of The New York Times.

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I'm talking to business people who have literally hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the markets. And they are all very, very wary of the sort of signals that are being put out. And signals matter an awful lot when it comes to the economy these days. Because as I've spoken about before,

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He was not arrested because he went to a pro-Palestinian demonstration. He was arrested because he has active ties to groups that openly support Hamas. That would be the reason. Trump said in a social media post, quote, we know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.

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The Trump administration will not tolerate it. The Education Department said Monday it sent letters to 60 schools warning of potential enforcement actions if they don't fulfill obligations to protect Jewish students. And again, that is an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Act, which lays out that all these colleges have anti-discrimination policies on the basis of race.

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That applies to black students, white students, Jewish students, Arab students, everybody. So you can't selectively fail to enforce the law when it comes to the Jews is sort of the point that Trump has made. Khalil played a prominent role in organizing protests last year against the war in Gaza, often addressing crowds on Colombia's lawn and giving interviews to national media.

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He was inside the Barnard Library during an occupation last week to protest the expulsion of two students for earlier demonstrations, according to photographs posted on social media. But that is not actually the full story about Mahmoud Khalil and the people he has associated himself with.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio put out a statement, we'll be revoking the visas and or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported. The Homeland Security Department put out a statement as well, quote, on March 9th, 2025, in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism and in coordination with the Department of State, U.S.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Again, there's a difference between pro-Palestinian and aligned with Hamas. Although distinction has been obliterated by the pro-Palestinian crowd who have largely aligned with Hamas at this point.

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So what are exactly beyond him saying bad stuff? What exactly is the thing that's getting him in trouble here? Well, it turns out that the group that he headed at Columbia University Apartheid Divest withdrew an apology that it made for a member who said Zionists don't deserve to live. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which is this guy's group, put out a statement.

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This is according to the New York Times, October 9th, 2024. Quote, we support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance. That's not just pro-Palestinian. That is pro-Khamas. That is what you are talking about. They then distributed a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas's name.

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If you're even a small business person, what do you want to make sure that you're going to invest in your business? You want a growing economy. You want to make sure that the government is going to come and take your money. The government isn't going to come in and over-regulate you. And the conditions tomorrow are going to be very similar to the conditions you have today.

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Quote, one year since Al-Aqsa flood, revolution until victory, it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. The group posted an essay calling the attack a moral, military, and political victory. I mean, that's pretty pro-Hamas. That's not like pro-terrorist group. And again, if you're an American citizen and you do this sort of stuff, that's one thing.

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If you're a green card holder, why do we need you here? Green card does not give you the right under American law to actively orient yourself toward terrorism. That is not a thing. When the founders were constructing the Constitution, they're not like, let's bring people from abroad who hate America and love terrorism. That was never considered a right under American law.

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The group wrote on October 7th, 2024, quote, the Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation. It is our duty to meet them there. It is our duty to fight for our freedom. That'd be Hamas that this person is talking about.

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So again, the New York Times recognized at the time, this is before the election, that this could lead to federal investigations into campus antisemitism or on-campus discipline if these were deemed to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. Now, again, it's more than that.

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It turns out that Khalil's group, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was one of 150 pro-terrorism groups identified by journalist Ryan Morrow over at Capital Research. Khalil's group says that it is, quote, fighting for a total eradication of Western civilization. It also asked for help from violent extremists abroad. Quote, we seek instructions from militants in the global south.

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Khalil's group said we in America must be killed, jailed and tortured and targeted in order to genuinely threaten the state as part of the global intifada. He suggested the only way to respond to state repression is to storm prisons and release prisoners and burn down prisoners, prisons, government offices and state vehicles. That's Khalil's group.

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I mean, like, I don't know how much clearer your sympathy for Hamas has to get in order for you to violate the law. So what does the law actually say on this? Well, what exactly does the law actually say? Well, good news. We actually know what the law says.

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According to Immigration and National Act Section 212, there are a number of grounds for ineligibility for a green card or immigration based on security grounds. That includes, quote, anyone who endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization. So, yeah, I mean that.

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That's how you make predictive decision-making. It's how you decide whether to hire that extra employee. It's how you decide whether to invest in more capital equipment. It's how you decide. whether to expand your holdings in particular areas or contract your holdings in particular areas. Predictability matters. Now, President Trump is not a predictable president.

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The Supreme Court has ruled back in 1904 that anarchists, for example, could be barred from the United States. Congress is of the opinion that the tendency of the general exploitation of such views is so dangerous to the public wheel that aliens who hold and advocate them would be undesirable additions to our population.

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Again, there's a section of the INA that grants the State Department broad authority to deport any alien, quote, whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.

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And that is exactly the authority that Secretary of State Rubio is citing in this guy's deportation. So you're hearing the sob stories from the left. So what did the Senate Judiciary Democrats do? Again, the stock market tanked to the tune of 900 points yesterday. And it has tanked to the tune of a significant percentage of the stock market's total value since the election.

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So what are Democrats focused laser-like on? Their hero of the day, open Hamas sympathizer, and pseudo-revolutionary Mahmoud Khalil. They put out a tweet, the Senate Judiciary Democrats, with a picture of this guy that said, free Mahmoud Khalil. So just to get this straight, Democrats would not cheer last week For the family of Lake and Riley, they would not stand up and applaud.

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The family of Jocelyn Nungary was killed by illegal immigrants, but they are going to stand four square behind a terrorist sympathizer who used to work for the UNRWA when not calling for the overthrow of Western civilization. They're going to cheer for that guy. He has to stay in the United States. Guys, the political malpractice here is so strong.

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The Democrats here are so bad, so unbelievably bad at this. Truly, truly awful at this. Now a judge has temporarily blocked the deportation. He's going to get overruled. This judge also happens to be brothers with Jason Furman, member of the Obama administration. Most of his relatives work in like deep blue American institutions and all the rest.

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Van Jones, perhaps the last sane man on the Democratic side of the aisle, he was pointing out like, guys, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing?

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He has never been a predictable president, but the one area that he was always quite predictable on was economics. President Trump liked tariffs, but you know what he liked more? He liked results.

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You know, again, Van is the only person speaking truth to power on CNN who is not a stated Republican. But the Democrats are going to keep going down this path, which is why Whoopi Goldberg had on Dylan Mulvaney, singularly responsible for the for the complete collapse of the Bud Light brand.

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They had on Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a woman to talk about how men should compete with women in athletics. I mean, they just they keep doubling down on stupid. It's amazing. It's amazing. The roulette wheel keeps turning up the other way. And they're like, what if I just keep doubling down on the stupid?

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And so what that meant is that during the first administration, when he talked tariffs a lot, the total amount of tariffs effectually that were put on the American economy ended up totaling something like $30 billion total. It was not huge. And much of it was designed to leverage places like Mexico into signing a new version of the USMCA.

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Okay, unbelievable. I'm sorry, but female athletes who know what they're doing, like Riley Gaines, who's like an NCAA champion, they're going to get clobbered by any half-decent dude in the pool. Everyone knows this. This is just basic human biology. I'm sorry that facts exist for Whoopi Goldberg because it makes her job really uncomfortable. But let Democrats keep following this path. Seriously.

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And Democrats are stuck because they keep throwing out these same types of people. There's an entire article in Politico about Tim Walz as though Tim Walz is going to make a giant comeback after his goofball presentation on the national stage or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom, who's now cleverly attempting to move away from some of the woke stuff.

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The thing that I'm absolutely puzzled by, if you're a Democrat, I do not understand. You have a point of vulnerability now in the markets. Why are you not focusing on that? And the answer is they're so tied to their own social issues that they can't let go of them. This is the thing they actually care about. It's truly amazing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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By the way, when it comes to the colleges and universities, we mentioned what's going on at Columbia. Something fairly amazing happened yesterday. So Harvard and Yale were among 60 colleges who were warned of fund cuts over claims that they have not properly policed discrimination against Jews on campus. And these universities are panicking. They are freaking out.

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These universities are claiming that this will mean serious cuts to their budget, to their ability to take care of students. I mean, you're saying the quiet part out loud, which is that your government supported institutions. All of these campuses have billion dollar endowments. They have much money, lots and lots of money. But they are adjuncts to the federal government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And now the federal government is saying, no, we're done with this. They're freaking out, which demonstrates just how deeply intertwined pseudo private institutions like Harvard and Yale are with the blue state Democratic Party in the federal government. Already coming up, we're going to get into the latest in Ukraine. We're also going to be getting into a piece of interesting news from Netflix.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, you actually go become a subscriber. And the reason you do that is because we have all sorts of great stuff behind the paywall. We've got Morning Wire. We've got Am I Racist? We've got What is a Woman? We have All Access Live. Tons of stuff. And you get to hang out with us behind the paywall. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapira.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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I think one of the reasons that people in the markets are particularly perturbed by Trump's attacks on Canada in the markets is that it's one thing to say we're going after Mexico to get them to close the border, that that's a piece of leverage. All right, fine.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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It's another thing to say, okay, we're gonna put tariffs on China because China is stealing our intellectual property and building up their military at incredibly rapid rates. Totally agree, fine. Canada? What did Canada do exactly? And the very notion that Canada is not a major trading partner with the United States is untrue. Canada is our number one trading partner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And Canada, again, has extraordinarily low average tariff rates with the United States under a deal negotiated during President Trump's first term, the USMCA. So the aim at Canada appears to the global markets to be a move away from America's involvement in the world in total. As I've spoken about before, that doesn't mean we need to be involved everywhere, either militarily or economically.

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Get the news the way it should be, honest, fearless, without the left-wing agenda. Your voice matters. Be a part of it. Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So yesterday, obviously, we saw a massive stock market dump. The stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average dumped almost 900 points. The stock market has been in a bit of a free fall over the course of the last couple of weeks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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However, the reality that America is the global hegemon is one of the reasons that the American economy continues to be the behemoth that it is. When you withdraw from what is a de facto financial empire,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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When you withdraw from providing global security and freedom of the seas, when it appears that what you're attempting to do is draw inward, the rest of the world has less interest in investing in you, buying your debt, for example, funding your giant government expenditures. The rest of the world is less interested. in doing business with you if it's harder to do business with you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And this has a very, very bad effect on the economy, not just outside the United States, but inside the United States. It turns out that autarky, the notion that we should produce and consume everything in the United States, that's a romantic idea.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Everywhere it has been tried, literally everywhere it has been tried over the course of the last few centuries, it has ended with impoverishment of the population, followed generally by expansionism. That is true in Germany. It is true in China. It is true pretty much ever. It's true in Russia. It's true pretty much everywhere it's been tried.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And so if the markets think that's what you're doing, even if you're not doing it, that's not going to be good for the markets. As Reuters is reporting, President Trump's tariffs have spooked investors with fears of an economic downturn driving a stock market sell-off that has wiped out $4 trillion from the S&P 500's peak last month when Wall Street was cheering much of the Trump agenda.

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A barrage of new Trump policies increased uncertainty for businesses, consumers, and investors, notably back-and-forth tariff moves against major trading partners like Canada, Mexico, and China. Now, President Trump, for his part, he's saying, listen, Short-term pain for long-term gain. Here's what President Trump had to say with Maria Bartiromo.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Okay, you need to explain, if that's the case, what is the tremendous foundation that is going to lead to future growth, and how do we get from point A to point B in a way that doesn't blow up everybody's 401k? It turns out, by the way, more than half of Americans are heavily invested in the stock market through things like their 401ks. This is not just a quote-unquote rich people problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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This is an everybody problem. And the sort of side effect of market downturns affect everyone from Main Street to Wall Street. As The Wall Street Journal points out, there are some red lights that are already flashing. Take Friday's jobs report, which showed employers added 151,000 jobs last month. That's half as many as in November and December.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Leisure and hospitality jobs have been declining in the past two months, which may indicate consumers are pulling back on their discretionary spending. The labor force participation rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 62.4 percent, owing to a decline among men.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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manufacturing did gain 10,000 jobs in the month, but the number of workers employed part-time who wanted but couldn't get full-time work increased by 460,000 to 4.9 million, which is the most in spring of 2021. Service businesses are being whipsawed. Transportation equipment manufacturers are being whipsawed. Whipsawed just means... One day they think that there's going to be a tariff.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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One day they don't know that there's going to be a tariff. And so everybody's looking for what's the overall vision here? What is the overall vision? Is this President Trump using tariffs as leverage? We don't know. Is this President Trump using tariffs as a way to force everybody else to lower their tariffs? We don't know. We've heard that justification too.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And this is something that I've been predicting for a while. It turns out that when you mess with the market mechanisms, people don't like it. Investors tend to take their money out of the market and wait for things to be a little calmer, a little more steady. If you think... of the free markets as essentially an ocean. Sometimes it's pretty choppy out there. Right now it's choppy.

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Or is it just that President Trump sees a vision of the United States with higher tariffs and a reshoring of manufacturing tariffs? That is good for particular industries, but very bad for the American consumer by raising prices overall and also disconnecting the American economy from other parts of the globe that actually, by the way, again, do subsidize the American economy.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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I understand that there is this notion that trade deficits where we buy more stuff from people than they buy from us. somehow reflects American weakness. But the reality is that there are many poor countries with trade surpluses and there are many rich countries with trade deficits. Trade deficits are not what they appeared to be, not necessarily.

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The reality is that if we spend more money abroad than people spend here, those dollars come back. How do they come back? Well, very often they come back in the form of governments either holding our dollars as the global reserve currency or in the form of other governments buying American bonds, which funds our growing national debt, which is out of control. And I love what Doge is doing.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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We need to bend the cost curve. The reality is, as I've said over and over, and I'll continue to say, we are not solving our national debt problem unless we take a look at the very things no one on either side wants to take a look at. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, means-tested welfare programs. Those are the massive drivers of the American national debt.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Elon Musk understands this, but trimming around the edges isn't gonna do it. Obviously, it's a very dicey time for investors, and smart investors need to prepare ahead of time, just like keeping a life jacket handy before you set sail. That's why many people are adding gold to their portfolios, leading to record gold prices in early 2025.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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There's still a great opportunity for you to diversify and strengthen your financial future. Thank you so much for joining us. With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and countless five-star reviews, text Ben to 989898. Let the experts at Birch Gold help you secure your future today with gold. Again, this is a very uncertain market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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It's difficult to know which way things are going, and this is why diversification has always been a time-tested and useful strategy. Go ask all your questions by texting Ben to 989898, and then let the experts at Birch Gold help you out. Also, You know, it's funny, when we started The Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating awesome content.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Well, it turns out, dealing with the behind-the-scenes stuff, the hiring, HR policies, employee issues, that's the stuff that eats up your time. And listen, I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable. So don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time-sucking payroll issues, office politics, and HR infractions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And here's the thing. If this administration is blamed for the choppy waters, that is quite bad, not just for this administration, but for everything that in the public mind it represents. According to the Wall Street Journal, a new round of recession fears rattled markets on Monday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 900 points, eroding Wall Street consensus that U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Focus on the stuff that matters most, running your business with help from Bambi. Here's what makes Bambi different. They give you access to your very own dedicated HR manager at a fraction of what it costs to employ someone full-time. And get this, Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month, whether you have 10, 75, or even 100 employees.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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If I had Bambi when I was first building this team, would have saved a lot of hours, a lot of headaches. Instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance stuff, I could have focused on growing the show, connecting with the audience. Well, with Bambi's HR autopilot, Ben Shapiro podcast.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Here is Elon Musk correctly citing one of the key phenomena that demonstrates the sort of underlying weakness of the American economic plan based on our spending. He says our interest payments are now outstripping what we pay for defense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Okay, that is correct. But Doge is not going to be capable of single-handedly doing all of that. And many of the moves that we are currently making, it's about to make it very difficult to raise more debt. And all of this is tied to what is the actual sort of overall Trump plan. And it takes a little while for the Trump doctrine to sort of take shape.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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Again, I have my idea of what the Trump doctrine is. That's very different from, say, Tucker Carlson's idea of what the Trump doctrine is. And President Trump doesn't really have a Trump doctrine. President Trump just has a series of what I think are very good political instincts and a fundamentally good set of principles. But that doesn't necessarily translate into something overall.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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But the way the markets are increasingly reading what President Trump is doing globally is that President Trump wants to reshore everything and he wants to withdraw from the world. And that is not going to happen. beneficial effects for the American consumer, the American producer, the American economy at large.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And here I want to talk about the sort of problems that are going to arise from this vision. So there's a really good analyst. His name is Balaji Srinivasan, who's an American entrepreneur and investor and a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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And he has a good tweet thread today explaining why it is that the world is perceiving some of the moves that the Trump administration is making as indicative of a broader worldview problem that could undermine sort of American strength. He says, here are four things MAGA is getting wrong and why it's handing over the world to China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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stocks would be among this year's biggest winners. By the way, this is having an impact on President Trump's approval ratings. There's a new pullout from Emerson today that shows President Trump is underwater on the economy by 11 points. He's still at 47.45 in his overall approval rating.

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Ep. 2155 - Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

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One, MAGA correctly understands that America's economic position is in decline, but think this is due to economic competition itself rather than lack of competitiveness. It's a big thing. He's right about this. The reason that America has been in relative decline versus China is not because the competitive global markets are bad.

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It's because America is not competitive in the American global markets. And Trump understands this, by the way. It's just sort of the other half of what he's doing with tariffs. Meaning, when he focuses on tax policy and regulatory policy, that makes America more competitive vis-a-vis other countries. Getting rid of competition entirely via tariffs, via cutting off world trade,

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the abandoning parts of the world, is not likely to result in American victory. It results in American impoverishment. Second, he says, MAGA understands that the U.S. has wasted trillions abroad in foreign wars, but thinks the problem is global leadership itself rather than poor leadership. Again, this is a really important point.

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Obviously, the United States has involved itself, particularly in Iraq. or Afghanistan in wars that were either unwinnable or had such bad strategies attached to them that they became unwinnable.

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That does not mean that abandoning the globe to the predations of the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians is going to be beneficial to America, that that is going to increase America's health in the world economically or otherwise. We need to be concerted about how we use force and how we threaten to use force. But a world without America is a worse world, including for Americans.

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Third, MAGA knows their blue American enemies have allies abroad, but has incorrectly overreacted to this by treating every non-red American as an enemy. Okay, this is, I think, the point about Canada. Yes, it turns out that blue America took over the institutions of the United States. The left took over the major institutions, including things like USAID.

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And then they fostered abroad alliances with a bunch of people who actually don't like America very much. That does not mean that the United States does not have allies abroad who are worth cultivating and attacking places like Canada, for example. By the way, the attacks on Canada are likely to elevate blue American types to power in Canada.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

Well, folks, it turns out that when it comes to getting things done, the image of the thing matters an awful, awful lot. And this is something Democrats have understood for a very long time, that the image that any particular department gives off has a cultural impact. There are people like me who learned from Andrew Breitbart who said that politics is downstream from culture. But the truth is.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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Now, you can say that culture led to that governmental action. You can say that the culture in the United States changed. There was a backlash against the insane, radical left-wing wokeism of the last decade and a half. in the United States. And that is why President Trump was reelected. It's why he has a conservative Supreme Court.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And when you say that, again, there's that cycle, culture being upstream of politics and then culture also being downstream of politics. It's the cycle that one pushes the other. Remember, Donald Trump was a cultural figure in Home Alone 2 and in every rap song from about 1988 to 1997, long before he was president of the United States twice.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And now he's using the power of culture in order to push his particular brand of politics. This is one of the things about Doge. So the Department of Governmental Efficiency, remember the history of Doge. So Doge was originally suggested as a sort of advisory council led by Elon Musk that would exist outside the federal government. And Trump talked about it and the entire left scoffed.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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The media scoffed too. They said, well, this is just a way for him to sort of throw a sop to Elon Musk. They're not really going to do anything. They'll make a few recommendations. It'll be like a task force and nothing will happen. And then it turns out, that Trump just outsourced a bunch of the hard-nosed federal cuts to Elon Musk. Why?

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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Because Musk is, number one, incredibly famous for going into companies and clearing out deadwood. When he went into X, he fired 80% of the staff day one. It broke a lot of the systems. And then he had to rebuild a bunch of those systems. This is something that Musk is famous for, too. Musk is famously... volatile in the sense that he comes in and he breaks things and he does it fast.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And if he makes mistakes, he'd rather break things and then fix them than not break anything and leave bad systems in place. This is what Musk does. And three, Musk happens to be the richest and one of the most famous people on earth, which means that he can draw the fire. It's not about Trump. Now it's about Musk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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So again, this is very smart strategically and targeting the sort of waste, fraud and abuse that Musk is targeting is also very smart PR. Now, as I've discussed before, the only way to solve the systemic debt problems of the United States, it's not going to happen through kind of cutting around the edges at the Department of the Treasury.

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Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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It's only going to happen when you restructure the major entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. However, none of that's going to happen anytime in the near future because both parties are deathly afraid of touching those third rails of American politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And so what Trump is doing right now is he's allowing Musk imagistically to carve away at the image of an efficient government that has never been true. Musk tweeted this morning that the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in America's governmental systems put to shame any private waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of the American Republic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And that, of course, is wildly true because the size of the American government is so huge, so exorbitant, that it is not hard to throw a dart and you will hit waste, fraud, and abuse almost anywhere in the federal government. In the private sector, you see you're responsive to things like return on investment. You're responsive to the profit motive. You're responsive to your shareholders.

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It is why he has a Republican-led Senate and a Republican-led House. And all of that is true. But it is also true that now that the cycle has begun, now that culture has shaped politics, politics is shaping culture again. Perhaps the tip of the spear in this battle is the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

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In the government, if you waste money, well, there's always more money where that came from. You can either print it or you can steal it from the American taxpayer. So that is what Musk is doing. And he is putting Democrats on the wrong side of the issue because who exactly is in favor of waste, fraud and abuse? What exactly is the objection to cutting waste, fraud and abuse?

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So what Democrats are doing instead is they're pretending that this is an assault on, quote unquote, the system. that it's a constitutional threat. Here's the thing. Democrats over the course of the last century and a half have hollowed out the constitution and worn around its face like Hannibal Lecter. That is what Democrats have done.

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They created an entire administrative bureaucratic executive branch filled with 2 million people to make all the rules that govern your life. They've turned the legislature into a vestigial organ of American government. And now Trump is coming in and he's the head of the executive branch and he's deploying people in the executive branch to make cuts within the executive branch.

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And they say this is a constitutional threat to the country. They want some separation of powers now. Well, welcome to the party, pal. But here's the thing. You created these rules and now you are going to have to live by them. F-A-F-O. Well, five former treasury secretaries, all Democrats, of course, have now written an op-ed for the New York Times saying, quote, our democracy is under siege.

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Now, what they can't say is our bureaucracy is under siege, which is the reality. Our bureaucracy is under siege, and it should be. The thing that they cannot say is that our waste, fraud, and abuse-ridden system is under siege. That's what's under siege. Instead, it's our democracy.

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Now, you may have gotten used to during the Biden administration or the Obama administration hearing the word democracy thrown around a lot. All Democrats mean when they say democracy is stuff they like. If they do something totally undemocratic and you say no, they say you're a threat to the democracy. If they say that the Equal Rights Amendment is now law, even though it totally isn't,

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And you say no. They say you're a threat to American democracy. If you cut the bureaucracy, they call you a fascist. I mean, if what we are watching right now is fascism, which is severing the bond between government sponsorship and blue constituencies, if that's fascism, I feel like your definitions are wrong. Folks, what we are watching at work here is not fascism.

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I've never seen a fascist cut the government. before. However, Democrats are banking on future uncertainty. In fact, they're trying to foster future uncertainty. Securing your family's future is of utmost importance in today's world. As somebody who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind.

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So again, remember, the Defense Department, when we were growing up, when I was a mere child, the Defense Department was all about the idea that America was winning wars, a battle machine made up of strong, particularly men, who were going to go into difficult places and do things that no one wanted to see them do in order to keep America safe. That was always the image of the military.

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Their licensed support team handles everything. They answer your questions, they manage paperwork, they advocate for you throughout the entire process. Don't take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation.

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Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click that link in the description, get your free life insurance quote, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. slash Shapiro. Also, research shows one of the biggest challenges employers face is the pressure to hire quickly.

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And let's be honest, searching for great candidates and reviewing applications can feel like a full-time job in itself. If you're an employer who can relate, I have one question for you. Have you tried ZipRecruiter? ZipRecruiter has figured out how to solve this very problem. In fact, Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one.

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When you find that perfect candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's pre-written invite to apply message to reach out to them directly. So relax, employers, and let ZipRecruiter speed up your hiring. See for yourself. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire right now. Try it for free. Again, at ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.

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Go check them out right now. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. We've been using them here at DailyWire ourselves for years. You should do the same. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. So anyway, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers. Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew, and Janet Yellen, all again, former Democrat treasury secretaries, have this piece in the New York Times, freaking out about all of this.

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Quote, when we had the honor of being sworn in as the 70th, 71st, 75th, 76th, and 78th secretaries of the treasury, we took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution. Our roles were multifaceted. We sought to develop sound policy to advance the president's agenda and represent the economic interests of the United States on the world stage.

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But in doing that, we recognized that our most fundamental responsibility was a faithful execution of the laws and the constitution of the United States. We are fortunate that during our tenures in office, no effort was made to unlawfully undermine the nation's financial commitments. Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that such efforts are underway today.

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The nation's payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants. Okay, now the first time you hear that phrase, nonpartisan career civil servants, it sounds kind of nice. These are just people who serve you. It's like a waiter at a restaurant. They're nonpartisan and they're serving you in the civil service. Well, here is the thing. Wrong.

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The nonpartisan civil service has become quite partisan because their patrons are all Democrats who continue to expand their agencies, their scope of authority in their budgets. These are not nonpartisans. Very often they're deeply partisan. But again, you have to wear around the face of objectivity while enacting highly partisan agendas.

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These five former secretaries of the Treasury write, in recent days, that norm has been upended. The roles of these nonpartisan officials has been compromised by political actors from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

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One has been appointed fiscal assistant secretary, a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds. Here's the question, how'd they do on that? Seriously, how'd they do on that?

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And the movies and TV shows that many of us grew up on were rooted in that image of the United States military. And the other day, I was looking for a movie to watch with my eight-year-old son, and I brought up one of my favorites from when I was a kid. I tended to watch old movies when I was a kid, meaning movies from the 50s and 60s. And so I brought up a favorite to show him.

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If these are such amazing nonpartisan civil servants, why are billions of dollars going out the door to some of the worst people on earth? I mean, again, look at USAID, where billions of dollars were going directly to line the pockets of Hamas as they built terror tunnels. Explain yourselves, gang, nonpartisan civil servants.

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These political actors, say the former treasury secretaries, have not been subject to the same rigorous ethics rules as civil servants. One has explicitly retained his role in a private company, creating at best the appearance of financial conflicts of interest. They lack training and experience to handle private personal data, like social security numbers and bank account information.

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Yeah, yes, I'm sure that the federal government run by career bureaucrats and lackeys has been so secure in its handling of our private information, which is how Donald Trump's IRS tax returns ended up leaked to the New York Times just a few years ago. Their power subjects America's payment systems and the highly sensitive data within it to the risk of exposure potentially to our adversaries.

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Man, wait until you hear about a secretary of state named Hillary Clinton who literally stored classified information on a private server and then was found by the FBI to have probably exposed it to foreign sources. Wow, I mean, that would be terrible if that happened.

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A key component of the rule of law, say these secretaries of the Treasury, is the executive branch's commitment to respect Congress's power of the purse. The legislative branch has the sole authority to pass laws that determine where and how federal dollars should be spent.

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The role of the Treasury Department is not to make determinations about which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep and which it will not. Well, we're about to find out because the reality is that withholding a payment actually was something that the federal executive branch did since the time of Thomas Jefferson.

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But Democrats somehow have to make this a threat to the system as opposed to the reality, which is it is a threat to the bureaucracy. It's turning into a threat to democracy. And again, in the words of the Democrat, everything turns into a threat to democracy.

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I think the most ironic instance of this is Democrats screeching and crying to the heavens, sackcloth and ashes, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. So for those who don't recall, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is one of the most ridiculous institutions of American government. It was created by Elizabeth Warren before she was a senator.

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It was pushed by the Obama administration and it was directly made unaccountable to the American people, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Before Ms. Warren became a senator, she persuaded Congress and then President Barack Obama to create a strange creature called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

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The bureau would duplicate, replace, or expand on the efforts of existing financial regulators, but with a few dangerous twists. It would have no mandate to protect the safety and soundness of the financial institutions it regulates. It would not rely on Congress for funding.

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Instead, the bureau would have the ability to draw funding directly from the Federal Reserve, ensuring it wouldn't have to pay much attention to legislators.

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Then-Representative Randy Neugebauer of Texas wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2012, quote, my House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has tried unsuccessfully to gain greater visibility into the Bureau's budgetary planning process. Those requests were denied.

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The old Gregory Peck, David Niven film, The Guns of Navarone, which is a classic. Terrific, terrific film if you have kids. Teenagers, it's a wonderful film. It's about a secret mission by a group of essentially American and British commandos to blow up a Nazi-held stronghold. And it's a really, really good movie.

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Once the director has decided a money draw is necessary, there's nobody with authority to prevent those funds from being paid out. Not congressional appropriators, not the Fed, not even the President's Office of Management and Budget. Well, the problem is that this totally unaccountable bureaucracy has now been taken over by Russ Vought, who is Trump's Office of Management and Budget Director.

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Vought posted on X, quote, Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not reasonably necessary to carry out its duties. The Bureau's current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment.

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This spigot, long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability, is now being turned off. So effectively, Vaught shut down the funding. He could transfer the amount back to the Federal Reserve. What's the problem? What's the problem? And it was made unaccountable to the legislature.

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So now Democrats, having designed the instrument, are now upset that it's being used in the reverse way because this is how Democrats operate. There is no consistent rule of law. There is no actual consistent objective regulatory agency established that cuts in all directions. Instead, the CFPB is a left-wing tool created by Elizabeth Warren, independent of the legislative branch.

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And when Trump takes it over and puts Russ Vought in charge, and Russ Vought immediately shuts down the funding, she screams and cries that somehow the legislature is being ignored. Here she was yesterday, freaking out over the death of her idiotic brainchild.

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It's a scam. Okay, so the CFPB was put in place by Democrats in order to regulate the living hell out of businesses, unless those businesses did the bidding of the federal government. That's what the CFPB was for. And now Trump is zeroing it out. A reservoir is coming in, and he's basically cutting the funding and pausing all operations. And they're freaking out. It's a threat to democracy.

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It was never a democratic institution. It was an explicitly anti-democratic institution. If you want to pass a regulation against business, do it through the legislature. But I noticed you didn't want to do that.

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I noticed that instead, you wanted to set up an agency that passes thousands of pages of regulations and goes after banks without any sort of reference to the underlying issue of how banks operate. And Democrats are so ridiculous on this stuff. Representative Maxine Waters, who has routinely been considered one of the most corrupt members, if not the most corrupt member of Congress.

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But the entire basis of the movie is that sometimes men have to do violent, nasty things in order to fight the bad guys. And this was always the idea of the American military. And then somehow it shifted. Somehow the American military became a tool of social engineering.

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This is a person who, according to the LA Times in 2014, had shuffled a million bucks in the last eight years by doing business with companies, candidates, and causes that Maxine Waters helped. And she literally oversaw the banking committee and her husband was being regulated by the banking committee at the time. Like Maxine Waters is super duper.

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Here she is outside the CFPB saying that this is an assault on democracy to, you know, have an executive branch agency run by the executive branch.

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This person has been a sitting congressperson for, I believe, longer than I've been alive or close to it and is deeply corrupt. You want to talk about people who have enriched friends and family? Maxine Waters is at the top of that list. And yet there she is yelling at Elon Musk, get your ass out. Yeah, I'm sure Elon Musk lives in fear of Maxine Waters. And it's not just Maxine Waters.

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It's more of a cycle. It's more that politics is downstream of culture, which is downstream of politics, which is downstream of culture. What I mean by this is that politics, the power of government, can in fact shape culture to its own whims. And so if you give off an image of DEI or ESG, From the government, you create an unofficial sanction against people who disagree.

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Ayanna Pressley, the Ringo Starr of the squad. She's kind of been forgotten because there were some new hot squad members and then they ended up being defeated in primaries, the Jamal Bowmans or the Cori Bushes. But- Ayanna Pressley is out there too, shouting about the evils of Elon Musk.

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And the glorious points of America's history were not America's military winning wars, but how the military was to be used as a sort of microcosmic stand-in for the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime.

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Okay, I do love the idea that it is greedy and grubby to go into government and cut it. That's what he's doing. He's going in and he's making cuts. And they're saying, oh, that's so greedy of Musk. I mean, look at him being all greedy. By cutting? I'm going to need an explanation for how him cutting the federal spending initiatives, cutting waste, fraud, and abuse is somehow an element of greed.

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I'm going to need an explanation. Democrats are barking up the wrong tree, but this is desperation because, again, they are losing control over the institutions they themselves built. Representative Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, they keep looking for good acronyms for what DOGE is supposed to be, and they keep failing. So you heard there something about, you know, grabbing everything.

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And now here's another version. They're going to need to come up with something better. It's not good.

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Government Evil? They're literally cutting the government. It seems to me the Department of Government Evil is very often just called the government. In just a moment, we'll get to Democrats and their continued attempt to foster a constitutional crisis, largely through judges. I mean, they're actually doing some pretty incredible things via the judiciary that are totally unconstitutional.

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When you join DailyWire+, it's not just a subscription, it's a statement. A refusal to be spoon-fed the nonsense shoved down your throat by the media, Hollywood, and every self-righteous blue-haired activist with a TikTok account. You've heard the lies, you've seen the manipulation, you know the game is rigged, and you refuse to be played.

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You're backing a movement that doesn't just report on the culture, but instead reshapes it. Every buck you spend goes directly into building the future because America's future didn't build itself. Join the fight today at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So the Democrats, again, they're declaring that a constitutional crisis is taking place. Why?

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So instead of the glorious moments of diversity in the military being linked with victory, so for example, the Tuskegee Airmen being helpful in winning World War II because we needed more people and we needed to get rid of the evils of segregation in order to have a better fighting machine. Instead, that was seen itself, whether it was useful or not useful, as the high point of the military.

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Because the executive branch is being cut by the executive branch. Well, now the New York Times has an article titled Trump's actions have created a constitutional crisis. Scholars say my favorite type of news piece from the New York Times and like minded institutions. What they do is they have a premise. The premise is Trump bad. Then they go find an expert who says Trump bad.

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And so they say Trump bad experts say, you know, pretty much anything. I can just as easily have an article that says Trump's constitutional expertise dominates America. Experts say, and just go find some people who agree with Donald Trump. Like this is the easiest game in the reporting world. And so the New York Times is trying to now gin up the idea that a constitutional crisis is upon us.

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It's not a constitutional crisis when the entire government shuts down people who refuse to get the facts. That's not a constitutional crisis, apparently. It is not a constitutional crisis when Joe Biden literally attempts to add constitutional amendments by tweet.

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It's a constitutional crisis when members of the executive branch go in and root out corruption, waste, fraud, abuse inside the executive branch. According to the New York Times, there is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis. But legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings.

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It is not binary. It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative. And once it starts, it can get much worse. Erwin Chemerinsky, who's a very left-wing dean of the law school at Berkeley, says, quote, we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency.

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We have never seen anything like this. He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump's lawless conduct, revoking birthright citizenship. Again, all that's going to get adjudicated by the Supreme Court. Freezing federal spending. Not clear that that's unconstitutional, given the fact that, again, the executive branch is allowed to put a pause. Everybody acknowledges this.

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A pause on federal spending to align it with presidential authority. They can't just freeze it entirely, but they can certainly put a pause. Shutting down an agency. Okay, you can gut an agency. You can shift its actual functions to other agencies, depending on how the law is written. Removing leaders of other agencies, okay? All of those people work at the pleasure of the president.

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So again, he's just naming a bunch of things that Trump probably can do and calling it a constitutional crisis. He says, quote, systematic, unconstitutional, and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis. Okay, but here is the problem. Some of the people who are creating a constitutional crisis are in the judiciary.

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So, for example, a federal judge has now determined that the Trump administration violated his order lifting the blanket spending freeze on federal grant programs. He's ordering the administration to unfreeze funds, including for NIH and the IRA. They put together a TRO, a temporary restraining order nationally. Now, here's the problem.

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What in the Constitution, what in the Constitution gives one federal judge at a district court level the ability to shut down nationwide an act of Congress or the president? Where does this nationwide injunctive power come from? This is an open legal debate, a seriously open legal debate. Why should one judge in, say, the Ninth Circuit

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be able to simply put a nationwide stay, you know, for the whole country on an action by the White House. There's a professor named Sam Bray over at Notre Dame Law School. Back in 2017, he wrote a piece called Multiple Chancellors Reforming the National Injunction. And he points out, is that the national injunction is a recent development in the history of equity.

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There was a structural shift at the founding from a single chancellor model to a multiple chancellor model, but the vulnerabilities in the latter did not become visible until the mid to late 20th century, when there were changes in how judges thought about legal challenges and invalid laws. Only with those changes in the second half of the 20th century did the national injunction emerge.

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And thus was born the idea that what the military really needs to do is draw from every segment of society. Basically, the military is not supposed to be a battle-hardened machine designed toward winning and breaking things and killing bad guys. Instead, the military was supposed to be a commercial for United Colors of Benetton. That was the basic idea of the military.

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And Sambre points out that national injunctions, again, are new, that what it leads to is a sort of tyrannical rule by one federal judge somewhere. So Bray said history can be read in different ways. In my view, national injunctions go back to 1963. They don't exist before then. In fact, nobody even asks for a national injunction before 1963.

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Despite the thousands of lawsuits attacking New Deal legislation, there was never an attempt to get a federal judge in, say, California to strike down New Deal legislation such that a national injunction went into place. He identifies, Bray does, the second term of Barack Obama as the opening of the floodgates.

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He says, since then, almost every major presidential initiative by President Obama or Trump or Biden has been stopped at the nationwide injunction. And that seems not particularly good. According to another professor named Mila Sahony, who is the University of San Diego School of Law, So Honey acknowledged that this type of relief has now been requested all the time.

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What's being asserted is that those sources of law impose this crisp rule on federal courts under which federal courts can never grant relief to anybody that's not a plaintiff or a member of a certified class. But what she is saying is the opposite of what Bray is saying.

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What Bray is saying is the way that a federal court should take up a case is to put an injunction with regard to a specific plaintiff. So if, let's say, you are a child of an illegal immigrant and you sue based on the birthright citizenship executive order put forward by the Trump administration, if the federal court is going to rule at the district level, they should put a stay on the injunction.

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They should put an injunction on the enforcement of that law with regard to just you, not to everyone similarly situated, because that is a question that belongs at the Supreme Court level. Bray said... Remedies need to be based in equity. They need to have a traditional equitable basis unless they're authorized by statute.

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So again, these universal injunctions are a problem because what you end up with is basically single judges now determining for the entire nation what policy should be. And that's not right. That is wrong. It takes a long time for these cases to win themselves to the Supreme Court. President Trump makes this point. He says judges who are attempting to block Doge are a disgrace.

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And again, he is not wrong about this is a very hotly contested issue by Democrats and Republicans. If it's a constitutional crisis for Trump to ignore one federal judge, not the Supreme Court, one federal judge in, say, Oregon, striking down a nationwide act of Congress or a presidential action, who's creating the federal crisis?

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And that's why we needed Admiral Rachel. I mean, that's why we needed members of the military who were carrying pride progress flags. That is why every recruitment video needed to be about finding yourself as opposed to what the military has always been about, which is defending the country and defending the guy next to you. Well, all that is changing. Secretary of Defense Hegseth,

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It would be that judge and people who are interpreting the law that way. Meanwhile, the American Bar Association, which is just a left-wing interest group, released a statement slamming Trump and Elon Musk. William R.A., president of the ABA. Remember, the ABA is such a corrupt institution. They actually signed on to. Joe Biden by fiat declaring a constitutional amendment.

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They said, quote, it's been three weeks since Inauguration Day. Most Americans recognize that newly elected leaders bring change. That is expected. But most Americans also expect changes will take place in accordance with the rule of law and in an orderly manner that respects the lives of affected individuals in the work they've been asked to perform.

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We have seen attempts at wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law. There are efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit. Social media announcements that disparage and appear to be motivated by a desire to inflame without any stated factual basis.

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This is chaotic, but it is wrong. And most Americans recognize it is wrong. It is contrary to the rule of law. Okay, listening to the ABA about what's contrary to the rule of law at this point is like listening to the American Psychological Association talk about what's contrary to common sense when it comes to transgender care.

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Like you are an institution that has been thoroughly corrupted in the name of left-wing politics, and we can all see it. It is perfectly obvious. In reality, Democrats are just upset because they do not like the fact that they are losing. Donald Trump picked an 80% issue when he said, let's cut waste, fraud, and abuse.

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Democrats are taking the 20% and then trying to swivel it into another argument about democracy and the Constitution that, again, avails you little when you guys are seen as a threat to democracy and the Constitution yourselves. And the desperation is clear and obvious. Eddie Glaude is a commentator over at MSNBC. Again, he is suggesting that it's all unconstitutional.

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Again, it's funny how Democrats suddenly like the Constitution the minute that Republicans are in power and they invoke it all the time. you know, when they're not declaring that the constitution is itself racist. Here's Eddie Glaude saying that the actual quiet part out loud, that Democrats actually believe the constitution itself is bad.

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The same constitution they are currently invoking to try and yell at Trump.

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So Democrats are going to have to make up their mind. Is the Constitution good or is the Constitution actually a tool of white supremacy? Because they can't make up their mind, it shows what Democrats actually think about all these things, which is just a power game. It's just a power game. If the Constitution is their enemy, the Constitution is a tool of white supremacy.

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If the Constitution is their friend, then violating the Constitution creates a constitutional crisis. Meanwhile, Ben Rhodes, he of the bad unpublished novels from Brooklyn, who was suddenly made into a national security advisor based on the fact that his brother was in charge of CBS News at the time under Barack Obama. Now he is complaining about Donald Trump.

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who we on the show push very hard for, specifically for this reason, is changing the culture and the nature of the American military and how it is perceived almost single-handedly. Not because he's the only one in the military who is saying this stuff, but because the leadership of the military absolutely matters.

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He is, he's very, very, he says Donald Trump is just like Vladimir Putin. And the histrionics from these folks, man, there's not enough room in this leftist tears tumbler. We need a bigger leftist tears tumbler. We need like a gallon size leftist tears tumbler for all the tears from people like Ben Rhodes.

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If you look at other autocrats around the world, throughout all of human history, including in recent years, when you look at, say, Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, or how Xi Jinping is eyeing Taiwan ever more closely as he ages a bit, you know, there's this idea that a real legacy comes with more territory. That's not a new concept. It both helps you consolidate power at home. It stirs up nationalism.

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You get a bit of a sugar high. And it also is something that, you know, you can associate yourself with going forward.

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And when I listen to Ben Rose talk about America's national interest, all I can think is that he was actually nicknamed in the White House, in the Obama White House. His nickname was, I'm not even kidding, Hamas. That was his nickname in the White House because he was so anti-American. This guy. And now they're bringing him forth to talk about Donald Trump being anti-American. No one's buying it.

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No one's buying it. And the Trump... The Trump rebranding of America is going exceedingly well. And that, by the way, includes President Trump's rebranding of America against things like Hamas, against evil actors like, for example, Hamas. So yesterday, Hamas canceled all hostage releases until further notice.

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They did so basically because they made themselves look even more evil than they normally are. So over last weekend, they released three Israeli hostages. These Israeli hostages had clearly been starved. They were emaciated. Apparently, one of those Israeli hostages, when released, weighed 39 kilograms, which, by the way, is 86 pounds. That is insane, obviously.

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Not only were these hostages emaciated, starved. Turns out the true starvation in Gaza, the true starvation crisis was applied basically only to the hostages in Gaza. Not only that, this particular hostage, who'd been held in a tunnel for some 440 days, had not been told that his wife and children had been murdered.

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So in a speech that they forced him to do before being released, he said he was looking forward to seeing his wife and children, who are dead. They had not told him that. So this, of course, made Hamas look even more evil than they already looked, which is hard to do, considering they are a mass murder, genocidal rape organization. And Hamas then...

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Politically correct generals atop a structure filled with wonderful men and women who are fighting for the country is not good enough. You need people at the top of the military who actually reflect the priorities and the image of the grunts on the ground, the guys who are actually doing the fighting and wounding and dying on behalf of the country.

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basically said we're not going to release any more hostages now the reason for that is probably because all the other hostages are either dead or in this kind of condition and so the more hostages they release in this kind of condition the worse it gets for them imagistically across the world by the way it is in my opinion almost certain that the bibas family who many people have been praying for i would be shocked if the bibas family is not dead the father i believe has been released but the mother and two babies you know those red-headed kids almost certainly dead

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The fact that Hamas committed those acts is the reason why they're not releasing the bodies, because if they do that, then the ceasefire is basically over. So they announced they're not going to release any more people. During the past three weeks, the resistance leadership has monitored the enemy's violations and failure to abide by the terms of the agreement.

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And now, realistically, it's not about that. It's just an outright violation of the ceasefire. So Israel is is arming up at this point. President Trump. then made a public comment about all this. And he said, listen, if these folks are not back, all of them, not some of them, all of them, by noon on Saturday, Israel has the green light to do whatever the hell it wants.

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Good for President Trump. Imagine if this has been the world's reaction October 8th, 2023. And President Trump, this is what strong American leadership looks like, is F around, find out. This has always been the way of President Trump, and he is right, obviously, about all of this. And the image of America and the world is changing.

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President Trump understands the Middle East better than any of his moronic predecessors. By far, it is not close, which is the reason he's actually achieved things in the Middle East that none of his idiot predecessors have been able to do. All righty, meanwhile, fallout from the Super Bowl. So apparently people are very upset that Taylor Swift was in fact booed at the Super Bowl.

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There's an entire piece in Glamour magazine titled why Taylor Swift getting booed at the Super Bowl was even more chilling than you think. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's more chilling than I think because I didn't find it chilling. I thought it was hilarious. Taylor Swift is one of the more obnoxious members of the celebrity culture.

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Whether it is Taylor Swift sitting in on Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively bullying Justin Baldoni, or whether it is Taylor Swift recording the warbling three-note songs of 15-year-old girls while being the same age as my wife, who is a doctor and has four children. in which she talks about her horrific breakups and how she's a victim of the patriarchy and all this while being a billionaire.

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So Pete Hegseth did a couple of things yesterday that re-entrined again this notion that America's military is back. And by the way, you can see it in the numbers as we talked about on the show a couple of days ago. Pete Hegseth announced that recruitment hit record highs, like 12-year highs in December and hit 15-year highs in January. And recruitment is going to keep going up. Why?

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She's a very annoying human, and that is why people booed her. But apparently it is chilling. According to Glamour, quote, since Donald Trump took office, there have been several times I felt chilled by the rapid increase in misogyny seeping in our culture. But watching Taylor Swift at Super Bowl, booed by a crowd of thousands on Sunday night, was a new low.

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It was just a football game, people might say, or Swift. Got heckled by some rowdy Eagles fans, excited to be at the biggest sporting event of the year. So, don't take it so seriously, but I was there at that game. When Swift's face appeared on the Jumbotron, an almost instant and distinctly male descent erupted from around me. Swift, of course, was there to support her boyfriend.

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I was far from the only celebrity in attendance. In fact, the screen showed a few famous people, from Paul McCartney to Anne Hathaway and Lady Gaga. Swift was different. As soon as she appeared on screen, the crowd seemed to delight in jeering and heckling her, and the mood shift was palpable.

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I watched in real time as Swift, alongside her friend Ice Spice, took in the response, her brow furrowing in confusion and then apparent discomfort. Looking at the camera, she distinctly said, what is going on? And girl, same, because we were all wondering what the hell was happening. If you're wondering, it's because you haven't been paying attention.

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Taylor Swift has earned the enmity of a lot of football fans. Why? Because we believe that she got into football approximately seven seconds ago when it became convenient for her to celebrity date Travis Kelsey. And people who like sports are kind of annoyed that they're watching a sporting event and then the celebrity girlfriend gets cut to every seven seconds by the NFL.

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And also they think that she is one of the most manipulative public figures in recent history. I mean, even that sentence, Swift alongside her friend Ice Spice. Yes, I'm sure they are deep and abiding friends who hang out daily. Like, come on.

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Perhaps the moment would have felt less visceral if not for the fact that less than an hour earlier, the crowd had exploded this time with applause to see Trump on that same screen. As an image of the president stone-faced and standing in a salute was shown to the crowd during John Batiste's national anthem performance, the roar of approval and cheers was deafening.

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Well, yeah, because it turns out that Trump got elected. And not only did Trump get elected, he is, again, putting forward a face of America that is simultaneously old and new. in which patriotism is glorified once again. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is doing anthems to the matriarchy and her supposed victim status. Yeah, people are annoyed by her.

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To me, that disparate reaction felt like a message, says the Glamour columnist, that the Super Bowl, one of the biggest cultural events in the country, has been reclaimed by Trump and the type of toxic masculinity he appears to be the beacon of. And he and his supporters seem to be living for it. Again, if it were really just toxic masculinity, then literally every woman would have been booed.

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But that's the point. It was just Taylor Swift. And the reason it's Taylor Swift is for all the reasons just mentioned. She is deeply fake. She is deeply artificial, deeply annoying. And yeah, she deserves it. All righty, folks, coming up, more commentary on the Super Bowl. Some people suggesting there was some coded messaging in Kendrick Lamar's halftime show. We'll discuss.

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Because it turns out that young men want to join this kind of military. If young men wanted to join the world's most diverse workforce, and that was like the top priority, they'd be going to Wellesley or they'd be looking for a job at Starbucks. But if what they actually wish to do is join a fighting machine, which is what the American war machine is supposed to be,

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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then they're going to want to go into Donald Trump's military, but not, for example, Barack Obama or Joe Biden's military. You know how many questions I fielded over the course of the Obama and Biden administrations from young men, 17, 18-year-old men, who said, listen, I have a long family history of going into the military.

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I'm not sure I want to go into the military if the commander-in-chief is Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Because, number one, I don't trust their foreign policy instincts, and I'm not sure I want to fight in a place that is far-flung, having no impact on American interests.

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But more importantly, I'm not sure I want to go into a military where people like me are scorned and looked down upon, historic military families who are not members of the sort of diversity coalition that's going to be on the brochure cover for the Biden or Obama military. All of that is changing. So Pete Hegseth yesterday, he went and he trained with a bunch of members of the military.

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Of course, he himself has a military background. Here's some of the video of him greeting members of the military.

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They're all eager to meet Hegseth because Hegseth is one of them. Hegseth served in the exact same kind of combat roles that they did. The image of that, as opposed to Lloyd Austin strolling down lines of men and women wearing like a face mask, is very different. And then, of course, Hegseth went out and he was pumping iron. Now, again, people on the left say, oh, this is so stereotypical.

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Sometimes you have actual formal strictures against people who disagree. In other words, the government does an awful lot to shape culture in this country. This is something the left has understood for a very long time in a way that the right traditionally has not. And that includes people like me.

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What does it matter? I mean, isn't this kind of just garish and boorish? Well, the answer is sure and awesome. Because the image that you want to give off to the world is one where if you screw with us, we will kick your ass. That is the image that the American military should in fact be purveying to the rest of the world. And Hegseth is a key part of that.

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So he made a couple of announcements yesterday that go to this. So number one, Hegseth issued an immediate pause on gender affirming medical care procedures for all active duty service members in a memo addressed to senior Pentagon leadership and military command, according to ABC News.

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It also ordered an immediate pause on all new promotions in the military for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria. In other words, this is not a diversity machine. This is a battle machine. Now, none of this should be surprising. Gender dysphoria is a very serious condition. If you have depression, you are not allowed to be recruited into the military.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you have clinical obesity, you're not allowed to be recruited into the military. Anything that is supposed to inhibit your function as a member of the military is supposed to bar you from entering the military. There's a wide variety of mental health conditions that bar you from joining the military.

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If it doesn't bar you from joining the military, that you're a man who wants to cut off your junk and have hormone treatment, I'm not sure exactly what should precisely. And again, that's not a question of the patriotism of people who want to join the military in this condition. It's a matter of what the military wants and what the military needs.

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The memo says, quote, effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused. All unscheduled, scheduled or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for service members are paused. Individuals with gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect.

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The memo continued. But the Department of Defense would provide additional policy and implementation guidance to service members with the current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, the executive order that President Trump signed not long ago directed the DOD to revise the Pentagon's policy on transgender service members and stated that expressing a false gender identity divergent from individual sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. And this would appear to be perfectly obvious. This would appear to be perfectly obvious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you are body dysmorphic, if you have anorexia, if you think that actually you're a fat person and you're a deathly skinny person, you shouldn't be in the military. If you're a person who believes that you're a one-armed person in a two-armed person's body, you shouldn't be in the military. The order continues, quote, cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Because I tend to believe that the government should have a set of delegated powers, and the government performs those delegated powers, and we elect that government. So really, culture should shape – our politics should shape our governance. But the truth is it works the other way, too.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Hegseth echoed this. He said, quote, efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated. And this is correct. With ExpressVPN, their powerful encryption reroutes 100% of your online activity through secure servers, making your data invisible to prying eyes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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Again, I'm traveling a lot, and that means that I'm constantly on public Wi-Fi. I need ExpressVPN because my data is my business. So I rely on ExpressVPN. It's super easy to use. I clicked one button, it downloaded. I clicked one button, it's activated. All done. Also,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. And if it's not in your industry yet, it is coming in fast. By the way, AI is amazing. It is getting better day by day. All the things you think are shortcomings of AI, those will be gone in the next iteration. They're being fixed as we speak.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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But here's the thing, AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to that next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure database application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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And this is a point that many people on the MAGA right have been making for a long time, is that when you have, for example, a defense department that decides that it's going to put out ads that feature – lesbian families finding themselves, that this actually has an impact on the kind of people who are recruited into the military.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking. So you are saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, and Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move on over to OCI. For new U.S. customers with minimum financial commitment, offer ends March 31st.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's oracle.com slash Shapiro. You don't want your company left behind in the AI revolution. Go check out Oracle right now, oracle.com slash Shapiro. So what exactly is happening? Well, of course, the left immediately sued because the idea here is not that the military must be strong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2136 - No More TRANSING The Military!

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The military must, in fact, be strong. a diversity organization. Human rights campaign and Lambda Legal then filed a federal lawsuit

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The lawsuit says, quote, by categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 military ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment. They lack any legitimate or rational justification. Well, actually, there's a pretty easy legitimate or rational justification.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you join the military and demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in services to cut off your penis, it seems that that might be an inhibiting factor in your military service. And first of all, Terming a transgender category, suggesting that transgender people are their own category, as opposed to human beings who have gender dysphoria and who are categorizing themselves wrongly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'm wondering exactly what the limiting principle there is. If you're somebody, for example, with a criminal history, you can't join the military. Is that a ban on categories of people because they've acted in a particular way? or they believe certain things about themselves. Good for Hegseth, and again, the image of the American military is going to be stronger because of all this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That was only one of two things that Hegseth did yesterday. He also renamed Fort Liberty to Fort Roland L. Bragg. So he is renaming Fort Bragg back from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg. But there's a twist, and this is really smart. Okay, so what Hegseth is doing, what the Trump administration is doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So originally Fort Bragg was named Camp Bragg, and it was named after a person named Braxton Bragg, who was a former US Army artillery commander and a West Point graduate who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. And by the way, one of the reasons that many of the forts in the United States were named for Confederate generals Fort Hood, for example.

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And that in turn has an impact on how people think of the military. And that in turn has an impact on how people around the world think of the United States. And they're not wrong about this. That's obviously true. The reason I say this is because now nature is healing and things are going back to normal, and it's starting with governmental action.

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One of the reasons for that was not because there was a great love for the Confederacy in the United States. It was because the way that you bring a country back together after the most bloody civil war in American history and possibly world history. is that you actually express conciliation by recognizing that the Confederacy existed and now they have been subsumed into the broader union.

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But the Biden administration decided to rename Fort Bragg because the idea was that presumably black soldiers would go to Fort Bragg and suddenly they would think of Braxton Bragg and they'd think of the racism of America. Now, again, I'm wondering what the evidence was to that effect, that black soldiers who were at Fort Bragg spent every waking moment thinking that, about the name of Fort Bragg.

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I've heard Fort Bragg thousands of times. It had never occurred to me to even look up who Fort Bragg was named after, let alone to look into the deep history of Braxton Bragg. But what Hegseth is doing is smart. They found another American hero named Bragg so they could go back to Fort Bragg.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That way, when veterans say, I served at Fort Bragg, everybody knows what they're talking about because there's still a fort named Fort Bragg, a U.S. base named Fort Bragg.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So according to the Defense Department, while flying aboard a C-17 from Joint Base Andrews to Stuttgart on February 10th, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum renaming Fort Liberty in North Carolina to Fort Roland Elbrag.

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The new name pays tribute to Private First Class Roland Elbrag, a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge. This change underscores the installation's legacy of recognizing those who have demonstrated extraordinary service and sacrifice for the nation.

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So apparently Roland Elbreg was, again, another American hero, but he was an American hero circa World War II. And he had effectively apparently hijacked During World War II, a German ambulance to get a wounded soldier to an Allied hospital in Belgium, you draw like 20 miles.

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And so what they're doing is they're restoring the legacy of Fort Bragg without paying homage to a Confederate soldier, which is a pretty good way of squaring the circle here. Pretty smart. And all the people who would normally be protesting against the renaming of Fort Bragg are going to have trouble protesting the naming of Fort Bragg for a World War II Battle of the Bulge hero.

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And all this goes to the sort of broader thing that Trump is doing. The broader thing that Trump is doing is very much image-driven. And this is something that Trump understands better than literally anyone alive. He is the best marketer in the history of the American Republic, bar none. I mean, who else would be up for the job?

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Like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Donald Trump, just in terms of branding genius. The people who did Coca-Cola. Donald Trump is amazing at branding and he understands the power of imagery. And the left is panicking because for a very, very long time, the right never understood the power of imagery. The power never understood the power of culture in general.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

Folks, the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week has now been arrested. He was arrested yesterday in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This apparently happened because somebody at a local McDonald's saw him and his picture had been plastered across the news and they recognized him. They called the police. The police showed up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Okay, again, this is the case that is being made by the political and media chattering class. Not all of them, but a large number of them. And it is, in fact, a real problem. By the way, it is not designed at solving the actual healthcare problems in the country. It turns out that healthcare in the United States is a giant cluster F. Everyone knows this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is a mix of massive government subsidization, massive government regulation, and then private healthcare companies who are attempting to navigate all of that. And one of the big questions that you should always ask in a quasi-market system is why companies are choosing UnitedHealthcare. And the answer is because UnitedHealthcare is cheaper for the companies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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And why aren't companies getting better healthcare for their employees? Because it turns out that there aren't a lot of other companies that are significantly better than UnitedHealthcare. Why? Because of the regulatory environment that surrounds health insurance companies. The profit margins on health insurance companies, by the way, are not 50%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They're more like 3% on average, 2% to 3% on average. And it turns out that large parts of that are because of the bizarre subsidization of particular parts of the healthcare industry and the bizarre regulation of other parts of the healthcare industry. The American health insurance system is basically a Frankensteinian monster crafted by the conjunction of politics and business.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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And it ends up wasting an enormous amount of money on administrative overhead. It ends up with ugly negotiations between patients and insurance companies over what sort of doctors they can get. The history of the American healthcare system is really complex. It is also really difficult to untangle because it also has disparate results in a wide variety of areas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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So for example, if you have cancer, you would prefer to be in the United States. If you have a broken leg, you might prefer to be in a nationalized healthcare system depending on how the care is getting rationed. Like emergency care in nationalized healthcare systems sometimes is quite good because again, basic care happens with alacrity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done. We'll get into that particular argument that it, quote, unquote, had to be done in a moment because one of the things about evil is that it tends to masquerade as good. Nothing in the American healthcare system changed because the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But if you have any sort of complex problem, you're not going to want to be there. You're going to want to be in the United States, which is why you see people from foreign countries like Canada and the UK traveling to the United States if they have cancer. A lot of this is really complicated. And that's sort of the point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's a piece by Alicia Finley talking about how Obamacare helped exacerbate all of these problems. Quote, Obamacare's perversions effects are fueling public rage against insurers and support for a single payer system that would eliminate them. Mr. Obama, Barack Obama, who pushed Obamacare, of course, and Peter Orszag, the law's chief architect, must be smiling.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Orszag, who is now CEO of the financial services firm Lazard, has dined out on advising health insurance on mergers he said were spurred by the law's regulations. The U.S. is spending $2 trillion more on health care than it was back in 2010, but Americans are not any healthier. Now, again, one problem is that having insurance doesn't change people's behavior. It causes them to use more care.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Medicaid beneficiaries, for example, rush to the emergency room for non-emergencies because they are covered by Medicaid. They don't have deductibles or co-pays. Also, the Medicaid reimbursement rates are significantly lower than UnitedHealthcare, for example, so there are a lot of doctors who will not accept Medicaid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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And then Obamacare expanded eligibility because states have tried to hold down Medicaid costs by reducing reimbursements. Patients with exchange plans are not faring much better. Affordable Care Act plan networks include on average only 40% of local physicians and 21% of those employed by hospitals. Insurers are narrowing coverage to keep down costs. because they sort of have to in many cases.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They're also hiking deductibles, which this year averaged $5,241 for a typical plan. Then it turns out they're not a lot of easy solves for a complex system. And herein lies the actual problem. There's nothing new about the United States, people cheering murderous criminals. This has happened for a very long time in the United States. There are full movies about this sort of stuff, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Bonnie and Clyde, famously with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, is a movie about the glorification of actual murderous criminals. John Dillinger, who robbed some 24 banks with his gang. He was widely proclaimed a folk hero in the 1930s by one segment of the population.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Sunday Times, for example, his gang robbed more than a dozen banks between May 1933 and July 1934, stealing over 300 grand. He also destroyed thousands of mortgage records during the robberies, which made him very popular with poor people who were seeking to escape the payments that they owed to the banks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So back in the 1930s, obviously, there's a lot of frustration and anger at the banking system because of the Great Depression. And so there was a sort of justification that went on of, for example, robbing banks or shooting bank managers. And as you can see in the alleged shooter in this case is justification of Ted Kaczynski.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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You can easily see the logic of this extending out to pretty much every aspect of free market enterprise in the United States. Healthcare, oil companies, banks, literally anything. If you don't like the way a business is acting, according to this logic, you should shoot somebody. Okay, so why is that happening?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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And in fact, one of the sort of outlying symptoms of evil is to use broad-based rationalizations about systemic problems in order to justify individual acts of evil, like murdering a father and CEO of a legal company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, there is now an entire media and political class dedicated to a simple proposition. America is so flawed, its systems are so corrupt, that criminality is a reasonable response to those flaws. This is demagoguery. In a democracy, in a republic, the way that you change policy is by electing politicians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then those politicians work with each other and with regulators and at the state level and at the local level in order to change the policy. Once you say that the system is so broken that the only

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resort is revolutionary violence and not even useful revolutionary violence in the sense that you're overthrowing the system at least if you're going to make the case for revolution you have to make the case for overthrowing the entire system but that's not what these people are doing it's just nihilistic violence lashing out at a system that these people believe is targeting them in some way why do they believe that because instead of saying the truth truthfully instead of saying the real truth which is that these systems are really complex they are very difficult to fix

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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There's a whole class of demagogues in political office and in the media who spend their days saying that all problems are easily solved except that there is an intractable coterie who want to keep people in misery for their own profit. And there's just a bunch of people who don't care, for example, if you are – being denied a loan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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They're a bunch of people who don't care if you're having a tough time with the healthcare system. They don't care about, if they just cared more, then it would all be solved. This is ugly and it's stupid and it's not true. One of the easiest things in politics is to attribute malice to your opponents. But you know what? That actually doesn't get the job done.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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When Valeria found out she was pregnant, she was beyond terrified. She'd often dreamt of being a young mom, but as a Christian and single, she now felt overwhelmed by shame and was seriously considering abortion. Valeria began the search for an abortion.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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It was on that search she called up a nurse at a pre-born network clinic who walked her through her options, including the true reality of ending a baby's life with the abortion pill. When she heard that, she knew she couldn't do that. Instead, Valeria chose life and now has a beautiful little girl. This Christmas, for just 28 bucks, you can help save a life.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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That even if you don't like how the company runs, and I know a lot of doctors who don't like how UnitedHealthcare runs, they think UnitedHealthcare rips off customers and fights them at every turn. Whatever you think about UnitedHealthcare is irrelevant to the question of whether Brian Thompson should have been shot to death on the streets of New York. So more about the alleged shooter.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Right now, get $15 off your very first order. Connect with the provider at ro.co. That's ro.co. For $15 off. There may be people who are perfectly willing to keep people in misery for their own profit. Maybe there are those people. That is not the vast bulk of people in the United States or in positions of high power or in positions in high industry. That is not how it works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is a strategy, a political strategy that was termed by the philosopher Alistair McIntyre, emotivism. The idea that you, instead of making an argument about the policy the person is promoting, you actually just say that the person has bad motivations. That person is evil. That person is wrong. Right. Not just wrong, but like motivated by a sociopathic evil.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the only way that you kill somebody like Brian Thompson is by suggesting that he is motivated, not by a desire to keep the company working and operative in a very difficult regulatory environment with a bizarre system of subsidies and administrative details and all the rest of that. And you can disagree with his decisions, think they're wrong, but that's the actual.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Instead, what you do is you say he's evil and he's just trying to maximize profit. Once you start saying the evil profiteers are trying to harm Americans, like that's their goal. Their goal is to harm Americans. I'm telling you, this is on both sides of the aisle. It is on the left predominantly, but there's a swath of people on the right who are also doing this routine. It's ugly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, I will say that there are elites who have lent credibility to this particular argument through their malfeasance. I think COVID had a lot to do with this. You had people like Anthony Fauci who were giving the platonic lies to the American public. lying for their own purposes in many cases, quashing their political opposition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the generalized argument that is made too much in politics, and it does boil the pot, it leads to an increasing temperature that justifies violence, is this language that disagreements on policy are not because of a pragmatic inability to come to a conclusion or starting from different first principles or using... logical deductions that end up with different conclusions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Wall Street Journal, a review of his reading diet suggested that at some point his ideas about activism had crossed into an interest in violence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, the actual reason that, for example, the healthcare system is a mess is because Brian Thompson is an evil person who is trying to kill grandma, right? Or the reason that the oil companies are attempting to pump more oil is not because there is high demand for carbon-based fossil fuels because it's still the most effective form of energy production on the planet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's because they want to destroy the earth and don't care about destroying the earth. Or the reason the bank denied your loan is not because the bank looked at your loan, assessed the risk, and found that it wasn't worth the price. It's because the bank manager is actually Mr. Potter and is trying to deny your bank loan because he himself is evil.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, this sort of stuff does get politicians where they want to go very often because the easiest form of politics is to label your political opponents evil. motivated, not by mistake, but motivated by actual sociopathic Darth Vader-style evil. People just want to do bad things to you. But this does lead to higher levels of violence across the board.

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And one of the things that's sort of amazing in the right-left breakdown is depending on who is doing the justifying, using the exact same logic, you'll see one side or the other justify it. So, for example... When Bernie Sanders back in 2020 says that our system creates huge profits by deliberately killing people, which is not the way the healthcare system works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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His circumstances were hard to reconcile with his standing, says the Wall Street Journal, less than a decade ago when he was a fresh-faced valedictorian at the nearly $38,000 a year Gilman School in Baltimore, which he attended from the sixth grade until he graduated in 2016. Again, this is a very upper-class person from a very upper-class family.

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If that were true, life expectancy in the United States would have declined over the course of, say, the last 50 years rather than radically increasing over the course of the last 50 years. The regulatory environment in the United States, as we've discussed for health care, is a complete mess.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But Bernie says he could just cut that Gordian knot by suggesting the reason that health care isn't better is because we need to nationalize it. And anyone who doesn't want to nationalize it wants grandma to be murdered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, the basic notion that Bernie Sanders is spewing there, this Marxist notion that profit is inherently some sort of grave evil. And if you just got rid of the hundred billion in profit, then magically healthcare would get better. There are non-profitable systems. They're called nationalized healthcare systems and the outcomes are not better. It's just not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But it's a sexy argument to many people on the left. It's even a sexy argument to some people on the right. Again, there are demagogues on the right who will do the same exact routine. Well, look at these systems. You know, it's very difficult for young families to buy single family housing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That must be because there's a coterie of elite who don't care whether you can get single family housing, who want to exploit you, who want to harm you. And we should go after those people. This sort of demagoguery exists across the aisle. What's funny, again, is depending on the context in which it crops up, you'll see different crowds condemning it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So to take a completely, the exact same argument, but now applied to a different context. Yesterday, Daniel Penny was acquitted in New York, as he well should have been. Daniel Penny is a hero. Daniel Penny was protecting people on a subway.

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from the predations of a mentally ill, deeply schizophrenic drug abuser who is threatening them physically, according to witness testimony on the subway train. This trial never should have happened. It should not have happened in the first place. He was acquitted yesterday. OK, and I want to get into the acquittal in a moment. But what's really fascinating is the reaction to the acquittal.

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So, for example, on the left, you're seeing the exact same arguments that are being made about the quote unquote racial systems of the United States, as you see being made about the health care system of the United States. So Hawk Newsome, famously of the Black Lives Matter movement, he says we need vigilantism here. He's basically making the Unabomber argument here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania. where he would major in computer science and earn a master's degree. So this person has very high IQ, intelligent person, A particular person from that class named Luigi Mangione, according to the Wall Street Journal, was inducted into an academic honor society reserved for top students in electrical and computer engineering.

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He's making the alleged shooter argument here. The racial system of the United States, the justice system is so broken that perhaps people should be assassinated. Now, you hear that, a lot of my listeners, many of the people in the comments a couple of days ago, and they will say, well, that's evil what he said. Yes, yes, it is. Yes, it turns out it is. Here he was yesterday.

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They searched him and they found a so-called ghost gun, a 3D printed gun. They found a bevy of fake IDs. He apparently also had a two-page manifesto on him that was radically anti-capitalist in nature. And it's sort of fascinating to get into who this person was. I want to get into that. I also want to get into the public response to him, which to me is far more disturbing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, again, he's calling for open vigilantism. This was the Black Lives Matter movement, by the way. The Black Lives Matter movement, just take the healthcare context away and take the Black Lives Matter movement and put it in. And it's the same exact argument. The system is so broken. It is so despicable that individual acts of vigilante evil are now justifiable, right?

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Fiery, but mostly peaceful would be the argument in this particular context. It's a bad argument and it's a wrong argument. It is a morally wrong argument. And meanwhile, as far as the Daniel Penny acquittal, obviously this trial never should have taken place. Here is Daniel Penny explaining the circumstances, this is a few months ago, explaining the circumstances of what happened on the subway.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, he appeared to enjoy Greek life, posting photos on Instagram of him and his Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, often on a couch outside their house. In Maryland, the family is a well-known clan. They founded something called Lorien Healthcare, which is a senior care company with services including nursing and assisted living in 1977.

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Okay, again, the fact that this everyone's trial is totally insane. The bizarre victim mentality that is now being adopted by Jordan Neely's father in particular is amazing. So Jordan Neely's father, who was completely absent while his son spun into criminality, violence, and heavy drug abuse, is amazing. It's amazing. Here's Jordan Neely's father calling the system rigged.

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And by the way, Adam Coleman, a columnist for The New York Post, he points out, quote, When I see a father tell a world at the end of a tragic game that we need to do something, my question is, where was he all this time? Where was Andre Zachary when his son was arrested over 40 times, including multiple violent offenses? Where was he when Neely was struggling to mourn his mother's loss?

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And they also developed something called Turf Valley Resort, which is a spa and conference center in Maryland and suburban Baltimore's Hayfield's Country Club. One of his cousins is a Republican member of the state House of Delegates. So again, very rich family, very wealthy family.

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Where was his father when Neely was abandoned in the foster care system with no one to advocate for him? Why is America being held responsible for Zachary's fatherhood issues? The reality of his of his background is horrifying. Neely apparently suffered as a child growing up in an abusive household.

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He testified at trial after his mother's boyfriend murdered her and stuffed her into a suitcase to dispose of the body. And then he was running around New York, bouncing from homeless shelter to homeless shelter while abusing drugs and schizophrenically threatening people on subways. And dad was nowhere to be found. And so society is to blame. No. So here's the thing.

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The American people will resound with the BLM movement is gone. This is no longer a thing. There will not be mass riots in the aftermath of this trial, nor should there be because the American people are tired of, for example, the justification of criminality on the basis that America is, quote unquote, racially corrupt. Well, if you're tired of that, then I have news for you.

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Applying that exact same argument to other contexts where it does not apply is not helpful in any way, shape, or form. In just a second, we'll get to all the updates from Syria. First, if you're still searching for the perfect holiday gift, look no further. Daily Wire Plus gift memberships are 40% off. That's right. You can save big while giving the gift of truth and entertainment this season.

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Meanwhile, chaos has continued over in Syria, where a rebel insurgency that was largely made possible by the destruction of Iran's entire swath of control, ranging all the way from Iran to the coast of the Mediterranean, as we talked about yesterday. That chaos is continuing. According to the Washington Post, a U.S.-backed Syrian peace process begun after civil war broke out in 2011 was moribund.

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Lines dividing the country into spheres of influence among world and regional powers hadn't changed significantly for years, but the sudden offensive launched by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group leading to the collapse of Bashar Assad's government has left governments around the world scrambling to figure out what to do about it, none more so than the Biden administration. Senior U.S.

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It appears, and you can examine his sort of political record all you want, and again, if you view his old Twitter account, for example, what you will see is a sort of bizarrely heterodox, sometimes center-right Twitter account. But what is very clear is that in recent months, he underwent some sort of serious health crisis, which was probably exacerbated by psychedelic use.

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diplomats have rushed to the region fanning out for discussions in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are also involved in talks about an effort to maintain stability in Syria and attempt to foster some sort of political transition.

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The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door meeting Monday afternoon with the UN Special Envoy for Syria and the head of UN peacekeeping forces in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Israel and Syria since the 1973 civil war.

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It is amazing, by the way, that the number one concern of the UN Security Council at this point is Israel deploying to the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria in order to create a buffer zone so al-Qaeda and ISIS don't set up there. And the UN Security Council is like, this is the big deal. Not Turkish-backed Islamist forces taking over the entire country.

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Israel setting up a buffer zone to prevent the invasion of the Golan Heights. Yeah, that's really where you should be putting your focus. Pretty amazing stuff. Hey, the reality is that Israel is currently doing everybody's dirty work by taking out pretty much every dangerous piece of weaponry in Syria. So Israel has knocked out the Syrian Navy now.

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They completely destroyed it, sent it to the bottom of the Mediterranean. They are doing that because they do not want that in the control of Islamist fundamentalists. Israel has been taking out chemical weapons depots throughout Syria so they don't fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who are backed again by the Turkish government, which again is a NATO member, which is insane.

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If the Biden administration had any stones at all, they'd be applying pressure to the Turks to moderate their friends over in Syria. But that's not what they're doing. Instead, apparently, there is a piece of news breaking that suggests that the Biden administration is releasing more money to, wait for it, wait for it, Iran.

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According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Biden and Harris administration waived sanctions on Iran three days after the November election, providing Tehran access of upward to $10 billion in one's frozen funds. I mean, how sick and pathetic is this administration? They're trying to bail Iran out of its own failures.

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The reality is the fall of the Assad regime is most damaging to Iran, which spent billions of dollars trying to not only uphold Bashar Assad, but to set up proxy groups across the Middle East by using Syria as a thoroughfare for weaponry.

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As the Wall Street Journal points out, Iran spent decades and billions of dollars building a network of militias and governments, allowing it to exercise political and military influence across the Middle East. In a matter of weeks, the pillars of that alliance came crashing down.

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Assad's removal is the climax so far in a cascade of events catalyzed by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th of last year, which resulted in the most fundamental change in Iran's security landscape since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. While toppling Saddam Hussein ended up helping Iran, this time Tehran is at a massive disadvantage.

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According to Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group's Iran project, the Islamic Republic thought Hamas's October 7th attack was a turning point in history. That's true, but in the entirely opposite direction to what it hoped for. The dominoes for the Western front have fallen one after another.

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And again, there are forces in Syria that would be much better for the West than, for example, HTS, which is this Islamist terror group that sort of broke away from ISIS and Al-Qaeda, ended up fighting both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. That doesn't make them good, by the way, because terror groups fight one another all the time.

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As I mentioned before, there are the Kurds who are up in the northeast of the country and who have provided safety and security to members of a variety of religions, including Christians. That is not going to be the case, probably, for HDS, which is a tragedy of enormous and horrifying proportions. And then there are the Druze in the south.

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Yesterday, correction, I suggested they were Sunni Muslims. They're not, in fact, Sunni Muslims, of course. They're their own ethnic group. And their religion is sort of a mashup of some elements of Islam, even some elements of Hinduism or Greek philosophy. So I just want to correct the record on that.

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Okay, the whole thing is a mess, obviously, and containment is likely to be the proper strategy here. In other words, let the pot continue to boil so long as it doesn't bother anyone else. That is precisely why Israel went to the other side of the Mount Hermon range and set up a buffer zone. So Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu has suggested that it's only a temporary hold.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, in recent months, there were hints he'd become estranged from friends and family, according to interviews, as well as his social media accounts, which might also shed light on his own health. So the banner photo of Mangione's ex-account features an x-ray of a person's back. And the picture is pretty horrifying. This appears to be like an L4, L5 surgery.

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We'll find out how temporary it is because again, security, security holds are temporary until they're not. Meaning that if Al-Qaeda continues to be on the other side of the mountain range, if ISIS continues to be there, then Israel ain't going to abandon it because that would be incredibly stupid of them. And then there's the question as to what happens next.

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So again, Israel has been doing heavy lifting In Syria, according to the Times of Israel, there were some 250 Israeli strikes against Syrian military targets after the fall of Assad. Israeli planes bombed at least three major Syrian army air bases, housing dozens of helicopters and jets. They basically took out all of the MiGs. So the Syrians had these really old MiGs that were, you know, crap.

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But Israel took them out because they don't want Islamists in charge of those. The 50-year-old regime, of course, had some weaponry, including chemical weaponry, and Israel has been steadily taking out all of those military targets over the course of the last few days.

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By the way, the rest of the world should be thanking Israel for that in the same way they should have thanked Israel for taking out the Osirak reactor in Iraq, and in the same way they should have thanked Israel in 2007 for taking out the Damascus-sponsored nuclear reactor that Bashar al-Assad was building. Can you imagine? HDS in charge of nuclear weapons?

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That's what would have happened if Israel had not done that. So it'll be interesting to see if Israel takes the next step and then goes after the Iranian nuclear facilities. If there's one message that Israel took away correctly from October 7th, the message is you don't wait until your enemies arm up. That'd be a stupid thing. So it'll be fascinating to see what happens next.

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Meanwhile, President Trump has made some new appointments to his cabinet. One of them is just fantastic. That, of course, would be our friend Harmeet Dhillon. Harmeet is an amazing lawyer. She has the right priorities, and he just nominated her to serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights within the Department of Justice, which is amazing.

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The Department of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice, the civil rights branch, has very often been militarized by the left to go after, for example, police departments. Harmeet is not going to do that. Trump has praised Dylann for having stood up consistently to protect people's civil liberties and for representing Christians who are prevented from praying together.

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Harmeet is a wonderful lawyer. She, of course, has represented Daily Wire in the past when we sued the federal government. She was our representative on that. She at one point ran for head of the RNC, an effort that I supported. I think that Harmeet, I can't speak highly enough of Harmeet. She's a fantastic, fantastic representative inside the Trump administration on behalf of freedom.

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She said that it has always been her dream to be able to serve the United States. And she's excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers being led by Pam Bondi, who is the new attorney general nominee from President Trump. So again, very good news. Harmeet is a great pick. Meanwhile, Donald Trump posted, I think one of the funniest things I've ever seen him post on Truth Social.

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So he met with Justin Trudeau. So Donald Trump despises Justin Trudeau. Donald Trump thinks that Trudeau is handsome Bernie Sanders, that he is an idiot, that he is a dullard. And of course, Trudeau has always treated Trump as sort of the, the fly in the soup. He always has treated him as the turd in the punch bowl at all these international events.

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A spinal fusion surgery, which has a very low rate of success. It usually leaves people, or very often, at the very least, leaves people with significant pain for life. So this person must have had a massive back injury. According to his friends, he did that while surfing.

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And now Trump is back and Trump is going to make Justin Trudeau eat it. It is amazing. So he tweeted, he put out on Truth Social the following statement yesterday. I love this so much. It's so great. Quote, it was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada. I look forward to seeing the governor again soon.

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So we may continue our in-depth talk on tariffs and trades, the results of which will truly be spectacular for all. Remember, he had suggested that if you guys are so dependent on the American economy and you don't give us what we want with regard to trade, then we'll tariff you. And if you don't like that, then maybe we'll just annex you and Canada will become the 51st state.

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So that is a reference to that specific comment by President Trump calling him Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada. Oh, I love it. I love it so much. It's so great. By the way, we'll be greeted as liberators. Nobody in Canada wants Justin Trudeau anymore. It's time for him to go. Meanwhile, in other good news,

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Pete Hegseth looks like he is going to continue to sail toward the actual Department of Defense slots. There were some questions last week about whether he was going to be able to get enough Senate votes. One of the votes in question was Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who had questions about some of the allegations that were being made about Pete Hegseth with regard to sexual impropriety or alcohol.

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As I said, these are all anonymous allegations. And those anonymous allegations, aside from a police report, which is really sketchy at best, from California. That should not be enough to sink Hegseth's nomination. So now Joni Ernst has released a statement, quote, I appreciate Pete Hegseth's responsiveness and respect for the process.

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Following our encouraging conversations, Pete committed to completing a full audit of the Pentagon and selecting a senior official who uphold the roles and values of our servicemen and women based on quality and standards, not quotas, and who will prioritize and strengthen my work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks.

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As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources. So that is great. With Joni on board, it looks very much as though Pete Hegseth is your next secretary of defense, which is wonderful. Hegseth has been stalwart throughout this process. Pete has been excellent throughout this process.

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Again, I highly recommend that people go back and watch the interview I did with Pete just a few months ago where he talks about what he would do were he secretary of defense, which apparently he now will be. Pete is saying that he looks forward to getting his FBI background check back. You know, there have been questions about is there going to be an FBI background check?

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He's like, sure, yeah, do it. Why not? Sean, you know what I look forward to?

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His Goodreads profile showed that he had been reading books about back pain and apparently suffered from chronic back pain that, quote, affected all parts of his life, including his ability to have a romantic life or enjoy sports such as surfing, according to a person named Josiah Ryan, who is spokesman for the founder of a Hawaii co-housing complex where Mangione lived a couple of years ago in 2022.

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Okay, again, he is right about that. He'll be a great Secretary of Defense, just terrific. So all seems as though it is working very smoothly for the Trump transition team at this point. Okay, in just a moment, we'll give you the updates on South Korea, on China, and on a bizarre political display from Pope Francis. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.

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About six months ago, he says, Mangione stopped replying to texts and sort of disappeared. So Mangione told a person named RJ Martin and others at this co-living facility in Hawaii, a place called Surf Break, that he was returning to the mainland to have back surgery. In late 2022, Ryan said that Mangione sent friends at Surf Break photos of his spinal x-ray and injured back.

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He did move back to Hawaii, but he stayed not at Surf Break and then stayed in touch by text with his friend RJ Martin, and then he dropped off the radar about six months ago. According to a friend of RJ Martin's, he just stopped replying to RJ's text. Part of the cognitive dissonance for RJ is there was no indication from anyone, anyone at all, that this sort of thing might be in his future.

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Now, again, it's not a giant mystery because Mangione was posting about anxiety and mental health. He shared a quote by an Indian philosopher that read, quote, it is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Again, you can start to see the radicalism creeping into his social media accounts.

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The law enforcement community is still trying to figure out exactly what happened in New York. He stayed at a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side. And then, of course, Thompson, Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was intercepted by the alleged shooter Wednesday morning as he was walking to the Hilton Hotel for the UnitedHealthcare Annual Investor Conference.

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But apparently, according to social media posts, a lot of his friends were reaching out to the shooter, asking where the hell he was. Quote, "'Hey, man, I need you to call me. I don't know if you are okay or just in a super isolated place, but I haven't heard from you in months.'"

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This particular friend said, you made commitments to me for my wedding, and if you can't honor them, I need to know so I can plan accordingly. And then on October 30th, another person posted to his ex account, hey, are you okay? Nobody's heard from you in months. Apparently your family is looking for you.

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Now, according to the UK Daily Mail, he suddenly went radio silent while he was recovering from this back surgery, and he sought alternative forms of pain management, including psychedelics and magic mushrooms. Okay, so let me just be clear. There are a lot of podcasts and people out there who recommend use of, shall we say, untested, unverified, uncontrolled studied drugs.

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And yes, I've seen the comments on my recent shows talking about how, believe it or not, it is very, very bad. It is, in fact, evil to shoot the UnitedHealthcare CEO, even if you are upset at the healthcare industry in the United States. The fact that this has to be said is sort of incredible. But it does have to be said. So let's start with what we know about the alleged shooter here.

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And there are a lot of young people who are listening to these people and then taking these psychedelics. And it turns out that they are not harmless.

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One of the amazing things about sort of our constant information environment is that many of the same people who will suggest correctly that the overuse of pharmaceuticals can mess with your brain will then pump themselves full of psychedelic drugs that are completely untested that you don't know the effects of and that can in fact cause serious mental issues.

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On X, for example, Mangione had created a titled psych full of tweets about psilocybin. Those would be magic mushrooms.

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On January 25th of this year, he added to his Goodreads a book called Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, an Identification Guide, and quote, Mushrooms of Hawaii, an Identification Guide, which sort of suggests that he's walking around Hawaii, picking up mushrooms, identifying them, and then ingesting them, which is not going to be good for your mental health, folks.

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Emergency physician Dr. Kashif Perzada wrote on X, the picture looks like a lumbar spinal fusion surgery. This would be his spinal fusion surgery that we talked about a moment ago. And again, there are lots of books on hisgoodreads.com about pain management.

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There's a guy named Jack Mack, a staffer at Barstool Sports, who said that high school friends of the alleged shooter claimed that he went crazy after being injured. Quote, spoke with a source that had a lot of friends that went to high school with Luigi Mangione. Well, it keeps coming up as back surgery that changed everything for him. And he went, quote, absolutely crazy. He moved to Japan.

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His contact with family stopped about a year ago. Recently, the family reached out to his friends from high school asking if they even had information on him. Some of the books that were on his Goodreads list included, quote, Back in Control, A Spinal Surgeon's Roadmap Out of Chronic Pain. Another is, quote, Crooked, Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery.

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Some friends, according to, again, this is the Daily Mail, now say that Mangione seems to have become radicalized after being laid off from a job at Trucar last year and then, of course, undergoing bad surgery. So that keeps coming up over and over and over. And again, there are indicators of just how radicalized he had become.

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So, for example, he had posted about the Unabomber's manifesto over on Goodreads, a four-star book review. And here is what he wrote. It's a window into his mind and it's a window into how people who have, quote unquote, social concerns can start channeling those into acts of individual evil, just as Ted Kaczynski did.

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The Unabomber, quote, clearly written by a mathematics prodigy, reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life. It is easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic. Again, this would be the alleged shooter who is writing this about the Unabomber. in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.

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But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out. He was a violent individual, rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however, they're more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary. A take I found online that I think is interesting.

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Quote, had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere. And at the end of the day, he's probably right. Oil barons haven't listened to any environmentalists, but they feared him. Again, this is his review of the Unabomber. So... Some like minds happening here. These companies don't care about you or your kids or your grandkids.

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His name is Luigi Mangione. And we have a policy on this show that we don't normally say the names of mass shooters. He is not a mass shooter. He's an individual murderer. And obviously, his name is plastered all over the news. So you've seen him and you know about his name. His name is Luigi Mangione. He is 26 years old.

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They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck. So why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? We're animals just like everything else on this planet, except we've forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival.

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Violence never solved anything is a statement uttered by cowards and predators. And that is a quote that he is quoting, a take that he's quoting about the Unabomber's manifesto. We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, you have an opportunity to open an IRA in gold with Birch Gold and receive free silver delivered to your home.

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During this special holiday season, Birch Gold is offering a complimentary one ounce of Silver Eagle for every $5,000 purchased. The best part is there's no out-of-pocket cost to you. Here's how it works. Simply convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in physical gold, and Birch Gold will send your free silver coins directly to your home.

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Now, you might be thinking, why do I need to diversify into gold? Well, here's the thing. One of the most significant issues is our national debt. The fact is, it's important our nation is broke. Debt is a house of cards that cannot be... quickly dismantled. For as long as the economy is sitting on that house of cards, the strategy remains the same. Diversification.

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That's exactly why I buy gold from Birch Gold. So you should take action the way I have. Text Ben to 989898 before December 18th. Get a free info kit on gold and claim your eligibility for free silver on qualifying purchases from Birch Gold. Do this before December 18th. Again, text Ben to the number 989898 for peace of mind that lasts longer than four years.

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Again, text Ben to 989898 and talk to my friends over at Birch Gold about how you should diversify. Also, Selling a car privately can be a real pain in the butt. Endless negotiations, tire kickers, paperwork hassles. But there is a better way to get your unused car off your hands. For 30 years, Cars for Kids has perfected the car donation process to make it truly effortless.

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They'll take your car in any condition, running or not. They'll turn it into funds for kids in need, plus a tax deduction for you. It takes just two minutes on the phone or at carsforkids.org to donate. They'll take over from there, getting your car picked up as soon as the next day. No haggling, no scheduling conflicts, no paperwork nightmares.

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You'll receive a vacation voucher and maximum tax deduction while supporting proven programs that actually help kids reach their full potential. With over a million successful donations over three decades, Cars for Kids continues to be a trusted partner for car donors across the country. Again, it's free, convenient, easy.

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It frees up your driveway while making a difference for the next generation. So give them a call right now. 1-877-CARS-FOR-KIDS. That's K-A-R-S, the number four. So you can see the extreme political radicalism here that suggests, again, that violence is justified because the system is unworkable, because the system is unfixable, and because grievances are justified.

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We know that he had upon him a 262-word handwritten document, so presumably written at the last minute, in which he said that UnitedHealthcare's market capitalization, even though it has grown American life expectancy, has not. This is according to the UK Daily Mail. He condemned companies...

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Now, the family of the alleged shooter did put out a statement saying, quote, our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson. We ask people to pray for all involved. The statement also says the family only knows the facts of the case that have been released in the news. We're devastated by the news, the short statement says.

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Now, obviously, windows into the mind of people who have had serious health problems, who are messing around with psychedelics. It is very difficult. And I've said this before about alleged shooters and alleged criminals right and left. Mental illness, psychedelic use, all of these things play a role.

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But the generalized willingness by many members of the media and in the political class to justify this sort of stuff is a symptom of something deeper and sicker going on in our society. So for example, when this alleged shooter was still at large, according to the UK Metro, Some of America's highest profile amateur sleuths are flat out refusing to help identify the killer.

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TikTok sleuth, that Danish guy, told two million followers in a video, quote, I don't have to encourage violence. I also don't have to condone violence by any means, but I also don't have to help. Savannah Sparks, who has been reportedly tapped by police to help train officers in how to track suspects online, told NBC whether she's working on the case. Absolutely the F not.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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Michael McWhorter, better known as a person named Tizzy Ent on TikTok, explained in a video, quote, I've yet to see anyone online posting, we've got to find this guy, we've got to get him off the street. I have, however, seen people making an argument, doing the hear me out thing, talking about how attractive the killer is, people calling him Robin Hood, people quite literally making fan art.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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I don't think it's that difficult to figure out why. I don't think there's a single person in this country who hasn't themselves or had someone very, very near and dear to them suffer from the absolutely abysmal thing that is privatized healthcare in this country. Now, the thing about that that, of course, is amazing is that nationalized healthcare in places like the UK are full-scale disastrous.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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And the same people who presumably were cheering on the alleged shooter in this case are in favor of a healthcare system that ends with lower life expectancy and actual government rationing of care, many of them. But there is something deeper, a sickness that is going on in our political class, best exemplified by the absolute nut job, Taylor Lorenz, who used to work for the Washington Post

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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as well as for Box. She was fired yesterday, it appears. She appeared on Piers Morgan yesterday. And I have to say that Piers, his show is entertaining largely because it has become the Jerry Springer of politics. But he had on Taylor Lorenz, and she said that she felt actual joy when the UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered on the street.

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Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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that, quote, continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Mangione then reportedly also added that he acted alone and that the entire effort was self-funded, saying, quote, to save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly I wasn't working with anyone. These parasites had it coming.

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Folks, we have a ton coming up on today's show. The final episode of the case for Derek Chauvin plus Malcolm Gladwell stops by to talk about all of that. And of course, all the big news of the day, the preparation for the Trump tariffs, the big race that's going on in Wisconsin for Supreme Court.

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And believe it or not, I believe that Hillary Clinton is trying to throw her hat into the ring. How do I know? Well, Hillary Clinton only emerges from the woodwork every so often to write an op-ed for the New York Times if she's got something else on her mind. She has a piece in the New York Times today titled, How Much Dumber Will This Get? Now remember, Hillary Clinton is 77 years old.

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That means that in three years, when theoretically she would be running for the presidency again, she'd be 80. That is no longer a barrier to entry. President Trump is currently 78 years old. He's a year older than Hillary Clinton. 77 is like a spring chicken by our modern standards. And the Democratic bench is pretty empty, pretty empty.

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So Hillary Clinton is emerging hypocritically to now talk about Signalgate. She says, it's not the hypocrisy that bothers me, it's the stupidity. We're all shocked that President Trump and his team don't actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws, but we knew that already.

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What's much worse is that the top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into chat. That's dangerous and it's just dumb. And I gotta say, it is amazing that the New York Times went to Hillary Clinton of all humans to jabber about Signalgate. Because this sword cuts both ways.

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As I've been saying, a bad economic downturn would seriously hamper President Trump's ability to do virtually anything, given the fact that he effectively has a one-vote majority in the House of Representatives.

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If she's saying Republicans are hypocrites for not caring about Signalgate, but caring about her classified documents mishandling, she is a hypocrite for saying that she cares about Signalgate, but she does not care about her own classified documents mishandling.

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Nowhere in this piece does she actually address the fact that she had a separate hard drive that she set up in her bathroom that contained all sorts of classified information. But it's pretty clear here that she actually is trying to set up, believe it or not, for another presidential run. Quote, in a dangerous and complex world, it's not enough to be strong. You must also be smart.

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As Secretary of State during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might, and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power.

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Okay, these are the kinds of words of a person who's trying to throw her hat into the ring as a candidate. Fascinating to see how empty the cupboard is at Democratic headquarters that they have to pull Hillary Clinton out from behind the unused cinnamon. Pretty impressive. Now, listen, not all hope is dead for Democrats today. There are a couple of big elections nationwide.

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One of them is happening in the Florida 6th Congressional District. That is Mike Waltz's old district, Rhonda Sands' old district. President Trump won that district by 30 points in the last election cycle. Right now, Senator...

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From Florida, Randy Fine is locked in a very competitive battle with a Democrat named Josh Weil, mainly because Democrats have poured something like $10 million into that district, hoping to steal it while Republicans are asleep. There's no way that an R plus 30 district should go Democrat.

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Yesterday, I actually participated in a tele-rally for Senator Fine, along with Representative Byron Donalds, to get out the vote for Senator Fine. It's very important that Republicans win that race and win it fairly handily.

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But beyond that, there are also certain stories that are just so bad for an administration that they end up hampering their ability to do anything because association with the administration becomes sort of toxic. And there are many cases of this over the course of modern American history.

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They need to win it because if they lose that seat, then basically Mike Johnson's margin of error in the House shrinks to zero because he always has to deal with the constant no vote of Thomas Massey, among others. But also, Republicans need to win fairly handily there just to show Democrats that they don't actually have a chance of sneaking back in through the window.

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That is one big race that is happening today. The other big race that is happening today is the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. It does have nationwide consequences, as The Daily Wire points out. Democrats are expected to challenge Wisconsin's current congressional maps if Crawford wins. Judge Susan Crawford is the very left-wing judge who's being put up for the Supreme Court.

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The conservative candidate is Brad Schimel. The outcome could determine how the court rules on abortion, voter ID laws, and union reforms as well.

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Schimel, who's the former Republican AG of Wisconsin, said in a recent interview he's running to save the court from activist judges like Crawford, saying the court has turned into the most dangerous body in state government under its current 4-3 liberal majority.

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The woman who is running against him, Crawford, is extraordinarily far to the left on pretty much every issue it is possible to be to the left. $90 million has been poured into this race. That's how important it is because a redistricting in Wisconsin could shift the balance of power in the United States Congress. If

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A left-wing Supreme Court in Wisconsin redraws the congressional boundaries, then Democrats could pick up a seat or two, and that would be enough to shift the balance of power in the Congress of the United States.

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Among Crawford's other rather infamous rulings were one spot highlighting a case where she sentenced a man convicted of sexually assaulting two young girls in a pool to four years in prison, which is well below what prosecutors had requested. Crawford said she doesn't regret the decision, asserting that she followed the law at the time.

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Elon Musk, of course, is putting heavy resources into this particular race. So it'll be fascinating to see how all of that turns out. Speaking of Elon Musk, the attacks continue on people who are driving Teslas, which is insane to me. It only took a little bit of political magic for Democrats to turn full scale against electric vehicles.

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Apparently, the number one electric vehicle company on planet Earth is now their enemy because Elon Musk happens to be an ally of President Trump, who's seeking to cut waste, fraud and abuse inside the government. Here is some footage of protesters outside a Tesla factory or Tesla dealership, and they're doing their best to, you know, fight the man. Oh, man, this is the best they can do.

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For folks who can't see, they're doing coordinated line dancing, holding signs that show Tesla with a swastika. Meanwhile, a man accused of firebombing a Tesla dealership in Colorado is now facing federal charges, according to AG Pam Bondi. Cooper Joe Frederick, 24, was arrested in Plano, Texas, on suspicion of attacking a Tesla dealership on March 7th in Loveland, Colorado.

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The truth is the Hunter Biden laptop story hovered over the Biden administration for the entirety of the Biden administration. The truth is that when it came to Barack Obama, Barack Obama's administration was seriously hampered, not just by Obamacare, but by Barack Obama's polarizing talk in 2012. There are many such cases where a single story can shift an entire election cycle.

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Bondi said, you can run, but you can't hide. Justice is coming. This is, in fact, terrorism, by the way. When you attack people or property with the intent of effectuating political change, that is an act of terrorism definitionally. So good for Pam Bondi for doing the thing.

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And if you want it to stop, you will have to do the thing because I think that we are now arriving in an age of political terrorism and chaos if it does not stop and stop right quick. Everything ranging from property damage to full-on shootings in the streets cheered on by members of the left wing are now on the table.

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Luigi Mangione is a hero to a bunch of people on the left, including people like comedian Bill Burr. Speaking of which, I have to say that the Comedians Club is getting less and less interesting and funny. Amber Ruffin is a comedian, an alleged comedian, who's supposed to do her bit at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and she was canceled because she is so overtly, annoyingly anti-Trump.

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And so she was explaining what her plans were.

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If you want more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, even more than you normally get, it's time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. You get member exclusive shows, ad-free streaming. Watch along with my producers in the chat, plus early access to our new releases. Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else.

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That's solid stuff right there. You're a bunch of murderers. Slow clap for these geniuses. Really smart stuff right there. Well, that lady is not very funny at all, but I'll tell you something that is also not funny, and that is your mattress, the one you're sleeping on. It stinks, right? You just went to a big box store and you picked it up, didn't you? Didn't you?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Well, you need a better mattress, and this is where Helix Mattress comes in. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already complaining? Well, before I got my Helix Mattress, that was me quite often. I'll see you next time. for you. Again, you will be sleeping better because, you know, you get your coffee made for you the way you like it in the morning.

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Why would you not have a mattress that you spend eight hours a night on that is actually made for you? Right now, Helix is offering an incredible deal during their spring savings event. Visit helixsleep.com slash ben, get 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash ben for 20% off site-wide. Start sleeping better tonight. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash ben for this exclusive offer. Also,

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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You know, I'm traveling, I'm on the road, there's a lot going on, the news is rough, and that means that I still need to somehow keep healthy. Well, when I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies.

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That's why I'm so thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. That sounds miserable and time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows just what to do with them. They are kosher, so I toss it right in the protein smoothie, and that is why I'm just ripped like a Greek god. Go to balanceofnature.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and get that free bottle of fiber and spice.

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This happened in 2006. Republicans looked like they were in decent shape for the midterm elections of 2006. And then there was a Republican congressperson named Mark Foley, who it turned out had been sleeping with some of his aides, allegedly. And because of that, Republicans ended up getting shellacked. So...

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It's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro to make your life healthier, make your body healthier, have more energy, just feel better overall, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Meanwhile, President Trump is continuing to troll. So over the last 72 hours or so, He continues to revive the idea that he is going to run for president again in 2028. He's not allowed to run for president in 2028.

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The 22nd Amendment says you can only serve two terms. There are some people who are trying to put forth the rather strained constitutional interpretation that theoretically he could run as vice president of the United States because the rule in the Constitution is unconstitutional.

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that the qualifications for the presidency of the United States are the same qualifications as for the vice presidency of the United States. One interpretation means, okay, well, he's no longer qualified to be president of the United States since he's done it twice. The other interpretation means that the Constitution just meant that you have to be a natural born citizen and 35 years of age.

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Okay, it's not happening, but he's still trolling. Here's President Trump in the White House yesterday.

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Well, you know, Caroline Leavitt, whose job it is to defend what the president says, she was out there defending President Trump over his comments regarding a possible third term. Again, this is just trollery. It ain't going to happen. And people, I think, understand that it is trollery.

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But one of the funnier aspects of the Trump administration, this is true during Trump one and Trump two, is Trump would do something that was clearly a troll. And then members of his administration would walk out there and basically have to defend the troll as though it's totally serious. So here we go.

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Okay, meanwhile, Democrats are in fact spiraling. Anna Navarro, again, one of the brilliant women at The View, she says we must take this seriously. It is deeply important. We must stop this tyranny.

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All that is happening right now is the media are on the hunt for some sort of screw up that is so bad that it seriously harms the Trump administration. And the place that they are digging right now is in the immigration realm because Trump is moving fast and breaking things in many realms, including the immigration realm. And so there is a story by Nick Miroff from the Atlantic.

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So, again, if they want to spiral on this, let them spiral, man, because, you know, honestly. If they want to hone in on President Trump's trolling, good luck to them. They're just following like a cat with a laser pointer every aim that President Trump is putting on the wall.

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The reality is, if Democrats are smart, what they should be doing is they should be focusing in on what is likely to happen tomorrow, Liberation Day, according to the President of the United States, but really giant tariff day. So President Trump says that he has settled on a trade plan, but he has not revealed it yet, which, of course, is like the worst way to do this sort of policy.

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It really is a bad way to do this policy because markets are looking... for stability. Markets are looking for predictability. If you are worried that the president is going to dump a bunch of giant tariffs on you tomorrow, how exactly do you plan for that? It sort of paralyzed the markets.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump said he had settled on a plan for his latest batch of tariffs expected this week, but didn't reveal what he had decided. After his economic team struggled to coalesce around a U.S. trade strategy, quote, I've settled it. Yeah, Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.

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Trump's team has pitched him on several ideas of how to tariff other countries, including a 20% global tariff on virtually all imports. Throughout Monday, some of its aides were under the impression he hadn't committed to a particular path. The people's stressed conversations remained fluid. Trump's comments that he had decided on an approach caught some White House advisors off guard.

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So it is totally unclear what President Trump is going to do today. The markets seem uncertain. kind of sanguine about this. They seem as though they think that President Trump is not going to do serious tariffs tomorrow, that President Trump is basically signaling that he's going to do big tariffs, but it's going to be smaller than anticipated.

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I certainly hope that that is the case, because I think that this is truly not good economic policy. If President Trump goes heavy, however, the markets are going to respond in very negative ways. According to Axios, The reality of multinational American businesses is that if these tariffs are suddenly applied, it is going to clock nearly everyone.

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The tariffs contrast with the 2018-2019 period in Trump's previous term when tariffs were more targeted to specific items from specific countries. All signs that these quote-unquote reciprocal tariffs meant to penalize other nations seen as dealing unfairly will be stacked on top of other tariffs like those ostensibly meant to penalize Mexico, Canada, and China.

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Trump told reporters on Sunday, you'd start with all countries. White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, of course, said, as we played on the show yesterday, new tariffs would raise $600 billion a year for the federal government. That, by the way, would be almost a 10x increase in terms of tariff revenue, which was $77 billion.

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that supposedly was going to bring down the Trump administration, do serious damage to the Trump administration. It's their lead today at the Atlantic. It's called an administrative error sends a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison. And this was going to be a big takedown, right? The idea being that the most popular element of Trump's agenda by far right now is his immigration portfolio.

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As Axios points out, Navarro's comments imply $6 trillion in increased tariff revenue over the next decade. So these are big tariffs if he indeed does them. So we'll see the market, again, seems to be banking on the idea that Trump is not going to go full Monty here. We're going to find out in very short order whether that is true or not.

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All righty now, our final episode in the case for Derek Chauvin, our five part series on why the Trump administration should issue a federal pardon for Derek Chauvin. After that, we'll be joined by the famous author Malcolm Gladwell to talk about his perspective. He disagrees.

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The death of George Floyd sparked what would become the most destructive period of civil unrest in modern American history. Protests erupted in all 50 states, not just in major urban centers, but in small towns across rural America. By early June 2020, over 200 cities had imposed curfews. More than 30 states and Washington, D.C.

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activated over 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment service members. This represented one of the largest military operations outside of war in American history. While the mainstream media continued to claim that these were mostly peaceful protests, the reality on the ground was very different.

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By the end of June 2020, at least 14,000 people had been arrested. At least 19 people died in relation to the riots. Property damage from arson, vandalism, and looting between May 26th and June 8th caused approximately $1 to $2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, surpassing even the 1992 L.A. riots.

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Minneapolis itself saw catastrophic destruction. There were two deaths, 604 arrests, an estimated $550 million in property damage to 1,500 properties. The city's third police precinct was overrun and burned to the ground. Businesses that had survived for generations were destroyed overnight. All of this destruction occurred before any semblance of due process was afforded to Derek Chauvin.

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In Seattle, protesters established what they called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, later renamed to CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. For weeks, six blocks of a major American city were essentially surrendered to anarchists, antifa, and radical activists. Police were forbidden from entering. Businesses were held hostage.

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When President Trump urged Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to take back her city, she glibly referred to the occupation as a summer of love. It wasn't until multiple shootings occurred within the zone that city officials finally acted to dismantle it. As American cities burned, Democratic politicians saw an opportunity for political gain.

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On June 8, 2020, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers draped themselves in kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian textile, and knelt in the Capitol's Emancipation Hall for a carefully choreographed photo op. The display was performed of virtue signaling at its most egregious.

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As Jade Bentle, a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher at Oxford University noted, quote, my ancestors did not invent kente cloth for them to be worn by publicity-obsessed politicians as activism in 2020. The kente cloth stunt was widely mocked across the political spectrum, with one screenwriter tweeting, quote, what if they, like, just passed some laws instead of dressing up like a Wakandan chess set?

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Following their theatrical display, Democrats then introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a bill that would have imposed federal mandates on local police departments, restricted qualified immunity, and fundamentally altered policing in America.

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The legislation ultimately failed, but it set the stage for a broader push to a movement that would have catastrophic consequences for public safety in cities across America. And who benefited from all this chaos? Well, certainly not the black communities these riots supposedly aim to help.

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President Trump has done more on the border than any president in modern American history by far. Basically, illegal immigration levels went from historic highs under Joe Biden to basically non-existent on our southern border under President Trump. And that is thanks, of course, to President Trump. It's thanks to Tom Homan, the borders are.

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No, the real beneficiary was Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which rigged in a staggering $90 million. And what did they do with this windfall? According to their own tax filings, only 33% went to actual charitable organizations.

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Meanwhile, BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors, a self-described trained Marxist, somehow discovered her capitalist spirit and paid her graffiti artist brother $840,000 for security services. She paid another $970,000 to a company owned by her child's father for creative services and $2.1 million to a consulting firm owned by another board member.

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And let's not forget the $6 million LA Mansion they purchased. The intellectual underpinnings of this movement were equally fraudulent. ACAB, all cops are bastards, became the rallying cry of college students who would call 911 if their iPhone went missing. Then came defund the police, possibly the worst political slogan in American history.

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When normal people heard defund, they thought it meant actually removing funding from police departments. But then when poll numbers cratered, suddenly progressives insisted it actually meant fund mental health services instead. The cities that did defund their police departments, like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle, saw crime rates skyrocket. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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It's thanks to Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. It's thanks to Secretary of State Rubio, who's been very involved in deportation proceedings. It is a whole of administration efforts. Thanks to Stephen Miller, top advisor to the president. It is by far the most successful element of the Trump administration thus far.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. His current imprisonment represents a failure of our justice system and a triumph of mob rule.

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And so if Democrats can find a sympathetic case of somebody being victimized, this is going to be the point of the spear at the beginning of their resistance. And it sort of has to be because they are actually not capable fully of shifting away from their open borders mentality. And in our unfortunately reactionary politics, a bunch of false choices tend to obtain.

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So it's either open border or totally closed border, nothing in between. In any case, this piece from Nick Miroff says, an administrative error since a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison. The Trump administration has mistakenly deported an immigrant with protected status, but the courts are powerless to order his return.

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And this is like the big, big story that is going to break the Trump administration. Because, after all, The Atlantic has been on the hunt for this. Jeffrey Goldberg was the editor of The Atlantic, who was included accidentally in that national security chat. That was the big story of last week.

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and connect with a community that shares your values. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. With new content added every week, there's always something worth watching. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Well, the media are on the hunt for a bad story that can hang around President Trump's neck.

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I urge you to visit PardonDerek.com and sign our petition asking President Trump to grant Derek Chauvin a federal pardon. We'll also put the website to donate to Derek Chauvin's legal defense fund in the description.

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The big story of this week is going to be The Atlantic reporting a bureaucratic script that sends an innocent man to go hang out with gang members from Trendaragua in El Salvador. Quote, the Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S.

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The pardon power exists precisely for cases like this one, where the regular mechanisms of justice have failed, where political considerations have overridden the fair application of the law, and where mercy is warranted in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Joining us online to discuss all this is Malcolm Gladwell.

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Of course, you know him as the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his great books, The Tipping Point and Blink. He's also the host of the Revisionist History podcast, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, as well as the Broken Record podcast as well. Malcolm, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

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So let's talk about the case that I'm making for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. My understanding is that you oppose. You've made pretty clear that you think that the case against Chauvin is solid and that the judgment was correct. What do you make of the case?

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courts lacked jurisdiction to order his return from the mega prison where he's now locked up. Now, on the face of that, that's really bad, right? I mean, that's a bad story. If they just took a random guy who had protected status from El Salvador, and then he was taken and thrown into a prison in El Salvador, And he was just like an innocent guy. That's a really bad story, obviously.

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You should try it. I'm sure it's unpleasant. I mean, the reality, however, is that, and you and I agree on many of the underlying facts here. One of the questions, legally speaking, obviously, is the question of proximate cause. Was it the stress on Floyd's, It was a positional asphyxia, which was the case that was made by the prosecution that actually led to Floyd's death.

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Was that the proximate cause of his death? Or was it in fact the excited delirium that was started by the fact that he was arrested in the first place? He's already claiming that he can't breathe before he's even taken out of the car and put on the ground. So if the idea is that he's in respiratory distress, so grave that he was going to die before anything else happened.

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And if the original attorney, the original medical examiner said in the report that if we'd found George Floyd dead in his home, he immediately would have attributed it to drug overdose.

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and contributed to by his pre-existing conditions, then that does lead to, at the very least, reasonable doubt as to whether the real question here was the weight on his back or the weight on his neck, or whether the real question was the underlying health conditions that George Floyd was experiencing.

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And when you talk about Thomas Lane, we should note here that Thomas Lane, who was telling Chauvin to move Floyd onto his side, The Minneapolis Police Department protocol suggests that actually you're supposed to keep the suspect in prone position until a code four can be called, meaning that the scene is clear.

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Paramedics didn't even call a code four when they arrived because the scene was not clear. There are many people who are around who are yelling, who are threatening. You can see that in sort of reverse angles of the footage. And so, as you say, it's a very complicated case.

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But that's irrelevant if you're threatening, meaning that there are people who are threatening around saying, get off Floyd or we're going to come do something to you, presumably. And that is why Chauvin, you can see in the video, he's actually yelling at the crowd. He's yelling back at the crowd to get back and remove themselves.

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And so, you know, the question of whether this was, you know, in fact, a second degree unintentional murder or whether this is a police procedure that met the wrong guy who had an eggshell skull syndrome, essentially, in terms of sort of legal speak. That's really the question.

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And as far as Thomas Lane, Thomas Lane, by the way, ends up in jail for three years, which to me is totally unjustifiable.

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And so this is one of the questions I really want to ask you about sort of the justice system is that the other three officers who are there all end up going to jail.

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And so that does suggest to me that there is certainly a political motivation and external circumstances that are affecting the judgment of judges and juries and prosecutors in cases like this, which is incredibly dangerous for the justice system.

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That'd be a very big screw-up. And if the administration is saying they can't do anything to fix it, that's an even bigger screw-up. According to The Atlantic, the case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three plane loads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador's Grim Terrorism Confinement Center on March 15th.

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That's separate from the legal question. But the legal question is the one that I'm talking about here. So when it comes to the question of, for example, proximate cause, you say that it's both things combined, that it's the excited delirium and it's the weight on his back that killed him. That's the case that the prosecution attempts to make?

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Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients' gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims. But in Monday's court filings, attorneys for the government admitted the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported accidentally.

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My contention is that that case cannot be, it's not possible for that case to be proved even remotely beyond a reasonable doubt, given the autopsy results and given the fact that again, when you're citing the Minneapolis department of the police department's use of force guidelines, there is in fact a proviso, which says that if the crowd is not secure, then a lot of that goes out the window.

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And this is one of the questions. And in the tape, again, you see Chauvin gesturing while Floyd is going under, while Floyd, his breathing stops, and it's about the last 50 seconds of the tape. He's not breathing for the entire nine minutes. He stops breathing, apparently, according to the tape, the last 50 seconds or so, which, listen, it's all tragic and horrifying. But...

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At that point in the video, you can see that Chauvin is not focused on Floyd. Chauvin is focused on trying to get the crowd back. He's literally pointing at the crowd with the baton, telling them that they need to get back. And when the paramedics arrive, the paramedics don't even call a code for. The paramedics, which says, seen all clear, the paramedics don't do that.

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And so my position here is that policing is inherently, and you've written about this, ugly, difficult work in which you're finding people at the lowest moment of their lives. And that means that anything on tape, if Chauvin had not died, this would look like an ugly arrest. If I mean, if Floyd had not died, it would look like an ugly arrest.

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I mean, there is an arrest that was that was quite similar, actually, that Chauvin did a few years back before this during a domestic violence call where he used exactly the same position. The person did not die. He was not reprimanded. He shouldn't have been reprimanded. It was a domestic violence call.

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There's a reason why this procedure was in the Minneapolis Police Department playbook in the first place. I mean, down to an actual picture that looks like that was not allowed at trial, by the way. that looks like Chauvin on Floyd's neck. I mean, there's like an actual silhouetted picture that looks exactly like that in the guidebook for the Minneapolis Police Department.

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And so the case that I'm making here is essentially multifold. One is that there is no way, just from the facts of the case, to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Derek Chauvin is responsible for George Floyd's death, given the autopsy results, Floyd's prior health condition, the fact that he's saying he can't breathe for multiple times before he's even put on the ground.

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So there's approximate cause problem. Then there is the question of, even if you want to make a case for excessive use of force, which fine, let's say that that case exists. That case does not exist for second degree murder. That's a totally different charge. Then you have the question of the jury. The jury was clearly intimidated in this case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Quote, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error, the government told the court. Trump's lawyers said the court has no ability to bring him back now that Abrego Garcia is in Salvadoran custody.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This was the most highly profiled criminal justice case since the OJ Simpson case. You had the Minneapolis city government giving a $27 million settlement to George Floyd's family in the middle of jury selection. You had Joe Biden declaring during the case that he was hoping that Chauvin would be found guilty. I mean, this is one of the least unbiased cases ever.

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I think the Thomas Lane conviction is perfect evidence of the fact that these cases were biased beyond all recognition. And that's terrible for the justice system. I think the thing that you and I are doing right now, a reasonable discussion about the George Floyd death and Chauvin's responsibility for that is precisely the thing that never happened during his trial or the lead up to the trial.

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And that's one of the reasons why I think that you saw this sort of explosion in public sentiment that really had almost nothing to do with the case. I mean, one of the things that was never even alleged in the case by federal prosecutors or by state prosecutors is that any of this happened because George Floyd was black. That was the thing that was never alleged.

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There was no evidence ever presented at any of the trials or in the media that Chauvin was a racist. And in fact, the other officers who are standing around, one was white, one was Hmong, and one was black.

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And so the idea that this was a race-based case, which became the predicate for the entire Black Lives Matter summer, resulting in massive 20 million person protests and $2 billion in property damage was predicated on a narrative that was unfolded from a case that could not bear the weight of that narrative.

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So as a non-police officer, I have a hard time answering that question because again, if I looked at just a raw tape of a police officer doing his job in a normal might, it would look ugly to me as a civilian. That's just the reality. I mean, I've seen a lot of- Thomas Lane- Sorry, go ahead.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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The lawyer for Abrego Garcia is asking for the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia's return. Trump administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump's supremacy in foreign affairs outweighs the interests of Abrego Garcia and his family. So the lawyer says, if this is true, the immigration laws are meaningless.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There are a few points we made here. One is that the police are taught that if you can talk, you can breathe, right? I mean, that actually is one of the things that the police are taught. Second of all, as far as the examination of Chauvin's behavior,

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I think that the sort of hard, bright line distinction that you're making between good police work and bad police work is not actually the reality of policing for the vast majority of police. Just as for anybody in their job, I think that not every day is a great day or a horrible day in terms of how you do your job. A lot of it lives in this messy gray middle that really is

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horrifyingly bad to live in when you're a police officer. I mean, I know a lot of police officers in a lot of different police departments. And I think that one of the ways that you can tell what police officers thought of this trial and of Chauvin's behavior is in these sort of revealed preference that you see in the aftermath of this. What do police officers start to do?

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And there's clear evidence this was happening. Police officers stop enforcing the law. Police officers are so afraid that if they do good police work, it is going to be perceived by the civilian population and possible prosecutors as bad police work that they say, I'm just not going to engage. I'm going to pull back.

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And you get a massive increase in murder rate all across the country in our major cities for approximately two years.

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All of them. The government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want. No court can do anything once it's done. So here's the part where the Atlantic gets itself into trouble. So, so far, bad story for the administration. They took a man who shouldn't have been deported and they deported him and the Trump administration admits he shouldn't have been deported, right?

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I mean, that's even more dramatic. That's a real revealed preference. And so because of that reveal preference, I guess what I'm saying is, yes, you can find police officers who are going to look at that tape and say that's bad police work. And I talked to police officers who said that's bad police work.

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I also talked to police officers who said, I don't know what I would do in that situation because police work is inherently in the moment. You're making hard and fast decisions in the moment involving like your physical body and other people's physical bodies. And you have to prep for that. Sometimes it goes the wrong way. If George Floyd had lived, none of this ever would have made the news.

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If George Floyd had been white, it probably wouldn't have made the news is the sad truth of it, even if it should have made the news. And so the police officers were saying, listen, I live 80 percent of my life in this messy middle between the beautiful arrest and taking the cat out of the tree and a police officer just gunning down an unarmed man for no apparent reason.

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Eighty five, 90 percent of my time is spent in that messy gray area. And if that messy gray area is going to be policed with a bright line drawn by civilians who have never done a police ride along. then I can't do this job. I'm gonna end up in jail for doing exactly what I do every single day. And so when we talk about these issues, I think that's why it's so important to examine it.

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Yeah, I think your angle, was he a bad police officer? Was the police action right? That of course is a perfectly relevant question. But when it comes to should a man be in jail for 23 years based on what is a messy middle case at best,

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And based on – leaving aside even the question of proximate cause and I think reasonable doubt, it is – again, I think it would be very difficult for an objective person to listen to the conversation we're having and say beyond a reasonable doubt was clearly met in this case.

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Beyond a reasonable doubt is a very strict standard in the criminal justice system, and there's just no way to get to beyond a reasonable doubt given the conflicting facts, the autopsy report. the jury intimidation and all the rest of it.

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But putting all that aside, I think that if the question that you've asked and you've talked about it a lot is public policy with regard to police officers, there's two sides to that coin. One is we would all like beautiful pictures of the police taking cats out of trees. And then there is the reality of what police work actually is.

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which is inherently dealing with people on their worst day, many of whom have serious criminal backgrounds and who have resisted arrest and who have done bad things in the past, and police officers who are doing this day in and day out. And their daily work is the same as your daily work in the sense it's a thing you do every single day.

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It is not you in a sort of unique situation where you get to be a hero or you get to be a villain.

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That's bad. The Atlantic says, Abrego Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen, has a five-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record, according to his attorney.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Trump administration does not claim that he has a criminal record, but called him a danger to the community and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I agree with that. I mean, I think that if you combine two policies, it would actually alleviate this a lot. One, you massively increase the size of police forces because police officers are generally overworked. They're generally in precincts where there's too much... police are sort of misallocated. In low crime areas, there are too many police.

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And in high crime areas, there actually are not enough police by a long stretch. I mean, this is particularly true in my old hometown of Los Angeles, where the police to civilian ratio is just extraordinary. I mean, it's one police officer for tens of thousands of citizens. And there's just no way for them to actually be able to cover that ground.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And if you actually want fewer criminal justice interactions, you need low crime rates. That's the way that you actually minimize criminal justice interactions. And the way you get low crime rates is regular, consistent enforcement of the law. So you actually need to massively expand police forces. And yes, you're right. Make it easier to get rid of police officers who clearly do the wrong thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So when it comes to public policy, again, I wish those had been the conversations that were had, and instead it turned into massive protests about the nature of American racism and slavery and Jim Crow and all this kind of stuff. Problems that are basically incurable because there's no actual prognosis for what you're supposed to do next.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The lawyer for this guy says the charges are false and the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George's County, Maryland.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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During questioning, one of the men told officers Rodrigo Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof, and police said they didn't believe him according to filings. Police did not identify him as a gang member. However, here is the thing. Okay, this is the part where the Atlantic screws it up. This is what makes this story, at least partially, fake news.

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I'm sorry. I made a mistake. I actually did talk about this case, but go ahead. I apologize.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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So, you know, there's only one problem with that particular case, which is the no complaint was actually even filed at the time. Meaning that – so it's very difficult to make the case that he ought to have been fired over an incident in which no complaint was even filed by the family at the time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean that's fair. It's also true that John Pope – again, it's terrible because he was 14. Also, he's a very big kid, but – and it's a domestic violence call. There are complicating factors that make it slightly more complicated than just the tape, but – The fact that no complaint was filed makes it very difficult for the police even to take action, even if that was a bad situation.

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So, you know, again, when you go through the police's history, I mean, Chauvin had an 18, 19-year history with the Minneapolis Police Department. The complaint rate against Chauvin was effectively no higher than it was against a lot of other officers that were in his same precinct. And the number of complaints that actually ended in reprimand was quite low for Chauvin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump continues to ride around 50% in the approval ratings, which is a historic high for him. The public is giving him an enormous amount of leeway because, of course, he is still at the beginning of his second presidency. There's tremendous warmth for many elements of his agenda, ranging from Doge to immigration. And so the media are on the lookout for a bad story, a bad story.

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An immigration judge is John Hasson. He's a good reporter. An immigration judge found that Garcia was an MS-13 member, a flight risk and a threat to the community six years ago. An immigration judge found that. And that is not included in the story.

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And so, you know, based on that, it is... Again, if we're going to litigate the John Pope situation on its own, I would want to look more deeply into actually all the surrounding circumstances. What was the call like? What exactly was the... thing that was being alleged.

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The tape alone, I think, is one of the things that my takeaway is from the Chauvin case and many other cases that are like this, is that the tape alone doesn't tell the whole story. Because tape alone is always going to look bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And even if I agreed with you that the tape looked bad there, that still would not convict Derek Chauvin in a court of law of the second degree unintentional murder of George Floyd. No, it wouldn't. But it's a, you're right, but it's a clue.

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Any more than, by the way, any more than George Floyd's previous criminal history, including cases where he actually had claimed being taken out of a car that he couldn't breathe, that actually happened a few years beforehand. that any more than that would exonerate Chauvin.

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Yeah, you know, I have. It's disturbing. I mean, again. Come on, it's more than disturbing. Well, I mean, my emotional reaction to a police video is precisely the thing that I'm trying to avoid.

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I mean, again, I think that feelings can tell us what we feel about a situation. I'm not sure that they inform the facts of the situation, but that's where we're going to have to disagree yet again. So it's good. We're ending on a point of disagreement. Malcolm Gladwell, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been an interesting discussion. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All right, guys, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. Remember, if you want to ask me a question and have your question answered, well, there's only one way to do that. That's to become a member. You need to head over right now to Daily Wire Plus and become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Instead, you get the story from this guy's lawyer that says he was just an innocent person who was wrapped up in a bunch of bad testimony from people with whom he was hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot. But according to the actual legal filings,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Abrego Garcia remained in ICE custody because the immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review denied Abrego Garcia bond at a hearing on April 24th, 2019, setting danger to the community because the evidence showed he's a verified member of Mara Salvatrucha, which is MS-13. The IJ also determined that he was a flight risk

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Hey, now, again, there was an administrative error here. Well, the Trump administration is getting illegal immigrants going out of the country, but anywhere worth going is worth going in good boots. Find your perfect pair with Tecovas. The first time I put my Tecovas boots on, it was like they were already broken in, which makes sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Each pair goes through over 200 meticulous steps of handcrafting. I used to think Western boots were just for cowboys. Since these folks started in Texas back in 2015, they've been changing that story. Whether you're a lifelong rancher or just looking for your first pair of Western boots, Tecovas makes it feel easy. You can wear them from sunup to sundown.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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They're built tough enough for long days, but stylish enough for a night out. I love my Tecovas again. Do I look like a boots guy to you? And yet I am wearing boots from Tecovas because they are great. No matter your size or style, they've got the perfect boot waiting for you. Plus, with Tecovas' Best in the West guarantee, you get free returns and exchanges for 30 days. Pretty tough to beat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Right now, get 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro when you sign up for email and text. That's 10% off at T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com. slash Shapiro, takovas.com slash Shapiro. See site for details, Takovas. Point your toes. West, go check them out right now at takovas.com slash Shapiro for 10% off. Again, that's takovas.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Also, did you hear about the recent study showing that about 20% of women who have medical abortions experience complications? There have even been some tragic deaths. What's concerning is that the Biden administration relaxed the reporting requirements so the NIH doesn't have to track injuries related to these medications anymore. These pills now account for over 60% of all abortions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Many women still don't fully understand the risks. At pre-borns clinics, they see women every day who are struggling after taking abortion pills. Some come in not knowing what to do in the aftermath. At pre-born, they welcome these women with compassion and support. They can even offer abortion pill reversal treatment if they come to them early enough. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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baby, or visit preborn.com slash Ben. Your choice today could help save a life tomorrow. Donate today at preborn.com slash Ben. Again, that's preborn.com slash Ben. Go check them out right now. It's all pounds for 50 and say baby, or visit preborn.com slash Ben to give and give generously. So what exactly was the administrative error?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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According to the filings, on March 12, 2025, ICE Homeland Security investigations arrested Abrego Garcia due to his prominent role in MS-13. Over the next two days, Abrego Garcia was transferred to the staging area for removal flights. The operation that led to Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was designed to include only individuals with no impediments to removal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Now, they tried Signalgate, and Signalgate basically went nowhere because the truth is... that everybody has at one point or another included somebody in a group chat by accident, and it gets very awkward and all the rest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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ICE was aware of a grant of withholding of removal at the time of Abrego Garcia's removal from the United States. Reference was made to the status on internal forms. Originally, he was not on the initial manifest of the Title VIII flight. So what happened is an immigration judge had labeled this guy years ago a flight risk and a member of MS-13.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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And then despite that, there was an order that was a withhold of removal that was put on him because of his credible fear, apparently, that he was going to be harmed by people back in his home country. So that was the screw-up. He was an alternate. He was on the list as an alternate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Like, you can't find the people who are primaries, find the people who are alternate, and then go through the procedure and remove them. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego Garcia should not be removed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Through administrative error, according to the filings, Abrego Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight. The removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego Garcia's purported membership in MS-13. So again, this is the part that is the screw up from the Atlantic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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How exactly is it that the Atlantic fails to mention that an immigration judge literally found that there was credible evidence that he was MS-13, which changes the entire nature of the story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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It turns this from a horrifyingly terrible story in which an innocent person with no connections to any form of criminal activity and a five-year-old son with disabilities and an American wife is removed for no good reason to a story where a credibly accused and legally found criminal

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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And the actual result of Signal Chat was kind of an embarrassing snafu, but the military strikes on the Houthis were totally successful, and in fact, the United States military is currently eviscerating the Houthis in Yemen. So... People are sort of looking at that and saying, okay, not great, not wonderful, but is this a career-ending mistake for people inside the Trump administration?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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MS-13 gang member, according to this immigration judge, is removed by accident despite a withholding of removal order. In other words, it's a bureaucratic screw-up, and the guy shouldn't have been removed, but it is not a human tragedy if somebody who is involved in MS-13 ends up being removed from the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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It's this sort of desperate hunger for a story to use as a baton against the Trump administration that leads so many members of the news media, the mainstream legacy media, to play up the headline. Again, the headline from the Atlantic in all of this was not man found to be credibly accused MS-13 member removed by accident.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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It was an administrative error since a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison, which makes it sound like he's like natural born citizen in Maryland, just a good old dad, just coaching ball at the local park. And then suddenly ICE descends upon him and sends him to El Salvador. So the media keep clowning themselves. Vice President J.D. Vance responded to this and correctly was dunking on the story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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So he said, Kyle Cheney, a legal affairs reporter, is apparently unable or unwilling to look at the facts here. In 2019, an immigration judge under the Biden administration determined the deported man was in fact a member of the MS-13 gang. He also apparently had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court. A real winner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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It is telling the entire American media is going to run a propaganda operation today, making you think an innocent father of three was apprehended by a gulag. Here are the relevant facts. This man is an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country. An immigration judge during the Biden administration determined he was a member of the MS-13 gang.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Because he is not a citizen, he does not get a full jury trial by peers. In other words, whatever due process he was entitled to, he received. So, again, I think that two things can be true at once. Number one, they really, really need to, inside the Trump administration, be careful about the things they are doing because the legacy media are on the hunt for screw-ups.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And second of all, the legacy media being on the hunt for screw-ups means they're going to ignore deeply relevant details that change the entire nature of stories in pursuit of the Trump administration. Now, meanwhile, on the immigration front, a judge has now blocked President Trump from ending deportation protections for Venezuelans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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So the Department of Homeland Security was going to allow temporary protected status to expire on April 7th for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. And it centers on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to rescind temporary protected status for Venezuelans shortly after being confirmed.

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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The Biden administration cited Venezuela's extreme poverty and economic and political crises under Maduro's autocratic rule in extending the protection. Nome said that the conditions in Venezuela no longer met the criteria for its citizens to qualify for temporary protected status. The district court judge suggested that this was unlawful and quote-unquote smacks of racism.

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Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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He said that her rationale for ending protections for people from the South American country is entirely lacking in evidentiary support. But here is what Bill Malugan, reporter for Fox News, points out. Temporary protected status is a status that is established by the executive branch of government. It is not, in fact, established by the judiciary. U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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Is this a total derailing of the Trump administration? Probably not. So the media continue on their lookout. And this is one of the things that the Trump administration has to be very careful about. There are certain policy screw-ups that are so large that they can take down an administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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law says this is not subject to judicial review. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that in the first term. Quote, there is no judicial review of any determination of the DHS secretary with respect to the designation or termination or extension of a designation of a foreign state under this subsection.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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In fact, there's a Ninth Circuit Court decision from the prior Trump administration that sided with the Trump administration when he was seeking to terminate temporary protected status for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. So these judges are stepping into arenas where they actually do not have any authority in an attempt to resist Trump. This is a big lose for them, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up

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It turns out that Americans are very much in favor of removing illegal immigrants from the country, particularly Americans. illegal immigrants who are here and committing acts of criminality and associated with gangs. So Democrats can overstep here as well. Now, one of the big questions on the Democratic side of the aisle, of course, is who exactly is going to be at the head of the party?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

Alrighty, folks, tons to get to on today's show. President Trump announces a huge tariff deal with the UK and markets are responding. Fans of Hamas took over Columbia University again, and Jerome Powell makes a decision about interest rates first. Becoming a member of Daily Wire Plus isn't just a subscription, it's a statement.

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Beds, bassinets, play yards, changing tables, 94%. High chairs, 92%. So that's a problem for young families. So President Trump saw that headline and his first move was to say that he was going to try to make exceptions for that. He was in the Oval Office, and he was asked about exemptions. He said, I'll think about it. I don't know. I want to make it nice and simple.

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He said he doesn't want so many exemptions that it creates confusion, but he said that he would look into it. And Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, was testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, and he was asked about it, and he said it's under consideration. So, again, the markets are looking for President Holt to punch holes through his own tariff regime.

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And President Trump is doing this repeatedly. So to take another example, there's been a lot of debate over export controls on things like Nvidia chips. So the idea is Nvidia chips are the most sophisticated chips that are out there. We have to prevent China from getting them because otherwise China will use them.

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But Nvidia is arguing that it doesn't matter, that China is going to find a way to get those chips anyway. that China is developing other ways of sort of brute forcing the chips. And that actually the best thing you can do is make China dependent on NVIDIA chips because NVIDIA is a unique company. Jensen Huang, who is the head of the company, has oriented NVIDIA.

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So they are redesigning their chips every six months or so. Like they come up with a new chip really, really, really fast. So the minute that a chip hits the market, it gets consumed by the market. But the market can't just be gamed by China because NVIDIA is already ahead of the market. So his argument is we'll dominate the Chinese. We'll just keep pumping out new chips.

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And they'll be reliant on American know-how. And that will mean that they can't sort of develop alternative pathways in the same way that the United States has become reliant in some crucial ways and bad ways on supply lines from China. We should make China reliant on crucial supply lines from the United States is the argument that NVIDIA is making.

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There's an article by Aaron Ginn in the Wall Street Journal all about this, talking about what he calls the self-defeating AI export controls. He says, in efforts to maintain America's headstart, U.S. policymakers are targeting graphics processing unit access and semiconductor tooling with a regime of ever-expanding export controls with an emphasis on restricting Chinese GPU acquisition.

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That focus misses the point. Exporting hardware is not the same as exporting capability. Cutting off China's access to American chips might have slowed model development, but it also sharpened Beijing's skill at diffusion in another way. China now leads the world in open-source AI. That lead has emerged under the constraints imposed by U.S. policymakers.

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That's what it is. There's nothing about this that is aspirational. There's nothing about this that is inspiring. This person is completely anonymous. We have no idea what makes her a hero or heroine. Apparently, just being kind of grumpy in front of a TSA agent is enough to make you one of the heroes of American society.

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What America blocks temporarily in outputs like models and enables permanently in inputs like chips. If AI is eating the world, says Aaron Ginn, we must ensure it eats on American hardware and resources. The US should be flooding the world with American GPUs in a concerted way. Untargeted export controls don't stop adversaries.

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They do punish allies and accelerate technical independence from American frameworks. The American strategy should be simple. Let every aligned country run on NVIDIA, Silicon and American standards. Biden restrictions are targeting an enormous number of countries, allies like Switzerland, India, Portugal, Israel, and Argentina.

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Mexico, which assembles our GPU servers requires US approval to transfer or re-export those services. So the Trump administration heard the message and now apparently President Trump is openly considering a plan to overhaul regulations that will limit AI chips and their distribution in foreign countries.

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The Commerce Department plans to replace the rule, which imposed caps on how many chips could go to countries like India, Switzerland, Mexico and Israel. Because, again, the idea is that if you're a third party country, you should be basically using American AI chips. You shouldn't be using Chinese made AI chips.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, the decision is at least temporarily a boon for tech titans who have fought the rules and been buffeted by a wave of export restrictions in recent years. So again, the Trump administration is constantly sort of experimenting. They try a thing. If it doesn't work, they don't do the thing anymore. This is the benefit of having a non-ideological president.

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It's also the detriment of having a non-ideological president because sometimes that means that you experiment with some pretty bad ideas. Speaking of which, one of the bad ideas that the Trump administration is now experimenting with. Again, there's a lot of good news now starting to come out from the Trump administration. Deregulation.

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The tax bill seems to be moving forward in the Congress, which is a must. And of course, with the UK trade deal, there's a reorientation of the American economy toward free trade again. We are moving back in that direction, which is why markets rose. But again, because it's a non-ideological administration, President Trump is also playing with some rather bad ideas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, for example, according to Politico, President Trump now plans to revive an effort to dramatically slash drug costs by tying the amount the government pays for medicines to lower prices abroad. So next week, he's expected to sign an executive order directing aides to pursue an initiative called Most Favored Nation for a selection of drugs within the Medicare program.

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The goal would be to force prices down. So the basic idea would be that if Canada is buying certain drugs in the American market at a lower price than American insurance companies are paying for it, then American insurance companies or Medicaid should basically be paying the same price as the Canadians. The problem for this, of course, is that we should be doing the opposite.

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The statue was meant to be a stark contrast to two other statues in Duffy Square of Father Francis Duffy and George M. Cohan. George M. Cohan's statue, of course, is a tribute to the founder of the Great White Way, Broadway, George M. Cohan. And Father Duffy was a Canadian-American soldier, a Catholic priest, and a military chaplain who served in the 69th Infantry Regiment.

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If we were actually going to make a gain from a tariff war with, say, Canada, what we should be doing is saying that you guys are artificially lowering the actual amount that you are paying for these drugs. The United States is footing the bill for all of the R&D on these drugs.

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American consumers are footing the bill for that with higher prices, and they're subsidizing places like Canada and the UK and every place else that is actually buying American drugs. They are getting a below market price, and we in the United States are paying an above market price. We should force those countries to actually pay the market price. We should not allow them to collectively bargain.

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using their state status against the drug companies in the United States if they wish to have lower trade barriers with the United States. Instead, the Trump administration is messing around with what is effectively a Bernie Sanders proposal. This, again, is not a particularly good proposal with regard to drug pricing policy. And so I would hope that that one also is met with

The Ben Shapiro Show

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market disquiet so that President Trump moves off of it. As the Wall Street Journal points out, Medicaid already receives hefty discounts for drugs under statutory formulas that require manufacturers to kick back a share of a medicine's price to states in a rebate. Medicaid rebates in 2023 amounts to 52% of the program's drug spending. Drugs accounted for less than 4% of Medicaid spending in 2023.

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The Fed spent 10 times more on hospital payments. Even if Republicans required drug makers to give away medicines to Medicaid, savings would not come close to the kind of savings that Republicans are looking for in the tax bill. And what this would actually lead to, if Medicaid crams down these prices, is fewer companies actually just selling to Medicaid. They just move into the private markets.

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And so it undermines the efficacy of Medicaid, whatever efficacy there is. So again, I think President Trump sticks and moves based on the success of a policy. That sometimes means he proposed some not particularly useful policies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Meanwhile, IR is rising again inside the Trump administration because the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, announced yesterday that he would not, in fact, be lowering the interest rates. I agree with him. We should be in wait and see mode at this point. We don't know the impact of the tariffs. Policies have long tails. Frameworks for negotiations are not in fact long form trade deals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so one of the things you do have to worry about if you're President Trump is an inflationary economy. Inflation killed the Biden presidency. It could easily kill the Trump presidency if we were to, for example, lower the interest rates in the middle of a supply chain crisis brought on by much higher tariffs. Here was Jerome Powell explaining his decision yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, again, what he's doing here is he's saying, listen, we want to keep that bullet in the chamber. If the economy takes a serious downturn, we want to be able to lower the interest rates. We don't want to preemptively lower the interest rates into an inflationary economy before we have to do any of that. He said, we don't feel like we need to be in a hurry.

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We feel like it's appropriate to be patient. When things develop, we have a record. We can move quickly when that is appropriate. He points out that uncertainty about the economy is elevated. That, of course, is true. Again, I think that the markets are correctly assessing that President Trump is moving away from his gigantic trade war against the rest of the world.

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However, that doesn't mean uncertainty has gone away by any stretch of the imagination. Here was Jerome Powell yesterday.

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And he served on the Western Front in France during World War I. So Duffy Square is named for him. So these are actual kind of heroic and world-changing figures. And this is meant to be a contrast because this person is just a person who might need a dose of Ozempic and apparently is kind of frumpy and mad and uninspiring. According to... the website for this particular work.

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Okay, so again, he's right that they're not in the data yet, but the sort of danger is that the data is always a trailing indicator. So for example, we know that many, many, many ports are empty right now. Like the port of Seattle is basically receiving no ships. And we know that there are a bunch of blank ships, blank sails as they're called, that are arriving at ports with nothing on them.

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That has not yet kind of sunk into the economy or passed through the economy. And so to preemptively lower the interest rates while supply chains are strained would be exactly the same thing that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve did during the Biden administration. That'd be a mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It means you're joining millions of Americans who share your values, respect our history, and are committed to building a stronger future. Members get ad-free, uncensored access to our daily shows from the most trusted names in media, in-depth investigative journalism, entertainment that actually reflects the stuff you believe, movies, documentaries, series, reshaping the culture in real time.

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COVID created supply line problems, supply chain problems, and then Jerome Powell and company continued to lower those interest rates. And that helped create the super bubble in terms of pricing in the United States. So that's the thing that they are attempting to avoid right now. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Goodness knows there are enough terrible educational institutions out there. A good one is Grand Canyon University. Go check them out right now, gcu.edu. Also, you know how most kids' vitamins out there are basically just candy with a vitamin label?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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So they've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies, 15 essential vitamins and minerals. We're talking vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, and more. All the good stuff that kids actually need for healthy growth. And they've thought of everything. It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, thoroughly tested for safety.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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That means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to a high-quality standard. Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens? Haya now has Kids Daily Greens Plus Superfoods. It's a chocolate-flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids. Packed with more than 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, and digestion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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Just scoop, shake, and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. They even send stickers with your first order so your kids can decorate the bottle and make it their own. We've worked out a special deal with Haya. for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2195 - BACK TO WINNING: Trump Negotiates Tariff Deal With UK

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To claim the seal, you have to go to hiahealth.com slash Shapiro. The seal is not available on their regular website. Go to h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h.com slash Shapiro. Get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Well, meanwhile, Doge continues to uncover serious waste, fraud, and abuse. The Daily Wire has a fascinating piece

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Luke Rosiak, our intrepid investigative reporter, has a pretty amazing piece, where our money was going via USAID. According to Luke, when Department of Government Efficiency aides showed up at a small USAID-linked federal agency called the African Development Foundation in March, its management locked the doors and refused to let them in. A fired board member sued to stop Doge.

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The group was lauded for resisting Doge's demands for access to USADF systems, including financial records, payments, and human resources systems. But according to several former employees, it may have been that the actual objection was something else entirely. That the actual objection was that there was a bit of impropriety going on, shall we say. According to Luke.

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The African Development Foundation has an annual budget of just $45 million, but operating out of sight and out of mind, it might have been the most corrupt agency in Washington, D.C., as employees have been sounding the alarm for years about a culture of self-dealing abuse, anti-white discrimination.

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By law, the agency is only allowed to give grants to Africa-based groups, but to move money through African entities and then back into the United States to pad the salaries of D.C. bureaucrats and pay friends and former employers, according to employees. Until the Doge takeover, which culminated in U.S.

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Marshals ordering building security to let Trump administration officials in, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who arrived in 2021 after working at USAID. An assistant to Adkins said, after she asked why her paycheck was lower than agreed upon, Adkins informed her the remainder would be coming from an overseas account.

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According to this woman, Adkins sent me an email connecting me with a guy in Africa who asked for my banking information, and then that guy wired me $17,000. All of this is really, really sketchy and has led to accusations of international money laundering. And there is indeed an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. Doge has been uncovering it.

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The work was created with the idea of disrupting traditional ideas. Always, when the left is constantly attempting to disrupt a traditional idea, maybe the traditional idea is good. Like you should have to do something heroic for us to build you a statue. It shouldn't just be a random black lady. Although,

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Are those the kind of numbers that are going to be sufficient to cure the national deficit or the national debt? No, but it's a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, information continues to emerge about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the hero of the left, who was visited by a national sitting United States senator, supposed victim of the Trump administration. Now, according to Breitbart News,

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Kilmer Abrego Garcia is being investigated by the DOJ after a convicted human smuggler told the FBI that he hired Abrego Garcia to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States, according to a new report. So you guys picked the wrong victim, man. Again, the Democrats are apparently utterly incapable of saying two things at once.

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Camargo Garcia should not be in the country and seems to be a quite bad person. And also, everybody is entitled to some level of due process. Now, to be fair, Republicans are also having a difficult time holding those two thoughts in place at the same time. So the Democrats are like, no, he's probably wonderful. He has a Maryland father.

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And then it turns out that he has been for years accused of being an MS-13 gang member. And his wife made repeated police reports about him beating her and sought orders of protection against him. And the DHS released a piece of body cam footage from 2022 where troopers pull over Abrego Garcia.

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And there were nine people inside the car, none of whom had luggage, which looks a lot like a smuggling operation. But again, because everything is stupid, we can't hold two ideas at once. So Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, he has come under fire, James Lankford, for saying the obvious here, which is that Kilmer Abrego Garcia should not be in the country.

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And also, even illegal immigrants have certain rights to due process. That does not amount to like a full jury trial. Typically, before you're deported, you have a hearing before a judge, and then we throw you out. That's what due process amounts to. Here was Lankford.

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I do understand that for the left, the basic idea is that every hero of the past is actually a villain. And the only person who you could put up a statue to is a person who's completely anonymous, has no background, no bad social media posts, and never did anything. Those are the people to whom we should build statues. There's nothing from the statue that makes this person in any way important.

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OK, so apparently this is too much. This very, very moderate statement that Lankford is making here, which is saying that there are actual procedures for deporting people and you're supposed to follow those procedures and a court will will hold that. This was apparently too much for some people on the right who were angry and fuming. Cats heard again.

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Amazing to me that a person who calls himself cats heard has wide. apparently, appeal and also impact inside the MAGA movement. But, you know, we live in a brand new world where all voices are considered equally wise. He said, I'm so sick of these fake ass weak cowards in the Republican Party running to fake news CNN to undermine the voters and the president.

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How is that undermining the voters and the president? Seriously, Lankford is in favor of the deportations. He's just saying that if you actually want to accomplish this, you have to follow the process because otherwise courts will stop you, which is true.

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Like, I'm sorry, but the idea that Lankford is some sort of traitor for saying the obvious, which is that pursue a good policy in the most precise possible way in order to achieve success. If you want President Trump to succeed, then you can totally agree with his ends and also believe that the means that he is applying to achieve those ends need to be well calibrated.

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I can totally agree with what he's attempting to do with China while believing that the way he's approaching it is the wrong way and probably destined to backfire. When it comes to illegal immigration, I can praise the means and the ends when it comes to the southern border. He's been unbelievable on that. The administration has been incredible on that. I can praise Tom Holman to the skies.

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I think he's great. Our borders are. I can praise what Kristi Noem is doing, generally speaking. I can also say, I think we should say, that actually due process rights under the Constitution, as the courts have already ruled, requires some form of process before people are removed. And the Trump administration is best served by expediting all those processes to remove people faster.

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Because otherwise you're going to end up in court interminably fighting these battles for no apparent reason. There's plenty of stuff the administration can do to facilitate deportation. including, by the way, cracking down on sanctuary cities. The acting ICE director yesterday mentioned that the Trump administration is going to start going after sanctuary cities.

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Here's the acting ICE director, a man named Todd Lyons.

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Okay, that is right. That is right. And so going after sanctuary cities for violation of law is well worthwhile. Again, applying the law equally and consistently is a very, very good idea. Applying it inconsistently You know, policies being applied in wild fashion does not actually achieve the goal. And I'm all about results. I just want to see the results.

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Listen, when President Trump was running, a lot of people were talking about the character of President Trump or what is he like as a person or any of that. To me, when you look at your politicians, that stuff should be basically irrelevant at this point in time. We are well beyond the point in American history since the Clinton era where character was the deciding factor in presidential elections.

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Just does not. It isn't. That's why Mitt Romney wasn't president in 2012. And the thing that matters most right now is does the plumber fix the toilet? That's it. So it matters very little to me whether the plumber intends to fix the toilet and then proceeds to botch the job. All I care about is whether the toilet is fixed. So President Trump wants to fix the toilet.

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In many areas, he is fixing the toilet that is Washington, D.C. But in places where I think he's going about it the wrong way, I'd prefer that he do it better so the toilet gets fixed. And I don't think that pointing that out is a critique of Trump as a president or as a human. I think it is an attempt to call for the right direction to be taken to achieve the actual goals.

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to anyone else. And yet, I guess this sort of self-centered statue is supposed to represent the future of America and the future of Western civilization. Again, the work was created with the idea of disrupting traditional ideas of what a triumphant figure and challenges should be defined as.

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If you want Trump to succeed, the only thing that succeeds is actual success. And meanwhile, on the foreign front, India versus Pakistan continues to heat up. According to Sadhanand Dume, writing for the Wall Street Journal, the drumbeat to impending war in the Indian subcontinent just got a lot louder.

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India said early on Wednesday it has conducted military strikes on nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation for a terrorist attack that killed more than two dozen civilians, mostly Indian tourists, in Kashmir on April 22nd. Pakistan then called the Indian moves act of war and vowed to retaliate.

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Again, they've been effectively at war, India and Pakistan, since their partition, which took place in 1947, by the way. It's always amazing that you hear people say, well, Israel is a fake state. India and Pakistan literally were created out of the British mandate the same exact time. And nobody ever says that. Anyway, side point.

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Dealing with Pakistan, as this columnist says, an unstable nation brimming with armed jihadists is a serious challenge for India. New Delhi has to find a way to deter Pakistan army-backed jihadist groups that shelter under Pakistan's nuclear umbrella while factoring in Islamabad support from China, which Pakistan calls its iron brother.

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The West also has a Pakistan problem because it's unclear whether Pakistan is a sort of anti-terror ally. Not really, but sometimes they help out. Or whether they're an actual enemy of the United States. It's a very complicated situation, obviously. President Trump, he says the obvious here. He would like for this to stop before it escalates into nuclear war.

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Okay, that is the right approach, obviously. Now, again, I think that that approach is being taken by China as well, neither China nor the United States. China backing Pakistan, the United States largely backing India, although we do have security arrangements with Pakistan. Nobody wants this escalating further. But as I said yesterday,

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This is just a great object lesson in why nuclear proliferation among really sketch countries is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea, which brings us to the latest with regard to Iran. So the administration continues to send wildly mixed signals about what a good Iran deal would look like.

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President Trump has been pretty consistent that the Iranian government cannot have nuclear capacity, but it's unclear whether they mean to allow some sort of civilian nuclear capacity. Just to be clear, if you're building nuclear capacity under a mountain, I don't believe that you are doing so because you need nuclear energy in oil-rich Iran.

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According to the website, Price's work offers viewers a unique opportunity to experience Times Square in a new light and share in a moment of personal reflection and empathy amidst the hyperactivity of the district. That's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous. You just want to see random people standing around in Times Square. You could do that with random actual humans.

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The only reason you're attempting to build nuclear facilities in Iran is because you want to nuke. That is the only reason. Because it turns out one of the great guarantors of the longevity of your regime is a nuclear weapon. North Korea only exists as the hellhole that it is because it has a nuclear weapon. That is the only reason.

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Because under the crazy man theory, the idea is that if ever there was an attempt at regime change, both internal or external in North Korea, which is the worst place on planet Earth, that if that happened, then a nuclear weapon might get fired. There's a reason why the worst people are pursuing nuclear weapons right now.

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So if the Trump administration is moving toward some sort of Obama 2.0 deal with Iran, that is a full-scale disaster area. And obviously that's what Iran wants. Iran is very good at this game. The phrase in the Middle East that's often used about Iran is that they never win a war or lose a peace. which is a pretty good description.

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The attempt the other day by Iran to tell the Houthis to stop hitting American shipping in the Red Sea so as to get the United States to stop hitting the Houthis and also to create some sort of warm feeling between the Iranians and the United States before upcoming nuclear negotiations.

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The region sought for what it really was, which was an attempt to separate off the United States from its allies in Israel with the hope that that would extend.

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That logic would then extend to an Iranian nuclear deal where basically the United States said, well, you know, if you develop ballistic missile technology or if you develop terror connections or even if you develop nuclear weapons, but you're aiming it mostly at like Israel, then whatever. We don't really care.

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The problem with that philosophy is that a nuclear-armed Iran means a nuclear-armed Saudi. It means a bristling nuclear-armed Israel. Israel, of course, already has nuclear weapons, which is one of the reasons it has survived so long in a region surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who wish to exterminate it.

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But proliferation among non-allied countries with the United States is generally a very bad thing. It's the only reason you care about the border between India and Pakistan today. So the sort of mixed signals that are being sent by the administration with regard to an Iran deal. Here's what a good Iran deal would look like. Seriously, what a good Iran deal would look like.

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The kind of deal that would allow for an off-ramp from any sort of strike on Iran. This is the only form of a good Iran deal. Iran completely dismantles all nuclear capacity inside its country. They do not need nuclear energy. And America has inspectors on the ground watching it. Those two things, that's what a good deal looks like. Anything short of that is a bad deal, period, end of story.

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Any sort of Obama deal where they still have civilian nuclear enrichment, they can just ramp into high gear the minute that the United States is not looking. Foreign inspectors from Russia, for example, or the IAEA, that is not going to be sufficient.

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And whether the United States takes part in a strike or not, it's certainly not going to be sufficient for Israel, which sees correctly an Iranian nuclear weapon as an existential threat.

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You don't need a 12 foot statue in order to accomplish this. It's silly, but that silliness has an underlying depressing message to it, which is there is no such thing as heroism. There is no such thing as iconic status that can be achieved by accomplishment. Basically, the only thing worth worshiping is a bizarre narcissism of do-nothingism.

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Well, we should always remember in all of this that when it comes to Middle Eastern policy, whatever the questions are about the Trump administration's approach, they will never be as bad as the Biden administration was. A brand new investigation has found that the, you remember that floating Gaza pier? Remember this?

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The Biden administration decided that they were going to try to create a humanitarian aid pier in the Mediterranean, the dumbest idea of all time. It turns out it left 62 US personnel injured, one service member dead, and caused $31 million in damage to military equipment. and basically ended up distributing very, very low amounts of aid because it was really stupid.

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And that aid ended up being hijacked by Hamas anyway. So slow clap once again for the Biden administration, the worst foreign policy administration of my lifetime. All right, folks, the show continues now, but only behind the paywall. We're going to get to Disneyland and Disney. Are they the biggest hypocrites in human history? I mean, they have to be pretty close at this point.

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When you become a member, by the way, you get all sorts of goodies, not just the extras of the show. You're also going to get all access live where you hang out with me and Matt Walsh's movies and all access live with him and stuff with Jordan and stuff with all of our hosts, all of our other movies like Run, Hide, Fight, tons of good stuff. If you're not a member, become a member.

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Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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So if that's the sort of stuff the left wants to embrace, the right has a lot of running room. They really do. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is out there with his own form of narcissism. So Bernie Sanders has been jetting around the country with Alexander Ocasio-Cortez doing these big rallies on behalf of socialism.

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No, Bernie appeared on Fox News with Bret Baier and Bret Baier asked him, we noticed that you spent like over $200,000 on private jet flights. And Bernie is unapologetic in his socialism. He's a good Soviet. He's a good Soviet commissar who has a Dasha out in the woods somewhere while everybody else is crammed eight to an apartment.

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Join right now. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe. OK, so in a moment, I'm going to get to President Trump's economic policy and the markets are responding, of course, quite positively to a vast shift in the direction of the Trump economic policy. A directional change that I've been calling for since well before Liberation Day. I'm very happy about it as well.

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So that would be yes on the private trial. You think he's going to wait in line with you peons at the United counter? You think he's really going to do that? Now, as somebody who travels a lot, especially in the past few weeks, I've taken an awful lot of commercial airliner travel, like a lot of it. I'm very tired because of it. But you know what Bernie could do?

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These rallies don't all have to be on the same day. He could actually schedule them out where he doesn't have to take private flights. But again, the rules don't apply to the elite socialists. They only apply to everybody else. Again, this sort of stuff is why the normie American turned toward the Trump administration.

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Another reason the normie Americans turned toward the Trump administration was given, again, pictorial status by what happened at Columbia yesterday. So yesterday, over at Columbia University, the students decided they were going to take over the library again. And the administration really didn't do much about it.

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According to the New York Times, dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, they're pro-Khamasniks, were taken into police custody on Wednesday evening after occupying part of the main library on Columbia University's campus in an attempt to rekindle the protest movement that swept the campus last spring. The protesters were wearing masks and keffiyehs.

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They burst through the security gate shortly after 3 p.m. They hung banners in the soaring main room of Butler Library's second floor. They renamed the space the Basel al-Araj Popular University. So who exactly was Basel al-Arash? Well, back in 2017, he was killed by the IDF. The IDF said at the time that he had been organizing terror attacks against Israelis.

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He was part of a terror cell, allegedly, planning to carry out attacks on Israeli targets. Inside his home, troops uncovered an M16 rifle, an improvised Carlos-style submachine gun. And not only that, the Palestinian Authority had arrested him for planning attacks against Israelis, and they imprisoned him for six months. So again, they picked not the world's best martyrs for their examples.

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Here's some of the video from the protesters taking over the library. You can see they took over the entire library. They're occupying the entire central component of the library. They then started tussling with security. Again, all this is a violation of law. It is trespass. And if you decide that you're going to confront officers and try to harm them, it's assault as well.

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Here's some of the footage. You can see they're trying to push their way through the police. Trying to push their way through security. All masked. Wearing the kefiz over their faces like terrorists. Just delightful people. This is at Columbia University, one of the most prestigious universities in America.

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The reason that's very important is because right now, the right Republicans have a lot of running room. And one of the reasons they have a lot of running room is because the Democrats continue to be insane. I don't just mean they're insane in terms of their policy preferences, although many of those policy preferences are quite crazy.

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A university that is under fire from the Trump administration, rightly so, for its violation of the Civil Rights Act. They wrote slogans like Columbia will burn for the martyrs and free Palestine all over library walls and shelves. So they committed all sorts of acts of vandalism as well. Here are some of the protesters vandalizing the library shelves. So just spray painting. Nobody in sight.

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Where's security? No one knows. OK, so eventually some of these people were arrested. And then the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, put out a statement saying we're reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University's library. Pro Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.

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And what he means by that is if you came here on a student visa to support Hamas, you shouldn't be here, which seems pretty intuitively correct. The reason I bring all of this up before we get to trade policy is because the Trump administration, as I've been saying over and over and over since the inauguration, has enormous amounts of work to do.

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Everything from DEI to the trans issue, everything from deregulation to building up our military defense. And the biggest thing that they have to do is make sure the economy keeps humming because Democrats have provided them with unique opportunity in my lifetime for Republicans to actually do things. Because guess what Americans don't like?

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They don't like images of keffiyeh-swathed terror supporters vandalizing some of the most prestigious American universities. They don't like Bernie Sanders jabbering about how he gets to take a private jet while you're stuck in the third row at Southwest. Americans don't like dumb statues in the middle of Times Square. They're sort of degrading to the human spirit.

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They don't like this sort of stuff. So Republicans have a unique opportunity. And what that means is you can't blow it based on bad economic policy. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, GoodRanchers.com. They deliver 100% locally sourced American beef, chicken, pork, and more straight to your door so you don't have to worry about grocery store mystery meat.

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Their 100% American supply chain also keeps your costs steady and predictable. Get this. The average family throws away about 500 bucks worth of meat every year because of freezer burn, bad packaging. That does not happen with Good Ranchers. They're vacuum sealed, individually wrapped, cut, stay fresh for a full year in your freezer.

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Plus, think about how much meat you usually have to trim off and toss before you even cook with generic grocery store meat. Like 10% minimum, right? Well, good rancher's cuts are already perfectly trimmed, so you're actually cooking the stuff that you pay for. Producer Savvy has a very, very chunky toddler. He's a big boy named Mikey. He's extremely cute.

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I mean, culturally speaking, the Democrats seem determined to do ridiculous things. People on the left in big cities continue to push ridiculous policies, imagery that is going to make them more unpopular, which gives Republicans a lot of running room. The latest sort of bizarre example, but it's symptomatic of a broader imagistic crisis inside the Democratic Party. comes courtesy of Times Square.

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And he's huge because of Good Ranchers steak for dinner at least twice a week. That's a little man right there. Better meat, stable prices, less waste. That's just smarter shopping for you and your family. Subscribe right now at goodranchers.com and get free meat for life and 40 bucks off with code Ben. Again, that's goodranchers.com, promo code Ben.

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Get free meat for life and $40 off Good Ranchers. American meat delivered. Also, not everybody who handles your personal information is going to be careful with that information. It only takes one mistake to expose that info to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there is LifeLock.

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So well before Liberation Day, I suggested that President Trump's giant tariff policies that he was proposing would be bad for the economy, that they would create supply chain problems, that they would not in fact achieve the goals that they were seeking to achieve in terms of re-industrialization,

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but that if tariffs were being used as a way to lower tariffs, if they were being used as a cudgel in order to get other countries to come back to the table and do better trade deals, they were acceptable and good. Well, it's unclear exactly what the plan of the Trump administration was.

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I think the most accurate take is that President Trump really did want to do full-scale Liberation Day tariffs, and then the stock market plummeted. And President Trump, as I've said before, is a man who lives in the world of reality. And so if he sees a bad headline, he sticks and he moves. This is what the stock market has been betting on pretty much all along.

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It's why as soon as he put out a tweet, basically revoking a large swath of the tariffs, the stock market started to jump again. It's the reason why when Secretary Scott Besant Secretary of the Treasury goes on TV, the stock markets feel a lot better.

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And when Peter Navarro, Dullard, or Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, go on TV and talk about tariffs, the markets start to get a little bit worried. Well, President Trump has now announced the first big trade deal. Okay, and that is a good thing.

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Because again, if we were to leave the current trade barriers in place, according to Yale's budget lab, consumers would face an overall effective tariff rate of 28%. That is the highest since 1901. 1901, now a huge amount of that tariff is coming vis-a-vis China. However, all these other countries where we put a 10% tariff rate on them, many of those countries were like a 2% tariff rate.

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So that is still a vast increase. So President Trump today, he announced that he had this earth-shaking deal with the UK. Here's what he had to say.

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So there is a brand new statue in Times Square that's 12 feet tall. It is titled Grounded in the Stars by an artist named Thomas J. Price. What is this 12 foot tall statue that is grounded in the stars? Well, it appears to be a slightly to moderately overweight black woman wearing jeans that are too tight for her, a t-shirt that she got at Walmart, and staring angrily at the cashier at CVS.

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So what exactly is in the deal? Well, it is not a full-scale trade agreement because it takes a long time to actually negotiate a full-scale trade agreement. It really is sort of a framework. The framework is not as extensive as I would like it to be in terms of actual policy. It doesn't immediately lower all the tariff rates down to zero, which I think would be the best policy.

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It lowers tariff rates on certain automotive goods, some steel products. It appears to leave a baseline 10% tariff rate. Again, I don't think this is the best possible trade policy, but directionally, and the reason the markets are responding is because what they are seeing is that President Trump, if the economy looks to be sinking, is going to adjust and reverse himself.

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And you're seeing this across a wide variety of Trumpian policy. So for example, there are a bunch of articles that came out over the course of the last 72 hours all about how tariffs on Chinese goods were really harming young families because a lot of the products that are coming in and being tariffed are oriented toward kids and babies.

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As the Washington Post pointed out, virtually every car seat, stroller, bassinet, and changing table sold in the United States is made in China, making children's products industry among the most vulnerable to fast-rising costs and shortages. Well, again, if you look at the actual statistics, 98% of all car seats are made in China. 97% of all strollers are made in China.

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Well, folks, controversy over Doge, turmoil over the economy, new movement on Ukraine, a lot going on. As always, if you're not a Daily Wire Plus member, now would be the time to join the fight. Get exclusive breaking stories from our investigative journalism team, the stories the mainstream media will not cover.

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They're so good that we literally threw out all the other sheets in our house and we only have bowl and branch. What really impresses me is how the bowl and branch sheets get even softer with every single wash. I didn't think that was possible. After a few months, they feel even more luxurious than when I first bought them. Believe me, I've tried a lot of other premium sheets before.

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Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowlandbranch.com slash ben. That's bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash ben to save 15%. Exclusions apply. See site for details. And that's bowlandbranch.com slash ben to save 15%.

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Well, yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States on a 5-4 vote essentially remanded the case back to the district court and said, we need clarification as to why and how you are actually doing this. So according to the Supreme Court majority opinion, it was a 5-4 decision that was joined on the right side of the aisle by Justices Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. This order essentially said,

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that the District Court for the District of Columbia had issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of USAID assistance funds. The present application did not challenge the government's obligation to follow that order.

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The District Court ordered the government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements, those owed for work already completed. So this doesn't apply, by the way, to forward-looking monies. This is to, like, there was an invoice because the work was already done. Does the federal government have to pay the bill?

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The Chief Justice entered an administrative stay shortly before the 1159 deadline and then referred the application to the court. The application has been denied. But when the application was denied, it doesn't mean that's the end of the story.

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The district court needs to now clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timeline. So again, sort of unclear the scope of this. It is remanding back to the district court to figure out exactly what it is that they are saying has to be paused and what doesn't have to be paused.

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Are they saying that the part that has to go out is the part that's already been paid for? Or are they saying that literally you can't pause federal spending at all? And so we're going to need clarification on that. This drew a very, very marked dissent, a hot dissent from Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. And Alito, who is just awesome.

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DJ Daniels, of course, very cute 13 year old kid who's suffering from brain cancer. And he visited the White House. And then he went on Fox News and said thank you to President Trump.

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If I have to rank my favorite Supreme Court justices, there's some people who rank their favorite baseball players. I rank favorite Supreme Court justices. And for me, it goes Clarence Thomas and then Samuel Alito.

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So Justice Alito, who is terrific, wrote the following, quote, Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out and probably lose forever two billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic no. But a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.

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Justice Alito not pulling any punches. He says in capital form, this is what happened. Respondents are a group of American businesses and nonprofits that receive foreign assistance funds from the State Department and USAID. They brought suit and claimed the current administration's temporary pause of foreign assistance payments is unlawful.

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The district court issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to then halt the funding pause, meaning spend the money. After issuing the TRO, the district judge grew frustrated with the pace at which the funds were being dispersed. On February 25th, he issued a second order requiring the government to pay out approximately $2 billion.

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The judge brushed aside the government's argument that sovereign immunity barred this enforcement order. He took two steps that would prevent any higher court from reviewing or possibly stopping the payments. First, he labeled the order as a non-appealable TRO. And second, he demanded that the money be paid within 36 hours.

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Alito says this left the government little time to try to obtain some review of what it regarded as a lawless order. The government moved for a stay pending appeal in the district court. The judge then shrugged off the government's sovereign immunity claim and ignored the government's representation that most of the money in question could probably not be recovered once actually dispersed.

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So he writes, to start, it is clear the district court's enforcement order should be construed as an appealable preliminary injunction, not a mere TRO. A temporary restraining order does not apply here because it is not temporary. Once the money is gone, it's gone. Usually a temporary restraining order applies to, for example, you're not allowed for a certain period of time to do this thing.

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But if the temporary restraining order says you must pay X dollars to this person, that's not a temporary restraining order. The money has now been paid and you can't claw it back. This is Alito's point. He says the order did not merely restrain the government's challenged action in order to preserve the status quo. It acts as a mandatory injunction requiring affirmative action by the government.

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So the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction. He said even if the majority is unwilling to vacate the district court's order, it should at least stay the district court's enforcement order until the government is able to petition for a writ of certiorari, meaning like the Supreme Court takes up the full case. He is right about all of this, of course.

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He says today the court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers. The district court has made plain its frustration with the government and respondents raise serious concerns about nonpayment for completed work. But the relief ordered is quite simply to extreme a response.

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A federal court has many tools to address a party's supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them. So again, this raises questions as to why Justice Roberts did what he did or why Amy Coney Barrett did what she did. It's not as extreme an order as it originally seems from the Supreme Court.

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And that basically says any district court judge anywhere can put a nationwide temporary restraining order on the federal government for any reason whatsoever. But as Justice Alito says, if the effect of the order is to force the federal government to disperse funds, it can't get back before the adjudication at the Supreme Court level. then that is a massive problem.

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And Justice Alito is right about all of that. But again, you were expecting a lot of this sort of stuff to happen. I mean, the reality is that because President Trump is moving fast and breaking things, there's gonna be a lot of legal action. Most of that legal action is gonna read down to the benefit of the Trump administration. Some will not.

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So the Trump administration has now been ordered to reinstate thousands of fired U.S. Department of Agriculture workers as well. The chair of a federal civil service board ruled on Wednesday that thousands of fired workers at the Department of Agriculture must get their jobs back for at least the next month and a half.

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So again, this is a very big win for President Trump. Not only that, it was a big loss for the Democrats. So Caroline Lovett, the excellent White House press secretary. In the White House press room yesterday, she trashed the Democrats over their reactions to the State of the Union. She said, I don't understand.

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The ruling said the recent dismissals of more than 5,600 probationary employees may have violated federal law and procedures for carrying out layoffs. But that is not going to resolve all of this because, again, the administration, as Politico reports, may have further options to place the reinstated workers on administrative leave or fire them again as part of a formal reduction in force.

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Enjoy ad-free, uncensored Daily Wire shows, plus live chat in the app with other members. And yes. even moi. Access exclusive Daily Wire documentaries, movies, and series. Stay ahead with breaking news and instant reactions. Be the first to know what's happening at The Daily Wire. Head on over to dailywire.com right now and become a member.

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So basically, there are all these sort of laws and regulations in place designed to ensure the continued peonage of all of these various federal jobs, that people be stuck in these jobs basically forever. One of those procedures is an administrative review before anybody gets fired. They're saying that that didn't happen. There was no administrative review.

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And so you have to replace people in these jobs because there's a merit systems board that has to review the issue. Now, again, that's not a permanent end to what Trump is trying to do inside the USDA. All of these road bumps are to be expected at this point.

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But in the end, one of the things that's going to have to happen is actual congressional movement to re-enshrine what Doge is attempting to do. The executive branch can do many things in terms of firing people. And by the way, there will be negative headlines that attend to many of these firings.

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So for example, lots of headlines today about the fact that some of these firings are affecting veterans. So there's a whole article from the Associated Press today suggesting that that it's a great tragedy that veterans are losing their jobs. Number one, nobody, including veterans, has a right to a job from the federal government. That's not actually how it works.

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You do have veterans benefits that attend to your service time, but nobody has a right to a federal taxpayer job. With that said, it would be a very smart move for the Trump administration to launch an initiative to help people who are veterans get jobs in the private sector if they end up being fired in the public sector, right? That would be just a smart political move.

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And I think the Trump administration will probably do something like that. But in the end, most of the big things that the Trump administration is trying to do, again, this is the hard part. This is where I say like the first 30 days are now over and now you hit the hard part of the presidency. You need Congress to do a lot of these things.

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And so yesterday, Elon Musk went to the Hill and he had a meeting with House Republicans to discuss what Doge was doing. According to the Washington Post, while supportive of Doge's cost-cutting mission, some Republican lawmakers have begun to express concern over Musk's methods of laying off federal employees en masse and then pursuing large budget cuts without congressional input.

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However, with that said, House lawmakers have been talking pretty seriously about the possibility of rescission. That is a process whereby the government of the United States, the Congress of the United States can, with 51 votes... vote to rescind some of its funding. Musk and the Republicans were talking about this as proposed by Rand Paul. Rand Paul is a consistent deficit hawk.

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The only people you can clap for are the Ukrainians, but like literally every other thing. Cancer-ridden children, victims of illegal immigrant crime, girls who've been hit in the face and suffered brain damage because a man hit a volleyball. Like literally nothing. You couldn't clap for anything. Here's Caroline Leavitt taking the wood to the Democrats.

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According to NBC News, they discussed a rescission package that the White House could send to Congress to codify Doge cuts through a measure that can get around the 60-vote hurdle in order to get around legal challenges to the administration's power to act unilaterally. Many of the challenges currently happening are people suing and saying the executive branch can't make these cuts.

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These spending initiatives were put forward by Congress. Only Congress can undo them. Well, there is a process called rescission. It's been attempted in the past, a little hard to do, but it could theoretically be done with 51 votes where the Congress says we're going to now rescind certain aspects of spending. Senator Rand Paul said, quote, to me, it's ephemeral now. meaning all of these cuts.

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I love the stuff they're doing. We got to vote on it. My message to Elon was, let's get over the impoundment idea, the idea that the federal government in the executive branch can simply stop the spending, and let's send it back as a rescission package. Then all we have to do is lobby to get to 51 senators or 50 senators, plus J.D. Vance breaking the tie, to cut the spending.

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Musk apparently was surprised to learn there was even a pathway to do that. Lindsey Graham also backed the idea. He said, it's time for the White House to go on offense. We're losing altitude. Now we started off straight good. We need to get back in the game on offense.

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The way you can regain altitude is to take the work product, get away from the personalities and the drama, take the work product and vote on it. And again, this is in fact a smart move by Rand Paul and some of the deficit hawks. So cutting the debt, rescission is a very good idea. Deregulation is absolutely necessary at this point.

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There's been a lot of talk about we won't add one regulation without getting rid of 10 others. You run into sort of a definitional problem. What amounts to a regulation? It's like the entire piece of regulation. Is it a piece of a regulation? What exactly is that? But bottom line is businesses need to be unchained. That is happening, particularly in the energy sector.

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Drill, baby, drill is very real. The Department of the Interior, led by Doug Burgum, is doing an excellent job with a lot of this sort of stuff. The permits are going to get a lot easier. This particular administration is very keen on unlocking America's energy resources, and that's very necessary. But congressional action is going to be the next step on a lot of this.

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This administration is moving incredibly fast, and so is this year. Two entire months of the new year are already behind us. I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with the family, even with the crazy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine.

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. And by the way, it's kosher, so great for me. I pop them in the protein smoothies, keep that gun show going strong. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com.

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promo code Shapiro. Balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Get 35% off that first order as a preferred customer and get a free bottle of fiber and spice. Balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Also, after more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel, all of Israel is brokenhearted after learning of the horrific murders of the Bibas family who were held hostage in Gaza.

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We're talking about the murder of actual babies by the monsters of Hamas. Many people are still hurting throughout the Holy Land where the need for aid continues to grow. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has support and will continue to support. the families of hostages and other victims of the October 7th terror attacks.

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With your help, IFCJ has provided financial and emotional help to hostages and their families, and to those healing and rebuilding their broken homes and broken bodies. The real work, however, is just beginning. As antisemitism continues to rise around the world, the people of Israel, our Jewish brothers and sisters, need us now more than ever.

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Your gift today helps provide critically needed support to families in Israel whose lives continue to be destroyed by terror and uncertainty as Israel remains surrounded by enemies. Give a gift to bless Israel and her people. Go to benforthefellowship.org. That's www.benforthefellowship.org. Thank you and God bless. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org.

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You can help people in need today in a great way. Go to benforthefellowship.org. Now, one area where there could be serious drag in the economy, and again, I'm going to warn about this because economic reality is economic reality, regardless of who is the president of the United States. A giant regime of increased tariffs will harm the American economy. It will.

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There are areas of the American economy where businesses will be reshored. Protectionism does reshore businesses in the affected area. However, the broader cost of gigantic tariff wars across the planet

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are to shrink the market for American goods, increase the price for American consumers, undermine the value of the US dollar as foreign reserve currency, and lead our allies to make trade deals with each other, but not us, or with our enemies. That is what tariff wars tend to do. They are not, in fact, good or easy to win.

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Now, again, if President Trump is throwing out his willingness to do tariffs as a way of leveraging down tariffs, meaning that he is basically saying, listen, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. You want to do tariff war? Man, let's do tariff war. Let's do this thing. Or there's an off ramp, and the off ramp is you lower your tariffs and we lower our tariffs.

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As I said yesterday, if President Trump's emphasis in the term retaliatory tariff is on retaliatory rather than tariff, then I'm fine with it. A retaliatory tariff would be designed to say that if you guys go down, we will also go down. And that's fine and dandy. However, comparative advantage is still an element of economics. And pretending that it is not is a fool's errand.

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Just because we can produce something in the United States does not mean that it is the best thing economically for it to be produced in the United States. Autarky is a giant fail. As an economic strategy, autarky is a fail. And again, that doesn't mean we can't out-compete people. We can now compete a lot of people. It does mean products are going to get more expensive.

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Businesses are going to be underfunded. Our bonds are going to be less purchased on the open markets. There are going to be real, real problems here. So one of the big questions right now with regard to the tariffs is what they will be. There's been a lot of sort of up and down, in and out. I mean, it's a roller coaster with regard to this tariff regime.

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And that in and of itself, by the way, not good for the economy. Okay, what you want from the economy is, George Gilder described the economy, the economist George Gilder, he described the economy as essentially a phone line, right? A series of regulations, regulatory background, the tax regime, as essentially a phone line. What do you want on a phone line? You want clarity.

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You just want clarity and predictability. If you have extraneous information in your phone line, meaning static, it's very difficult to hear the actual information you want to hear, which is the person at the other end of the phone. Unpredictability is static in the phone line.

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And so when you are saying one day we're doing tariffs and the next day we're not doing tariffs or we're going to do a tariff and then we're going to blow a hole in the tariff with an exception for automakers or maybe it's a retaliatory tariff. Maybe we just love tariffs.

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When you do that sort of stuff, business people get a little skittish because how do you invest in building abroad if you think the tariffs are going to increase? And why would you invest building in the United States if you believe tomorrow President Trump is going to revoke those tariffs or the next administration will revoke those tariffs?

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Business is very much about investing for the future because it takes a while for things to materialize. This is why when Apple, for example, says they're going to spend $500 billion in the United States, they don't mean they're just going to take a bag of cash and drop it in the Federal Reserve today. That is not how that works.

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They mean that over the course of years, they're going to spend on a variety of projects in the United States, the net cost of which will be $500 billion. That's what they mean. But that could change at any moment. A commitment to spend money is not actually spending money. So uncertainty in the economy is the enemy of productive growth. It is a massive problem.

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It's the reason why when you have sort of tyrannical countries where the rules change at any moment, you can't get economic growth. You would not invest in a country where the government could at any moment seize your assets. And investing in a country where the regulations change every five seconds, a tariff goes up, a tariff goes down. It's literally day by day. Very difficult.

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People instead tend to withdraw their money from the economy and they tend to keep their powder dry. And that's what you're seeing, by the way, from, for example, Warren Buffett. The reason he's keeping his powder dry right now is because he doesn't know where this is going. And he's figuring, hell, if the stocks go down in a month, then I'm gonna be able to buy them up on the cheap.

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Well, meanwhile, the trade war that is currently being initiated with Canada, President Trump has said that he wants a crackdown on the northern border in Canada. Fine, let's get that. Let's do that. And then let's get rid of these tariffs. Seriously, let's get them to ratchet down their tariffs. Let's ratchet down our own tariffs. Canada is the number one trade partner of the United States.

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They are not a financial or economic or physical threat to the United States. Treating them as such is not a wise move. It just isn't. And by the way, it's going to keep Justin Trudeau in power. So President Trump had a conversation yesterday with the terrible leader of Canada. And then he put out a statement, quote, Justin Trudeau of Canada called me to ask what could be done about tariffs.

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I told him many people have died from fentanyl that came through the borders of Canada and Mexico, and nothing has convinced me that it has stopped. He said it's gotten better, but I said that's not good enough. The call ended in a somewhat friendly manner. He was unable to tell me when the Canadian election is taking place, which made me curious, like what's going on here?

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I then realized he was trying to use this issue to stay in power. Good luck, Justin. Except for the fact that actually it is good luck, Justin, because the reality is that Pierre Poliev, who is the leader of the Conservative Party and is excellent, a terrific leader, would be amazing prime minister of Canada.

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Pierre Poliev has been sinking in the polls since the initiation of the trade war because people in Canada are associating Poliev with Trump, even though he says he doesn't like the tariffs and doesn't like what Trump is doing. So you know what I would like? I would like lower tariffs with Canada. Sure, I'd like more border security.

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I will point out at this point that the grand total of fentanyl that was caught at the northern border in the last year was 43 pounds. By way of contrast, the amount of fentanyl that was caught at America's southern border was 22,000 pounds. So there may or may not be a major problem with fentanyl coming across our northern border.

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The United States should articulate to Canada what are the concrete steps that they want Canada to actually take to crack down on fentanyl trafficking across the border. We should actually make a significant ask and then get the ask, get the win, and then ratchet this thing down because it is not good for Canada and it is not good for the United States.

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And hell, I don't care much about Canada, but I do care about the United States. When you ratchet up prices... on everything from oil to cars because of this. That is not going to be particularly good. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, he seemed to be linking the Canadian and Mexican policy to our open borders. This, again, totally on board with us.

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If you're using tariffs as leverage, that is worthwhile. If you're using them as a way of, quote-unquote, winning economically, not as worthwhile.

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Okay, well, that's fine, but we need the deliverables. What are the deliverables so that the tariffs can go back down? And in fact, President Trump has already blown a hole in his own tariff regime because you can see that it's having a massive impact on trade with the United States.

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Yesterday, the White House announced a one-month reprieve from tariffs on Mexico and Canada for cars that comply with the USMCA. Again, the USMCA was negotiated by President Trump in his first term. It is a pretty good piece of agreement. The markets immediately rose because it turns out, you know what the markets don't like? The breakup of trade.

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It turns out that after you announce that, what you get is an increase in markets. And when you announce tariffs, then you get a decrease in markets. It does not require like a genius level understanding of economics to understand that this is in fact the case. There are a bunch of reasons why a tariff war would not redound to America's overall benefit.

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Again, maybe it harms others more than it harms us, but it certainly harms us. And I'm not sure what exactly is the achievable goal. If you're doing it for national security reasons, on board. You're doing it to leverage our enemies, on board. You want to get something out of someone, fine.

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But tariffs are a blunt instrument, and they're a blunt instrument that affects the American consumer and many American producers who import inputs into their product. Why do I care about this? Because the only thing, the biggest obstacle to President Trump's success is an economic downturn. It is the single biggest obstacle.

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And there's a theory out there that what President Trump is actually doing is quote unquote engineering or I don't believe that's true. I don't think that's true. The theory goes that basically President Trump is attempting to

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undermine trade regimes with the United States in order to essentially force the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates, undermining the strength of the American dollar because President Trump likes a weaker dollar in comparison with other countries to rectify the trade imbalance. I don't think it's anything like that. I think President Trump has a very simple view of trade.

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And that very simple view is we don't like getting screwed. And again, I'm on board with that. Tariffs is leverage, that's fine. But if the idea here is that tariffs are going to make America wise, free, and beautiful on their own, that is a massive mistake that is going to come back to bite. And again, I don't think President Trump believes that. I hope he doesn't believe that.

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I know the markets hope he doesn't believe that, which is why they rose yesterday on news that he is suspending the tariffs with regard to automakers for at least one month. Meanwhile, there is some movement on Ukraine.

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Mike Walz, the national security advisor yesterday, he suggested that there will be some good movement on Ukraine after Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, came to the United States. There, of course, is a giant blow up at the White House between Vladimir Zelensky and the president and the vice president. And then a couple of days ago, Vladimir Zelensky essentially gave up the goes.

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He put out a statement saying that he wanted to do the rare earths mineral agreement with the United States, that he was looking forward to moving toward peace. Here was the NSA Mike Walz explaining.

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Now, it is worthwhile to note here that the movement is all on the Ukrainian side. I've seen no movement whatsoever from the Russians, and it takes two to tango.

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The Russians keep saying that we want to do an agreement, but then when it comes down to sort of the hard-nosed negotiation of what an agreement looks like, they are currently turning down pretty much all of the prerequisites and necessities for any sort of peace agreement. And remember, Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia would like to take Kiev.

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If they believe that the West is going to cave in Ukraine, they will continue to push. This is how negotiations work. So pushing the Ukrainians does not come without risk to the Ukrainians, clearly. The reason I say this is because literally yesterday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who's essentially a cutout for Vladimir Putin in Belarus.

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Belarus is effectively a sort of satellite member of Russia. He warned the Kremlin, quote, will never accept a European troop deployment to Ukraine. In a wide-ranging interview with blogger Mario Nafal, who, of course, is very big on X, he Lukashenko praised President Trump's forthright approach to Russia's war on Ukraine and suggested Putin was ready to make peace.

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However, he said any proposal would be unlikely to win Russian support if it included deployment of European forces into Ukraine. Quote, Russia will never agree to this. At least this is Russia's position today, especially since the leadership of the EU, primarily in the person of Germany and France, is taking a very aggressive position at the moment.

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The Belarusian leader also counterattacks by both Trump and Putin on the legitimacy of Vladimir Zelensky while offering Belarus as a location for peace negotiations. So again, here is the question. This is a very real question. If Russia is unwilling to make an agreement that allows European boots on the ground, how in the world do you get to a national peace agreement?

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I've said many times, I've been saying since 2022, again, that agreement looks like Russia keeps Donbass and Crimea together. There are security arrangements with Ukraine that guarantee that this never happens again. That's the only thing that Ukraine will sign on to. If Russia refuses that, then why would Ukraine sign on to anything?

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And any peace that would be forced by the West would be a sort of temporary respite before Russia rearms and then goes back in. That's what Ukraine is worried about. I don't think unreasonably. Part and parcel of this is right now, again, the United States continues to ratchet up pressure on Ukraine as though it's Ukrainian intransigence that's responsible for all this.

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What I would love to hear is some move by Russia to explain exactly what they want. I've yet to hear that. I want to hear from Vladimir Putin and from the Russians. What is it that would look like an off ramp to you? Because so far it's been everybody else projecting an off ramp onto what Russia wants, including me. I'm telling Russia what it should get.

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if we want to come to some sort of end to this thing. But if Russia refuses to take that, what does the off-ramp look like? Would Vladimir Putin actually accept Donbass and Crimea and real security arrangements, meaning European troops there that would trigger a larger regional war if Russia were to walk across the border?

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And if the answer to that is no, there's no agreement, it seems to me, to be made. So the United States keeps ratcheting up the pressure on Ukraine. John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, said that they're cutting intelligence support to Ukraine. This, to me, I don't understand this part of the strategy. I'll just be totally frank with you.

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I don't understand the part of the strategy where we are denying Ukraine weaponry to at least maintain the current status in the war, to maintain the current lines. Again, if Russia feels like they have momentum and they can push further, why would they come to the table?

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If it takes two to tango, you have to simultaneously convince the Ukrainians to come to the table by threatening things like, we might withdraw if you don't get a deal. But you also have to say to the Russians, if you don't come to the table, what happens? Where's that other half of the conversation?

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Withdrawing intelligence support to Ukraine, which is effectively designed to prevent Ukraine from making attacks inside Russia, which is a way of them, by the way, clawing back territory, which then they will presumably trade for some territory inside Ukraine. I want to see movement from the other side of the table. Has there been any movement from the other side of the table?

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I'm waiting to see it. Now, again, I'll let the administration cook, but I would love to see some movement from Vladimir Putin to justify the kind of movement that is being pushed on the Ukrainians right now. Here is John Ratcliffe over at the CIA.

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Now, again, what Ratcliffe is saying there is actually correct. So the pause has to be temporary. And again, Zelensky, I think one of the reasons that now he's showing more flexibility is because of the pressure. That means that the pause should actually stop at this point. And the United States should continue to ratchet up pressure on both sides. It requires pressure on both sides.

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If you're going to be an arbiter who is neutral, a mediator who's neutral, there has to be pressure on both sides to come to the table. Meanwhile, the Europeans are apparently stepping up military spending. The Germans in particular are radically revamping their military spending. The EU is in crisis talks on Thursday focused on defense.

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French President Emmanuel Macron says, I want to believe the US will stand by our side. We have to be ready for that not to be the case. The future of Europe must not be decided in Washington or Moscow, which, okay, fine. That's great. I mean, again, I think that President Trump is very much on board with the Europeans taking the lead on this sort of stuff.

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Apparently, Germany is about to blow out its debt ceiling in an attempt to radically increase their defense spending, which, of course, is necessary in the face of Russian predation. None of that is particularly bad. And I think all the pyrotechnics aside, we could end up with a salutary end to this war because of what President Trump is doing.

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He's putting pressure on the Ukrainians to come to the table. They're ready. Now the pressure needs to be on Vladimir Putin to come to the table. And the pressure that he's put on the Ukrainians has been accompanied by a radical revision upward of European security spending, which is good. And the end of this could be quite salutary from President Trump.

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And if so, he deserves an enormous amount of credit. It's a little early to say that. Let's get there first. If it does end the way that it could, that would be a very, very good thing. And meanwhile, speaking of foreign policy and the President of the United States' peace through strength. So the President of the United States yesterday

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put out an ultimatum to Hamas because Hamas is still holding American hostages and indeed holding probably 35 live hostages somewhere in that neighborhood. The president of the United States put out an ultimatum to Hamas in some of the strongest language he has yet issued. Quote, "'Shalom, Hamas' means hello and goodbye. You can choose."

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Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered or it is over for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies and you are sick and twisted. I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job. Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say.

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I've just met with your former hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning for the leadership. Now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance. Also to the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits, but not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are dead. Make a smart decision. Release the hostages now or there will be hell to pay later.

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Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. Love it. Love it. Couldn't possibly love that more. Imagine if this had been the angle of the United States on October 8th, as opposed to Joe Biden being a cowardly fraud. Amazing stuff from President Trump.

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Well, joining us online to discuss is Mary Margaret Olihan. She, of course, is our Daily Wire White House correspondent. She was in the hot seat yesterday. She got the first question at the press briefing yesterday. So how is that, Mary Margaret? That's pretty cool.

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The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, explained in more detail President Trump's language here, although it didn't really require a lot of explication. This is the beautiful thing about President Trump. If you're ever wondering what he's thinking, you shouldn't. He just says it. Here was Marco Rubio yesterday.

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And again, that is excellent stuff there from the Secretary of State and obviously from the President of the United States. And meanwhile, a breaking story courtesy of our reportorial team over at Daily Wire. It's a pretty amazing story. Apparently, it turns out that a former top aide to Kamala Harris is now under criminal investigation by the Trump administration.

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Apparently, this person tried to forge paperwork to take advantage of Elon Musk's fork-in-the-road buyout offer, according to Luke Rosiak and the team at Daily Wire.

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The probe is apparently going to explore whether high-level officials, potentially including Kamala Harris herself or Lena Kahn, Joe Biden's chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who's awful, conspired to embed a person named Nathaniel Siegel into a job at the FTC just before President Trump's inauguration.

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Apparently, that placement involved a series of maneuvers that appeared to have been designed to evade personnel and ethics regulations, hide that Siegel was a political appointee, and prevent the Trump administration from firing him. So basically, in short, this person was placed on the payroll at the FTC on the direct orders of Lena Kahn, even though he was missing essential paperwork.

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And when the scheme began to unravel, Siegel tried to pull the ripcord by doctoring a document to try to secure the deferred resignation program buyout, despite the deadline having passed and Siegel not having received the offer in the first place, which would have insured him something like $200,000 in exchange for leaving the government.

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So the fallout continues from President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress the other night. Again, I was there and it was an amazing experience. The enthusiasm in the room from the Republicans was off the charts and the radical depression into which Democrats have sunk is quite real.

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The official confirmed, according to the DOJ, that the department was taking a broad look at this story. Apparently, again, it was a bunch of sleight of hands that resulted in Siegel being hired just before the Biden administration left and then classified improperly as a tenured nonpolitical civil servant, making it harder to fire him.

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I mean, it's this sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that Doge exists to ferret out. And obviously, Attorney General Pam Bondi, if there's criminal activity, is going to be all over this. All right, guys, coming up, we're going to get into some culture. Viola Davis has some thoughts on Black History Month that are sort of bizarre.

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Plus, Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, he says that they will no longer be performing at the Kennedy Center because of the evils of Donald Trump. But in order to hear my thoughts on that, you do have to become a subscriber. And we have all sorts of great stuff, right? You got all access with me. You got Matt Walsh's fantastic movies. What is woman? Am I racist?

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You've got all the kids content you could ever want. Over at Benkei, you've got our entertainment content. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And and she did give cogent answers to both. She's very, very good at her job, obviously. And what what has been the mood around the White House surrounding President Trump's speech? I mean, I actually was at the White House kind of walking around simultaneously yesterday with Matt Walsh. We got to visit and hang out in the White House comms office a little bit.

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People seem pretty high about President Trump's speech as well. They should have been, it seems.

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Mary Margaret, you were on Air Force One last week with the President of the United States flying back down to Palm Beach. How did that go?

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They are so disorganized, so unable to come to any sort of answer for President Trump's steamroller and juggernaut of an early administration that it felt disorganized. It felt ridiculous. It felt as though a bunch of spoiled college students couldn't get it together. And instead, they decided to sit on their hands.

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That was Mary Margaret Olihan at the White House every day as our Daily Wire White House correspondent. Congrats on, again, being in the new media seat yesterday and I look forward to checking in with you soon.

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Again, gigantic failure by Democrats. And President Trump did something quite brilliant in the speech. I talked to many people in the White House yesterday and they said that the most brilliant thing in the speech, which was President Trump deliberately calling out the Democrats and saying they won't clap for anything I'm about to say.

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It put them in such a difficult position because then if they clap for what he was saying, they might prove him wrong. But they'd be clapping for what he said. And if they didn't clap for what he was saying, then they look like Jackie. because many of the things that he was saying were totally unifying and apolitical.

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Like, for example, renaming a national park after a 12-year-old who was murdered by illegal immigrants. Like, how exactly is that something you don't clap for? How do you not clap for the kid getting into West Point? These are things that happened in the speech, and Democrats couldn't clap because Trump had trapped them between a rock and a hard place.

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That was an excellent piece of strategy by President Trump. Again, he actually thought of that and put it in the speech himself, apparently. Democrats... The smarter ones understand that they are wrong-footed. David Axelrod, who of course was the top advisor to Barack Obama when he was running for president in 2008, ripped into the Democrats for their optic failures.

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Okay, so again, Axelrod is living in the world of reality, but many Democrats are not. Smart Democrats are going to have to start living in the world of reality if they actually wish to win back the presidency or the Congress or the Senate of the United States.

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Top Senate Democrats, this would be Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, even they were saying, yeah, our behavior in there was not particularly good. We need to start actually offering some solutions here instead of just holding bingo signs or Brazilian steakhouse signs to bring more steak.

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And so it was a big optic win for President Trump, which he is going to need because we are now about to enter the most tumultuous period of President Trump's presidency. I say most tumultuous because the first month, the president has a lot of political capital to spend. This is true for every president.

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So, again, these are these are Democrats who at least are smart enough to read the tea leaves a little bit. And then there are the Democrats who, of course, are not like, for example, Democratic Representative Latifa Simon from California, who claimed that Al Green, he's the 77 year old gentleman who rose to scream at President Trump about Medicaid while shaking his cane at him.

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And then was removed by the sergeant at arms in a bizarre move. Here is a congresswoman suggesting that the reason Al Green was removed was way for a way for it wasn't because he was yelling at Trump. for like solidly minutes on end. It wasn't because of that. It's because... Racism! Here we go.

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OK, these folks are so off their rocker and they're off their rocker on the easiest issues in the world. I mentioned yesterday that the most obvious issue Democrats should clearly drop just for pragmatic reasons. I mean, for moral reasons, they should, because it's absolute insanity and idiocy.

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But for pragmatic reasons, they also should, because most Americans recognize that it's idiocy is the boys can be girls routine. But it was just a couple of days ago where Republicans pushed a bill. to bar transgender women and girls, meaning like boys and men, from school sports teams designated for female students. The measure stalled in the Senate on a party line 51 to 45 vote.

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When a president is first elected, that president usually has a pretty high popularity rating. They have a bit of a halo effect from winning. And they spend the first month putting forward most of their sort of big agenda items. But then the rubber meets the road. Things start to get a lot tougher, ranging from how to fund the government to how to solve war. New crises emerge.

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Every single Democrat in the Senate voted against that bill. Every single one. which is insane. It's totally crazy. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said, quote, what Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other and distract people from what they're actually doing.

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And then he said the bill was, quote, unquote, totally irrelevant to 99.9% of all people across the country. Well, if it's irrelevant, then why don't you just vote in favor of it? And it's obviously relevant to you. As stated, the Democrats look crazy because of this particular issue. They're crazy on a lot of issues. But there were two big issues in the last election cycle.

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They just looked befuddlingly insane. They're ones that are clearly just political games that are bad for the country, like leaving the border open or blowing money into an inflationary economy. And then there's stuff that's just bleep lunacy, like bad bleep lunacy. Those are things like boys are girls and also maybe Hamas isn't that bad.

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Those are like things where people look at them and they go, you must be out of your mind, like totally crazy. And Democrats keep doubling down on the crazy. They're going to have to recover some semblance of sanity if they wish to move forward. Now, meanwhile. The president of the United States has planned to cut into USAID spending.

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Doge basically wiped out about $50 billion in USAID spending, saying that this does not comport with American standards of foreign policy. And so a temporary federal freeze, an impoundment was essentially put on those funds. And a district court judge then put a freeze on the freeze and said, no, no, no, the money has to go out the door.

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And this raises a very serious constitutional issue, as we've discussed. That constitutional issue is whether a district court judge has the capacity to simply shut down a presidential nationwide action. Can one low-level district court judge actually do that? We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, let me ask you a question. Do you trust your internet service provider?

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There's good reason not to. Depending on where you live, ISPs may be required to keep logs of your online activity just in case the government wants to take a peek. In the United States, it's even worse. ISPs can legally sell your browsing history to whomever they want. So what can you do about it? Well, the solution is to get a VPN. The one I use is ExpressVPN.

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It's an app that reroutes my online traffic through encrypted servers so my ISP can't access it. Neither can data brokers or other third parties. I use ExpressVPN all the time. I was in the airport yesterday using ExpressVPN. VPN, because hell, I don't want anybody checking out on my data while I'm at the airport. For this to work, you have to trust your VPN.

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After all, you are transferring trust from your ISP to your VPN provider. So why do I trust ExpressVPN? Well, any reliable VPN receives data requests from law enforcement and government entities. ExpressVPN received over 300 of these requests in the past year alone. None of them resulted in any customer data being exposed. Zero. Go read their transparency report on their website.

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It is indeed fascinating. They comply with law enforcement as much as possible, but you can't hand over what you don't have. ExpressVPN simply doesn't keep any customer activity logs thanks to specially engineered server architecture that runs on volatile memory. Nothing is ever saved to disk. It is private by design. ExpressVPN works on all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets. It's easy to use.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Tap one button and you are now connected. So if you want the VPN I trust to protect my online privacy, get ExpressVPN. In fact, you can get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free with my special link. Go to expressvpn.com slash Ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Ben. Get four extra months for free. Also, I've tried pretty much everything to improve my sleep quality.

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The sort of act two of any presidency doesn't begin a year in. Act two of any presidency begins about a month in, and that is where we currently are. So the sort of optic capital that President Trump earned from this joint address to Congress – I think was really, really strong. Yesterday, that continued at the White House.

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Stricter bedtimes, putting the phone out of reach. But all those changes take a lot of effort, not tons of results. Here is the thing. When I really wanted to change the way that I sleep, I discovered it came down to a pretty simple upgrade. Bull and branch. Their 100% organic cotton sheets are amazing. From the very first night, I could feel the difference.

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Well, folks, President Trump has now signed an executive order barring men from women's sports. Everybody knew that men and women's sports was totally insane for years. Well, the Daily Wire, we actually did something about it. First, we made Lady Ballers the most triggering comedy of the decade. And then, of course, yesterday, President Trump signed that order keeping men out of women's sports.

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Angry eyes. He's not the only one who's ripping on Elon Musk and the rest of the Trump administration for cleaning out a deeply corrupted agency. Jasmine Crockett, who is sort of the fresh new AOC, and there was a point when AOC was so fresh and so faced. She was a fresh face, an incredibly fresh and incredibly face.

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Well, she's being replaced in her faceness and her freshness by Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is now the darling of the left-wing media because she is spicy in hearings and she says obnoxious things. and seems to have a very inflated sense of her own skill set. Like here was Jasmine Crockett yelling about Elon Musk yesterday in Congress.

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We are 17 days deep and the Democrats are already reverting to type. They're already saying that they will do anything that they can to stop Donald J. Trump from enacting an agenda that was approved by the majority of the American people. Yesterday, Representative Al Green of Texas said he plans to introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump. Here he was announcing all of this.

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Articulately spoken, madam. It's a lot of y'all happening in that particular clip from Jasmine Crockett. Democrats have decided again to focus their ire on Musk because they are hoping also to drive a wedge between Musk and Trump. What they don't understand is that by focusing their ire on Musk, it makes him closer to President Trump. Senator Elizabeth Warren, fresh from her latest powwow.

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She said at a rally, quote, in the building behind me, Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people. We are here to fight back. Musk, quote, wants the power to decide whether or not every road repair in America goes forward, whether or not every Head Start Center in America opens, whether or not every military base anywhere in the world operates according to Elon.

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Now, again, the thing about this that is absolutely hysterical is that you hear Jasmine Crockett or Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker ranting about the systems of government, always a threat to the systems of government. You built this system. You did it.

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You created unelected bureaucracies, unanswerable to the American people, staffed by people who have never had any level of accountability to Americans directly. That was you. The legislature, over the course of the last 120 years in this country, has abdicated extraordinary responsibility to the executive branch.

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They decided to write nonspecific laws delegating absolutely extraordinary powers to regulatory agencies filled with unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable in the extreme. And now you're claiming that it's bad that an unelected bureaucrat, which is what Elon Musk currently is, is coming in and cleaning it out. I'm sorry, you don't get to complain about that. You don't. You built this.

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You're just pissed off because you built a weapon that's now being wielded by people you don't like. That's your own fault. That's your problem. If you want to seize back your power, maybe what you should do is stop delegating all your power to the executive branch in the first place. In other words, you are fine with dictatorship.

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You just don't like it when somebody else grabs the power that you established for your own self. That's all that's happening right here. If you're worried about the centralization of executive power, something I've been worried about my entire career. then maybe it should apply all the way across the board. But I noticed that you guys don't have any of those principles. It doesn't matter to you.

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And now turnabout is fair play because there is no mechanism for clawing back this kind of power. It can't be the one side plays by the rules and the other side gets to violate those rules and destroy the entire system. And then the minute... that the levers of power switch hands, the other side plays by the rules.

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This is one of the huge differences between Team Trump and the entire Trump MAGA movement and prior iterations of conservatism. It's one of the biggest distinctions. Prior iterations of conservatism said, listen, there's a set of rules. We're going to abide by the set of rules that we think is the right set of rules, trusting that the other side will not violate the rules.

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And then over the course of decades, Democrats violated the rules over and over and over and over and over. And Republicans, when they got in power, they said, no, no, we're still going to play by the rules. And it turns out that it's just an incentive for Democrats to violate the rules. There must be a mutually assured destruction when it comes to the powers of government.

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If Democrats are going to do things like, for example, blow up the filibuster, then absolutely Republicans should use their newfound powers under that exact rubric to ram through conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

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If Democrats are going to centralize all power in the executive branch of government, in regulatory agencies that write tens of thousands of pages of rules and rob Americans of their freedom and initiative, then when Republicans gain control, they should use those exact agencies to do precisely the reverse. Because otherwise, that is a form of surrender. That is not high-mindedness.

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That is not objectivity. That is not constitutional government. It is simply surrender. When the other side is breaking the rules day in and day out, playing by the rules is a form of surrender. That is the message. That is Democrats' fault. This is a boomerang. And you're on the bad end of the boomerang right now. Well, welcome to the party, pal. You broke it. You bought it.

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You don't like what Elon is doing? Elizabeth Warren, of all people, doesn't get to complain about this. She created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, a totally unelected bureaucracy that isn't even funded by Congress. It's independently funded by the Federal Reserve. She created an entire agency to anti-Elon Musk.

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And then she complains that Elon Musk is going in and doing things she doesn't like. Well, tough bleep. Seriously, you're the ones who did this. When one side is breaking the rules, it does not behoove you to play by the rules in a rough and tumble world. You got to balance everything out, just like your nutrition.

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With an entire month of the new year already behind us, I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with my busy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on pure conservative willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance actually requires peak nutrition.

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And that means eating enough veggies. That's why I'm so thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. Sounds miserable, time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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balance of nature takes fruits and veggies they freeze dry them they turn them into a powder and then they put those into a capsule you take your fruit and veggie capsules every day and your body knows precisely what to do with them they're kosher so i can pop it right into the protein smoothie to keep the gun show going go to balanceofnature.com use promo code shapiro for 35 off your first order as a preferred customer plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice that's balanceofnature.com promo code shapiro go check them out right now balanceofnature.com

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promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer plus that free bottle of fiber and spice. Also, let's talk about something that's important for most parents, their kids' nutrition. You know how most kids' vitamins out there are basically candy with a vitamin label? They're loaded with two teaspoons of sugar and artificial ingredients kids really don't actually need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, that's where Haya comes in. They've created an amazing chewable vitamin that kids actually like. The best part, zero sugar, still totally delicious. They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals. We're talking vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, more, all the good stuff kids need for healthy growth. And they've thought of everything.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, thoroughly tested for safety. That means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to this high-quality standard. Thank you so much for watching. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your very first order. To claim this deal, you have to go to hayahealth.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This deal is not available on the regular website. Go to h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h dot com slash Shapiro. Get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Representative Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat from Maine, said his office has been inundated by calls in recent days about Musk, not the president.

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Quote, my constituents and a majority of this country put Trump in the White House, not this unelected weirdo billionaire. Listen, here's the thing. Because Musk isn't running for office, it doesn't matter. You can attack him all day long. And guess what? He's not running and he will never run for office. The only question for Trump is going to be, do you like the changes that are being made?

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And it turns out the vast majority of Americans do not want to spend billions of dollars on transing the kids in Ethiopia. That is not something that they are interested in doing. You know who understands? This is David Axelrod, the former Obama advisor.

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He said officials in his party should not try to save the USAID from its likely illegal gutting at the hands of Elon Musk, according to Mediaite. The strategist told Politico his party is walking into a trap. He says, man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight. When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is cut foreign aid.

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Rahm Emanuel, former Obama chief of staff, said, quote, you don't fight every fight. You don't swing at every pitch. My view is, well, I care about USAID. That's not the hell I'm going to die on. But Democrats are going to die on these hills because they have no hills that they can die on. This is the dirty secret. Democrats don't have defensible ground. They ceded all the defensible ground.

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This is a point I made during the election cycle. Donald Trump occupies the mainstream middle of American politics. That was the dirty secret of the last election cycle. Democrats kept trying to say Trump is out of the box. He's so crazy, so extreme. It's so wild. Every position they took was psychotic. And he took the non-psychotic position. And then he won.

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And so the idea that Donald Trump is going to plug Elon Musk into, for example, the transportation department to gather information, is that scary to people? You know what's scarier to people when it comes to the transportation department?

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That you put in charge Democrats Pete Buttigieg because he liked choo-choo trains and then he went on paternity leave for months without notifying anybody and couldn't be bothered to visit East Palestine, Ohio. That was weird. Plugging Elon Musk in there to clean the place out, that's not all that scary. Secretary Sean Duffy said, quote, big news, talk to the Doge team.

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They're going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system. And Democrats are pretending that they're freaking out about this. I have a question. What is freaky about this? You mean some of the most technologically sophisticated people in all of the world are going to be plugged into our transportation system as opposed to using computers from 1982? Wow, that sounds absolutely terrible.

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dastardly proposed and dastardly. I didn't realize that those were quote unquote misdemeanors, high crimes and misdemeanors under the constitution of the United States. Al Green is going to write in his articles of impeachment, dastardly deeds done. That's going to be what it says. And by the way, What Trump is proposing for the Gaza Strip is not, in fact, ethnic cleansing.

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Again, Democrats have boxed themselves and they've painted themselves into a corner. There is no issue on which this is more true, more obviously true than on the trans issue. There is no issue on which this is more true. Again, the Daily Wire fought a pretty lonely fight in the early days of this issue. Many conservatives and many Republicans were like, why are we even fighting this?

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Ah, you know, let's just be, just be nice. Just be nice. Why are you even making a big deal out of this? What difference does it make if a man wants to be called a woman? And some of us At Daily Wire said no. We said no from day one and we've been saying no consistently for over a decade at this point. And now we win and you lose and Democrats lose.

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Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order keeping men out of women's sports. The argument is that this is a revision of the Biden administration's interpretation of Title IX. Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law, prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs. The whole purpose of Title IX was to protect things like women's sports.

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We are winning here at Daily Wire because of you. Help us by becoming a member at dailywire.com slash subscribe and make Lady Ballers your very first watch. Okay, so Democrats have no handle on what to do with President Trump. No handle. at all. We are 17 days deep into the Trump administration. It feels like he's been president for a couple of years, doesn't it?

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The reason you have separate women's divisions is because of Title IX. And so the administration said the obviously true thing. Men should not play in women's sports. That is a form of discrimination. In 2023, the Biden administration proposed a rule change that would prevent schools from categorically barring trans athletes from teams that match their gender identities.

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They called that a violation of Title IX. And Trump was like, no, sorry, that's stupid. The answer is no. The answer is no. Now, Democrats are like, why is this even an issue? I mean, there are only 10 publicly identified athletes at the collegiate level who are identifying as transgender. That's not the point. On a principled level, no one is in favor of this.

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According to CNN, 79% of Americans, 79, oppose men and women's sports. This is an 80-20 issue, and somehow Democrats insist on taking the 20, which means Trump is going to take the win. So here he was yesterday. Again, you want to make the claim that Donald Trump is against women and girls? I challenge you with this picture. There is no way for this optically to be a loss for President Trump.

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You're the morons who decided to take the side of a hulking dude in a dress over this conglomeration of women and girls. Here is President Trump surrounded by young female athletes ranging from probably ages seven all the way on up to college age and post-college age. Here he was signing the executive order yesterday.

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He is proposing that people ought to be allowed to voluntarily leave an area where there is nothing but rubble. There is no economy. There are no jobs. There is nothing. And then that place would be rebuilt into something that actually is great and decent. And some of those people would be allowed back in dependent on circumstance. That is the proposal that Trump has actually put forward.

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Okay, President Trump knows how to do this better than anyone else. You handed him the issue and he clubbed you to death with it like a baby zeal. You handed it to him because you're idiots. And you insist on continuing to hand him these issues and then complaining about Elon Musk and Doge. Good luck to you, you political idiots, you.

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Seriously, I got to say, President Trump is a different President Trump this time around. Why? Well, number one, there's no sort of burning sense of insecurity and rage. He won. And a happy Trump is good. President Trump is happy with life. He is happy with his administration. He's happy with the direction of the country.

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Him being surrounded by young girls and women to defend their rights to play sports without the intervention of a man. is an amazing optic moment. It is a fantastic exclamation point on top of his victory and an end to the transgender madness that we all experienced for about a decade here. Here's President Trump saying, we categorically reject this lunacy.

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He is right about all of this, obviously. Our own Mary Margaret Olihan was at the White House and she asked, how would this executive order impact the Summer Olympics, for example?

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Speaking of which, Mary Margaret joins us on the line right now. She's our White House correspondent, of course. So, Mary Margaret, you were present at the White House yesterday. The president signed an executive order that basically said that men no longer get to play in women's sports. What was that like? It seemed like a pretty amazing optic moment.

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And according to Al Green, that's now impeachable. OK, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what Trump did. He could have found a thousand things to, quote unquote, impeach Trump over. He is saying, by the way, that the articles of impeachment are still a work in progress.

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Mary Margaret, you had the opportunity to be at the White House and ask Caroline Levitt about the president's approach to the Olympics that are coming up and what exactly the United States should do about that. What information do you have on that?

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Senior Democratic sources are brushing off the efforts, casting him as a backbencher who is not in coordination with leadership. But that'll last precisely as long as they think they can to actually get any steam behind it. Democrats are absolutely struggling here.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And one of the reasons they're struggling is because Trump is picking targets that are unpopular for Democrats, and he is hitting them with regularity. This is the most targeted administration I have ever seen in my entire life. He has picked a set of targets that are 80-20 targets in favor of the Republican position, and he is hitting them over and over and over.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And Democrats are in full-scale disarray. Aesthetically, they're in disarray. Organizationally, they're in disarray. The Democratic National Committee just picked David Hogg as its vice chair. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, is attempting to lead chance and it is going wildly wrong. He showed up to protest along with his fellow Democrats like Maxine Waters.

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And yes, Al Green, remember, Al Green's supposed to be a backbencher. There he is right next to Chuck Schumer at this rally protesting Elon Musk's access to the Treasury Department. Now, remember, the complaint, as we'll get to in a moment from Democrats about Elon, is how could this unelected person be doing all of this?

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Well, I mean, you guys are defending, I noticed, hundreds of thousands of unelected bureaucrats from the elected presidents of the United States. That's the thing I know. In any case, here is Chuck Schumer trying to lead a chance, and it all goes wildly wrong.

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So, Brooke, there's so many sort of claims that are being made that are just legally specious here. So what you've heard is, well, you know, this is Palestinian land. It's a violation of law because it's Palestinian land. There's literally no iteration of law by which this is Palestinian land. Prior to 1948, it was ruled by the British mandate. Between 1948 and 1967, it was occupied by...

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by Egypt. At no point was there an independent Palestinian state there. In fact, the only autonomy ever granted to the Palestinians in this area was granted by Israel in 2005 when it pulled completely out of the Gaza Strip and allowed Hamas to be elected in the Gaza Strip by Palestinians living there.

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So this idea that there's any sort of legal claim by anyone to that land connected with the Palestinians, what legal grounds? I mean, you've heard this kind of trotted out there routinely by members of the mainstream media and the left. I've yet to hear an actual legal argument for why this is, quote unquote, Palestinian land, as opposed to, say, Israeli land, Egyptian land or anybody else's.

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Well, this is, I think, the reason why this is so groundbreaking. President Trump's plan here, whether it eventually ends up becoming reality or whether he has just kind of spoken it, has exploded all of these premises and completely shifted, again, the grounds upon which all Middle Eastern policy for the West has been based for decades, which is exactly what he did with the Abraham Accords.

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And now he's doing it again. He did when he moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He basically gave the lie to the idea that the Arab street was going to explode. If the embassy was moved to Jerusalem, he exploded the lie that the Palestinian issue lay at the heart of all Israeli-Arab relations. He blew that up with the Abraham Accords.

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And now he's exploding the lie that the two-state solution was ever a required element of a future. And in fact, he's saying precisely the opposite, that it is in fact that idea that is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. And I think that's going to change things pretty dramatically. You know, the claims of people that this is somehow inhumanitarian that it's terrible.

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What's amazing to me is that their alternative, their proposed alternative is for people to live in rubble for the next 10 to 15 years without any source of income. No one is going to be allowed by Israel to use a work visa, for God's sake, to go into Israel to get a job. There'll be no functional economy, no infrastructure, no water, no power, nothing in that area.

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Yeah, as producer Savvy points out, that is the chance at the nursing home right before they take him away to nap time at 5 p.m. We won't rest. And he's holding Maxine Waters' hand.

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That area has been completely wrecked specifically because, not because Israel is being brutal, but because Hamas literally implanted itself in these areas to force Israel to destroy them. And now they're all destroyed. What is the alternative plan? Nobody has proposed an alternative plan that actually helps Palestinians other than both Israel and the United States.

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My favorite part of that clip, I think, for those who can't see it, is all the people in the background who look absolutely confused, bewildered, and upset by this old man screaming into the microphone while holding Maxine Waters' hand in the air. It's just pathetic. Politico has an entire piece titled, quote, blow this place up. Frustrated Democrats want the Senate to fight harder.

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Well, that's Brooke Goldstein. You can check out her work over at The Lawfare Project. Brooke, really appreciate the time and the insight.

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And now for something a little bit lighter. I mean, a lot lighter. I mean, it is world shattering and earth changing in its own way, I suppose. You've all been following the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni scandal that involves Tay-Tay, McTay-Tay Swift, and all of this. I will admit, I have not followed this closely, which is why I, on this show, bring on the experts.

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I do know somebody who is an expert on this, the original influencer and host of the Perez Hilton podcast, Perez Hilton. Perez, welcome to the Ben Shapiro Show.

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So here's the thing. I know nothing about this case. I've talked about it a little bit on the air. You know, Justin Baldoni, frankly, seems like he is right in this, but the public seems like they're siding with him as well. I'd never heard of Justin Baldoni until this whole thing broke onto the public scene. So for those who haven't been watching any of this, what's the story?

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And the amount of stuff that is happening, the pace at which President Trump is moving is absolutely unprecedented. And I have to imagine the Democrats sort of feel like a boxer who is just outclassed, where the person they are facing down is throwing such a flurry that by the time they even realize they've been punched, the next punch is already on its way and there's no way to slip it.

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Why are people generally on team Baldoni versus team Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Tay-Tay, Swift and all the rest?

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Senate Democrats are struggling to deal with a rising tide of anger inside their party as President Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk run roughshod over federal agencies. With House members seething and activists demanding they shut down the Senate in response. Instead, it has been in many ways business as usual in the Senate over the first two weeks of Trump's second term.

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Okay, so apparently over the course of the last few days, Baldoni's team put up a website dedicated to explaining the lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds. They had sued him. He is countersuing them. What exactly is on his website? What's the damning material that he put up?

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Republicans have ground through procedural obstacles to confirm merely a dozen cabinet nominees, a pace that alarms a broad swath of Democrats. The lack of organized pushback has many Democrats wondering when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders will put forward a more aggressive strategy for resisting the GOP blitzkrieg that has already gutted U.S.

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Okay. So what were the accusations originally for people who are sort of new to the story? What were the accusations that Blake Lively originally was making about Justin Baldoni? And then how is he rebutting those? What's his response?

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So obviously, this doesn't just involve Blake Lively. This is now dragged in both Ryan Reynolds as well as Taylor Swift. Some of the allegations were that Ryan Reynolds was sort of involved in attempting to cram down a script and script changes on Justin Baldoni, that Taylor Swift was brought into a script meeting where she was giving advice on scripts to Justin Baldoni.

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And so this has raised the prospect that Taylor Swift may actually be deposed in this particular lawsuit. What are the chances that we end up with a Taylor Swift deposition?

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foreign aid agencies, halted many federal grants, and left government employees shell-shocked. Representative Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, she of the bartending and the low IQ said, quote, this is not business as usual. And Senate Democrats should not be treating this as business as usual. We need to see a halt on all Trump nominees. Yeah, please do it. Seriously, do it. Try to stop all the nominees.

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So, yeah, well, I mean, again, there's so many sort of aspects of pop culture that are being dragged into this case. That includes, of course, Ryan Reynolds's latest movie, the Wolverine movie that he did with Hugh Jackman. One of the big characters in it is the so-called nice pool character. There's Deadpool and then there's nice pool.

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One of the allegations is apparently that nice pool, which is sort of a mockable, ridiculous character who's a faux feminist, who isn't really that he's actually based on Baldoni. That's what Baldoni is now claiming. You know, how credible is that? How valid is that claim?

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The whole thing is, in fact, much more interesting than I thought it was going to be when we started this interview. So Perez Hilton, thank you so much for walking me through that. And I'm sure that we'll have you on again as the updates flow in. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Happy to be back.

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Alrighty, coming up, we are going to get to Google, which is now overtly getting rid of its DEI programs. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Shut down the Senate. Really shut down. Let's see how that goes for you. See if the American people like that particular plan. House Speaker Johnson, he says, you know, the problem for the Democrats is they don't have a vision. They don't have a leader. They got nothing. Here's Mike Johnson.

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Ep. 2133 - Democrats Plan Trump IMPEACHMENT?!

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Okay, again, Democrats don't have a strategy. So impeachment, obstruction, let's see how that goes for them. And they are picking some of the worst things in the world to defend. It turns out the American people do not like wasting billions of dollars on ridiculous giveaway projects to Democrats' friends, as we've been talking about for several days at this point, maybe weeks at this point.

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The Democrat blue taxpayer pipeline that was set up from the bureaucracy inside the executive branch, billions of dollars flowing from unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch to non-governmental organizations run by unelected Democrats outside the executive branch all over the world. That pipeline is coming to an end thanks to Doge. I'm old enough to remember when Democrats laughed at Joe.

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She said, this isn't a real thing. Ah, Elon Musk, what's he really going to be doing? And then President Trump gave Musk the keys to the car to go into all of these agencies and start gutting them and start looking at all the problems in the agencies. And now Democrats are freaking out. Well, Democrats are freaking out right now, and that's good news. But let's be real about this.

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Life is filled with uncertainty. That's particularly true when it comes to the economy. Some economists are forecasting a depression, not a recession, a depression by the year 2030. Here's the reality. All the systemic debt of the United States is eventually going to come due. That includes things like Social Security and Medicare. The largest generation is now hitting retirement.

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A smaller workforce means a smaller tax base. Pair that with our growing national debt and the rising cost of living, we could have a very big problem. What are you doing right now to protect your family for the future? Gold is a safe haven in hard economic times. Birch Gold makes it easy to diversify a portion of your savings into physical gold.

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Ep. 2133 - Democrats Plan Trump IMPEACHMENT?!

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Birch Gold will help you transition existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold, and it doesn't cost you a penny out of pocket. Protect your future today. Text BEN to 989898. Get your free info kit on gold and a copy of the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era with forward by Donald Trump Jr. There's no obligation, only information. I buy my gold from Birch Gold. You can trust them as well.

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And because of that, Democrats are going right back to the old playbook. That means 17 days in, Democrats are already talking about impeachment for President Donald J. Trump. He's been president for 17 days. And again, this just shows you that all along, the goal with Trump was never an honest accounting of presidential power.

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Diversification is just a smart strategy when it comes to your investment portfolio. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898 to get started today with my friends at Birch Gold. Also, let me tell you something. I never realized just how bad my old mattress was until I got rid of it in favor of my Helix mattress. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already whining at you?

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Well, that was me. Very often, actually. And don't even get me started on how my old mattress turned into a heat trap at night, which is the worst. There's nothing worse than waking up in a puddle of sweat because your mattress is trapping the heat. Since switching over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on the busiest days, the craziest headlines. Here's what makes Helix different.

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They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has the perfect match for you.

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We took the sleep quiz, we got a mattress that is firm but breathable, and it's been great. Right now, Helix is offering an incredible President's Day early access sale. Visit helixsleep.com slash men, get 20% off site-wide, plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase. That's helixsleep.com slash men for 20% off site-wide, plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase.

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Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash men for this exclusive offer. Musk and Trump targeting USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has, again, become a corrupted institution.

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The original idea that was promoted by Congress and JFK way back in 1961, that idea was not bad, that you counter Russian influence by funding organizations all over the world that do the sort of soft outreach that's necessary to deter people from joining the communists. Not a horrible idea, but in the aftermath of the Cold War, USAID was shifted into

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a welfare agency for left-wing international and domestic causes. And Doge has uncovered all of that. And it turns out the American people don't like any of that. Democrats are picking a very weird thing to defend. The Wall Street Journal says, quote, no doubt spending $40 billion, which is the budget of USAID, is bound to do some good somewhere.

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One off-sited example is the PEPFAR program that has funded anti-AIDS efforts in Africa in particular. But USAID, like most foreign aid, has become something of a plaster saint in Washington, even if it does far less good than advertised. And they mentioned some of the things that happened under the Biden administration.

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The agency during the Biden year supported electric vehicles in Vietnam and a transgender clinic in India. A Serbian LGBTQ group called Grupa Izagi received $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities. And there are many other examples.

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An analysis by the Middle East Forum says $164 million of USAID money has supported radical organizations around the globe. $122 million of that aid was going to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations, including organizations directly controlled by Hamas in Gaza. Recipients of that money have called for their lands to be cleansed from the impurity of the Jews.

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It never was about whether Donald Trump had actually committed impeachable offenses when they impeached him twice. It was never about any of that. It was just about they didn't like him. It was beyond their reckoning that a Republican president might actually do the kinds of things that Trump wanted to do.

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So, Musk and Trump going in and cleaning this thing out, turns out the American people generally like that. But one of the element that became very public yesterday was questions over the relationship between members of the federal government and Politico. So Politico, the publication, Politico has a sort of specialized service called Politico Pro. It's usually for lobbyists.

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It has kind of public knowledge, but specialized public knowledge and a subscription on a yearly basis goes for something like $10,000, $10,000. Well, USAID spent about $44,000 on Politico payments between 2023 and 2024, but federal government employees did spend something like $8 million on Politico Pro, which is a pretty large subsidy from federal employees to Politico Pro.

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By the way, that does include money from Republican places like the Office of the Speaker of the House or the House Committee on Agriculture. However, that is a giant taxpayer subsidy. Whether you're going to say that it's individuals in the federal government doing it or agencies in the federal government or USAID.

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Here is Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, saying, well, we're not going to allow that sort of thing anymore.

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Okay, so there are a few problems with what she's saying. Number one, it is not USAID money that's going directly to Politico. Also, the number of dollars going to Politico from the federal government is not $8 million. It's $16 million.

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So it turns out that if you run in a publication that covers the government and members of the government are paying you $16 million, that seems like that could be a bit of a conflict of interest. But the real answer on all this is that Americans don't want their money wasted on stupid trash. And Democrats are perfectly fine with wasting money on stupid trash.

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Yesterday, there was an entire House hearing about where USAID money is going. And Representative Nancy Mace from South Carolina, she asked a Democratic witness named William Resch about spending $2 million to trans people in Guatemala. And here was William Resch's response.

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And so they were going to use whatever tools they had at their disposal, whether it was impeachment, whether it was legal prosecution, whether it was deep state fakery in an attempt to undermine his popularity with the American public, whether it was manipulating the media and social media not to release stories about his opposition. Everything was on the table.

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I have no position. I have no position. Why would you not have a position on that? How exactly does that advance American? The answer is he does have a position. He's for it. The left would love to push trans propaganda in Guatemala with your taxpayer dollars. And then you wonder why precisely Republicans are targeting this sorts of spending. That would be exactly the reason right there.

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So Democrats who are struggling for an answer here, they've decided that instead of defending the spending, they're just going to attack Elon Musk because Elon Musk is really, really rich. And in the polling data, Elon has become less popular because it turns out that when you do controversial things, you become less popular. The nice thing for Elon is he doesn't care. Just think about Elon Musk.

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Elon Musk is famous for not caring what people think of him. It is sort of his stock in trade. It also happens to be one of the reasons why he is singularly successful. Well, Democrats have decided it's absolutely imperative to yell about Elon Musk and his intervention at USAID.

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Cory Booker, Mr. Potato Head, took out his angry eyes, popped those things in, and decided to rant about USAID and Elon Musk and how dare they touch our vaunted foreign aid going to transgender people in Guatemala.

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elon actually tried to do that exact same thing with the federal employment base it doesn't work that way so elon was running up against the hard walls of what politics actually looks like regulations bureaucracy the balance of power with congress and within those confines elon was doing some pretty astonishing things i mean i know people who were working for doge and with doge and what doge was doing was pretty amazing well in the end elon had to leave because his term ran out

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And he was unsatisfied with what Doge was able to accomplish, and he was also unsatisfied with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Why? Well, because he had spent the last six months attempting to cut waste, fraud, and abuse at the federal level. He might have been able to cut $100, $150 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse, but the trillions that he thought he was going to be able to cut, in the end,

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have to come from Congress. And so he's looking at the big, beautiful bill, and he's saying, why does this increase the deficit? My whole raison d'etre is to shrink the size of government and to shrink the size of our national debt, because it is going to be a gigantic burden on the American taxpayer, on our future, on future growth, on tech, on all of these things.

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And so here we are blowing up the national debt. So that is Elon's perspective politically. And then there's President Trump's perspective, which is he's the most powerful man in the world, but also he has the constraints of an extraordinarily narrow House majority, an extraordinarily narrow Senate majority. And coming into office, it wasn't as though he ran on these kind of widespread cuts.

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Elon may have wanted to do them, and maybe President Trump wants to do a few of them, but President Trump had never wanted to restructure Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the things that actually would have to be cut in order to facilitate true debt reduction. And so President Trump comes in and he says, look, I've got my tax cuts. Those tax cuts are expiring.

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If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, you're going to get a massive tax increase, and then you're going to get a recession on the back of that. I'm the president of the United States. I need the tax cuts. I need more money in border security. I'm willing to make concessions along spending lines in order to do that. However, that gets hammered out is how it gets hammered out.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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You're talking about two men who combined made President Trump president. Obviously, most of that is President Trump, but Elon's weight is... was not insignificant in the last election cycle. You're talking about a coalition between tech and sort of blue-collar workers. There are a lot of issues at play. But I want to break down what exactly is going on along three lines.

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And then he handed it off to Speaker Johnson and to Senator Thune to try and put together the requisite majorities. And what they came up with was a bill that basically preserves the current tax rates and also makes some moderate cuts to future growth in spending. But the way that the media have treated this is as though a new debt dike has suddenly been opened.

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that suddenly the dam on debt has been broken. And that actually is not true. The reality is that the debt trajectory looks very much like what the debt trajectory would have looked like if we had just assumed that the tax rates remain the same.

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Again, so much of this is about budget scoring and dynamic scoring, and do you treat the tax cuts as though they were going to go away, or do you recognize that they were likely to remain in place

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Anyway, so that is a very interesting fight, the sort of ideological fight between what we want and what we get, what's possible and what we would love to see happen, what the American people say they want and what the American people actually want. All that's really interesting. And it got telescoped down into the battle between Elon Musk and President Trump over the big, beautiful bill.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Because that's the political side. And as I've said before, I have sympathies on both sides. I am a longtime cutter. I'm somebody who has openly said we ought to restructure Social Security and restructure Medicare and restructure Medicaid. I've said all of those things. But I also understand the American public does not agree with me on a lot of those things.

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And so you have to work through the system. So I have sympathy for Elon Musk's positions more than the positions of President Trump. I've criticized President Trump and the Republican Party in the past for not wanting to actually do anything about those massive debt creators.

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At the same time, I have a lot of sympathy for President Trump, who actually has to work within the realm of the pragmatic in order to achieve what he can. So that's in the political realm. Then you get to the business realm.

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So in the business realm, the biggest problem we have with the American government, it is so large that that means that politicians can use it to help their friends and harm their enemies. And that's kind of what you are seeing play out right here. So President Trump comes into office. He won Michigan.

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Michigan obviously has a very large support base of auto workers who voted for President Trump, blue collar workers, factory workers who really supported President Trump. President Trump has reconfigured enormous amounts of our trade policy in order to help specifically these kinds of people. That's what the steel tariffs are all about.

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That's what many of the car tariffs are about and all the rest. If you're wondering why he's tariffing Canada, that would be one reason, is to supposedly try to reshore some of the manufacturing into the United States, and specifically that industry. So as the Big Beautiful Bill worked its way forward, the electric vehicle mandates and subsidies that were part of the Biden-era law went away.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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And Elon Musk looked at that and he said, okay, hold up a second. You want to tell me that the EV mandates and regulations... and subsidies that all that goes away, which really hurts Tesla, right? Because listen, I own Tesla. I love Tesla. Tesla is the best car company on planet earth. It is an amazing, amazing company. I could not be a bigger fan of Tesla.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Literally my two-year-old son's first word was Tesla. I'm not even kidding. Okay, with that said, Elon is looking at this and he is saying, okay, so you're getting rid of subsidies to my company and companies like my company, but you're blowing out the subsidies for a wide variety of other interest groups. What the hell? What the hell? And Elon said as much today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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There is the political, there is the business, and then there is the personal. So... Let's start with the political. So Elon's term in office came to an end. There is a statute on the books that says that you're basically not allowed to work inside the White House for longer than 130 days without some sort of waiver or without some sort of clearance. And Elon ran out that time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Woo! So what the hell is going on? That is the question on everybody's mind. Obviously, Elon Musk and President Trump are now going at it like cats and dogs. And there's been a lot of speculation for a long time that this marriage would never quite last. You're talking about the world's richest man versus the world's most powerful man.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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He said, listen, I'd be willing to take it on the chin as far as the electric vehicle mandates and subsidies if we were actually cutting spending, but we're not cutting spending, so I'm getting the worst of both worlds. We expand the spending except in the area that would actually help my company. So what the ever-loving hell.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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And President Trump, on the other hand, also a businessman, is saying, well, hold up a second. We really should not have these sorts of subsidies for people who are already largely wealthy and who don't necessarily want to buy a green car. And I do have to support these workers. And so the battle that's happening here is kind of a normal battle that happens when business and politics meet.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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A normal battle between certain people who want certain benefits and other people who want other benefits. And the only solution to that, ironically, is to agree with Elon on cutting size in the scope of government. A smaller government would not be actually capable of handing out favors to friends and punishing enemies.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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President Trump has now responded to Elon going after him by suggesting that he is going to remove federal contracts for SpaceX. And Elon's like, fine, I'm just going to dismantle my rockets then. Fine, you don't want it? You don't get it. I'll work with somebody else. Again, none of that is particularly good for the United States because SpaceX is, in fact, an amazing company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Tesla is, in fact, an amazing company. And the American space program has been basically hollowed out for decades, which brings us to the third aspect of this, and that, of course, is the personal. So when it comes to the personal, I know both these men. I know President Trump. I know Elon Musk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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obviously you don't get to be this powerful on either the business side or in the political realm without being unbelievably talented incredibly smart and also having a big ego and so both of these men do not like being insulted both of these men do not like being treated with personal insult and and so you're seeing that play out right now i think that elon felt insulted when he left

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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There'd been a lot of friction inside the building, apparently, between him and a bunch of people, including the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. He felt like he didn't receive the proper levels of support for all the sacrifice that he was putting in. He leaves. There's a man who he had wanted to be the head of NASA.

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Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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And, of course, Elon's input when it comes to NASA should be taken fairly seriously because, of course, Elon is the person who is most knowledgeable about space companies on planet Earth. He had recommended a man named Jared Isaacson who is himself a billionaire, an entrepreneur, to head up the NASA program. And the belief in Elon's camp and from Isaacman is that he basically was defenestrated.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Isaacman was taken out of the running for the NASA administrator, specifically as a piece of sort of in-the-building revenge against Elon, which, if that's true, is unbelievably petty and stupid. There's really no reason for that at all, like none. And so Elon felt really insulted. And so the suggestion is that he was insulted between that and the EV stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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He basically decided to go after President Trump. President Trump, of course, will not take a punch sitting down. I mean, President Trump always punches back, always, always, always. And so President Trump immediately started punching back against Elon Musk and suggesting the Trump's arrangement syndrome. And now you have two very big egos.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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As I said on the air, I thought that what he did during that time was quite incredible. He put his companies on hold. He took a major stock hit. He took a major brand hit in order to come into the government and try to root out waste, fraud, and abuse through the Department of Governmental Efficiency. And Elon came in believing that he would be capable of doing all of that because

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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who do not take insult lightly, going directly at each other. And so Elon then comes back at Trump and suggests that the reason that the Trump administration has not released the so-called Epstein files is because Trump is in the Epstein files. And of course, that has to be taken with a little bit of credibility given the fact that Doge actually had presumably access to the Epstein files.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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We believe that that's the case. Is he saying that speculatively? Is he saying that because he has knowledge? Totally unclear. Again, there's no evidence, any evidence that I've seen, none, that President Trump was actually engaged with minors on Epstein Island or anything like that. But it's gotten very, very personal between President Trump and Elon Musk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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It doesn't look like it's gonna calm down anytime soon because again, you're talking about two incredibly powerful men, two incredibly rich men, with large egos who believe that they are in the right. And so this is likely to continue for some time. And again, that's my preliminary take. I just wanted to break that all down for you in terms of the timeline and now where things stand.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Of course, that is all a preview for tomorrow's show, so make sure you tune in then.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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If you don't have a lot of time in the government, you always believe, as President Trump believed in his first term, that basically politics runs just like a business should run, meaning you can come in, you can fix the problems, and then you can move on to the next problem to fix that. You can come in, cut everybody. Elon was doing the kind of thing that Steve Jobs used to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump vs Elon: What The Hell Is Going On?

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Steve Jobs, of course, famously used to go into the elevators at Apple, and if he saw an employee, he'd ask them what they did. If they couldn't explain, he would fire them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

Well, folks, there was a shocking assassination on Wednesday in New York City. We're going to get into all the details and the left's bizarre response to this particular assassination. First, if you have not yet heard, Daily Wire Plus is 50% off right now. It's our best deal of the year. That is one full year of uncensored shows, exclusive series, documentaries, and more. Don't wait.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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If the left controls the system, the system is good. If the left does not control a system, the system is bad. And if you're a member of that system, then maybe just maybe you deserve to die. It's all a power game. If you're a prosecutor and you see a good Samaritan on the street trying to stop

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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a violent act on a subway, that person who tried to stop the violent act is bad because that person is not of your political ilk. They're not part of the team. And so that means that person ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Meanwhile, if a person actually commits a felony murder, if that person is a member of your team, well, then you do your best to let that person off the hook because it's all team sport. It's all team sport. And the subjugation of basic liberal principle by left-wing principle is perfectly obvious here. It's the great untold story of the last several decades in American politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It used to be that liberals in this country were people that you or I as a conservative might disagree with on tax policy, on healthcare policy. But as I've said, literally my entire career, there's a difference between a liberal and a leftist. A liberal would never argue that because you work for United Healthcare, you ought to die. Maybe you ought to be shot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That's not something a traditional liberal would ever suggest. They might say the system has problems. They might say that this company needs to be run better. They might object to that particular CEO. They would never argue that person ought to be morally dispensed with, just shot on the street in the way that you're hearing from some of these members of the radical left. They wouldn't say that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That takes a left-wing point of view because for the left-wing, for people who are truly on the left, not just liberals who disagree about the various uses of the government or what government can or should do, but who actually believe that all dynamics are power dynamics. And the only thing that matters is that your allies control the government gun.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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For those people, murder is one of the things that is just part and parcel of the system. Sometimes to cook the left-wing omelet, you have to break a few eggs. And you're seeing that more and more from the traditional liberal wing of the Democratic Party is this sort of power dynamics are central to everything. Perfect example of this comes today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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So Joe Biden and his team are now leaking that they are considering the possibility of preemptive pardons for pretty much everybody associated with the Biden administration. Now, the way that they are painting this is in a quote-unquote principled liberal way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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And clearly it wasn't a robbery because the guy didn't even rifle the body. Apparently the gun jammed. You can actually see this happen in the video. The gun jams during the attack and the shooter then proceeds to rack the slide in order to clear the jams. This is somebody who knew what they were doing, at least on a very basic level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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What they're saying is they are afraid that the Trump administration is going to come in and politicize the Justice Department and go after Biden officials. Therefore, they have to preemptively strike and pardon everybody. Now, do you find that plausible? I don't find that particularly plausible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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The reason I don't find that plausible is because it was the left wing of the Democratic Party that decided that now that they had power, they were going to initiate prosecutions of pretty much everybody they didn't like, ranging from Donald Trump directly to pro-lifers who are protesting in unapproved places.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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to other members of conservative constituencies like school board members who they didn't particularly like, like parents. They were going to target all these people using the positions of power, not because they believed in principled ways that certain people were guilty of crimes, but because they believed that certain people had to be got and the law was as good a method of any crime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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And so what you're watching right now is that inaction. I don't actually think this is a preemptive strike directed against the Trump administration coming in and politicizing law enforcement. I think this is precisely what it appears to be, which is the left wing of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden now creating a new standard where if you are a friend of Joe, you get a blanket pardon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That's what the Hunter Biden thing was. Remember, he did not pardon Hunter Biden. of the crimes for which Hunter Biden was charged. He didn't commute the sentence, which he certainly could have done, for Hunter Biden. Instead, he gave him a blanket pardon for a full-scale 10-year period for anything and everything. He gave me a get-out-of-jail-free card that covered everything.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That's not a preemptive strike, folks. That is just a you're my friend, you get special benefits thing. That's what's happening right here. Apparently, now Joe Biden wants to consider doing that for pretty much all of the people allied with him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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According to Politico, Joe Biden's senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions. So who exactly are they worried about? Well,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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They might give a preemptive blanket pardon for all possible crimes on the federal level to Senator-elect Adam Schiff from California, as well as former GOP Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Others mentioned include Anthony Fauci, who almost certainly committed perjury with regard to gain-of-function research before the United States Senate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

130.193

And apparently if you just get away with it, then, you know, this person had this planned out pretty well. Apparently Paulette Thompson, his wife, told NBC News there had been some threats against Brian Thompson. She said, basically, I don't know, lack of coverage. I don't know details. I know that he said there were people that had been threatening

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Apparently, the West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel, but include a range of other aides, including Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. The president himself has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions that I love that Joe Biden is so out of it. He is so not part of this conversation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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He's not even a part of the conversation about what kind of pardons he should be issuing. But make no mistake, this is Democrats changing the rules of the game yet again. They changed the rules of the game to let Hunter Biden off the hook for everything and anything. And now they want to change the rules of the game so as to issue preemptive blanket pardons to all of their friends and allies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Well, the Democrats change the rules pretty routinely. But one thing that never changes, the natural disasters are a reality. They are, in fact, a reality. From the Maui fires to Hurricane Helene in Milton, we are seeing catastrophic disasters take out entire towns with minimal warning, resulting in lack of basic resources.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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I get it, we're all wired to think it can't happen here, and then in a blink, you might be in survival mode. Being prepared in advance is your best defense against the unexpected. The wellness company's emergency kits completely remove the gatekeeper and subside panic by providing you with a personalized mini-pharmacy in the convenience of your own home.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

1380.39

Bacterial infections, staph, bite wounds, UTIs, strep throat, respiratory illnesses. You no longer have to be at the mercy of someone else to help you. You keep a fire extinguisher handy in case of a fire, right? Well, it's probably a good idea to have some basic medicines handy in the event you need them. Same mindset, different product. My wife loves this, by the way, as a doctor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Getting an emergency kit is fully digital, all from the convenience of your couch. You fill out an intake form, a pharmacist reviews and approves it, and then you receive the kits in two weeks. The medical board approved guidebook tells you exactly what to do. This is preparedness simplified. Invest in your family's self-managed insurance plan. Go to UrgentCareKit.com slash Ben. Use promo code Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Save 60 bucks plus get free shipping. USA residents only. That's UrgentCareKit.com slash pen to save 60 bucks. UrgentCareKit.com slash pen. Also, this Christmas, as we celebrate the gift of life, you have an opportunity to share that same gift with a mother and her baby. Imagine a young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, feeling alone, unsure what to do. She's searching for hope.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That's where Preborn Ministries comes in. When Valeria found out she was pregnant, she was beyond terrified. She'd often dreamt of being a young mom, but as a Christian and single, she now felt overwhelmed by shame and was seriously considering abortion. Valeria began the search for an abortion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It was upon that search she called a nurse at Preborn Network Clinic, who walked her through her options, including the true reality of ending a baby's life with the abortion pill. When she heard that, she knew she couldn't end her child's life. Valeria chose life. She now has a beautiful baby girl. This Christmas, for just $28, you can help save a life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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And thanks to a special matching grant, your gift is doubled. Just $28 provides one ultrasound. $140 sponsors five. That means your $140 gift becomes $280, potentially helping 10 moms and their unborn kids. To donate, dial pound 250-SAVE-BABY. That's pound 250-BABY. Or visit preborn.com slash ben. All gifts are tax-deductible, and Preborn has a four-star charity rating. Preborn.com slash ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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The UnitedHealth Group is one of the biggest companies in America. It includes the biggest American health insurer, as well as doctor groups and other assets as well. And Thompson was the CEO of the insurance unit, which is called UnitedHealthcare. The company appeared to remove profiles of its executives from the website following the attack.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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So I have a question. Where are the members of the left standing up to this? They certainly should. They certainly should. To their credit, some of them actually are. Team Obama, actually, some members of Team Obama are upset about this. That makes sense because Team Obama and Team Biden don't get along.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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So I don't know how much of this is principled and how much of this is the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of stuff. But in any case, here, for example, was Tommy Veeder of Pod Save America ripping into Joe Biden for the Hunter Biden pardon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Okay, well, that last part there is the part that's amazing. Is Hunter the only one getting saved here? Is the implication that everybody should get saved? From what? For what crimes? Again, the Democratic argument is going to be we have to use this nuclear option because otherwise Trump is going to use his nuclear option.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Or maybe there's something else going on here, which is if you've got the power and you're a Democrat, you wield it no matter what. And that seems to be the order of the day. That seems to be the rule of the day. Again, Democrats were perfectly willing to kill the filibuster if they had won the Senate. If they had won the Senate and the presidency, they would have killed the filibuster.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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They made no bones about this. For them, power is merely a tool. For people who are normal in politics, normal liberals, normal conservatives, The powers of the government don't change based on who's in power. It is only for what purpose those powers are used.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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One of the ways that you can tell whether somebody is a postmodernist in their politics is whether they believe that the powers delegated to the federal government expand based on who is in control of the government. If it does, I get to expand my power radically. If it's them, I restrict the power radically. That is a problem. It is a real problem in American politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It's a real problem in global politics as well. It turns out there's still a standard of right and wrong when it comes to this sort of stuff. But increasingly, when it comes to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, that is no longer the case. Liberals are being supplanted by the leftists. In fact, Sean Penn, who is, as we all know, a fool, he praised Hunter Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

165.29

the UnitedHealth CEO of the overall company, not just the insurance branch, said in a video message to employees, Brian was a truly extraordinary person who touched the lives of countless people throughout our organization and far beyond. It's a terrible tragedy. Now, there are a number of things to be said about this. Obviously, number one, New York City is governed horribly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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He called him one of the finest people I know. And he urged Joe Biden to squeeze in more pardons. He says, quote, it ain't January yet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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I hope that it is also in President Biden's intentions to offer an ongoing concerted focus on people who have been wrongfully charged, overcharged, where the extenuating circumstances have not been fairly considered, and that there will be many more pardons that are better for the world than leaving people to toil in prison.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

1678.594

It's all power politics all the way down, which brings us to the Supreme Court. So yesterday at the Supreme Court, there was a hearing in a case called U.S. v. Scrimetti.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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This particular case is one The Daily Wire has a bit of a stake in because obviously Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire has done heavy lifting in what is a woman, particularly in the state of Tennessee, with regard to preventing the transing of the children in the state of Tennessee. So Tennessee passed a state law that banned the transing of the kids. And then a federal lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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in an attempt to suggest that there is, in fact, a 14th Amendment argument that small children must be given cross-sex hormones or this is sex discrimination. That is the argument that was being made yesterday in U.S. v. Scrimeti. The U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Solicitor General under Joe Biden, who is trying to argue in favor of striking down the Tennessee law, they argued the Tennessee law discriminates by sex and transgender status, violating the equal protection of the laws.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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The feds argue, "...a teenager whose sex assigned at birth is male can be prescribed testosterone to conform to a male gender identity, but a teenager assigned female at birth cannot." That is a wild argument. Again, it has nothing to – that is sort of like suggesting that it is sex discrimination to suggest that if a male has cancer of the prostate, he can have his prostate removed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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But a female who has anal cancer can't have her prostate removed because she doesn't have a prostate. What are you talking about? These are different diagnoses for different conditions. It's an absurdity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Now, again, a lot of this confusion was created by the terrible ruling in Bostock in 2020, which suggested that the Civil Rights Act, when it banned employment discrimination by sex, that also included discrimination based on the idea that if a boy walks in and says he's a girl, that you could fire him based on that. That somehow that's what the Civil Rights Act was meant to protect against.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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That, of course, is incredibly silly. But what is this in the end? What is this entire argument about? It's about a power game. It's about a power game in a couple of ways. One, the left doesn't believe that men can become women. They don't. They're lying if they say they do. No one believes this. No one. Even the greatest advocates don't believe this. Instead, it is a power game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

18.337

This deal ends soon. Head on over to dailywire.com slash cyberweek and join the fight today. So On Wednesday, the chief executive of UnitedHealth's insurance arm, according to the Wall Street Journal, was fatally shot outside a hotel in New York City. It was a targeted attack, according to the police. There is, in fact, video of the attack.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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When you're having assassinations in public places in New York City, that goes to the way that law enforcement is deployed, what law enforcement is allowed to do. When you have violence that has become commonplace on New York streets, that goes to governance. And simultaneously, as this is happening, the jury is still out in the case of Daniel Penny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It is designed to get you to say the thing. You will be made to care. You will be made to repeat the phraseology. This is not a right to privacy. This is a right to publicity issue. It's a right to be treated in a way that you believe everyone else should treat you, even if it violates those other people's rights. That's what this is all about. And even violating the rights of minors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It's a power game. Chase Strangio, that is the name of the transgender man, meaning a woman, who works for the ACLU and was the attorney on behalf of the ACLU before the Supreme Court, is making this argument. Again, this is, man, it is amazing. This is what we have come to in America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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We have to have Supreme Court arguments over whether the state should be able to prohibit the genital mutilation and hormonal destruction of children. Here's Chase Strangio. Again, this person is a lawyer before the Supreme Court. Defending sex changes for two-year-olds

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Yeah, just ridiculous. And this person is obviously female. You can listen to the voice. I have a pretty high voice for a dude. That's a lady. But we're all supposed to pretend that that's actually a man and that it is a functional good for the state to facilitate surgeries and hormone treatments that would make this more common for confused kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Well, some of the Supreme Court justices were having nothing to do with this yesterday. The audio is available from Supreme Court hearings, but the video is not. That's just the way that it works over there. Justice Samuel Alito asked some pretty basic questions that destroyed the government's case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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He asked, for example, about whether sex changes reduce suicide because the data showed that they do not actually, which is the chief argument that has been used by the state as well as by trans advocates to argue for why children should be given these sorts of horrific, barbaric treatments. So he says, well, where's the data that shows that these treatments actually reduce suicidal ideation?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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And the answer is there are none.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Daniel Penny, of course, is the Marine veteran who took down a crazed drug abuser named Jordan Neely on the New York subway as Jordan Neely was threatening other members of the public in this subway car. And you'll recall that Daniel Penny put Jordan Neely in a submission hold and Jordan Neely later died because of that. supposedly it was because of the submission hold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Okay, so that would be a distinction without much of a difference there from Chase Strangio trying to split hairs. The reality is that the data don't exist on this point at all. Alito then went further and fully destroyed the entire logic. He pointed out that the 14th Amendment is meant to prevent discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristic. Immutable characteristic would be like race.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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If you're a black person, you can't become a white person. You're still going to be black no matter how many times you say you're white. He says, well, when it comes to gender, that's clearly not an immutable characteristic under the 14th Amendment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Well, duh. Of course it's not an immutable characteristic, but this argument was never about the principle of the matter. Ever. It's all about a power game in which the entire body politic, and in fact all of humanity, is forced to abide by a false construction of reality because that's what the left wants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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The left wishes that humanity were all a bunch of interchangeable widgets that they could mold at will. And if that's not true, we'll just pretend that it's true And we will mutilate kids in order to accomplish this. That is the logic of the left on these issues. I mean, Sonia Sotomayor, who is by far the dumbest person on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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There are some other candidates, but Sonia Sotomayor is unique in her level of stupidity on the Supreme Court. Yesterday, she compared the hormonal treatment of teenagers and pre-teenagers to them having aspirin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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So you are now comparing taking aspirin to having your genitals chopped off as a 15-year-old, your breasts chopped off. She's neither a good doctor nor a good lawyer, as it turns out. All right, in just a second, we'll bring you the updates on the possible nomination of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. I say possible because it seems to be a little bit fraught lately.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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First, only a few days left to join the fight and save 50%. If you've ever thought about joining DailyWare Plus, now would be the time. Right now, new annual memberships are half price. It is our best deal of the year. That is one full year of uncensored daily shows with limited ads, groundbreaking documentaries, and hit movies like Am I Racist?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Series including Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's The Gospels along with our entire entertainment catalog. Plus, you get unlimited access to Menke, our kids app packed with content that reflects your values. Already a member? Give the gift of DailyWire Plus this holiday season at 50% off. This deal ends soon. Go to dailywire.com slash cyberweek right now and join the fight. Meanwhile...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Hot controversy over Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense. Now, he is defending himself as well as he should. An enormous amount of material that is now being submitted into the public spaces about Pete Hegseth, about alleged drunkenness or alleged improprieties with women is being done anonymously. Virtually no one is willing to go on the record about Pete Hegseth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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It also could have been because of the drugs in his system or his reaction to the lack of air to the brain. The bottom line is that that is clearly not a manslaughter or murder charge. New York City is bringing that charge anyway because the city is governed horribly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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And this is supposed to scuttle him. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. You have to have a higher burden of proof than anonymous sources say. Somebody needs to make the accusation that the particulars can either be rebutted or not. So Pete Hegseth has now put out an op-ed over at the Wall Street Journal saying, quote, I faced fire before. I won't back down now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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He says, quote, I've been through a lot. Combat tours, job changes, divorces, and family challenges. Yes, I love my mom very much, and she loves me. I've always led with honesty, integrity, and passion. Tragically, many veterans never find the purpose for their next chapter and succumb to the vital depression or, worst of all, suicide. I understand what they're facing because I've lived it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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By the grace of God, I took another path. My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has renewed and restored my life. I am saved by his grace." The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and take me down. It's a textbook manufactured media takedown. They provide no evidence, no names. They ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf.

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Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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They need to create a bogeyman. And because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity, that is the only thing they are right about. He's right about that. I mean, we've gone through the allegations. The allegations are either scanty or anonymous or both. Some of the allegations have been trotted out.

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Our letter that Pete Hegseth's mom sent him seven, eight years ago, talking about how he needed to be better to the women in his life. Which, by the way, that's pretty rough stuff to be dumping out there in public view. You know, letters from mothers to sons and such. I mean, seriously, people. Well, Pete Hegseth's mom was out defending him in the media yesterday. Here's what she had to say.

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Here, for example, is the lead Daniel Penny prosecutor, a person named Daphna Yoran, who is such a left-winger that while she is prosecuting Daniel Penny for the great crime of standing up to potential violence on the subway system, She is bragging about a light sentence that she went to pursue for a thug who killed an 87-year-old.

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Again, the fact that there's a game that's played here. Anonymous accusation. Accusations that bring forward something that his mom said about him. His mom comes forward to rebut. And then it was like, hey, you had to call your mom. You made his mom the issue. Well, Pete went out with Megyn Kelly yesterday to defend himself. She asked him about the accusations. Here's what he had to say.

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Now, good for him for saying that sort of stuff. He says, also, listen, I don't owe the media answers. I owe senators answers. Presumably they're the ones who are going to be doing the advice and consent process. Here he was with Megan.

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So we'll see how this all plays out. There have been rumors that Trump is considering some other possibilities. People like Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa or Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's not. But the bottom line is at this point, I have not seen sufficient evidence for why Pete Hegseth should not be secretary of defense.

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I think he would completely revitalize the Department of Defense. I think he would come in and he would clean house, which is, as he says, probably the thing they are most afraid of. And we are now living in a post-Kavanaugh era where simply accusing people of impropriety anonymously isn't going to do it anymore. You actually have to show proof.

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You have to show why Pete Hegseth should not be Secretary of Defense. Now, maybe he can't get there with the votes. That's possible. We'll find out. But from the reports that are being made publicly that are all anonymous in nature and that very often contradict some of the public record, I'm not seeing it, certainly as of yet.

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Obviously, the wide level of support that Pete has in the commentariat, I think, speaks to what many of us think of Pete, which is quite highly. GOP Senator Bill Hagerty, who's one of the people who's been considered as a possible replacement, supposedly, he says that House members gave Pete Hagseth a standing ovation when he visited the Hill.

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I think that that is correct. I think that's correct. So again, we'll see how the math plays out. But the sort of strategy of dump the kitchen sink on whomever the nominee is and don't provide any specific credible evidence of accusations that would bring them down, I think that that is not a winning strategy for the media anymore. I think that era is now over.

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Now, with all that said, one of the things that I think has been a mistake by President Trump in nominating a variety of these people is not the nominees themselves. It's the problem that he's actually wiped out several House members from the House Republican caucus. And this is something that Republicans are going to have to keep in mind.

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President Trump right now might have a House majority of one, which would be the smallest House majority in decades. It's going to be one or two seats. So again, 220 seats. That means no one can get sick. It means no one can be out of town for a vote. And it means nobody can dissent. Historically small House majority.

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It wouldn't have been that small if not for the fact that there are now several vacancies. Those vacancies were created by President Trump picking a bunch of House members out of the House and trying to bring them into the administration. That's kind of a problem. Practically speaking, the GOP majority could be as thin as 217 to 215.

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That would be the same as the smallest ever 1917 to 1919 Congress. And a lot of members of the House team were pretty upset at the reduction in the House majority. We'll see how that plays in terms of actually being able to negotiate the kinds of major legislation that President Trump needs to push forward. Meanwhile, chaos has broken out in France.

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Another French government has now fallen after the National Assembly approved a no-confidence vote. So, and this is not a giant shock. The French National Assembly has been split among a wide variety of parties for a while now. Emmanuel Macron's party, he's the president of France. The prime minister, his role is a lot more ceremonial than the president.

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The president has a longer term and has more power. His government, meaning his workable majority in the National Assembly, Macron's, has now broken down.

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And that, of course, is because Macron had effectively sided against Marine Le Pen's national rally and instead had decided to side with the actual far left socialist led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's an insane person, like a total rabid, crazy person, a Bernie Sanders style, Jeremy Corbyn style nut job.

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And so because of that, when the left turned against him in the National Assembly, he couldn't count on the right to back his play. And so now the government has fallen apart because it turns out that the quote-unquote moderate right in France, which the Macron regime was supposed to represent, would rather side with the socialists than side with the actual right in France.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Macron's attempt to ward off the rise of Marine Le Pen's far-right national rally by calling snap elections this summer saddled the country with a hung parliament.

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The National Assembly, which is divided between Macron loyalists, Le Pen's ranks, and an unruly alliance of left-wing parties, splintered over its first order of business, approving the government budget for 2025. Le Pen and leftist lawmakers backed the no-confidence motion after the prime minister, who is a person named Michel Barnier,

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Michel Barnier had proposed 60 billion euros, equivalent to about $63.1 billion in spending cuts and tax increases. That budget was attempting to narrow the French deficit. The left opposed it. So did the far right. And when I say far right, I just mean the right. National Rally is not really a far right party anymore.

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Every time there's a right-wing party, it's now labeled far right, despite whatever the actual positions of the party are. This is true everywhere in Europe. OK, anytime you have a party like the Maloney's party in Italy and it wins, it's a far right party. Gerd Wilders is now far right. Viktor Orban is far right. The Vox party in Spain is far right. National Rally is far right.

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UKIP, the independent party in the UK, is far right. Far right just means not a sort of moderately, squishily, slightly right of center European party. Anything to the right of that is now the far right party. Barnier said, listen to me, this reality is here to stay. It won't disappear by the magic of emotion of censure. Macron's options for resolving the deadlock are narrowing.

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The president can't dissolve the National Assembly and call for new elections until July. Instead, he can allow Barnier to remain in office in a caretaker capacity to pass measures that would effectively extend this year's budget into the early months of 2025, which would avoid a government shutdown.

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He can also appoint a new prime minister who could either pass the extension or scramble to pass a full budget by the end of the year. French stocks are falling. Marine Le Pen said she was prepared to vote in favor of a budget extension. But she said, quote, this budget takes the French people hostage.

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The no confidence vote delivered a broadside to Macron, who in September rejected a nominee for prime minister from the New Popular Front, a leftist coalition that won the most votes in the snap election. Opponents accused Macron of defying the will of voters. So he didn't please the left. He didn't please the right. And now Barnier is in trouble.

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In choosing Barney, Macron relied on an eminence grise from the conservative Les Républicains party that has similar pro-business stance to Macron's ranks, but that fared poorly in the election. So again, he's trying to paper over the fact that the right in France is picking up steam. He desperately tried to avoid allying himself with Le Pen, which he certainly could have done.

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And instead, he allied himself with the far left. And it turns out the alligator always eats you, if not last, maybe first in this particular case. Le Pen has issued a number of red lines for the budget, including ditching plans to increase electricity taxes, lowering drug reimbursements, and delaying inflation-linked pension hikes.

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And one of the things that is strange about European politics is that many of the so-called far-right parties are actually big government spending subsidy parties. They're not necessarily free marketeers. With that said, Macron has been unable to cobble together a coalition to support him. for years at this point. And Marine Le Pen is the big winner in all of this.

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As the Wall Street Journal's opinion page points out, Andrew Hammond writing, he says... The country's economic outlook is ugly. France's borrowing costs hit an approximately 12 year high against those of Germany. But the current chaos has more to do with the political weakness of Macron.

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The trigger for the removal was the budget proposals to try to reduce France's huge fiscal deficit, which has grown under Macron. Attempts to address this, however, have met with huge political opposition from both the left and the right. There's no immediate solution. The European Union is going to face a rough year in 2025. And again, those political problems are stemming from Macron's weakness.

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It is increasingly Marine Le Pen, an ally of President-elect Trump, who is calling the political shots. It was Le Pen who decided to pull the plug on Barnier's government. One reason she may have decided to roll the political dice is that she faces judgment this spring in another corruption trial.

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Again, the use of law enforcement all over the world to target people on the right is really an amazing thing. I mean, truly, it's Marine Le Pen in France. It's happening in South Korea, maybe, maybe not. It is happening certainly in Hungary. It is happening in Brazil. It is happening in the United States. It is happening in Israel.

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If Le Pen were to be found guilty, she could be barred from elected office for up to five years, which would thwart a 2027 election bid. So Le Pen might be trying to force an early presidential poll. But right now, the most likely scenario in France remains that Macron will limp along until 2027, possibly in a period of so-called cohabitation with the government, not of his political colors.

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But maybe he'll resign the same way that Charles de Gaulle did back in 1969. Bottom line is Macron does not represent the French people. That is being made clear each and every day in France. Folks, we'll get to more in a second. First, I want to remind you, I was actually in Argentina in Buenos Aires yesterday talking about free markets versus socialism.

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You can view the whole speech from CPAC Argentina. I think it's a pretty solid disquisition on why free markets matter, why socialism is evil. You can view that over at my Twitter account. All right, you guys, coming up, we'll bring you the updates from South Korea, where after the South Korean president tried to declare martial law, it now appears he's likely to be impeached.

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If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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So this, of course, is crazy, and it's precisely this kind of approach to law enforcement in which a person who robs an 86-year-old, 87-year-old man, and the 86-year-old, 87-year-old man is knocked to the ground and dies. The person who does that is given a light sentence by a prosecutor, but a person who's defending the public from an actual criminal is charged with manslaughter in New York City.

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That's just another reason why violence is being propagated to an extraordinary extent in New York City these days. And not a shock, by the way, in terms of updates on the Daniel Penny case, jurors have been in deliberations for a couple of days.

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We're not going to show it here on the show because it's fairly graphic. This obviously appears to be a professional hit. The person who was killed, again, his name was Brian Thompson, who's the CEO of UnitedHealth. He is walking past the shooter. The shooter seems to emerge from the shadows, shoots him, shoots him again, calmly, walks by him and appears to shoot him a third time.

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At this point, they've asked to rehear a couple of pieces of evidence in that case, including testimony given by the medical examiner who suggested that no matter how much fentanyl had been found in Jordan Neely's system, she still would have blamed Daniel Penny for the death of Jordan Neely. So we'll see how the jury comes down in that case.

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But this is just another reason why, again, violence has become relatively commonplace in New York City. But there's something else that's going on here too. And that is the left-wing reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson. So there's a person whose name is Anthony Zankis. Anthony Zankis is apparently a professor at Columbia, Anthony Zankis.

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And this person, again, amazing, this person teaches at Columbia, and calls himself a trauma expert, anti-violence, commie. This is in his description. A communist who's against violence. He put out a tweet saying, quote, today we mourn the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. Gunned down. Wait, I'm sorry.

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Today we mourn the death of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company executives like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires. So that would be basically he deserved to die because UnitedHealthcare is a mildly profitable company.

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When I say they're a mildly profitable company, I mean that when it comes to the health insurance industry, the profit margin is generally below 2%. You're not talking about industries where the profit margin is 10, 15, 20%. You have a lot of problems with American health insurance and how that is run. That is because of the legal structure that has been set up for health insurance in America.

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And we can talk about all the fixes that need to happen, how the truth is that health insurance should not be tied to employment. about the fact that you should be able to opt into various levels of health insurance rather than basically being shoveled into one of a few categories.

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We could talk about the fact that an enormous amount of health care should actually be provided just on a pay-for-play basis as opposed to via insurance. It's bizarre that in order to, for example, just go get a normal checkup, that should be covered by insurance. What are you insuring against? That's typically not what insurance is for.

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Insurance is for an unexpected situation that you are betting might happen. And the insurance company is making the bet that it probably won't happen. or at least not in the timeframe that you're talking about. That is why you have, for example, fire insurance. It's not because you know tomorrow you're going to set your house on fire. That'd be arson and it would violate your insurance policy.

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It's bizarre that health insurance in the United States works such that it is called insurance when in reality, it's just a kind of subsidized form of group coverage. But in any case, you can have whatever arguments you want with the system.

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The idea that because you don't like this system, the CEO of a private healthcare company deserves to die, or at least it is his fault if 68,000 Americans, quote unquote, needlessly die each year so that he can become a multimillionaire. That shows a dramatic lack of understanding of not only markets, but of morality.

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Taylor Lorenz, who it is unbelievable this person was once considered a well-respected reporter at The Washington Post. She clearly has a mental illness. I mean, there's something very, very wrong with Taylor Lorenz on a wide variety of levels. Taylor Lorenz recently suggested, for example, that there was a major problem in the United States with people, quote unquote, raw dogging the air.

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This person was a reporter for the Washington Post. Just a couple of days ago, quote, planning a COVID-safe book launch took months and thousands of my own dollars, ensuring testing, outdoor space, far UV lights, and a litany of other precautions. Meanwhile, you dumb Fs are out raw-dogging the air. I'm pretty sure that's not what raw-dogging means.

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The suspect has not yet been identified, fled on foot after the shooting outside a Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan around 6.45 a.m. Apparently, the suspect rode an e-bike to Central Park, and that's the last place that the suspect was seen. Police said that this was obviously a planned attack. They don't actually know why.

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And spewing your disease-laden breath all over your elderly neighbors. We are not the same. Okay, so this person, who again, was a well-respected, I'm just going to emphasize that again. You wonder why the legacy media are a flaming dumpster fire?

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This person was a well-respected journalist at the Washington Post who spent her days tracking down bad things on the internet and then going after people on the right. So this week, she's talked about the evils of raw dogging the air and also the apparent good of murdering people in public because they work for companies that you don't like.

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Quote, people have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. Now, that's not true. You might not agree with how the insurance companies run their business.

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You might think that the insurance companies go too far in attempting to restrict coverage or to find loopholes in their policies that prevent them from having to cover things. Okay, that's what insurance does. That's what insurance companies are. Again, what you're really criticizing is the system.

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Well, if you're a member of the far left, apparently you believe that somebody with the wrong political principles, maybe they should be murdered. Well, you know, it might be good to diversify for the future because it's possible that far leftists could theoretically at some point take power. It's not so theoretical and it could be really ugly. Just another reason. Why?

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Diversifying with gold might be a good idea. You have an opportunity to open an IRA in gold with Birch Gold and receive free silver delivered to your home. During the special holiday season, Birch Gold is offering a complimentary one-ounce silver eagle for every $5,000 purchased. And the best part is, there's no out-of-pocket cost to you. Here's how it works.

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Simply convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in physical gold, and Birch Gold will send your free silver coins directly to your home. Now you might be thinking, why do I need to diversify into gold? Well, one of the most significant issues is our national debt. The fact is, and this is important, our nation is broke.

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That debt is a house of cards that simply cannot be quickly dismantled. For as long as the economy sits on top of that house of cards, the strategy remains the same. You need to diversify your savings. That's exactly why I buy gold from Birch Gold. Take action right now.

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Text BEN to 989898 before December 18th for a free info kit on gold and to claim your eligibility for free silver on qualifying purchases from Birch Gold. Do this before December 18th. Again, text Ben to the number 989898 for peace of mind that lasts longer than four years. Text Ben to 989898 today. Also, listen up, renters.

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Ever feel like you're stuck in this loop of rent payments, just washing your money, vanish into thin air? I know we've all been there, writing those big checks every month, wondering if there's a better way. Well, there is. It's time to turn that rent game around and start earning some serious rewards. That's where Built Rewards comes in.

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Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Built is Breaking Ground is a neighborhood reward program that hooks you up with points on your rent. Every month, pay your rent, watch the built points roll in. Use points to jet off on a dream vacation. Put your points toward a flight or hotel stay with 500 plus airlines and 700,000 plus hotels and properties.

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Here is Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch explaining this was not, in fact, a random act of violence.

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You can also use your points to book fitness studio classes, redeem them toward a future rent payment that are designed to meet your lifestyle. Pay rent hassle-free through the Built Rewards app. Your rent game just got a big upgrade. Built points have been consistently ranked the highest value point currency by the points guy and bank rate.

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Earn points by paying rent right now when you go to joinbuilt.com. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Joinbuilt.com to start earning points with your rent payments today. That's joinbuilt.com. The system of private health insurance in the United States is a bizarre amalgam

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Of government subsidies, nearly all healthcare coverage in the United States is in some form or fashion government-involved. Even private healthcare systems are heavily government-regulated. Very, very strongly. Okay, but that is not UnitedHealthcare's fault.

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That is like suggesting that if Ralph's prices bred at a particular level because the markets have determined that there's just that much bread available... And then people can't afford that bread. That that's somehow Ralph's fault. The system works how the system works. And you can talk about changes to the system. We should. Obamacare has been a bad thing for the system, I believe, in general.

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But the idea that if you work for a private health care insurance company, that you should be murdered is pretty astonishing. She says someone against death and suffering. I think it's good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. I have a question. Why is he the one who enables it? Really? Why is he the one who enables it?

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I wasn't aware that Brian Thompson was a public policy professional working in an arena in which consent was not actually the keystone. Meaning if you don't want to buy health care insurance via United, don't do it or don't work for a company that does do it. But you have to understand that for people on the left, this says something deeper about the left.

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Okay, here's the deeper thing it says about the far left. And it's a reason why there is a Venn diagram that looks like a circle between people who are fine with Brian Thompson getting murdered on the street and people who are pro-Kamalist. Like it's an actual circle. Why?

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Because the baseline belief of the left system these days, at least the far left, is that if you are working within a system that they have deemed morally inferior, you deserve to die. You do. And if someone kills you, well, you probably had it coming.

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I can only imagine that's why Taylor Lorenz has spent the rest of the day putting out posts at Blue Sky, which is this dumb alternative to Twitter, in which she actually posts the pictures of other healthcare CEOs. So again, the premise of the left is if you work within a system that they do not like, you deserve to die. You're a kulak and you deserve to die.

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If you work within a system that they deem morally praiseworthy or you're a member of a quote unquote morally praiseworthy group, you can literally do anything. So if your grievance is in the view of the left in any way legitimate, then you can do anything. This is the same group of people who will suggest, for example, that if you don't like

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the situation in the Gaza Strip, that now justifies you in raping women and murdering babies. This is the left's full-scale belief system, at least on the far left. And this is a perfect example of it playing out. Now, what's amazing about this is that the way that the left adjudicates whether a system is morally praiseworthy or morally blameworthy is not, in fact, based on a utilitarian calculus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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So that professor from Columbia who suggested that the private health care system in the United States is responsible for 68000 deaths or whatever is the number that he is spewing. He doesn't actually believe that if you work for an alternative health care system that is government run and it kills more people that you then deserve to die. He doesn't believe that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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Because it isn't actually about a utilitarian calculus for what's best for humanity. For the left, it never is. For the left, it is all about the central moral principle. It is not about a utilitarian calculus. They're not angry at private health insurance because private health insurance supposedly makes people worse off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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If we had a nationalized healthcare system in the United States that had severe shortages, that had healthcare rationing, that had major problems with taking people with severe illness, which all the way, all that that I just said is all true of the National Health Service in Great Britain, for example. It's wildly expensive. It's bankrupting the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2098 - A SHOCKING Assassination…And The Left Celebrates!

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The quality of the healthcare is poor, particularly if you have significant health problems. You have to wait online for basic health procedures. But you never hear the left complaining about the utilitarian calculus there. It's not about the human beings affected by the system. That is a lie. That is a facade. The thing they actually care about is power and control.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

Well, folks, horrible, tragic situation in Washington, D.C. According to the UK Daily Mail, an American Airlines passenger jet with 64 people on board crashed midair into a military helicopter while attempting to land at Reagan National Airport. This is one of the most heavily policed areas of the sky in all of America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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OK, so that is the correct answer. OK, the correct answer. When someone says, is X a right? You have to ask, what do you mean by that? There are many different type of quote unquote rights. What Bernie means is, do you think it's a good thing that everybody should have? And the answer to that is sure. That doesn't mean it's a right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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If you're demanding a service from somebody, it's no longer a right. I don't have a right to food, for example. I have a right to the ability to obtain food in a free system. I don't have a right to food because that means that somebody else would have to provide me that food.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I do have a right to free speech because I do have the ability to demand from you that you not actually impede my ability to speak freely. That is the difference between so-called negative rights and positive rights. Positive rights is a conflict of terms. It doesn't mean anything other than an entitlement. Meanwhile, it wasn't just Bernie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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It was also Elizabeth Warren, who's sort of knockoff Timu Bernie. Here she was yelling at RFK Jr. and basically just redoing the lady screaming at Katmim. If this is what Democrat, like, please, more of this. Like, really, how did you turn Republicans into the cool kids? Well, probably with the lecturing schoolmarm, fake Native American, who is the senator from Massachusetts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I'm not going to agree to not sue drug companies or anybody. I mean, first of all, it's kind of amazing that what Elizabeth Warren is doing there is what she's trying to do is she's trying to suggest that RFK Jr. would be corrupt if he sued the companies that he is regulating as HHS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Now, normally, the corruption allegation is that you go and you work for the companies that you're regulating at these various agencies. That's usually the rip. Pete Hegseth, for example, was asked about this by Mazie Hirono

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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During his hearing, when he was being nominated for Secretary of Defense, the question is, are you going to go work, for example, for some sort of defense contractor afterward? That's the normal question. But she's not asking whether he's going to go work for Pfizer. She's asking if he will refrain from suing Pfizer after he's the head of HHS, which is a super weird take.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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We'll bring you the latest as more news becomes available. But at this point, all you can really do is pray for the families because there are no survivors from what we know at this point. Bodies have been fished out of the Potomac. This is going to... mandate serious change, I'm sure, in how Reagan National is run.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Now, again, I think that Big Pharma gets a horrible rap in the United States as a general rule. Big Pharma has developed literally every drug that you and your parents rely on, all of them, and your kids. So Big Pharma does bad things, just like every other corporation does bad things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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But this notion that Big Pharma is uniquely bad when they develop literally all of the life-saving things that surround you in the world is a bizarre one to me. Nonetheless, Elizabeth Warren was attacking him from the right there. It's super-duper-duper weird.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Meanwhile, Maggie Hassan, the senator from New Hampshire, she was ripping on RFK Jr., suggesting that he had sold out his life's work by now suggesting that he would be part of a pro-life administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Again, this is the take. This is your take. Fine. Well, RFK Jr. does care very deeply about nutrition. And you know what? So do most parents. You know how most children's vitamins out there are basically just candy with a vitamin label? That's where Haya comes in. They've created an amazing chewable vitamin kids actually love. The best part? Zero sugar, but still totally delicious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies, plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals. We're talking vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, and more. All the good stuff kids need for healthy growth. They've thought of everything. They've non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, and thoroughly tested for safety, which means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to this high-quality standard.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens? Hiya now has Kids Daily Greens Plus Superfoods, a chocolate-flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids, packed with more than 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, and digestion. Just scoop,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Shake and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. They even send stickers with your first order so your kids can decorate the bottle and make it their own. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your very first order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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To claim this deal, you have to go to HayaHealth.com slash Shapiro. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H dot com slash Shapiro. Get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Also, selling a car privately can be a real headache. Endless negotiations, tire kickers, paperwork hassles.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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But there's a better way to get your unused car off your hands. For 30 years, Cars for Kids has perfected the car donation process to make it truly effortless. They'll take your car in any condition, running or not, and turn it into funds for kids in need, plus a tax deduction for you. It takes just two minutes on the phone or at carsforkids.org.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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It'll take over from there, getting your car picked up as soon as the next day. No haggling, no scheduling conflicts, no paperwork nightmares. You'll receive a vacation voucher and maximum tax deduction while supporting proven programs that help children reach their full potential.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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And that is some very busy airspace, despite the fact that it's very sensitive airspace. The last time there's a major American plane crash was 2009. It's been a long time in the United States. These are very rare. The United States does have the safest

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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With over a million successful donations over three decades, Cars for Kids continues to be a trusted partner for car donors all across the country again. It's free, convenient, it's easy, frees up your driveway, making a difference for the next generation. Call now, 1-877-CARS4KIDS. That's K-A-R-S, the number four, kids. Or donate online at Cars4Kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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That's with the number four, Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Donate your car today. Once again, 1-877-CARS4KIDS or Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Okay, so the Democrats decided to go hard after RFK Jr. using these particular lines. Again, the only effective line of attack on RFK Jr. in this hearing was basically just asking him about past comments, and he spent most of the time rebutting that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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But if Bernie yelling about onesies and Elizabeth Warren going nuts over RFK Jr. are your methodology, good luck. Also, I'm sorry, you blew it here. You really did. Sorry, Democrats do not get to complain about their own nominees when they nominated people like Rachel Levine to be assistant HHS secretary. Remember Rachel Levine, the dude, the fake admiral? Remember that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Visit HHS.gov. This person was approved by Democrats. This person was championed by Democrats. And now it's like, OK, RFK Jr. is too weird. All right. Again, I might have respected that position if you guys weren't so weird yourselves. And again, there are going to be questions about how RFK Jr. does his job.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I hope that he is held to the standard that he set for himself in the hearings, meaning no cram downs on Americans' ability to choose what kind of foods they want to eat. No attempts to simply punish companies for not doing the will of HHS. No shutting down of R&D that would actually be useful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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aviation system on planet earth so when this sort of stuff happens it is truly truly shocking horrifying and tragic once again our prayers go out to the family we'll bring you more information on how people can give charity and help out as time goes on as that information becomes available okay meanwhile in washington dc

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I mean, there's some R&D that really is counterproductive, as we saw from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But... not attempting to shut down research. You're going to judge him by the fruits of his labors over at HHS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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But I don't think Democrats really laid a glove on Bobby Kennedy yesterday, which is indicative of their total failure across the board since they lost the last election cycle. Meanwhile, speaking of that failure, President Trump continues to succeed along the lines of cracking down on illegal immigration. Yesterday, he signed into law the Lakin-Riley Act.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The Lakin-Riley Act, of course, was designed to crack down on criminal illegal immigration in the United States. In doing so, he praised Democrats who signed on to the act. Many of them did.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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So what exactly did the Lake and Riley Act do? Well, it orders ICE to detain illegal immigrants for crimes like theft, and it allows states to sue the Department of Homeland Security over harm caused to citizens by illegal immigrants. That obviously is a strong act that had a bunch of Democratic support. Trump is winning on this particular issue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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He's also expanding his mandate on this particular issue. So yesterday, President Trump announced that Gitmo would essentially be turned into a housing facility for the worst criminal illegal immigrants in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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According to the Wall Street Journal, he ordered the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to construct a facility for holding as many as 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. Navy base in Cuba, the site of a prison for more than two decades for terrorist suspects, would instead be used to contain the worst criminal illegal immigrants. Here's President Trump announcing it yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Okay, well, this I think is going to be a popular notion for Americans who don't wish to see violent, illegal immigrants in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, opening 30,000 additional detention beds would almost double ICE's capacity to hold migrants ahead of their deportations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Congress has allotted funding for detaining as many as 41,000 immigrants at a time, a historically high number Trump's team considers inadequate as it tries to carry out mass deportation. This is not the first time Gitmo has been used this way. It was used this way during the 80s and the 90s.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The big story of the day was that RFK Jr., Bobby Kennedy, had his hearing for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He, of course, is one of the more controversial nominees by President Trump, both from the right and from the left. From the left, there are a lot of people who question Bobby Kennedy's association with President Trump, the fact that he gave a pretty bang-up speech

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Kristi Noem, the newly approved head of the Department of Homeland Security, she said, listen, this is something we've done in the past. We're already doing it, actually.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Well, again, I think the entire administration is on the same page. It's very different from Trump 1.0. Everybody is moving in lockstep inside the Trump administration. Pete Hegsatt, the new Secretary of Defense, he said something similar. He said, listen, we're ramping up mass deportations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Reagan National, of course, a very sensitive security site, given the fact that it has close proximity to pretty much all of the major American security sites in Washington, D.C., The tragedy is just shocking. You can see on video as this American Airlines passenger jet, a small passenger jet that was taking off from Kansas, was trying to land at Reagan National.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Now, again, this is a whole of administration approach. And President Trump is not slowing down on any of this. Now, Colombia had, of course, talked back to the United States, suggested they weren't going to take illegal immigrants that were deported from the United States. Trump said, you're going to take exactly what we send you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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By the way, it is worth pointing out here that Democrats, again, have very little response to any of this other than to claim that you won't be able to get blackberries or blueberries in your smoothies because the illegal immigrants are picking all your fruit. Again, it is kind of incredible that this is the only comeback they've been able to come up with.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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After, what, 30 years of this conversation about illegal immigration, is your mangoes might be more expensive? Really? That's what you got, guys? Really, that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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leaving the race. He was running originally as a Democrat. He was basically barred from the Democrat primaries because the Democrats were trying to rig it for Joe Biden. And then he ran as an independent, and he was picking up a not insignificant portion of the vote. And he decided to drop out and endorse President Trump in that speech.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Well, actually, it does make sense to actually fight the broken system by unbreaking the system and deporting the people who are illegally here. Again, if your white lady privilege, which is we have to absorb 20 million illegal immigrants so that your blueberries can be a little bit cheaper for your protein smoothie. I'm not sure what to tell you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I feel like you might be just a little out of touch, just a little bit. Meanwhile, the president of the United States continues his spate of very strong executive actions. Yesterday, he issued an executive order ending racial indoctrination in K-12 schooling. This, of course, is designed to end DEI indoctrination across the public school system.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The executive order suggests, quote, imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our nation's children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, it usurps basic parental authority.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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For example, steering students towards surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designed for females may contravene federal laws that protect parental rights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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My administration will enforce the law to ensure recipients of federal funds providing K-12 education comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in various contexts and protecting parental rights. So this means no more, if you're receiving federal funding, of this nonsense where you socially transition a child.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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No more indoctrinating kids at school to believe that they are inferior based on their white skin color. No more of that. That all goes away. Meanwhile, the president issued another executive order attempting to broaden the possibility for school vouchers. According to this brand new executive order, quote, parents want and deserve the best education for their children.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Too many children do not thrive in their assigned government-run K-12 school. According to this year's National Assessment of Educational Progress, 70% of eighth graders were below proficiency in reading, 72% were below proficiency in math. Moreover, geographically based school assignments exacerbate the cost of housing in districts with preferred schools.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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It is the policy of my administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children. Within 60 days of the date of the order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how states can use federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He went after many of the Democrat-controlled systems, ranging from the media to academia. So there's a lot of ire from Democrats who used to love Bobby Kennedy at Bobby Kennedy. On the right side of the aisle, there's some dyspepsia over many of Bobby Kennedy's prior positions, ranging from abortion to his sort of broad position on vaccines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Secretary of Education shall now include education freedom as a priority in discretionary grant programs as appropriate and consistent with applicable law. So the idea here would be to promote, as far as possible, the spread of school choice across the country, the great civil rights issue of our time. allowing children to go to the best school available to them, facilitating that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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We have universal school choice here in my wonderful home state of Florida. It is a godsend. It is wonderful. And President Trump is trying to extend that across the country. In just a moment, we'll get to more of President Trump's strong executive action. First, 10 years ago, the Daily Wire started a fight. We took on the radical left's assault on truth. We refused to bow to their delusions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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And today, because of our members' support, we are winning. On January 20th, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the chemical and surgical mutilation of children. It's a huge victory that this company led the way on, a battle that other conservatives weren't even willing to fight a decade ago. There were other mainstream. right-wing channels that actually surrendered in this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We took the heat. We took the losses. We took major, major risks. And reality won. Truth won. We win. But the fight is far from over. The left isn't giving up. Neither are we. Join us because the next decade is going to be even bigger. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Meanwhile, President Trump is using his executive power to also go after the universities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that is what he is doing yesterday when he put out an executive order, additional measures to combat anti-Semitism. The goal here would be to force universities to actually enforce the civil rights law that they enforce on campus with regard to black students or Mexican students or Asian students to also apply to Jewish students.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So if you violate the Civil Rights Act, then you will lose your federal funding. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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So his hearing yesterday was, I think, an excellent job by Kennedy of walking back some of the positions that are more extreme, generally anti-vaccine positions or positions that suggest that he's going to outright work to ban foods that he doesn't like,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The implication had been from many people that Make America Healthy Again, MAHA, was really going to be a sort of Michael Bloomberg effort to ban you from buying a soda or buying a hamburger. And Bobby Kennedy said, no, that's not the case. He said right off the top, listen, I'm not interested in taking people's food away.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The president of the United States, Donald Trump, that dude loves, that dude loves McDonald's. He loves Diet Coke and he loves cheeseburgers. Those ain't going away.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, the fact that he's pushing for more information being available is not a terrible thing. He says that his tenure at the head of HHS, if he is confirmed, will be marked by radical transparency, which of course would be a major shift from the past. The Democratic Party, of course, has not embraced radical transparency in any area of administrative law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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President Trump obviously has a very aggressive agenda. One of the things that he's faced in the past are people within the executive branch who may not like that agenda, who may oppose that agenda, and who may do things to get in the way of that agenda. The EPA is a big agency. You're talking 17,000 employees, an $11 billion budget.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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How do you handle an agency of that size and ensure that actually President Trump's agenda and your agenda as the administrator actually get done?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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auto jobs and the needs of the American consumer and the American worker. Obviously, that's high on President Trump's list of priorities. Very often, these two things are sort of put in opposition to one another, protecting the environment and protecting American jobs. What do you make of that? And how do you plan to square that circle?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All the administrative agencies have basically been opaque. You only find out when you violated a law because you had a summons from some sort of executive branch agency. Here is RFK Jr., suggesting that the hallmark of his tenure will be radical transparency.

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Now, President Trump has already put forth notice that he's interested in cutting wasteful programs implemented by the Biden administration over the course of time. I assume that you are going to have a pretty weathered eye when you look at sort of the cost structure inside the EPA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, that is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Lee, again, congratulations on your confirmation. Look forward to seeing what you do at the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Congratulations again. Thanks a lot, Ben. All right, guys, coming up, we'll get to the release of Israeli hostages. The scene upon the release is pretty shocking. If you're not a member, become a member.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, again, that is a good thing. By the way, one of the things Bobby Kennedy pledged is that null studies, meaning studies that come out that are basically. file droid. What that means is very often the studies that tend to get a lot of play are the ones that have quote unquote new results. And very often those new results are not duplicated in other studies.

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And so if somebody tries to put forward a result that basically shows no impact, a void impact of a drug, for example, that is file droid. Somebody just gets rid of the study. It just doesn't see the light of day. He says, we need to see more of those things. We need to see more of the studies. We need more information. That of course would be very, very good. RFK Jr.

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also walked back some of his pro-choice positions. Not that he has suddenly become pro-life, but he does work for the Trump administration, which is a pro-life administration. He's not going to use HHS to promote abortion. That was one of the things that he said yesterday, which I think quieted a lot of concerns from the right about his anti-life positions in the past.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And a helicopter, which was swirling around in the area, a Blackhawk military helicopter, flies directly into its path. And it's pretty clearly an accident. There was a lot of speculation last night. I don't like doing speculation, particularly in situations like this where all the information is not available. But the video is shocking and horrifying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Of course, he had said on many shows, including my own show, I've interviewed him, that he is fully pro-choice, but he says he is a member of the Trump administration. Minimizing abortion would be the idea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, that I think is aimed at the Republicans in the Senate who are likely to vote for RFK Jr. 's confirmation. He also... mitigated his own statements with regard to vaccines. So he's made many statements in the past on vaccines that are not just controversial, but are far too broad reaching.

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Suggesting, for example, at one point that vaccines, there was no such thing as a safe and healthy vaccine. Now he says he meant for everyone, meaning that every single vaccine has some sort of side effects for someone, which of course is true. He was asked about that and he said, listen, if you think I'm taking away the measles vaccine or the polio vaccine, that is not what I am in favor of.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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OK, so he was browbeaten by Democrats on that particular. So he spent a lot of yesterday walking back old comments, which, of course, is not a shock, considering that he has said a lot of controversial things in the past. Now, that's not all that he did. He pointed out that many of the same Democrats who were attacking him used to be his friends.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Here he was yesterday pointing out that many of the same Democrats who are now saying that he's out of his mind, that he's insane. All these same people were courting his favor just a few years ago.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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I mean, again, he's right about that. If President Trump wants to snuff out all of his opponents, all he has to do today is come out in favor of breathing oxygen. All of his opponents will immediately denounce breathing oxygen and put plastic bags over their heads. And that is the oppositional nature of our politics at this moment. Well, RFK Jr.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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This is some camera footage that was available, some security camera footage available from afar. You can see the fireball that is created as the plane hits the helicopter here. You can see the explosion happening near the bottom of the screen. There's a close-up. You can see the helicopter approaching the flight, flying directly into the path of the airplane. It explodes in midair.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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may be confused by how many of his former friends have now become his enemies, but there are people out there who actually don't want the best. For you. Did you know that American homeowners have over $32 trillion in equity and criminals are targeting it with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Scammers can transfer your title out of your name using a one-page document they file at the county. Then they can take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back. The most concerning part. You won't find out about it until collection or foreclosure notices start arriving in your mailbox, leaving you with a financial and legal nightmare.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The best way to protect your equity is with Home Title Locks Exclusive, million-dollar triple lock protection. This service offers 24-7 monitoring, urgent alerts, and if fraud should occur, their US-based restoration team will spend up to $1 million to fix the fraud and restore your title. Our own senior video editor, Adam, trusts them to protect his home. You can as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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So when was the last time you checked on your title? If the answer is never, that's exactly what scammers are counting on. The good news is we've partnered with Home Title Lock to offer you 25% off their services. Go to hometitlelock.com, use my promo code SHAPIRO25 to save 25%, and you'll also get a free title history report to ensure you're not already a victim.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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And make sure you check out the million-dollar triple lock protection details when you get there. Link below. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code SHAPIRO25. Also, let's talk about something that affects all of us, responsible, hardworking Americans, taxes. Now that it's the new year and tax season is on us, are you prepared for what's coming? Do you owe back taxes?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Are your tax returns still unfiled? Miss the deadline to file for an extension? As we head into the busy tax season, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they're not playing around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. But here's the good news. There's still hope.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Tax Network USA has been in this game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law. They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Don't let the IRS catch you off guard and get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA. Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. So here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. RFK Jr. also... went after the kind of spending that we've been doing on our public healthcare system. He's not wrong about this. In fact, every single public healthcare system on planet Earth reaches a point of diminishing returns.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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You can increase the health of your population only to the point of the baseline health of the population, meaning... that if you have a deeply unhealthy population, that is, for example, obese, ridden with diabetes, has too much sugar, never exercises, no matter how much money you sink into Medicaid, it is not going to fix those problems on the back end. That is not how medicine works.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Here's RFK Jr. on this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Are the premiums low enough? He is right about this, although when he talks about premiums on Medicaid, he was banged about for this in the press because it turns out that there are no premiums in Medicaid, right? I mean, when it comes to premiums in Medicaid, Medicaid is not a private health insurance system.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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It breaks apart. It lands in the Potomac River. Everybody aboard apparently dead. That includes members of the U.S. figure skating community who had been returning home from the National Development Camp, which is an advanced training camp for promising young athletes held in conjunction with U.S. figure skating championships.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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One of the problems with Medicaid is that typically the reimbursement rates are so low that many doctors won't even take it in the first place. But... His point, which is we spend billions, hundreds of billions of dollars on these gigantic healthcare systems when we should actually be encouraging people to do healthy things on the front end, that he is right about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Now, the Democrats made fools of themselves. One of the things that helps RFK Jr. in this hearing is that whatever mistakes he made were quickly covered up for by the fact that Democrats are out of their freaking minds. They are out of their minds. They're just crazy. They're crazy. I mean, listen, it's not our fault on the right that you guys decided to tout

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as your champions of diversity, of inclusion, of economic wherewithal. That is your fault. You decided to make these people your leading lights. We didn't. You chose the form of your destructor. And it turns out it was a bunch of geriatric socialists with no relationship with the real world.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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The funniest moment by far of the day came when Bernie Sanders started questioning RFK Jr. about a onesie for a baby that said unvaxxed, unafraid.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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Bernie 2028, will you denounce the onesies? By the way, one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in a congressional hearing like this was Megyn Kelly, who showed up, and Megyn, of course, I'm friends with Megyn, Megyn showed up directly behind RFK Jr., She considers herself a maha mom. And she was sitting behind RFK Jr. And during this exchange, if you can't see it, she bursts out laughing.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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It's really funny. And it's everybody's thought. It's like, this is just crazy. You think that you're going to get RFK Jr.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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As many as 15 people on the flight may have been involved in figure skating, according to the reports, it included a married couple, a Russian married couple named Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who apparently won world championship in figure skating back in 1994. Again, there were three soldiers who were aboard the Black Hawk helicopter. Just a horrifying, tragic scenario.

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Ep. 2128 - Bernie Goes NUTS: DENOUNCE THE ONESIES!

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As you can tell, I've had some experience with baby onesies. That was not the end of Bernie's insanity. He then asked RFK Jr. if healthcare is a right, and RFK Jr. gave the correct answer, which is not the way you mean it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

Well, folks, yesterday was Liberation Day, and we are going to go through everything tariff-related you could possibly imagine. First, your reminder, we exist to cut through the noise and bring you the unpleasant facts that others will not. Uncensored ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats with my producers. Breaking news first. No filter, no nonsense.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The tariff that is now being applied to all of his imports is like 35, 40%. Those prices will get passed directly onto the consumers. It is a tax paid for by Americans. So this is a massive tax increase on American consumers. That's what it is. And it is designed to be so.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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And it is talked about in these terms by the Trump administration that this will cost $600, $700 billion in additional revenue to the government. You know what we call revenue to the government typically?

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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paid for by americans because that's who pays for it if you're importing a product and nobody buys it then you stop importing the product and nothing gets paid to the government it has to be sold that is the consumer pays the tax that is what we would call a tax increase okay these secret calculations that are not so secret anymore because it turns out that actually they just have nothing to do with tariffs at all those calculations are nonsensical

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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This idea that President Trump is doing this based on legislation that suggests that there is a national emergency on the basis of trade deficits. No, the answer is no. This is in the purview of Congress. There is no national emergency that justifies a unilateral tax increase of the size that the administration is attempting to levy down on the basis of a trade deficit.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Because we buy more stuff from Madagascar than the Madagascays buy from us, That is not a good reason to declare a national emergency because it ain't a national emergency any more than it's a national emergency that I buy more stuff from my public than they buy from me. By the way, there are already free trade commitments that are now being breached by the Trump administration.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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We have free trade commitments. Many of the countries that we are currently slamming with tariffs. Again, it's going to cost American consumers. It will cost American producers who use inputs from other countries. And most importantly of all, if this is supposed to somehow screw, for example, the Chinese, precisely the opposite is about to happen. Why?

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Because many of the countries that are about to get absolutely hammered are countries that exist in Southeast Asia. So if you want to know what the actual tariff rates are that these various Southeast Asian nations are charging the United States, the answer is not what President Trump is putting up there, which again is rooted in the

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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the trade deficits that we supposedly have with these various nations. If you want to know the answer, I did. So I asked my friends at Perplexity, sponsors of the show, what are the actual effective tariff rates Southeast Asian nations have against American goods? Not the Trump statistic, which is rooted in trade deficits.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Also, please make a chart correlating the trade deficit or surplus those countries have with the United States with their GDP per capita. So according to Perplexity, The actual effective tariff rates imposed by Southeast Asian nations on American goods vary significantly across countries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The figures cited by the Trump administration appear to be exaggerated and based on trade deficits rather than real tariff structures. According to the WTO, Vietnam's average most favored nation tariff rate is approximately 9.4%. Now, remember, according to the Trump statistic, the average tariff rate that's being charged by Vietnam, the effective tariff rate, is 90%.

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Okay, so 10 times what the actual tariff rate is, is what the Trump administration is claiming. Asian nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, impose average MFN rates, most favored nation rates, of 7.5% and 5.6%, respectively. Those numbers are far lower than the inflated numbers presented by the Trump administration.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Now, as to trade deficits that we have with these various countries, the answer is because they're poor, they generate cheap product like in Vietnam, your t-shirts probably made in Vietnam and they have no money. So we run a $95 billion trade deficit with Vietnam. Their GDP per capita is $4,200, $4,200, okay? So what are we gonna do?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Chisel that out of them precisely, that $95 billion trade deficit because we wanna buy their t-shirts? Same thing with, say, the Philippines. We have a $5 billion trade deficit with the Philippines. And the GDP per capita in the Philippines is $3,700. Meanwhile, Singapore... Right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Which Singapore is getting hit with a 10 percent tariff, by the way, for no reason, because we actually have a trade surplus with Singapore. They have a 10 billion dollar trade deficit with the United States. How can Singapore afford that? I mean, aren't we just screwing them? I mean, obviously, according to this logic, we're screwing them.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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If they have a trade deficit with us, must be that we're jobbing them in some way. The reason that they can have a trade deficit with us is because, wait for it, their GDP per capita is seventy two thousand dollars. So again, none of this is rooted in economic reality. And the biggest problem is there's no way to sort of get out of the box that's been created by these statistics.

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Because if you were saying lower your tariff rates, and if the tariff rate is already zero or close to it, where do you go from there? So one of the things that happened during the pandemic is knowing that the Chinese were bad actors. Many producers started shifting their supply chains out of China and into other nearby countries, like, for example, Vietnam.

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believing the United States would punish China, but not Vietnam. Well, now the new tariffs slam Vietnam with a 46% tariff. So why don't you shift your production back to China? More importantly, if you're the EU and you're not getting racked by the United States with a gigantic tariff, or if you're Canada and you're getting absolutely ravaged by an American tariff, you need markets for your goods.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Where are you going to go? maybe to a country that is perfectly willing to militarize capitalism on behalf of fascism, the Chinese. The Chinese are about to make extraordinary inroads in Southeast Asia. They're about to make extraordinary inroads in Europe and in Canada.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Because it turns out when America withdraws from the world and basically declares a trade war on literally everyone, including, by the way, an island with no people. I'm not even kidding. This is a thing. Included in the list of places that President Trump is going to tariff. I wish I were kidding. I'm not kidding. Included in this list is, in fact, the Heard and McDonald Islands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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We are hitting the Heard and McDonald Islands with a 10% tariff. The Heard and McDonald Islands include zero people. Includes penguins. We're hitting the penguins. Screw them penguins. Penguins. Stupid penguins. Penguins. OK, so it what exactly is this designed to do? Again, it is predicated on a bad idea of how international trade works.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Okay, so he's actually making a separate case here, which is that people should pay their own way when it comes to their welfare and defense spending. Totally agree, 100%. That is absolutely true. Also, that has literally nothing to do with what the president of the United States did yesterday.

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If I've said this a thousand times, it's not coming from a place of I want Trump to fail. It's coming from a place of if he engineers a recession based on these sorts of tariffs, which seems increasingly likely if you were to stick with this. If you were to do that sort of thing.

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All of the amazing things that need to happen and that he is pursuing and that his administration is filled with good people who want to do. All that stuff goes by the wayside. A bad economy kills everything around it. It is the neutron bomb of politics.

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If you drop the neutron bomb of politics, a recession into the lap of this administration, it doesn't just destroy this administration's economic agenda. It destroys the administration wholesale. That is what happens in American politics. Recessions destroy administrations. And by the way, everyone close to them, all the tech bros get destroyed. All of the business people get destroyed.

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It's really important not to self-engineer a bad economy. Really quite important. It is frustrating at the very least because this has not been well justified by literally anyone, including members of the Trump administration. J.P. Morgan put out its forecast, quote,

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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On a static basis, today's announcement would raise just under $400 billion in revenue, or about 1.3% of GDP, which would be the largest tax increase since the Revenue Act of 1968. We estimate that today's announced measures could boost PCE prices by 1 to 1.5% this year. We believe the inflationary effects would be mostly realized in the middle quarters of the year.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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So, in other words, inflation will start ticking up again fairly significantly. The resulting hit to purchasing power could take real disposable personal income growth in both the second and third quarters into negative territory. And with it, the risk that real consumer spending could also contract in those quarters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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This impact alone could take the economy perilously close to slipping into recession. That's before anyone else tries to punish us for punishing them. This is before, according to JP Morgan Accounting, for the additional hit to gross exports and to investment spending. Headlines about retaliatory measures by U.S. trading partners are already coming out. We expect to learn more in coming days.

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It seems to be predicated, his giant tariff policy that he just dropped on the market unilaterally, probably unconstitutionally yesterday. And I'll get to that in a moment. It's predicated on a few false notions about the American economy. One is that the American economy has been a giant fail for the last 40 years. That is simply not true. This is a myth that is propagated by both parties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The somewhat confusing nature of today's news, coupled with uncertainty over how long these tariffs will remain in place, should make for an even less friendly environment for investment spending. We plan to revisit our forecast later this week. By the way, you know who else is upset? The manufacturers. This was supposed to save the manufacturers, right? You heard President Trump say it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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We are going to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Here is a statement from the National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons. Quote, Needless to say, today's announcement was complicated, and manufacturers are scrambling to determine the exact implications for their operations. The stakes for manufacturers could not be higher.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Many manufacturers in the United States already operate within margins. The high cost of new tariffs threaten investment, jobs, supply chains, and in turn, America's ability to out-compete other nations and lead as the preeminent manufacturing superpower.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Manufacturers build things in America to sell around the world, and manufacturers in America share President Trump's goal of supporting manufacturing investment growth and expansion here at home.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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To empower manufacturers to drive the economy, the administration should minimize tariff costs for manufacturers investing and expanding in the United States, ensure tariff-free access to critical inputs manufacturers use, secure better terms for manufacturers by negotiating zero for zero tariffs. So in other words, bring the tariffs down, not increase them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's the National Association of Manufacturers saying that. We'll get to more in a moment. First, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and creates a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come by honoring your career calling you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours.

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. With so many terrible institutions of higher education out there, you need a great choice. Grand Canyon University is that choice. Go check them out right now. gcu.edu. That's gcu.edu. Also, Did you know your home could be stolen from right under you without you even realizing it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The FBI calls this house stealing. It's a growing scam targeting homeowners across America. Here's how it works. Scammers only need to forge your signature on one document, add a fake notary stamp, get a small filing fee, and then submit it to your local recorder's office. Just like that, your home title gets transferred out of your name.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Once they have control, they can take out loans against your equity or even sell your property behind your back. Worst part, you might not discover anything's wrong until collection notices or foreclosure warnings start showing up in your mailbox. So when was the last time you checked your home title? If you're like most people, the answer is probably never.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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And that's exactly what scammers count on. That's why so many people, including our senior video editor, Adam, trust Home Title Lock. Their million dollar triple lock protection helps keep your home and equity safe. Here's what you get. immediate 24-7 monitoring of your property, urgent alerts if there are any changes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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And I know it's a fun myth. It's something people like to believe is that yesterday was economically better than today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Go to hometitlelock.com, use my promo code SHAPIRO250 or click on the link in the description. Make sure to check out the million dollar triple lock protection details when you get there. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code Shapiro250. Get the protection and peace of mind you deserve. And so President Trump, again, he was laying these out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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He's very enthusiastic about it yesterday in the Rose Garden. He tried to suggest that if tariffs are so bad, why do other people do them? Here he was trying to make this case.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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And then you look at all the stuff around you, and you look at the phone in your pocket, and you look at the computer before you, you look at the internet, you look at the fact you can literally order any product at any time from anywhere on earth, and it arrives at your doorstep in two days at a price you can afford, and you think to yourself, would I rather live in 1980 when the only person with a cell phone was Gordon Gekko on a beach holding a shoebox to his head?

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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So then he said, if imposing tariffs and protective barriers actually made us poorer, then why would other countries be doing it? Here is President Trump saying this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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The Daily Wire is where the real story lives. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join the fight today. Okay, so yesterday, President Trump declared that it was, in fact, Liberation Day. He said this is our economic declaration of independence. And I want to start with his announcement yesterday.

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Okay, well, actually, as it turns out, many countries have spent the last couple of centuries eliminating many of these policies. And maybe we should take a look at what he's saying. Here is a chart.

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Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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It shows that actually the countries that have, for example, as a general matter, the lowest tariff rates are also the countries with, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, the highest GDP per capita. Why, it turns out that richer countries have been steadily lowering their tariff rates.

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And many of the poorest countries on earth have really, really high average tariff rates, including, by the way, Madagascar and Burundi and the Central African Republic. Why, it's almost as though Tariff rates actually decrease wealth because tariffs increase prices and reduce trade and all the things that tariffs are designed to do.

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And President Trump suggested that the tariffs are kind and they are generous and they are friendly. Here he was saying that the tariffs are kind because it's only half the rate that other countries are charging us. But as we've already discussed, and herein lies the problem, those aren't the real tariff rates.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Okay, here is the actual thing. Those are not the real tariff rates, and this is why it matters. Why does it matter how the calculation is done? The reason it matters is because if the goal was to get other countries to lower their tariffs, which I am totally fine with, I would love it. That would be great.

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If that was the goal, then you can't tariff countries that have no tariffs on us, where we already have a free trade agreement. If you are using trade deficits to calculate a fake tariff rate and using that,

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as the margin of tariff on those countries, there is literally no way for them to forestall the tariffs who are putting on their country other than by presumably getting the people of Madagascar to somehow buy millions of dollars of American product or the people of Ethiopia to buy billions of dollars of American product, GDP per capita, Ethiopia, 950 bucks a year.

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By the way, the actual tariff rates among the biggest countries in the world are actually fairly low. According to the World Trade Organization, the United States has a trade weighted average tariff rate of 2.2% in 2023. That's compared with 2.7% for the EU, 1.9% for Japan, 3.4% for Canada, 3.3% for China, and 1.7% for Switzerland. I mean...

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When central air conditioning was kind of a rarity? When the cars, if you were lucky, had electric windows? Okay, was that like better? Were things better just on an economic level? Forget about everything else. I can make a case about the spiritual level. You can make a case about the dissolution of the family. I agree with many of those cases, but we are talking here about economics.

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If the goal is to get the tariffs lower, then maybe we should do that. Maybe that should be the actual goal here. Maybe that's what we should do. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, he was asked about all of this. And his basic perspective is it's not clear how long these tariffs are going to last, how they're going to be implemented.

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As we'll get to in a moment, there are already exemptions that are being put out there for the tariffs by the Trump administration like immediately. Here was the Treasury Secretary.

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We're going to wait and see how this plays out is the hope of all markets everywhere, because the markets are sending pretty strong signals. They don't like it very much, by the way, by the polling. Again, this notion that Americans are just they hate foreign trade. They hate it with a pat. Gallup poll, 2025. What do you think foreign trade means for America?

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Do you see foreign trade more as an opportunity for economic growth increased through U.S. exports or a threat to the economy from foreign imports? 81% opportunity for economic growth. 14% threat to the economy. I have a basic rule in politics. Do not take the 20 side of 80-20 issues. Unless there's like a great moral reason to do so, don't do it. It's not a good idea.

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So what exactly is the Senate going to do? Well, the Senate voted on a resolution that says that they're going to try to seize back power from the executive branch over tariffs like this. It would require action in the House to actually stop this. I doubt that that's going to happen anytime in the near future. The Republican Party is, of course, very much split over this.

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Nobody wants to go up against the Trump administration on this. This is the purview of Congress. Let's be clear. What President Trump is doing should never, if it was ever delegated by Congress to the executive, that's insane. And it probably wasn't. It's not a national emergency that justifies one of the biggest tax increases on American consumers in the history of America.

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It is a very, very, it does not, it does not justify that. There is no national emergency because the United States buys more product from Thailand than we sell to Thailand. That is not in fact a national emergency. Again, there are many reasons why tariffs can be good. Tariffing China to punish them, to try and cut them off from the world economy, good.

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This, by the way, is also why you should sign free trade agreements with all the nations that rim China. Tariffs for purposes of protecting national security-laden industries in the United States, good and useful. We can't have outsourcing if, God forbid, we need to produce things for a war or a pandemic or whatever. Tariffs in order to get other countries to drive down their own, fine and good.

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We're not talking about the life of the spirit within. We're talking about economics, which is the distribution of goods and services. So I need to start by showing you a few charts that show you that America, in fact, does not suck and has not sucked for several decades economically, because this is a myth that all politicians like to tell.

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But the tell to me here is, again, I go back to this. If the idea is to get other countries to lower their tariffs, if this is raise the tariffs to lower the tariffs, then why are we charging tariff rates on countries that don't have tariffs against us? Why? That's the tell. And so the question becomes what this actually looks like in practice.

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Now, I've been a little bit catastrophist about this because I'm taking the Trump administration at their word. The reality is I don't think that this thing gets implemented anything like it is currently being retailed to the public. I think in reality,

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The Trump administration is likely to bull those holes right through this tariff regime in the areas that it figures is going to most hurt Americans. And it's likely to try and leverage headlines out of various foreign nations, suggesting they're going to invest in America to the tune of some billions of dollars before lowering the tariff rates again.

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Because, as I've said before, I do have faith that President Trump actually responds to headlines and responds to the news. He lives in the world of reality, and it would not be living in the world of reality for him to simply ignore if markets hate all of this, if costs start going up, if a recession is imminent.

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He does not want to preside over a recession, which is why, again, I think this policy is misbegotten. I also think President Trump is not going to implement it as currently stated. So what does this actually mean in practice? Well, the White House quietly put out a fact sheet yesterday to all of its embassies talking about what exactly President Trump is doing.

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So apparently, the tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines the threat posed by the trade deficit Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Number one, there is this notion that American deindustrialization has been happening. that America has been hollowed out by de-industrialization, that we are not actually manufacturing anymore in this country. That is not true. It is not true. In the mid-90s, the United States was producing in real manufacturing value-added. In 1997, we were producing $1.4 trillion.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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In 2025, we were producing $2.4 trillion. And it is an arithmetic increase. You can see the line on this chart. We are manufacturing more. Why aren't there more manufacturing jobs? The answer is technology. We're manufacturing more because we have better robots.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And they're doing much of the work that people seem to have a very warm and fuzzy feeling about, but that they would never want to do themselves. I noticed a lot of people, why can't I have a factory job just like 1955 Ford or something? Yes, I'm sure that you want it to be in a non-air-conditioned factory riveting all day. That just sounds like you. That's most Americans. That's your ideal job.

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No, it isn't. It isn't. Just like working in a coal mine isn't your ideal job either. Here's another chart. We've been told the lie that the American middle class has been hollowed out by international trade. Here's what actually happened to the American middle class over the course of the last several decades. The American middle class stayed approximately the same ties, shrank a little bit.

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free markets and free trade don't exist if they're not fair on an apples to apples trade policy basis and i think that's that's a good fundamental uh principle in uh in trade policy and trade negotiations and congressman errington one of the things that i think that that people in the markets are worried about is that there's been a lot of whipsawing a lot of kind of policy uncertainty so far particularly regards to this stuff the investors that i know are kind of holding out their money waiting to see where everything settles which isn't an unreasonable position given the the changes

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President Trump is declaring these tariffs on a national emergency basis. And the national emergency that he's claiming is the trade deficit. It is difficult to see how a trade deficit amounts to a national emergency under the law. Where do you think the line of congressional authority lays with regard to tariffs as opposed to executive authority on tariffs?

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Why did it shrink? Why did it shrink? Not because people became lower middle class or poor, but because a huge number of Americans went into the upper middle class. The number one change in the status of American families in terms of income from just before 1980 to about 2015 was a 16 percentage point increase in the upper middle class. In other words, people got richer.

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So Congressman Arrington, all of this makes it that much more important that the big, beautiful budget resolution actually get passed because the market's already priced in, I assume, because pretty much everyone I'm talking to has. The permanence of the Trump tax cuts, if that were to disappear, there would be a massive market catastrophe.

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I think it's pretty clear to everybody that the big, beautiful bill needs to happen. Where does that stand? How do you see that being ushered through the process?

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And then I want to talk about what it is that he actually announced, because the markets are getting rocked and there's a reason they are getting rocked. Here was President Trump yesterday in the Rose Garden celebrating Liberation Day. To be fair, he had warned everybody a month in advance that he was going to do this sort of thing. Here he was.

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Congressman Arrington, I've said on the show that you co-authored with Phil Graham, former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, the single most important op-ed of the last five years, which was this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal talking about how means-tested welfare programs are the thing that's bankrupting the United States, that for the most part, Medicare and Social Security are paid for.

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And by the way, everyone got richer, including the poor, because the stuff you can get as a poor person in America in 2025 is way the hell better than the stuff that you could get as a poor person in America in 1980. That's just a reality. How about wages? We keep hearing that wages are stagnant, that they stagnated since 1979. Here, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a chart.

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For the most part, not in their entirety, but the thing that actually is rising dramatically continues to be the cost on the means-tested welfare programs. When you talk about the budget bill, what in your version of the budget bill was aimed at sort of bringing down the cost curve on those?

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Well, that's House Budget Chairman Jody Arrington doing good work on the Hill. Really appreciate your time, sir. And thanks for your insight.

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Meanwhile, there is in fact breaking news on the Joe Biden front, believe it or not. So there is a brand new piece out from the UK Guardian suggesting a new book, top Biden aides were perfectly well aware that Joe Biden was ailing during the 2024 election. Ron Klain served Biden from 2021 to 2023. And then he came back last June to run debate prep. According to Klain in this new book,

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It turned out Biden, quote, did not know what Trump had been saying and couldn't grasp what the back and forth was. Left preparation and fell asleep by the pool, obsessed about foreign leaders saying, quote, these guys say I'm doing a great job as president, so I must be a great president.

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Didn't really understand what the argument was on inflation and had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job. As described by Klain to a reporter, Chris Whipple, at one point Biden had an idea, quote, if he looks perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain replied, sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you're perplexed.

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And this is our problem in the race. The book is titled Uncharted. How Trump beat Biden, Harris and the odds in the wildest campaign in history. Well, I mean, yes, obviously, Klain was hiding it. Klain, by the way, has been saying that Biden should have stayed in the race, which, again, is an easy sort of revisionist history, given the fact that Harris then went on to lose to Donald Trump.

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but it's pretty unbelievable. These stories are crazy. Whipple says, quote, at his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, Klain was startled. He'd never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.

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It shows you the average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory employees. And it shows you what happened to wages between 1980 and 2025. And what you see is a steep increase from the 1990s and up, a very steep increase. I know this cuts against the conventional political wisdom, which is the American economy sucks, and it's because everybody is cheating us.

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That evening, Biden met again with Klain and his team, Mike Donilon, Steve Ruschetti, Bruce Reed. We sat around the table, said Klain. Biden had answers on cards. He was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders.

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Klain wondered half seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the United States. Ooh, boy. Well, I wonder why he lost. I wonder why he dropped out and then Kamala Harris lost.

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Meanwhile, in other hilarious news, Jonathan Allen of Politico is now reporting that Barack Obama behind the scenes after Biden dropped out was actually working to scuttle Kamala Harris's presidential bid. This is another one of these new books called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Here's Jonathan Allen explaining.

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Well, it turns out that, I think that's a little excuse making by Barack Obama, but maybe he shouldn't have selected Joe Biden as his vice president. And then maybe he shouldn't have selected Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's vice president. He was very involved in that actually back in 2020. Alrighty, folks, the show continues in a moment. We are going to be talking about Elon Musk at Doge. Is he out?

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Politico says he may be on his way out. We'll get into that. The administration denies. Plus, we'll take your questions. As always, head on over to Daily Wire. Plus, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Now, one of the things that President Trump is predicating his tariff war upon is the idea that trade deficits are inherently bad. A trade deficit is where we import more stuff than we export in terms of value. Now, as I pointed out before, you have a trade deficit with literally every business that you do business with unless they are buying your product.

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So I have a trade deficit with my local Publix, a large trade deficit. They have bought pretty much nothing from me. And I've bought tens of thousands of dollars over the years from my local Publix. Clearly, they are screwing me. Or maybe they're not because I'm getting value for my dollar in the form of food and supplies.

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Or maybe I should go over my Publix and just beat the living out of the general manager. I don't know. One of those two things. Trade deficits, they're an accounting procedure, trade deficits. You label something in export and you label something in import. But trade itself is about mutual benefit where you wouldn't do the trade in a voluntary system.

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So the idea that every trade deficit someone is getting screwed is a zero-sum view of how economies work, and it's not true.

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As Thomas Sowell points out, the eminent economist, quote, if the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a deficit or a surplus in the international balance of trade.

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In fact, I can name you a period in American history where there was a fairly large surplus in America's balance of trade. The entire Great Depression. Now, there were times in American history that were great, where we also had a surplus. There were times in American history that sucked, where we had a deficit. And times in American history that were great, where we had a deficit.

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As it turns out, trade deficits have pretty much nothing to do with the health of an economy. They don't tell you very much. In fact, the French economist, Frédéric Bastiat, who's really cutting about this stuff, writing in the 19th century.

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He said, look, if you're so worried about trade imbalances, then actually what you should do is you should sink ships filled with your own exports before they ever get to the other side.

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So if we're exporting oranges to Europe and they're going to send us apples in return, the best way to ensure that no trade imbalance takes place is we should send our oranges out of the country and we should sink the ship before it ever gets to Europe so they can't send us apples back. Then we have a large export on our ledger and no imports. Great idea. The economy will be stronger.

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So a fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits. And again, that's not balance of payments. That's a different thing. Balance of payments is about the flow of gold. We're no longer on a gold standard, but it's about currencies and all that. Trade deficits are a different thing.

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The reason I'm bringing up trade deficits is because this is how President Trump is calculating his Liberation Day tariffs. According to the Washington Post, President Trump said Wednesday he will impose a new 10% tariff on all imported goods, along with higher import taxes tailored for each of about 60 countries. His advisors say maintain the largest barriers against U.S.

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products and a sharp turn toward the kind of protectionism the United States abandoned nearly a century ago. So President Trump said that for decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. This is not going to happen anymore. Okay, so... Let's take a look at the Liberation Day quote-unquote reciprocal tariffs.

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Okay, so here I have a chart. President Trump held it up. He held like a big chart, like Wheel of Fortune or something. He held like a big chart that showed reciprocal tariffs. And what it said was in one column, the names of the countries. In another column, tariffs charged to the United States, including currency manipulation and trade barriers. And then USA discounted reciprocal tariffs.

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So his idea is, here is the tariff rate that a country is charging us. And then we're going to take half that rate and charge it to them. There is only one problem. There are many problems. There's only one problem here. What is labeled the tariffs charged to the United States is not, in fact, the tariffs charged to the United States. It is not true. It is not true.

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And I looked at this and I thought, holy crap. The EU is charging us 39% tariff rates on all products. We're exporting stuff there and they're charging a 39% tariff. That's what this chart says. Japan is charging us 46% tariffs. Malaysia is charging us, Cambodia is charging us 97% tariffs. And then I thought to myself, self, I said, that doesn't sound correct to me.

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That doesn't sound right at all. In fact, that's it. That sounds totally wild. I mean, that can't be true. And so I made the mistake of actually looking up some of these statistics. What are the actual average annual tariff rates that are charged on American goods by countries like, for example, Japan or Taiwan, which this chart says is charging us a 64% tariff rate.

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And it turns out there is zero correlation whatsoever. Those are not, in fact, the tariff rates that are being charged on American goods going into Taiwan or Japan or India or any of these other places. It's just not right.

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Well, listen, I don't love these tariffs, as you may have noticed, but Doge continues to do some good things, like cut the fad from decades of bloated government spending and corruption. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, they're cutting the fad from the wireless industry. That is correct. Pure Talk says, I don't think so.

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$100 a month cell phone plans, that's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network and America's most sensible prices. Take a listen to this. Unlimited Talk taxed 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part? Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus.

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Access the entire library of DailyWire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. And as always, your free leftist tears Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge. You got the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get one year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, There's a growing expense eating into your company's profits.

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It's your cloud computing bill. You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high. It's increasing every year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the exact same time? Well, if you act by May 31st, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that.

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OCI is the next generation cloud designed for every workload, where you can run any application, including any iProjects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, Oracle has a special promotion where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. The savings are real. On average, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, 80% less for networking.

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Join Modal, Skydance Animation, and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI and saved. Offer only for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off at oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's oracle.com slash Shapiro. If you're not in the AI game yet, you certainly will be in the very near future. You owe it to yourself.

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to check out our friends over at Oracle for those special savings. Go check them out right now. Oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's Oracle.com slash Shapiro. So where's that number coming from? And this is where the trade deficit comes in.

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It's coming from taking the trade deficit of that country and dividing it into the imports that the United States is taking in from that country and then calling that a tariff rate. That has nothing to do with the tariff rate. Nothing at all. Zero things to do with the tariff rate. The reason, by the way, that we have a tariff.

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So according to this chart, according to this chart, for example, Madagascar is charging us 93% tariffs and we ought to charge them 47% tariffs. And that's what it says. That's what the thing says. There is only one problem with this. That is not remotely true. And if we have a trade deficit with Madagascar, then so the hell what? It's Madagascar.

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The GDP per capita in Madagascar is like $530 a year. Our trade deficit with Madagascar is a few million dollars. Is the idea we have to chisel out of the people of Madagascar extra dollars for American products or we are getting screwed by the great and powerful people of Madagascar? Is that the idea here? It makes zero sense. It literally has nothing to do with the actual tariff rate.

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Sounds cool. So how are we going to actually do that? Well, here's the thing. The president's vision of international trade is, I am sorry to say, mistaken. The president seems to believe that international trade is a zero-sum game. Here is the president explaining that actually the United States is a victim of everyone else when it comes to international trade over the past several decades.

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How do we know this? We've got perfect proof. Yesterday, Israel, which already had almost no tariffs on the United States, 99% of all goods coming into Israel had no tariff on them from the United States. That was something that Israel did in the 2000s because they used to have high tariffs.

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And what ended up happening is that Israelis would come to the United States, load up their bags with a bunch of American-made goods, and then take them back with them to Israel to avoid the tariffs. So Israel just got rid of all the tariffs. Yesterday, Israel announced zero tariffs on any American goods.

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The Trump administration hit them with a 17% tariff anyway, claiming that they had a 33% tariff rate on American goods, which clearly is not true. Why? Because it turns out that we buy more stuff from the Israelis than the Israelis buy from us. Shocker, they're a smaller country. We're a giant market, not a giant shock as it turns out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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So this is pretty crazy because it turns out the trade deficit has nothing to do with the tariff rates. So we are punishing countries that have a low tariff rate with us. For example, like South Korea is listed on this chart as having a 50% tariff rate on us. The average tariff rate South Korea has on American goods, according to the World Trade Organization, is 0.79%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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We have a free trade agreement with South Korea. It is listed on this chart as 50%. That's nonsense. It's not true. It just isn't true. And it leads to a 25% reciprocal tariff on all South Korean goods. Now, there are a number of reasons why this is a problem. Okay, whatever. Who cares? Do we need other countries? Okay, so first of all, yes, we do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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It turns out that the supply chains all across the planet are incredibly complex. And if you like the products that you have, at the quality that you have them, and the price that you have them, you're not going to get to keep them. You don't get to keep the...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Anybody who tells you that you can is telling you the same kind of falsehood that Barack Obama said when he said, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. You don't get to keep your Xbox at the same rate with the same quality. You don't. That's just not the way that these tariffs are going to work. So what exactly happens?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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Well, Tyler Cowen points out, quoting Scott Lincecum over at Cato, Trump's reciprocal tariffs impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans without public or congressional input, because that's actually what happened. I have friends, for example, who import product to the United States and then sell them. Why? Because they can't get the product in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2172 - What The Hell Happened on LIBERATION DAY?!

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So, for example, I have a friend who's in the jewelry business. And this friend in the jewelry business imports products that are not capable of being manufactured or found in the United States from abroad. So it's not like there's import substitution you can just buy from an American. That's not how it works. By the way, this company is an American company.

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All righty, folks, as you can see, I'm not broadcasting from the studio right now. I'm actually in a room in the presidential complex in Budapest, Hungary. I just finished interviewing Prime Minister Viktor Orban. That interview is going to be available in very, very short order. Plus, tomorrow's show is going to be a speech that I'm giving here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It always should have been in the purview of Congress. You don't want any president being able to unilaterally simply decide that there are massive tariffs across the board on all of America's trading partners. You just don't want that. OK, that is not the balance of powers that was envisioned by the Constitution, by the founders, by the framers. That is not what they wanted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it's very important. I have to try to continue to change that, she added. The more we can elevate black women, that's going to be a beautiful thing.

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Now, hilariously enough, her presence in the league is elevating many of the black players around her who nobody knew about until five minutes ago. But she's been the one who has been targeted by so many people in the WNBA. And in fact, there are entire compilations of people basically laying hard fouls on Caitlyn Clark last season, putting her in danger of actually getting hurt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In fact, she recently was hurt. And it turns out that a bunch of fans are very unhappy about it and have decided that they are interested in essentially boycotting the entire WNBA over it.

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According to Total Pro Sports, there are a bunch of fans who are suggesting that the WNBA's failure to protect Clark, specifically because Clark is white and many of the players fouling her are black, that that is in and of itself a problem and racist. So, you know, again, there actually is some racism in the WNBA, but it's directed the opposite way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that's the stuff you're not allowed to talk about. So I mentioned that we would speak about Brittany Griner. Brittany Griner was caught on tape during a game with the Indiana Fever, dropping racial slurs against Caitlin Clark and pretty obviously doing so.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it doesn't take a lot of genius to lip read Brittany Reiner, whose voice, by the way, is about as low as mine is, calling her trash and an effing white girl. Now, of course, if Caitlyn Clark had ever suggested the same in reverse, using black as opposed to white in that sentence, that'd be the end of her WNBA career. But Brittany Reiner is going strong. It's totally fine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, a former WNBA champ, has actually come out and suggested that it's racism to talk about people hard-fouling Caitlin Clarke.

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Oh, so that's, that's racism now. So the way that it works is if no racism happens in the stands, the WNBA does a full investigation. If there are hard fouls on Caitlin Clark every night and Brittany Griner is using slurs like pretty openly against Caitlin Clark, then it's racism to even pay attention to any of that. You see, everything has to end in racism. If you were to create a flow chart,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's not something that I want either. And whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs is actually sort of irrelevant to the question of whether the president ought to have the unilateral ability to do as President Trump did on Liberation Day and simply declare a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam or 145 percent tariff on China. Like the Congress should have to sign in at some point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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What it would look like is something racist didn't happen. Therefore, investigate racism or something maybe racist happened, but it was against a white person. You mentioning this is also probably racism against black people. If you want to get people never to watch the WNBA, this is an amazing way to do it. Truly an amazing way to do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Because if the league is going to be rooted in this sort of nastiness with regard to it's only real star. Good luck to them. And we'll see what the viewership is like in the WNBA. Truly, truly idiocy. Now, the reason this is important is because it's part of a broader rubric, the whole kind of diversity, equity, inclusion rubric that the left has embraced.

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That, of course, is part and parcel of a broader worldview that suggests that all inequality and outcome is due to inequality in the system, that the system itself is racist and There's a kind of shocking story that has emerged via NewsNation about the Biden administration pointing out that NewsNation has spoken with a whistleblower from the U.S.

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Department of Agriculture about loan forgiveness policies under the Biden administration. This whistleblower discussed the passage of the American Rescue Act and how there's a section of that act that provided loan relief specifically for socially disadvantaged farmers. It was supposed to be based on social disadvantage, would be based on economics, presumably.

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And the American Rescue Act, which passed by a Democratic majority in Congress, allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to, quote, provide payment in an amount up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness of each socially disadvantaged farmer. The socially disadvantaged farmer was defined by the act on a racial basis, which I have no idea how that's even legal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So farmers then sued and they said, this is race-based and violated the equal protection clause of the constitution. And then the judge found that this was an actual constitutional harm and it didn't matter. In the end, the Biden administration just went ahead and did the affirmative action anyway. Here's the whistleblower discussing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Again, if you're wondering why Trump, this would be the reason why Trump. This is the reason why Trump. Because people in America innately understand that it is wrong to give people loans specifically based on their race. And it's illegal to do that. And they also understand that these sort of broader complaints that American society is racist when they watch your league more is totally crazy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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As long as the left keeps operating, beneath this broader philosophy, they are going to lose. They are going to continue to lose pretty clearly. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, folks, we are seeing something truly disturbing. Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world and sadly right here in the United States. Jewish schools are being targeted. Synagogues threatened.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, does this mean that all the tariffs are going to go away permanently? No. The markets spiked on the news of all of this. The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market immediately jumped significantly. It then came back down to earth a little bit as the markets realized, oh, wait a second, it may be, in fact, that President Trump is still going to be able to do some of these tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Families living in fear. It's something that many of us hope we wouldn't see again in our lifetime. And let me say, silence is not really a great option here. It's a good moment to take a stand. That's why I want to tell you about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, or IFCJ. They're on the front lines providing real help where it's needed most.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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They're giving food and shelter to Jewish families under threat, building bomb shelters for children, helping survivors of hate rebuild their lives. They don't just respond to crisis. They work every day to prevent it. Your gift of only $45 will help support their life-saving work by helping provide food, shelter, and much more. The Bible says in Genesis 12, 3, I will bless those who bless you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Supporting IFCJ is a spiritual stand. It's showing up for God's people when it counts. Every dollar helps. Don't wait. Be the difference. Visit benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org. They're doing amazing work on the ground in the Holy Land. Go check them out right now and help out. benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Also, when we started Daily Wire, it felt like we had to figure everything out with minimal help. Editorial guidelines, studio setup, production schedule, branding. It was overwhelming. New decisions were needed daily. Finding that one tool that simplifies everything when starting a business becomes a game changer and a lifesaver for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Shopify is the e-commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. We even use it for our own daily wear shop to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently so you can get all the goods. You might be asking, what if I can't design a website? Or I'm worried people haven't actually heard of my brand. Not a problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Shopify has got you covered from the start with beautiful, ready-to-go templates that match your brand's style and help you find your customers through easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And if you need a hand with everyday tasks, their AI tools created specifically for commerce can help enhance product images, write descriptions, and more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Plus, their award-winning customer support is available 24-7 to share advice if you ever get stuck. Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Shapiro. Go to shopify.com slash Shapiro, shopify.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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So meanwhile, speaking of idiots, Gavin Newsom on Tuesday welcomed a decision by school athletics groups to expand the number of high school athletes eligible to compete in a track and field meet. That came after a strong showing by a transgender student, which drew anger and a threat of funding cuts from President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So there were new rules that have now been set out by the California Interscholastic Federation. Athletes who were identified at birth as female and fell one spot short of making the cut for the upcoming statewide championship at qualifying meets around the state will now be allowed to compete. So basically they're changing, they're still allowing the boys to run against the girls.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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They're just allowing one more girl to also race. That does not solve the problem. That does not solve the problem. And the fact that Gavin Newsom appears to think that it solves the problem is totally crazy, of course. It shouldn't require some sort of insane pilot program to get a slot that you should have earned in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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So, you know, the fact, again, that Gavin Newsom and the left, they keep trying to square the circle. There is no circle to square here. You can't do this. Okay, boys should not be racing against girls, obviously. But the left cannot let go of this. They cannot let go of this. And it's one of the reasons why they continue to be wildly unpopular and make everything they touch unpopular as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, controversy continues over these so-called big, beautiful bill. It has now passed the House, obviously, by a very slim margin. It has moved on to the Senate. Some senators, we discussed with Senator Ron Johnson, for example, why he is opposed to the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill. He says that's because we should be going back to 2019 spending levels.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration has already said it will appeal the ruling. Trade experts and lawyers say it has a variety of other legal avenues to prosecute the trade war that are unaffected by Wednesday's decision. Deborah Elms, who's head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Henrik Foundation, said,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Why in the world are we maintaining Biden's spending levels in the middle of all this? Here was Senator Johnson yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And of course, he's not wrong about any of this, Senator Johnson. One of the other critics of the bill is Elon Musk. So Elon has basically removed himself from the federal government at this point. He's no longer overseeing Doge.

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And he did an interview with CBS Sunday Morning talking about this, ripping into the big, beautiful bill, saying this thing just spends too much money, which, of course, it does. It spends less money than Democrats would have. It doesn't mean that it's actually making enough cuts, obviously.

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Okay, and I don't think that Elon is wrong on any of this. I mean, the reality is that the bill may be the best that you can do in the moment, given the extraordinarily fractious caucus that Republicans have, but to pretend that we are in any significant way bending the cost curve in any sort of real way that we are solving the national debt, obviously that's not the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, to be fair to the proponents of the big, beautiful bill, the sort of explanation that we are radically increasing the debt by maintaining current tax levels and then making some future cuts to Biden programs, again, it all depends on where you're using the basis of comparison.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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in Hungary in just a few hours, complete with Q&A and all the rest. Just a quick warning, we have lots of content that will emerge next Monday, Tuesday. I am off next Monday, Tuesday because of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. That is the one where the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. But as to the actual news of the day, I didn't want to leave you hanging.

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So if you say that this quote unquote explodes the debt, what you mean is that in the absence of this bill, tax rates would increase. And so if tax rates increased, then you would get additional revenues into the government. So even if you maintain Biden levels of spending, there'd be more revenue into the government. Okay, more of your money being taken.

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says this is just one more bump in the tariff road that we're going to be on for as long as President Trump remains in office. He loves tariffs. He loves the idea of being able to impose them at will. I don't think he's going to give that up particularly easily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you are measuring this against the possibility of the tax rate basically staying the same, the tax rates stay the same, then it cuts from where we normally would be under Biden. So it sort of depends on what you're using as your baseline.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's a point that's been made by Stephen Miller that if you use the latter as the baseline, namely you're assuming the tax cuts are permanent, then it actually is a cutting instrument. It cuts from where Biden's spending actually would be otherwise. But regardless, does it solve our debt crisis? Does it get us toward solving the debt crisis? Not really.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Musk also has complaints about how Doge was handled inside the White House, by the way. He sort of suggests that every time a bad thing happened, Doge got blamed for it. And again, I don't think he's wrong about this. I don't think it's coming from inside the White House. I don't think that's President Trump's fault. President Trump was a big fan of Doge, obviously. But...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If President Trump wants the cuts that Doge made to actually become permanent, he needs to actually submit a rescission letter to Congress asking them to make those cuts permanent. He suggested in an interview with The Washington Post, quote, Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything.

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So like something bad would happen anywhere, we would get blamed for it, even if we had nothing to do with it. And again, I don't think that that's wrong. He said that people were burning Teslas going after him personally. That obviously is true. And so to that extent, Elon deserves an enormous amount of credit.

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I mean, he literally put his own net wealth on the line in order to try and do things that he thought were very important. And he did the best that he could, given the constraints that he was provided. Again, you're not going to find trillions in waste, fraud and abuse inside the federal government, but he certainly found tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, the judgment undermines the legal basis for the reciprocal tariffs that are the centerpiece of President Trump's effort to rein in the trade deficit. The court also shot down special levies of 20% that were imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, supposedly based on national emergency rooted in the fentanyl crisis.

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He deserves enormous credit for all of that. Now, where exactly does that put us economically speaking, just on a generalized level?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Joining us on the line to discuss is a conservative, a rare conservative professor at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff, who also has a brand new book out titled Our Dollar, Your Problem, an insider's view of seven turbulent decades of global finance and the road ahead. Professor, thanks so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

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So there's a lot to talk about, obviously, in the markets and in the world of finance right now. Why don't we start with the so-called big, beautiful bill? There's been a lot of talk on the right side of the aisle about the necessity of maintaining current tax rates, not allowing those to rise.

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There's a lot of heartburn on the right side of the aisle as well about the amount of spending that is in the bill, the unwillingness of Republicans or Democrats to go back to 2019 levels of spending. How big a problem should we perceive the American debt and deficit to be? And how urgent is that problem?

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So when we look at what that means for the future of America's economy, obviously, we are watching as people rush away from American bonds that they're not trusting that we're going to pay back our debt outside of inflating the currency in some way. And the reality is that at some point here, there are only a few choices. One is inflate the currency. The other is radically increase taxes.

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And the third is serious austerity measures. with regard to many of the social programs that nobody actually wants to touch. It seems to me that just politically, the most likely outcome is going to be some form of inflation because people don't like high taxes and they don't like austerity. What do you make of that?

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Now, theoretically, you can make the case that we should put tariffs on Mexico and declare a national emergency on the basis of fentanyl. You could at least make a colorable case for that. You could never make a colorable case that that was the case with Canada. The United States last year, in terms of fentanyl, seized something like 50 pounds of fentanyl the entire year at the border.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When we look at sort of what that means for the ability of America to raise debt out into the future, there's been a lot of talk about the dollar as the world's reserve currency. And you talk about this at length in your book, Our Dollar, Your Problem.

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The dollar, of course, is basically the thing that allows us to raise this extraordinary amount of debt and sell our debt at these really low rates, just historically speaking, to finance all of this. Now, I I've had a lot of concern about the reality of the dollar as sort of wavering in terms of the world currency. It used to be 80% of the global foreign exchange reserves.

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Now it's down to about 60% of the global foreign exchange reserves. You talk about in your book, the fact that there isn't really like an amazing replacement for the dollar right now, including the Chinese currency. You make some points with regard to China that I think are quite fascinating. Do you see China as a rising power capable of replacing the United States in this particular moment?

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Well, what are the big threats to the dollar as the world's reserve currency?

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So the idea there was a national emergency that merited a 20% tariff on Canada originally, that, of course, was far exceeding the scope of authority originally presented to the President of the United States by that act in 1977. Now, there's still a bunch of other tariffs that are going to be on the books.

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And when we look at the possibility of all that happening, that stuff is exacerbated by the fact that we are now in giant trade wars with pretty much everybody. Because one of the things that facilitates the use of the dollar in commerce is the United States being involved in commerce.

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And as we withdraw from being the sort of global hegemon militarily, as we attempt to draw bilateral trade deals, but with countries where we're going to elevate our tariffs against them to try to reshore manufacturing in some way – How does that impact the dollar as the world's reserve currency and America's sort of strength on the world stage?

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Well, one of the things that many people in sort of the Trump arena are talking a lot about these days is crypto as a possibility, as sort of a hedge against the erosion of the dollar, the possibility of crypto being a safer store of value, sort of like digital gold. One of the points that you make in your book

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is the idea that if crypto ever actually became a rival to the dollar, the first thing the government would do is actually prevent it from becoming a rival to the dollar. And governments all over the world are not going to allow there to be a separate safe store of value that actually be used beyond a safe store that could be used in actual commerce on a regular basis.

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I mean, there are people inside sort of the crypto worlds who are looking for rational regulation. I think one of the great dangers to crypto, and again, I'm a fan of crypto. I own some Bitcoin. I own some Ethereum. I invest in a crypto trading firm. I like crypto.

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So the court's decision does not impact 25% levies that have been placed on steel, aluminum, and cars because those levies were imposed using alternative legal avenues, not the national emergency situation. Those are conventional avenues. Those are known as Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs.

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But one of the things that I'm actually quite fearful of is the fact there are so many people in the crypto space who are so warm with the Trump administration in a deregulatory environment that if the economy were to take a tumble, that the reaction to this would be to basically wipe as much out of crypto as humanly possible in sort of a political reversion.

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We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, not everybody who handles your personal information is going to be quite as careful with it as you are. It only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's LifeLock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US-based restoration specialist will help solve your identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed, or your money back. Plus,

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So one of the big questions all of this actually bears is what happens in terms of American productivity in the economy? So there's been a lot of talk about the idea that basically we're now a slow growth economy, that we may be a slow growth economy out into the future.

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And then there are people who have this sort of deus ex machina view of what AI is going to do to productivity growth in the United States. My own view of that is that AI is unbelievable, but the adoption of AI in sort of everybody's regular life and its adoption in industry, it takes a little bit longer to for the adoption of new technology to actually adhere than people tend to think.

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The internet was working by the mid-90s. It probably took until the mid-2000s at a minimum for the internet to really start making a massive difference in everybody's economic life. So what does that mean for American productivity? Should we be expecting 2% increased GDP year on year? Do you think AI is transformative? What do you think comes next?

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The president does have the ability to actually do tariffs under that sort of power, but they're usually used for specific sectors. It's not blanket across the board, giant tariffs on entire countries, for example. So again, the markets were pretty happy about that, immediately speaking. Does this mean the end of President Trump's trade war? No.

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So if you were making policy for the Trump administration right now and you were trying to grow us out of our debt problem, let's take some parameters as reality. So for example, we're not restructuring Medicaid, Social Security in any serious way. Those are your parameters. So now you're screwed. So putting aside those parameters. What growth-oriented policies?

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I'm sorry, I just put in place all of the roadblocks that prevent anybody from doing anything, which is, of course, the big problem. But assuming all of that, what do you do, Professor Rogoff, what do you do to spur growth in the moment, aside from things like tax cuts? What regulations do you look at? Where do you see areas of growth in the American economy?

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It does mean that the president, again, does not have the unilateral ability by declaring a national emergency simply to impose gigantic tariff regimes across the board. And that actually is a good thing.

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So, you know, I'm not going to ask you to be held to your crystal ball here, but I talk to a lot of investors, obviously. Everybody is sort of in this bizarre mode where they're excited but nervous and nervous but excited, where every time President Trump makes a positive economic signal, then the markets spike. Every time he makes a negative economic signal, the markets dump.

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The thing that I've been looking at is the sort of delta between where the markets would be if he had not done a lot of this stuff and where we are right now. So instead of just looking at The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 44,000 when he took office, and now it's at 43,000, so it's really not that big a deal.

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The way that I'm looking at it is probably the Dow Jones Industrial Average should be at 47,000 or 48,000 if we had not done a lot of this stuff as opposed to where it's sitting right now. Because of so many investors, we're sort of holding dry powder, not knowing what the next day brings, and all of this sort of uncertainty, which is its own form of economic uncertainty.

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I mean, it obviously puts a cap on on people's capacity to grow because of all of that. Now, when people ask me what I think the future of the economy is, if I had to ballpark recession or no recession inside the next three years, say during the rest of President Trump's term. Now, I just it sounds wishy washy.

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I mean, listen, as a person who believes that we should be drawing closer trade relations with our allies and that the shot across the bow, if it was meant to get them to the table, that still exists.

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I would say at least at least a 50 percent probability that there's a fairly serious recession sometime in the next three years. Where do you put that probability?

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Well, the book is Our Dollar, Your Problem. It's Professor Kenneth Rogoff. You should definitely read it because it is a fascinating history of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, but also just currency exchange, debt problems. What you need to know is in this book. Professor Rogoff, really appreciate the time.

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Meanwhile, the foreign policy of the United States appears to be at least a little bit discombobulated at this point. So Russia continues to strengthen its talk about its own imperialistic image. Unbelievably enough, Joseph Stalin has now returned to Moscow's ornate subway stations.

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The fact is that the economic damage and the uncertainty wrought by the tariff war on our allies, again, I fully believe that we should be gradually ramping up tariffs on China, reshoring manufacturing away from China, making closer trade alliances with countries that are more aligned with us, ranging from Vietnam to India, for example. All of that would be good.

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So I look forward to other commentators traveling there to talk about the beauty of the subway stations featuring actual honest-to-God Stalin. In any case, the New York Times reports a new statue was unveiled by the authorities this month showing Stalin gazing sagely into the distance, flanked by adoring workers and children holding out flowers to him.

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a replica of one that was removed in 1966 during a de-Stalinization campaign. The new relief quickly became an attraction, with people leaving flowers, stopping to pose for pictures, including with their children, or just watching pensively. The sculpture is part of the gradual rehabilitation of a brutal leader who still has the power to divide Russians 72 years after his death.

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The Kremlin has revived parts of his legacy, and its efforts to recast Russia's history is a series of glorious triumphs that it is determined to continue in Ukraine.

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Well, that's absolutely horrifying, considering that Stalin is responsible for the death of legitimately millions of people in Ukraine under the Holodomor, as well as hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Terror from 1936 to 1938. So that's great. Things are going really well with Vladimir Putin and company. The Trump administration's approach to Putin remains unclear at this point.

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We can hope that they are shifting toward a more hawkish view of what needs to happen with regard to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Germany is starting to step up, according to the Wall Street Journal. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that they will step up financial and military aid.

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They say they will maintain and expand their military support to Ukraine, and the two countries will start a joint program to produce long-range weapons that Kiev can use against Russian targets. He said this is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential.

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Well, Germany is in fairly decent fiscal shape, so they certainly have the capacity to spend more in places like Ukraine. The question is whether they actually can provide the military materiel necessary to withstand a Russian assault. Kiev has long been calling on Berlin to supply it with the Taurus long-range missiles. They can destroy targets over 300 miles away.

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Again, the goal would be to actually go after critical infrastructure inside Russia itself. So where's the United States on this remains totally unclear. The same holds true, by the way, with regard to the Iran negotiations. President Trump keeps putting out sort of warm statements about the Iran negotiations.

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Apparently, according to Reuters, Iran is is suggesting that they might pause their enrichment negotiations. if the United States recognizes their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which of course is ridiculous. Why exactly would we recognize their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes?

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The whole goal of that would be so that they can then ramp up their enrichment for quote unquote civilian purposes and then break out. And two months later, they have a nuke. That is the entire goal of that. Like, why are we, what precisely is the incentive structure that causes the United States to sign onto a deal like that? Why not just keep the maximum pressure on? Really, what do you get?

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their word that they're pausing it? How long is the pause that you are talking about? Isn't that pause just going to, I mean, presumably this would mean the end of sanctions, by the way. Iranian sources suggest that any temporary suspension of the enrichment, even temporary, would require the United States to then release assets to the government of Iran. Why would we do that?

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I don't like the tariff policy, but that is actually a side point here. It turns out that whether you are a fan of the president or not a fan of the current president, The balance of power that was drawn in the Constitution should be something that we like. That is something that we want.

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What exactly is the, what is the goal there? Just to get a name on a piece of paper? First of all, once again, this is where the Senate should step in, seriously. Like it turns out the treaties, I know it's become non-practiced, but it turns out that the Senate does have treaty power, just as the JCPOA should have been approved by the Senate of the United States and was not.

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Anything that's done here should be approved by the Senate of the United States. Because what appears to be shaping up, if it's anything like what the Iranians are offering, is in fact a bad deal. It is just JCPOA 2.0. So we'll find out what happens there. Meanwhile, the United States' efforts in ensuring that humanitarian aid does get into the Gaza Strip, those actually have been effective.

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Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been showing up in the Gaza Strip in line preparing to actually get the food that they want. In fact, they're even breaking into Hamas held warehouses that are holding things like flour. It appears that Hamas's stranglehold on the Gaza Strip may be breaking at this point. And there's been some talk of a possibility of another hostage release.

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So we'll keep you up to date on those sorts of negotiations. Meanwhile. RFK Jr. has now ended COVID-19 recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women in terms of vaccines. He is right about that. The idea that you require as a child a COVID vaccine is, it was always a sketchy proposition at best.

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Well, joining us on the line to discuss all of this is, of course, friends of the show, Dr. Marty McCary, who is the commissioner for the FDA. Dr. McCary, great to see you. Good to be with you, Ben. So let's talk about the new standards with regard to the COVID vaccine. Obviously, you and I talked about this a lot during the actual rollout of the COVID vaccine.

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Much of the data that was presented to the public was not actually rooted in data. There was a lot of talk at the very beginning about how the COVID vaccine was going to prevent transmission of the disease, which it actually did not do a particularly good job of doing, at least with regard to Omicron and the later variants. What is the new guidance from the FDA?

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What is the new standard for the FDA with regard to the COVID vaccine?

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Because I promise you that the next time a Democrat takes office, that same exact national emergency power will be used for something that you don't like. That is the way this typically works. And so, you know, again, I'm not going to say that the court was wrong here. I don't think the court was wrong here. President Trump will appeal it.

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Now, there are a lot of people who are suggesting that because of the FDA's new approach to all of this, somehow people who need COVID shots are not going to be able to get them, that because the FDA is essentially pushing for the idea that COVID shots are mainly applicable to the people that, again, you and I were talking about this when it was happening, to people who are at high risk and seniors or the people who are, again, most at risk of COVID in general, that somehow this will deprive people who need the shot of the shot.

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What do you make of that critique?

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Well, again, a lot of this raises questions about the conduct of the Biden administration, particularly during the rollout of the vaccine. And now that you're actually in the seat, what sort of information do you think should have been presented to the American public?

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I know that there's been a sort of Senate investigation that's ongoing into what the public knew when the public knew it about things like myocarditis resulting allegedly from the use of the vaccine. What should the Biden administration have been doing differently? What did they do wrong during the original rollout of the vaccines?

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He will find other ways to pursue a trade policy that is more legally obtainable, shall we say. Meanwhile, the other big news of the day after we stopped covering the news yesterday was that Elon Musk has now officially left the Trump administration after what the Washington Post calls a contentious tenure. But this is unfair to Elon, okay?

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Now, meanwhile, obviously, a lot of controversy has arisen because of RFK Jr. 's running of HHS. And people have been asking questions about where focus ought to be in terms of trying to discern the causes of disease, something that obviously RFK Jr. has been putting tremendous focus on, Secretary Kennedy.

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When we talk about that, the biggest and most controversial one is all the discussions of autism. What is the FDA doing to look into that? Yeah. The secretary has controversially sometimes suggested a link between vaccines and autism. What do you make of that?

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We have a bunch of news that we recorded just before we left for the airport yesterday, but also a bunch of news broke while we were on the plane. So here is the big news of the day. The big news of the day is that the Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of,

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Well, that of course is the brand new commissioner of the FDA, Marty McCary. Dr. McCary, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate your hard work on all of this. Good to see you, Ben. Thanks. All righty. Meanwhile, in lighter news or heavier news, depending on how seriously you take celebrity trials, Diddy Watch continues apace.

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Let's just put it out there that what Elon did here is actually politically heroic, like actually really heroic. This is the richest man on earth who took time away from his gigantic companies ranging from XAI,

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Some of the witnesses in the case are now going out and speaking to the media. One of the big questions for all the witnesses is why didn't you do anything about all this terrible stuff in the first place? And the answer for most of them is that they actually just thought everything was hunky-dory because I guess this is just de rigueur in celebrity land.

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There is a male escort who worked with Diddy who is called the Punisher. I believe that's what this person's name was. The Punisher. I just, I can't believe this. Anyway, the Punisher Hayes, he was on CNN, because this is the world in which we now live, explaining why he didn't actually come forward with any of this stuff.

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Well, I mean, there are no signs. There are no signs whatsoever. Joining us on the line is the host of The Megyn Kelly Show, of course, Megyn Kelly. And Megyn, thanks so much for taking the time to explain to me what is the Diddy case? Why should we care?

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And my general take has been, I'm not sure why what we are watching is not just an expose of Diddy being a terrible person and his girlfriend also kind of being a bad person, as opposed to sex trafficking. What are the charges and how does what we're watching actually justify the charges? Thank you.

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to Tesla, to SpaceX, simply to come in and try to cut waste, fraud, and abuse at the governmental level for no pay and at massive financial cost to him because many people got very angry at him and started targeting his companies. So Elon deserves a gigantic round of applause for even getting Americans to talk about cuttings to the federal government.

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Elon took time away from his chief goal here, which was, of course, to grow his companies in order to pursue something on behalf of the country. That actually is self-sacrificial by Elon Musk. He did not get richer over the course of the last several months. He got markedly poorer over the course of the last several months, if you count his stock holdings as his wealth base.

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So what exactly is his defense? Just that he's a jerk and everybody knows he's a jerk and he does terrible things, but everybody sort of consented to the terrible things that essentially the essence of his defense.

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I feel like a child here.

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Because, again, the stocks went down in places like Tesla. The stocks have not been kind to Elon Musk's companies. He really took the hit here. President Trump thanked Elon Musk for it. Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform that his scheduled time as a special government employee had come to an end. He's not permitted to work more than 130 days in a 365-day period.

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So one of the big sort of open questions about all of this that a lot of people have kind of trended toward conspiracism on is why it took so long for any of these prosecutions to be brought. Because a lot of these predicate offenses are taking place over the course of decades. Everybody who's famous apparently went to his white parties and some of these people took part in these freak offs.

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And it does. I think there's two possible theories. One is that there's some sort of conspiracy that he was working with law enforcement to create tapes or whatever. And the other theory is that in Hollywood, actually, the line between just being some of the worst people on planet Earth and criminal activity is really thin.

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And you can get away with an awful lot of crap in Hollywood until the point that you can't. Which one of those do you think is more explanatory?

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It prevents him from having to do financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules. In the post, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending and said Doge's mission will only strengthen over time. Now, again, we will see how much it has strengthened over time.

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And so so one of the questions that arises just on sort of a moral level that I want to get your take on is the question of Cassie Ventura and some of the women who are willing participants at least some of the time in this sort of stuff.

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You know, this does raise the sort of broader societal question of if there are abusive men and people know about these abusive men, what obligation should women have? Do women have if these guys are doing criminal things like beating the. crap out of them in hallways to actually go to the cops and stop this sort of behavior? Because obviously these guys are not just a threat to them.

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They're a threat to plenty of other people. What do you make of that question?

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In order for that really to effectuate, the president of the United States does have to send a rescission letter requesting that all of the cuts that the executive branch is currently making under Doge become permanent at the congressional level. President Trump hasn't done that yet. Presumably, he will do that sometime soon. So, again, Elon Musk, he's taken an enormous amount of crap.

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Well, that's Megyn Kelly. You can check out all of her analysis on a wide variety of issues, including ones like this over at The Megyn Kelly Show. Megyn, really appreciate the time and the insight.

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Alrighty, folks, the show's continuing for our members right now. We have updates on Andrew Tate. Yes. Wait, wait, wait, wait. He didn't cure brain cancer. He was charged with more sexual crimes. I know. I too am shocked. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click the link in the description and join us.

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But the reality is that what he did here was a rare act of political altruism. He wasn't running for office here. He didn't get anything out of this. He received nothing but downside, and he took the hit. So good for Elon Musk. Really, thanks to Elon Musk. Okay, now, there was other news yesterday, but we covered it yesterday, so I'm going to be in a different outfit in the studio.

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If you can see it visually, here's the rest of the show. Folks, we have a ton coming up on today's show. We'll get into WNBA controversy over racism. Yeah, I know. We're going to actually talk about the WNBA. Plus, we're going to break down the latest on the economy with a Harvard conservative professor. And Megyn Kelly stops by to talk Diddy Watch. But first, this Friday night, 7.30 p.m.

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blocked President Trump's tariffs in a sweeping ruling, according to Reuters, that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners.

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Eastern, we fire up the cameras, dim the lights, and make at least three people in legal very nervous. Adam Carolla is here to help me weaponize negativity. Jordan Peterson drops a recommendation that briefly unhinges the entire production team. And Savvy electrocutes me in the name of entertainment.

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There's mailbag mayhem, unvetted content, and enough off the rails production choices to qualify as a cry for help. If that sounds like a mistake, that's because it most certainly is. Ben After Dark, episode three, only on DW Plus, only for members. Well, folks, the left has a real problem in the United States.

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They've spent the last several decades talking about how racism is an endemic problem in American life. And there's a problem with that problem, which is there's not enough racism for them. They require instances of racism in order to support the idea that every maldistribution of outcome is, in fact, bad. rooted in racism and white supremacy.

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And so they're constantly looking for their latest racial conflagration. It has to be a white on black racial conflagration, obviously, because white supremacy and white privilege and all the rest. The latest iteration of this comes courtesy of the WNBA.

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So it is amazing to be discussing the WNBA like seriously at the top of the show, because let's face it, the last time anyone cared about the WNBA was when Brittany Griner, who will arise in a moment, was actually freed from captivity in Russia after having brought marijuana product into Russia, genius move, and then being essentially kidnapped by the Russian government.

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The court essentially suggested that the law under which the president of the United States was declaring these tariffs was not, in fact, capable of carrying those tariffs because, essentially, the president used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the IEEPA. It gives the president the power to regulate imports during certain emergency situations, according to CBS News.

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And then we had to trade an arms dealer for her. I will say that based on some of her late comments, I'm not sure that we got the better end of that particular deal. In any case. The WNBA entered into an investigation over the course of the past couple of weeks because there were allegations that fans were being racist during a game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever.

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And yes, I should get points for knowing the names of both of those teams. The Indiana Fever is, of course, the team of Kaitlyn Clark, who's the only player in the WNBA who seems to matter right now. And the Chicago Sky are the team of Angel Reese, who is sort of her arch nemesis and has been since her college days. We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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First, a lot of good work is being done by the administration on the economy, trying to get regulations in order, but there's a ton of instability. And while the Trump administration tries to stabilize the country's economy, it is difficult for them to consider everybody's individual personal finances, meaning you ultimately have to take responsibility for safeguarding your own financial future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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That's why I just bought gold from Birch Gold. In the past 12 months, the value of gold has increased by 40%, and with central banks buying gold in record quantities, demand does not appear to be subsiding anytime soon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Just go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company. Pure Talk, if it's good enough for my very important phone calls. It's good enough for you as well. It's awesome. Go check them out. puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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So the allegations arose after there was a foul by Caitlin Clark on Angel Reese. It was called the flagrant. If you watch the video, it's pretty clearly not a flagrant foul just by any basketball standard. Basically, Angel Reese goes up for a layup and Caitlin Clark doesn't clothesline or anything, kind of grabs her and Angel Reese falls over.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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And there were allegations that people in the stands were then being racist. So, The league immediately launched an investigation into these alleged racist comments. And the WNBA had responded with a statement confirming the investigation. Quote, the WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate, and discrimination in all forms. They have no place in our league or in society.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter now. There was no evidence at the time that any of this was true. And given the fact that cell phones are ubiquitous and that everybody now tapes everybody else saying anything racist, the chances that this actually happened in real life were extremely, extremely low, especially at like a WNBA game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Who are the white supremacists showing up at a WNBA game? Seriously, the white privileged folks who are like, you know what? We don't like black people and we're super white nationalist. So we're going to a WNBA game. What is the crossover between those two circles? There's like no crossover in that Venn diagram. It didn't matter. Caitlin Clark was then forced to go out there and make a statement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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But those emergency situations do not actually extend to things like, you know, a trade deficit. Big trade deficits do not amount to a national emergency, and that's what the court found. And the court isn't wrong here. If the president actually wants to do tariffs, there are other legal mechanisms, presumably, that he will pursue. But this should be in the purview of Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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And every time Caitlin Clark makes one of these statements, blink if you need help, Caitlin. Here she was after the game saying that there's no place for racism in the game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Well, I mean, she needed to say that because if she hadn't said that, then you would have thought that the WNBA was just filled with deep, and abiding racism, obviously. And of course, this is not the first time that Caitlin Clark has been forced to go to the camera and then speak the words, say the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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So not all that long ago, 2024, December, she came out and she had to acknowledge her own white privilege. Now, can we be clear about this? If Caitlin Clark were not in the WNBA, we would not be talking about the WNBA. She's the only ticket draw in the WNBA. A large percentage of all tickets sold in the WNBA are so people can watch Caitlin Clark play basketball. No one cares about Angel Reese.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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She'd be drawing flies if she were playing not against Caitlin Clark on the court right now. Angel Reese has basically become the Bill Lane beer to Caitlin Clark's Larry Bird, essentially. That is where we now are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Well, here was Kaitlyn Clark back in December acknowledging her white privilege because there were so many players in the WNBA who were getting angry that people are out watching Kaitlyn Clark. Really, this is a thing inside the WNBA. There are a bunch of players in the WNBA who are angry that Kaitlyn Clark is bringing notoriety to their sport.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Their idea is, why didn't people watch the WNBA before? The answer is because Kaitlyn Clark is uniquely talented and yes, uniquely appealing. And is some of that based on race? Well, I mean, there are other white players in the WNBA who don't have remotely this kind of following. So I really don't think that that's the reason. She was a wildly popular player when she was in college.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Was that also based on her race or based on the fact that she was hitting threes like an NBA player? Well, back in December, she actually had to issue a statement in which she suggested that there's an element of white privilege in her stardom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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Quote, I feel like I've earned every single thing that's happened to me over the course of my career, but I also grew up a fan of this league from a very young age. My favorite player was Maya Moore. I knew what this league was about. She said, like I said, the WNBA has only been around 25 plus years. Only, by the way. And they've never earned a profit until like this very moment, maybe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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I know there's been so many amazing black women that have been in this league and continuing to uplift them, I think is very important. That's something I'm aware of, is what she told Time Magazine. She said, I want to say I've earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of these players in the league that have been really good have been black players.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

Tons of news to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show. We're going to get to the NPR CEO completely melting down on Capitol Hill. We'll get to the Trump administration capturing the head of MS-13 in the United States. We'll get to a Daily Wire breaking story about waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered inside the federal government. And episode four of the case for Derek Chauvin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Now, what exactly will it apply to? According to the New York Times, the tariffs are set to go into effect April 3rd. They apply to both finished cars and trucks shipped into the United States, even if the majority of parts, for example, are made in the United States. Sometimes they are completed in Mexico or in Canada. And to imported parts that are assembled into cars at American auto plants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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The tariffs will hit foreign brands, but they'll also hit American ones because Ford Motor and General Motors built some of their vehicles in Canada and Mexico, and virtually all cars use some foreign-made parts. Nearly half of all vehicles sold in the United States are currently imported. So are 60% of the parts and vehicles assembled in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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So you could see a significant inflation in terms of the price of your car. Again, these car parts will cross the border three, four times before they actually end up in your driveway. This is, to my mind, a mistake by the Trump administration. I think that these tariffs that are designed to protect, quote unquote, domestic industry, inflate prices at the cost of American consumers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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They create pressures where there need not be pressures. And those pressures are likely to have a negative impact on the economy. So certainly you could get boosts in particular areas of the economy. But understand, tariffs are a subsidy to some at the expense of the others. That is what this is. Stock investors are spooked, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Meanwhile, PBS NewsHour attracted about 882,000 viewers on average in 2022, which means that about 57 million viewers tuned in to PBS's content during any given month in 2022. So, again, these are large numbers. 67%, apparently, of all US TV households, over 160 million people tuned into PBS member stations over the course of a year. Now, that is a decline over the course of time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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The markets plummet every time Mr. Trump proposes a new or higher tariff and rise when he delays or cancel them. By the way, this is true. You can see it actually in real time. When President Trump does a press conference,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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and it's broadcast on CNBC, and you're watching the stock ticker in the corner, or on Fox Business, and you watch President Trump talk about tariffs, you can watch the stocks drop in real time as he talks about the tariffs. Whenever he delays them, the stock market goes up again. So it's still unclear exactly what the tariff regime is going to look like.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When President Trump brings it on April 2nd, he has talked about a significant tariff regime, the same thing for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The possibility of economic stagnation arising from this corporate uncertainty, people not investing as much, that is a real problem. The uncertainty is of itself a problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When President Trump says, for example, that April 2nd is Liberation Day because of the tariffs, that will be applied on any trading partner that charges tariffs or imposes other trade barriers on U.S. products, markets start to freak out. And even if he withdraws them, people start to think, okay, I'm just going to hold out my money.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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I'm going to have some dry powder until we actually know what the hell is going on here. And this is, in fact, a problem for President Trump, and there's no reason to do it. It is a mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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There is no reason to do it, given the fact that the economy is, in fact, chugging along, and investors are really, really happy with what President Trump is doing on the regulatory side, on the spending side, and on the tax side. Meanwhile, in good news for the Trump administration, huge story today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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The top MS-13 leader in the United States was arrested by authorities in Virginia, according to the FBI. According to the New York Post, U.S. authorities have now captured the top MS-13 leader for the U.S. East Coast. The 24-year-old suspect in Woolbridge, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C., was captured yesterday. Authorities have yet to release the suspect's name.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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They say he's one of the top three leaders of MS-13 in the United States. Both AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel monitored the arrest as it took place on Thursday morning. According to Bondi, quote, they executed a clean, safe operation. The bad guy's in custody. Thanks to the FBI, we got one of the worst of the worst of MS-13 off the streets this morning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Presumably, some court will then demand his release because that seems to be the pattern is the Trump administration starts deporting criminal illegal immigrants, and various courts decide that that's bad and these people have a right to stay in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Speaking of which, according to the Wall Street Journal today, an appeals court upheld an order blocking the Trump administration from using a wartime law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members on the same day that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited a prison in El Salvador where the migrants are currently being detained. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Circuit's 2-1 decision on Wednesday denied the Justice Department's bid to lift the block while it fights the lawsuit. Karen Henderson, who is a Georgia H.W. Bush appointee, said that the TRO blocking the deportations was, quote, entered for a quintessentially valid purpose to protect the court's remedial authority long enough to consider the party's argument.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the argument is not that what Trump is doing is illegal. The argument is that he can't do it until it's been totally adjudicated. So before you hear that Trump's action has been struck down or something like that, all that's happening here is that the court is deciding that the temporary restraining order is appropriate so that you don't have further irremediable

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Because if somebody gets deported, you can't exactly bring them back. And in the meantime, it'll get adjudicated up to the Supreme Court, which is likely where this is going to go. So not all is lost on that front. President Trump is solving illegal immigration faster than any other problem. Again, there's a reason why in the polling data.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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the worries about illegal immigration have dropped precipitously. And that is because at the border, particularly our southern border, illegal immigration is almost non-existent now. Now, speaking of scandals that are really, I think, not scandals, I think most Americans are bored with this, just to be... perfectly frank about where I think most Americans are on the so-called Signalgate scandal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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This, of course, is all the members of the Trump national security team who are having a conversation on Signal about bombing the Houthis. And that conversation included some operational details in real time about what was happening, planes taking off, about to strike, that kind of stuff. It was vague in the sense that it did not include as the Secretary of Defense

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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However, these are big numbers. They are sponsored by you, and they are producing left-wing propaganda. The hearings were led by Subcommittee Chair Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is grilling NPR CEO Catherine Maher and PBS President Paula Kerger

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Reminds us any names, any targets, any locations, any units, any routes, any sources, any methods, no classified information. It still included information that was non-public, obviously, because it was saying in real time, planes about to take off, for example. And that signal chat included Jeffrey Goldberg. Somebody included the Obama stenographer, Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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And this is supposed to be one of the great scandals of our time. Here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If I have a choice, and unfortunately, apparently I do, between a national security team that does the right things, but also does stupid accidental things like including Jeffrey Goldberg in group chat, and an administration that surrenders everywhere on earth but does it by the book, I'm going to go with A. And that apparently is the choice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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And that's the, I wish there was a choice where everything was by the book and it was not surrendering all over the world. But apparently that choice is no longer available to us. Again, this is not going to happen. Again, a mistake is a mistake. A blunder is a blunder. The idea that this is sort of a widespread systemic, oh my God, Americans are freaking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Here's the thing about procedural scandals at this point in American history. No one is getting ousted over a procedural scandal. You're gonna get ousted if you had a sex scandal or if you did something so bad for the American people that you have to go. That's pretty much the only circumstance in which you are going.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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But including a journalist by accident in a signal chat is not going to be that thing. It's not going to be that thing. By the way, I should point out here that Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, people are giving him plaudits for not revealing the classified information until he was called upon to basically go ahead and do that by the Trump administration. Here's what I would have done.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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If I had been included in such a signal chat, I would have immediately notified someone in the signal chat that I was a journalist and I probably shouldn't be in it. And then I would have reported that they accidentally included me in a signal chat before I got access to all of these operational details.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Goldberg's bizarre excuse in not doing that was that he thought that maybe it was all a giant prank. But even if it was a giant prank, the first thing you would do is say, I don't belong in the signal chat. Why am I in here? And then you would check it out and go for comment. That's the way you would normally handle it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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suggesting that they were both presiding over publicly funded news organizations that hate the right wing, which is absolutely 100% true. Representative James Comer of Kentucky said people who listen to NPR are totally misinformed. I have a problem with that because you get federal funding. That, of course, is 100% true. And NPR had no excuse for this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Pair them with Bull & Branch's airy blankets, duvets, and quilts for the perfect seasonal upgrade. Bull & Branch's 100% organic cotton sheets were pivotal in my sleep quality from the very first night I could feel that difference. These aren't just any sheets, they really do have an amazing softness. that puts you in instant relaxation mode.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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What really impressed me is how they get even softer with every single wash. I didn't think that was possible, but after a few months, they felt even more luxurious than when I first got them. Believe me, I've tried other premium sheets before. Nothing comes close to the breathable comfort of these. The best part?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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They're woven with the finest 100% organic cotton on earth with designs and colors for every mattress size and bedroom style so you can find the perfect fit. this spring. Upgrade your sleep during Bull & Branch's annual spring event. For a limited time, get 20% off at bullandbranch.com slash ben. That's bullandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash ben. Take 20% off sitewide for a limited time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Exclusions apply. See site for details. Again, that's bullandbranch.com slash ben and get 20% off sitewide. Also, I need to tell you about my friends at PragerU. They're doing an amazing job. This is the conservative nonprofit fighting to educate the next generation and win back the culture. Conservatives won huge in November. The fight is not even close to over.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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The left still controls our schools. They're undermining faith, family, and freedom. One election isn't going to fix that. That's why PragerU is making real, lasting change. They're reaching young people like never before, with pro-American, pro-Judeo-Christian content, nearly 2 billion views a year, with 65% of their audience under 35. And now, PragerU is getting into classrooms.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Nine states have already partnered with them to bring PragerU videos and books into schools, with more states on the way. But they can't do it alone. Right now, every dollar you give is triple matched to help push back against radical indoctrination. Don't wait. Go to PragerU.com. Make your donation today, which will be triple matched.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Together, we can keep the momentum going and stand strong for the values we care about. That's PragerU.com. They're basically a sister company to Daily Wire. They've been making amazing content for years. We've helped them. They've worked with us. They're great. PragerU.com. Make your donation today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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It will, in fact, be triple matched and make a huge difference in keeping the values momentum going. In any case, President Trump, he understands the bottom line, which is, was the attack on the Houthis successful or was it not? Here's President Trump yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, well, he's right about that. And in the end, it is what comes out of the oven that matters, not the ingredients that go. If the cookie's good, the cookie's good. That's all. Caroline Lovett, yesterday, she said that President Trump has confidence in his national security team.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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Leavitt also pointed out that these were not, in fact, classified plans. Now, the debate over classification status, the reality is the president can declassify anything that he wants. So if the president says this is not classified, then definitionally it is not classified. Should it have been classified is another sort of question. Here was Caroline Leavitt on this topic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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NPR could not explain why they are so biased to the left. They couldn't explain why they should receive taxpayer dollars if, in fact, they only are a propaganda outlet for the Democratic Party, which is 100 percent true. Catherine Maher was asked yesterday while she was on the Hill as the CEO of NPR about her editorial board, which involves 87. There are 87 people on her editorial board.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, again, the easiest thing to say here would be, OK, we botched it. Whoops. I mean, that's the easiest thing. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio essentially said that yesterday. He said, yeah, absolutely. Somebody made a mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, he is right about this. And this is the most obvious response. Mistake, oopsie, move on. Democrats, however, have decided this is worse than the Afghanistan pullout, which is quite an amazing statement. Here is Senator Mark Warner saying this is worse than Afghanistan, which I'm going to go no on that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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It seems to me that much worse for the world was the United States pulling out of Afghanistan in absolute ignominious defeat, getting Americans killed in the process and leading to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, among other things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, worse than Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Representative Jimmy Gomez went the worst possible route, asking whether Pete Hegseth was drunk on the chat, which is just gross and stupid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Me and Chris Matthews was going crazy. It's a cover up. It wheeled him in from the local hotel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The number of Republicans on that editorial board, zero, zero. Here she was being grilled by Representative Timmons.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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cover-up well what what is the cover-up precisely she's like it's all out there we know everything that happened what is that what is there to cover up it's literally all public in the chat And then they said to Jeffrey Goldberg, if you release the rest of the chat, it's not classified. And then he did. It's like the least cover-up cover-up I've ever seen in my entire life. Here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So I think most Americans care deeply about this. I really, really don't. I'd be shocked if they do, frankly. It seems like a bureaucratic snafu. It seems like a mistake. And it doesn't seem like it inhibited our ability to kill Houthis. So there's that. And all the sort of over-the-top media coverage is unjustifiable on virtually every level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Joining us online is our White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan. And she spent the day with J.D. Vance yesterday. Mary Margaret, good to see you.

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So tons of stuff happening here on the show today. If you want even more... From The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, you need to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, early access to our new releases. Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else.

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Well, it sounds like JD Vance was a good shot from the calls that you're hearing on the range. They're shouting, hit, headshot, and all the rest.

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Well, that is awesome for you. And it's awesome for me because it means Michael Knowles is nowhere near me. So I'm really excited about that. Mary Margaret, doing a wonderful job, as always, from the White House. Really appreciate it.

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Meanwhile, the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to an impartial jury, a fundamental cornerstone of our justice system. But what happens when that impartiality is systematically undermined by external forces? What happens when jurors are effectively told that their city will burn if they don't reach the correct verdict?

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Well, the problem is that you actually don't believe that. If you believed that, you would have done something about it. 87 to 0 is not exactly an even-handed examination of the news. If you want to be an opinion journalism outlet like we are here at The Daily Wire, admit your biases, openly do it. We also receive zero taxpayer dollars. That is not a thing that we do here at Daily Wire.

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What happens when sitting members of Congress and even the President of the United States weigh in on a defendant's guilt before the jury has even deliberated? That's exactly what happened in the Derek Chauvin trial. It represents one of the most egregious violations of due process in modern American legal history. This is The Case for Derek Chauvin, Episode 4, The Jury.

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The state trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd took place at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis from March 8th to April 20th, 2021. It was the first criminal trial in Minnesota to be entirely televised and broadcast live, receiving extensive media coverage with over 23 million people watching the verdict announcement on live television.

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But the reality is that Derek Chauvin never received a fair trial, not because the judge was biased or the prosecutor's unethical, but because the entire social and political environment made an impartial jury verdict virtually impossible. As Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz has noted, not moving the Derek Chauvin trial out of Minneapolis was a serious constitutional mistake.

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Thank you Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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We are not living off your taxpayer dollars. We have advertisers, we have subscribers, we have members, all of those things. But that's not NPR. NPR does receive taxpayer dollars, which is why Catherine Maher was on the Hill being grilled. Then she ended up being humiliated by Representative Brandon Gill out of Texas. It was a pretty amazing exchange.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Here was Brandon Gill grilling her about her own political beliefs and Maher just openly lying about them on the floor of Congress here.

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., en P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and in While Mercer later stated that once the subject is under control and handcuffed, the technique would no longer be authorized, this raises the question of when a subject is truly under control in a dynamic street situation with potential crowd interference.

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The MPD call handling protocols specifically instructs officers to, quote, ensure that on-scene notification is reported to the dispatcher and to handle scenes, quote, in accordance with MPD policy and procedures, suggesting that scene management is a continuous assessment.

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MPD policy specifically recognizes that officers must, quote, continuously reassess the perceived threat in order to select the reasonable use of force response, indicating control techniques may need to be maintained until officers can definitively establish that all threats, including environmental threats, have been neutralized.

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Katie Blackwell's testimony that Chauvin's technique was, quote, not what we train has been central to the case narrative. However, this testimony is now directly challenged by former officers who assert Chauvin did follow his training. As noted in court filings, these officers allege that the restraint technique Chauvin used against Floyd was part of departmental training.

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The legal filing goes still further, arguing that Blackwell committed perjury when she testified Chauvin was not following departmental training. This serious allegation suggests the trial may not have presented a complete picture of Minneapolis Police Department training protocols. Closing arguments were made April 19th, 2021.

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Prosecutor Steve Schleicher stated that Chauvin's behavior, quote, wasn't policing, this was murder, while defense attorney Eric Nelson argued a reasonable police officer would understand the situation. The jury began deliberations April 19th and reached a verdict after approximately 10 hours. On April 20th, 2021, at 4.07 p.m.

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Central Time, Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges, second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter. On June 25th, 2021, Judge Cahill's sentence drove into 22.5 years in prison, exceeding Minnesota's minimum guidelines, but falling short of the prosecutor's request for a 30-year sentence. Let me be absolutely clear.

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On this day, our justice system failed to provide the due process protection our Constitution demands for all defendants, regardless of the charges they face or how despised they may be. In a system of justice worthy of the name, the verdict must be based solely on the evidence, not on fears of what might happen if the wrong verdict is reached.

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As Judge Cahill himself acknowledged, external pressure and threats of violence have no place in our system of trial by jury. In the fall of 2022, Judge Cahill delivered the Justice Jackson Lecture before a large audience of judges at the National Judicial College.

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Curiously, only one news organization covered his remarks, despite their relevance to one of the most high-profile cases in modern history. That organization was The Daily Wire, courtesy of my colleague Matt Walsh.

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The lecture, which is available online, begins with Cahill making several jokes about various aspects of the Chauvin trial before covering topics like the importance of upgrading technology in courtrooms. As the lecture progresses, Cahill makes a series of statements that raise serious questions about judicial impartiality.

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He transitions from discussing procedural matters to advocating for what he terms racial justice in a manner that appears to depart from traditional notions of judicial neutrality. Most concerning is when Cahill explicitly states to the roomful of judges that, quote, every case should be about racial justice.

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Cahill said every case should be about racial justice, work for equity. He advised judges to take implicit bias training and suggested hiring practices based on demographic considerations. Cahill advocated for judges to consider race consistently in their cases, claiming this approach would restore, quote, trust and confidence in the judiciary.

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The judiciary's fundamental purpose is to apply the law equally to all individuals, regardless of race or background. A sitting judge openly advocating for racial consideration in all cases represents a significant departure from traditional judicial ethics. Judge Cahill's comments revealed a concerning ideological framework that may have influenced the Chauvin trial proceedings.

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Chauvin's legal team filed a motion for a new trial, citing numerous grounds, including jury misconduct, intimidation, and the court's failure to sequester the jury during the trial. While this appeal was not successful, the legal issues it raised were substantial and would normally merit serious consideration by higher courts. In particular, the defense cited...

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One, the court's failure to change the venue despite unprecedented pre-trial publicity. Two, the city's $27 million settlement announcement during jury selection. Three, the failure to sequester the jury during trial. Four, external intimidation from politicians and protesters. Five, evidence of juror misconduct and bias. Any one of those might be sufficient grounds for reversal in a normal case.

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Collectively, they represent a devastating indictment of the trial process. Just two weeks after the state verdict, Chauvin was hit with federal civil rights charges on May 7th, 2021. Initially, Chauvin pled not guilty, but faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in federal prison if convicted at trial, he eventually accepted a plea deal on December 15th, 2021.

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The terms were 20 to 25 years in federal prison to run concurrent with his state sentence. To pile on, they threw in a completely unrelated 2017 incident involving a 14-year-old to make Chauvin look like a serial abuser of power. Judge Paul Magnuson ultimately sentenced him to 21 years in federal prison.

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Given all of these factors, a presidential pardon would send a powerful message that justice in America is not determined by mob rule or political pressure, but by evidence, due process, the rule of law. It would affirm that even the most hated defendant deserves the full protection of our legal system. Critics have argued that a pardon would undermine confidence in our justice system.

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This is about ensuring that justice is applied fairly and consistently without being swayed by mob mentality or political pressure. Joining us on the line to discuss the case of Derek Chauvin is one of the journalists who helped really uncover many of the explosive details surrounding it. That's Coleman Hughes. Coleman, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

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Connect with a community that shares your values, not one that cancels you for them. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. With new content added every single week, there's always something worth watching. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So yesterday...

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So obviously, I've been taking a leading role in calling for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. Part of the, I think, transformation in the public view of the George Floyd-Derek Chauvin case is the series of articles that you wrote for the Free Press where you analyzed the case in detail. I wanted to go through some of that with folks because the case that you make is that

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You know, it's not as though we know for certain exactly how or why George Floyd died, but that's almost the point. If you are in a criminal justice system in which reasonable doubt is the demand, there is no way this case meets the standards of beyond a reasonable doubt.

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Very rough there for Catherine Maher. And it continued to be rough throughout the entire day. Representative Jim Jordan, out of Ohio, friend of the program, he also humiliated Catherine Maher. It was basically just a series of dunks on Catherine Maher in Congress yesterday.

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And one of the things that's pretty amazing when you view the original autopsy and all of the medical reporting around it is that this really is not even a coin flip, that the positional asphyxia case is just not really backed by any of the medical evidence in the autopsy, or at least not very much of it. There was no bruising on his neck. There's no bruising on his trachea.

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The sort of speculation that would have to occur in order to achieve the idea that this was purely due to the weight on his back or on his neck, you'd have to ignore things like the massively enlarged heart, like the 11 nanograms per milliliter of fentanyl in his system. You'd have to ignore the tape, which...

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which shows him saying, I can't breathe, six separate times before he is even removed from the car and put on the ground. He's obviously in a state of panic even before he's put into the police car.

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I'm struggling, honestly, when I look at the autopsies to see where is the physical evidence that the weight alone would have made a person of George Floyd's prior health conditions and excited state and drug use die. That's the part that I have trouble with.

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So Coleman, obviously one of the big issues surrounding the George Floyd case is the fact that it became a national issue, which effectively deprived Chauvin of his right to a fair trial. It's the highest profile criminal case that we've had in this country since the O.J. Simpson trial.

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You had the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party essentially calling for his conviction before this trial even happened. You had the city of Minneapolis paying out a $27 million settlement to George Floyd's family. You had members of the jury who are openly at rallies wearing I Can't Breathe T-shirts before the trial took place.

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You have jurors who afterward acknowledged that there was public pressure on them and that that affected their judgment. What do you make of the jury deliberations and the fairness of the trial itself?

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No way in the world. So Coleman, obviously, this has massive impact on how Americans have thought about the criminal justice system. I was on with Stephen A. Smith recently, and he basically acknowledged that he was not willing to look at any evidence outside of the nine-minute tape. And his assumption was that as long as there was an E on an X, that meant that that was the cause of death.

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I literally asked him, is there anything that could change your mind? And he just said no. which I think has unfortunately been the way that too many people have approached criminal justice issues in the country for a really long time. That obviously speaks to the sort of decline in racial comedy in the country.

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It wasn't all that long ago when both black Americans and white Americans actually thought that race relations were on a good track in the United States. That was as late as 2012, 2013. For the past 12, 13 years, they've been on the wrong track. The numbers have been bad. Do you see that recovering anytime soon?

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And what do you think the fallout from the Chauvin-Floyd trial and conviction of Chauvin is going to be for the long term?

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That's Coleman Hughes. Go check out his book, The End of Race Politics, and his podcast, Conversations with Coleman. Coleman, really appreciate your insight and knowledge on this issue. Great to see you.

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All right, guys, coming up, we're going to jump into the Ben Shapiro Show mailbag. Now, I know you've heard about it a lot, but the thing is you can't hear any of the questions or the answers or even ask the questions unless you're a member. That's just one of the amazing things that you get behind the paywall, but it's an exclusive club and you can only get in by joining Daily Wire Plus.

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If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro. I check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Yeah, yeah. There's no bias over at NPR. And Jim Jordan there is referencing a piece by Uri Berliner about the bias at NPR that he put out at the Free Press just a few months ago. We went through it. This is back in April of 2024. The title of the piece was, I've been at NPR for 25 years. Here's how we lost America's trust.

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And Uri Berliner, who again, was in fact a veteran at the public radio institution, acknowledged the massive bias. Quote, it's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different.

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The distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population. And then he goes through in detail what changed inside NPR. Well, again, the windmill jams on Catherine Maher did not stop. Representative Tim Burchett out of Tennessee also went after Catherine Maher.

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there was a big hearing on the Hill involving the heads of NPR and PBS, both of which are in fact publicly funded. Well, I asked my friend Perplexity, which is of course the sponsor of the show, how much money we, the US taxpayers, spend on PBS and NPR every year. Apparently, according to Perplexity, the U.S.

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Okay, that's weird because again, you have said things along those lines. And this is entirely the game that NPR has been playing for literally decades. They say something that is overtly to the left. And then when called upon it, they say, well, I didn't mean that. Or you're just missing the context. Why is it that every single error NPR has ever made is in one direction?

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Literally every, it's amazing. Including, for example, NPR's decision not to cover at all the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election. You remember this. NPR overtly said, we will not cover this because we do not think it is of importance. Which, of course, is insane since there was a ton of information on there that was of high importance to American voters.

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Here is Maher now admitting that they should have covered the story.

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Well, yes, it wasn't just Catherine Marr who had a rough time of it. PBS boss Paula Kerger, she was out on the Hill as well, and she was trying to explain there is nothing more American than PBS. And of course, the example that people will use here is Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street, both of which, by the way, are perfectly capable of operating on their own in a for-profit environment.

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I mean, clearly capable of operating in a for-profit environment. These are two of the most profitable brands probably ever. The idea that you require public broadcasting in order to somehow get Sesame Street on the air is ridiculous on its face. But here is PBS trying to grasp that public money as hard as it can.

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Well, what you've also done is promote an enormous amount of left-wing propaganda over the years. And again, this is a win for President Trump because of the fact that all of this is now being exposed to daylight. The fact that we are now talking about getting rid of exorbitant spending in these areas is a really, really important thing.

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And all of this is part and parcel of a broader attempt by the Trump administration to cut out the waste of fraud and abuse. We have a breaking story on that from our own Luke Rosiak, our investigative reporter here at Daily Wire.

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He points out today, quote, a prominent diversity, equity, and inclusion nonprofit declared bankruptcy this month after its board accused its founder and top employees of stealing millions of dollars, according to a Daily Wire investigation. Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey are set to keynote a conference run by the alleged thief, apparently through his for-profit firm next month.

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taxpayer spends approximately $535 million annually on NPR and PBS through federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Over the last decade, taxpayers have spent about $5.35 billion on these outlets. They have very broad listenership. These are propagandistic outlets that have huge listenership.

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The National Diversity Council filed for bankruptcy March 17th after its board said in a lawsuit that its founder, R. Dennis Kennedy, quote, improperly paid himself millions of dollars from NDC's donor funds. The suit said that Kennedy paid himself a grossly excessive salary while using the nonprofit as a front for his for-profit diversity consulting business called Diversity and Leadership, Inc.

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The group's 2020 IRS disclosure said Kennedy was paid $450,000 for 10 hours of work per week. In 2022, at the height of corporation CEI hype, Kennedy, Chief Executive Officer Angeles Valenciano, and Chief Financial Officer Jason DeGroote also unilaterally decided they were owed almost $3 million in back pay, and then they paid themselves more than $1 million in donor funds.

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Board members started to become suspicious, and they figured there was nothing there that justified the payments. Kennedy systematically moved the nonprofit's trademarks and web domains into his own name, and essentially created a fake organization with the same name that would trick people into paying him directly according to the lawsuit.

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NationalDiversityCouncil.org now leads to a website of an organization that purports to be the National Diversity Council, listing Kennedy as its founder and no board. John Hooper, an accountant who manages bankruptcy for NDC's board, told The Daily Wire the site is not operated by the National Diversity Council. So deep corruption with taxpayer dollars, obviously.

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And the imposter NDC website, by the way, is having a conference in L.A. next month, which is supposed to feature Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. The necessity of wiping out bad taxpayer spending is deep and real, and it is having a positive impact on our markets, obviously. Cuts to regulation, cuts to bizarre subsidization schemes, all of that is quite good for the American economy.

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Along those lines, yesterday, the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, he said it's time to invest in energy. The Trump administration is making a bunch of really good moves for the economy, which is why, despite all the tariff threats, the economy seems to be still chugging along. Here yesterday was Secretary Christopher Wright.

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The Trump administration is making a lot of very good economic moves, and those moves, of course, include Doge, which continues to surgically trim the fat from decades of bloated government spending and corruption. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That's correct. Pure Talk says...

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Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire+. Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. Access to Daily Wire Kids programming. And as always, your free Leftist Tears Tumblr. With Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes.

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According to Perplexity, in 2022, NPR had about 23.5 million average weekly listeners for its terrestrial broadcast programming. And NPR, of course, is just trash stacked atop trash. It is a left-wing agitprop organization that puts out sort of modulated voices with well-produced music and segments and Sounds very easy to listen to, and it turns out that it's just Noam Chomsky propaganda.

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You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch to PeerTalk at PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. PeerTalk Wireless by Americans for Americans. I've been using PeerTalk myself for years. I value, obviously, clarity in my cell phone conversations.

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PeerTalk provides me excellent coverage. And at a lower price, go check them out yourself. PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro. Again, that's PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro for the special deal. Meanwhile, the big sort of issue of the day when it comes to inflation is, of course, egg prices. Egg prices are now falling. They're falling nationally. That's particularly on the wholesale level.

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Ep. 2167 - MORE TRUMP WINNING: NPR CEO IMPLODES, MS-13 Head ARRESTED

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They've yet to drop tremendously on the retail level. There are a few reasons for this. One of them is, in fact... economic sanguinity with regard to gas prices and transportation prices. It costs money to get the eggs from the farm to the grocery store and all the rest of it. It is also because the avian flu is basically giving out, so fewer chickens are dying.

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So you have an increase in the supply of eggs, and that is combined with a drop in the demand for eggs because of the high prices, so you get lower prices. Here's President Trump praising the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, over the drop in egg prices yesterday.

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OK, so again, all of this is quite good. Now, on the problematic side of the ledger, President Trump yesterday announced that he would be driving up tariffs on non-American made cars. Now, one of the problems with this is that how do you define a non-American made car? An enormous number of cars that have foreign brands on them are actually made in the United States.

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And so it's unclear exactly quite how this applies as of yet. Here's President Trump announcing it yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, folks, woke leftism is totally on the ropes. The Democrats don't know what to do about this, but their entire centralizing philosophy is on the ropes. We can get into all of that today, ranging from the Washington Post to the war in Ukraine to how Democrats are responding to everything that President Trump is doing. But we begin today with the Washington Post.

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And the new middle in America is... Fairly pro-free market. It's a middle that doesn't like the idea that the American economy is rigged on behalf of white people or rigged on behalf of men. It's an American middle that believes in the American dream and thus believes in the idea, generally speaking, of capitalism. It's also an American middle that, well...

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Okay, so again, Musk acting as sort of an outside actor is the best version of all of this. Meanwhile, as Politico points out, the layoffs are just getting started. Quote, federal agencies are being ordered to submit plans by mid-March for laying off employees in large-scale reductions in force, an escalation in President Trump's efforts to reshape the federal workforce.

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According to an Office of Management and Budget and OPM, Office of Personnel Management memo released on Wednesday, quote, pursuant, And so they're talking about laying off a bunch of people. As President Trump suggested yesterday, he was left with a government that was bloated, fat, and disgusting. You know, sort of typically colorful language from the president.

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Okay, meanwhile, other secretaries also spoke up. Secretary of Defense Hegseth, who's excellent, he said that one of the chief goals that he had as Secretary of Defense was to fully investigate every aspect of the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, one of the most shameful moments in American history.

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Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, all spoke up about President Trump's new proposal for the so-called Golden Cards, which apparently will be wrapped around chocolate bars and stowed all around the United States in various candy shops. But actually, it's like five million bucks and you get a citizenship. Anyway, here is Howard Lutnick explaining.

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Now, let's talk about that debt because this is a serious question. The big budget that the House is pushing forward is, in fact, going to add to the national debt. Why is it going to add to the national debt? Well, because by preserving the Trump tax cuts, supposedly there's less tax revenue to the federal government. It's not about the tax cuts.

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fairly liberal about what their neighbors do is not completely liberal about what their neighbors do, meaning that if their neighbors decide to open a porn shop next door, the answer is no. If their neighbors decide the local public school is going to be teaching genderqueer, the answer is no. That's the new middle in America.

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It is about the simple fact that the debt is going to keep going up and to the right because of our embedded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid programs. That's all.

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The means-tested welfare programs, things like SNAP and TAMF and all the various other gigantically bloated programs that funnel literally trillions of dollars a year from one segment of society to another segment of society via the American taxpayer dollars and mostly via debt. That is going to eat the American economy. It is. And herein lies a bit of the problem.

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And here is where I think conservatives ought to be wary. Not that President Trump isn't doing amazing things. Not that Doge isn't doing useful things. But the systemic underlying problems of American politics are not going to get solved by either party right now. That is just a fact. President Trump yesterday, he was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

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He said we're not going to touch them. And we won't. He's right. We're not going to touch them. At the same time, there are consequences to not touching them.

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Okay, so no matter how much fraud you identify in these programs, and literally every dollar of fraud should be cut, it ain't even a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of spending America has done. This is a bloated legacy of FDR and LBJ. It is eating the American economy, and it is going to cause a crash in the American economy sometime in the very near future.

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Again, one of the things that I've suggested about the Trump administration is that they have to focus laser-like on ensuring increases in productivity, cutting regulations, ensuring ease of economic transaction. These are the only things that Trump can do if he's unwilling to touch the actual systemic drivers of America's national debt.

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And the reality is that without touching those drivers of America's national debt, the debt's just going to keep going in the wrong direction. So when President Trump says that he's going to balance the budget, that is not a real fiscal possibility. You can't do it without touching any of these big programs. So one of those two things is untrue. I'm going to go with balancing the budget.

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I was thinking about this a lot last night, about President Trump and the fact that, as I said during the election cycle, It's not that President Trump is uniquely right-wing. It's that the left in the United States has moved so far away from the center that by occupying the middle, Donald Trump now appears to be right-wing because the left has alienated everybody to the right of MSNBC.

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And we're not even going to do zero base budgeting going back to like the 2019 budget. Let's just be real about this. None of this stuff is going to happen. Both parties are going to spend like drunken sailors until austerity measures are forced into place about five years from now. That is actually what's going to happen in the United States. That train is coming down the tracks.

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Ain't nobody getting in the way of that train because it's politically dangerous to actually try to stop the train right now. So instead, we'll just run right off that cliff. Well, it's actually one of the things I like least about working in the news industry, you know, actually having to cover the fact that most of our politicians will not do the things we need to do.

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But there are things I do love about working in the news industry. The thing, like, for example, I get to connect every day with millions of listeners and share these breaking stories and work with incredible talent who are just as passionate about the political sphere as I am.

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There's nothing quite like the energy and thrill of creating content that not only informs but also resonates with people around the country. If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who also love doing that thing.

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And if you own your own business, you want to hire employees who love what they do to boost the overall success of your business, plus make it a pretty great place to work. But how do you find passionate employees who are a good fit for all your roles? ZipRecruiter right now. You can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com. slash dailywire.

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ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer most based on G2, and their powerful matching technology works fast to find top talent, so you don't waste time and you don't waste money. Hire experienced people who are excited about what they do with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day. See for yourself.

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Go to this exclusive web address and try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. Also, Victory is in the air, and so is the scent of renewal. Behold, a candle. Yes, yes, you see.

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Here at The Daily Wire, we also, in fact, have candle companies, and we light a candle in memory of the stupid leftist ideas that Donald Trump is destroying. Well, Donald Trump's first joint session of Congress since his historic re-election is almost here. America is already winning.

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Celebrate the triumphs of a new era from Doge's major cuts to protecting America's borders to major cabinet confirmations and more with my all-new Smells Like Victory candle from The Candle Club. Again, I already lit it. I already showed you, but here it is again. It's really cool and it smells good. Capture the essence of American renewal with a fresh invigorating scent.

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A burning reminder that with strong leadership, our best days still lie ahead. Don't wait. Right now you can get 20% off when you order by Friday. Bask in the smell of victory. Order now at thecandleclub.com slash Ben. That's thecandleclub.com slash Ben. Thecandleclub.com slash Ben. Meanwhile, again, the big danger to President Trump's presidency would be Things like inflation.

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Inflation is, in fact, going the wrong way in the United States. Right now, it is not headed in the right direction. The Agriculture Secretary, she suggested yesterday, Brooke Rollins, that they have a five-point plan to bring down the price of eggs. Here's what she had to say.

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So what does that mean? It means that there is now a real market possibility of newspapers like the Washington Post reorienting. Jeff Bezos is by no stretch of the imagination a traditional Republican. He is not somebody who believes in sort of traditional conservative social values. He's not somebody who, as far as I'm aware, is particularly hawkish on foreign policy.

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Okay, so will this have a massive impact on egg prices? Well, it could have some impact. It's going to have a massive impact if the inflationary pressures continue. Again, we've blown too much money into the American economy, and it appears that's not going to stop anytime soon, despite the relatively high interest rates by sort of historical standards.

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Now, President Trump did announce yesterday that tariffs are back on the table, although he says that they're not going to be kicked back in place on Canada and Mexico until April 2nd. And if he's using this for leverage, I just want to know what's on the other side of the leverage. I'm fine with President Trump using tariffs as leverage.

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He's done it successfully against the country of Colombia, for example, to get them to take deportees. He's done it against Mexico to get Mexico to pledge to put 10,000 troops on the border. All that's fine. What are the deliverables that we can look forward to from Canada and Mexico that would justify the threat of tariffs? That's all.

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That's all because then maybe Canada delivers and we don't have to do the tariffs. The problem with tariffs, folks, trade wars are not good and they are not easy to win as a matter of fact. And they are not good for inflation because when you restrict supply and demand remains the same, prices go up. This is just basic econ 101.

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Here's President Trump saying that the tariffs will kick back in place on April 2nd.

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Okay, now again, reciprocal tariffs as a way of driving down tariffs to get everybody to go weapons down, that's fine with me. But tariffs as sort of an America strengthening policy do not have a long and storied history. And if you want the Trump administration to be successful, you need the Trump administration to actually keep the economy humming. You need inflation to come down.

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It's really important. The other thing you need is no distractions. I've said this over and over and over. What President Trump is doing right now is way too important for there to be stupid distractions. I bring this up because the big distraction of the day is that Grifter's extraordinaire, the Tate brothers, are apparently now arriving in Florida.

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And this is happening because apparently the Trump administration put significant pressure on the country of Romania to release them from house arrest. Now, I don't need to get into sort of the legal vagaries of what house arrest means in Romania. Does this mean that they're never going to go back to Romania and they won't be prosecuted? There are criminal allegations in Romania.

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But Jeff Bezos does exist in the business world and in the world of semi-rationality. And so yesterday, Jeff Bezos put out an announcement. His announcement was that he was going to be remaking the Washington Post editorial board. Quote, I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning. I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

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They're under indictment in Romania for allegations of sex trafficking. One of the allegations apparently includes rape of an underage girl. Put all that aside. Andrew Tate is an American citizen. He was born in the United States. His father was an American citizen. His mom was a British citizen. He's always considered himself more British than American.

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But the real question is, is it good for America for the Tates to be here? Now, again, that's not a sort of legalistic question as to whether they should be released from house arrest. I have no actual opinion on release from house arrest for American citizens who are accused of sex trafficking in foreign countries. I'll leave that one to the lawyers.

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The question is going to be whether it is good for the Trump administration, for example, the Tates to go walking around with all these people who are very closely associated with the Trump administration. My suggestion is no. I'm not sure what the popularity rating there would be. My guess is not particularly high.

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If you want to give a spate of bad headlines to your opponents, make sure that you put people who are self-professed pimps who literally ran a pornography industry and made millions of dollars off of it. alleged sex traffickers, radical Muslims who are self-proclaimed terrorist supporters, including supporters of Hamas, running around the United States with some of your closest allies.

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If that sounds like a winning proposition, I'm just wondering, where's the political win there? Forget about the morality of it. OK, the morality of it. I've spoken about the Tate brothers before. I think they're disgusting. I think that they have diagnosed many problems with feminism and they have diagnosed many problems with left wing thought that are easily diagnosable.

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And then all of their solutions are not just wrong, but prurient and ugly. The question as to why the Trump administration would expend political capital to do this, that's a bizarre one. And again, if you think that the left-wing president is going to hang this around Trump's neck, you got another thing coming. Apparently, Andrew and Tristan have left the country for the United States.

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They're supposed to arrive early Thursday morning in southern Florida. Apparently, the Romanian prosecutors said in a news release they are still pursuing criminal investigations against the two British American citizens. And they said they'd been allowed to leave Romania and had to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned.

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The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Again, this raises legal questions about when, if they return to Romania at any point. But I really don't care about the Tate brothers. I do care about the effect on the Trump agenda of association between these kind of scumbags and members of the Trump administration.

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That does not seem like a particular win in a time when you're going to need political capital to expend on actual serious projects. So from a practical point of view, don't see it.

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So the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, he's the owner of the Washington Post. He bought it several years ago. And he said at the time he was not going to get involved in the editorial side of the newspaper. And then the newspaper decided to basically become the repository of the most radical, woke nonsense in all of American media.

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From a moral point of view, I'm just going to say, I don't think that America needs more self-professed pimps who hate marriage, believe that impregnating tons of women is the mark of manhood, who preach support for actual terrorists, have outstanding criminal allegations of sex trafficking with a proud history of pornography distribution, and make their money today on a grift university that effectively suckers young men into giving them thousands of dollars for basically no return.

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We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

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I don't know. Call me strange. I'm just not sure what the upside is there for anybody involved and for people who are going to now tout these folks as some sort of heroic characters, which undoubtedly will happen. The right has a massive problem with this. The right has a massive problem with touting grifters as actual heroes now. And this is this is

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shall we say, not salutary to the goals of actually making America great again. OK, meanwhile, President Trump is doing something pretty phenomenal with regard to Venezuela. So the president announced yesterday that he'd be terminating the Biden era oil deal with Venezuela.

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So Biden, in an attempt to lower oil prices before the election, had essentially given concessions to the Venezuelan government, which is, again, a dictatorship, a socialist dictatorship. in order to get the oil prices down. Supposedly, that was contingent on Venezuela being slightly nicer to the United States.

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Well, the president made the announcement Wednesday afternoon, claiming Venezuela is transporting violent criminals deported from the United States at a rapid pace. Trump blasted Biden for making the concession agreement with the evil regime of Nicolás Maduro.

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He said, we are hereby reversing the concessions that crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela on the oil transaction agreement in November 26, 2022, and also having to do with electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime. So again, that is a positive.

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He said the regime has not been transporting the violent criminals they sent back into our country, back to Venezuela at the rapid pace they'd agreed to. I'm therefore ordering the ineffective and unmet Biden concession agreement be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That, of course, is a good move.

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There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job. I am of America and for America and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical.

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Okay, in just a moment, we'll get to the latest negotiations surrounding Ukraine, an important Supreme Court case. But first, this is the one you don't want to miss. Tuesday, March 4th, President Trump addresses Congress, 9 p.m. Eastern, laying out his America First vision. tackling immigration reform, economic revival, national security. We're not going to sit this one out.

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Join us for Backstage Live at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, our pre-show breakdown with the full crew at The Daily Wire. Then we'll watch the entire speech together live at Daily Wire Plus. And when Trump is done, we're back with unfiltered, no BS reactions you won't get anywhere else. This is an event shaping America's future. So be there. Watch it all live on Daily Wire Plus this Tuesday night.

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Subscribe right now at dailywire.com. Meanwhile, there's a lot of talk about the Possible end of the war in Ukraine. Apparently, Vladimir Zelensky is going to show up in the United States and he is going to be holding a meeting with President Trump. According to The Post, President Trump and President Zelensky offer differing expectations on Wednesday for a high-stakes summit later this week.

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The Ukrainian leader underscored his need for American assurances about Kyiv's future security. The U.S. president stressed the benefits of a deal to reap Ukraine's vast mineral wealth. Trump said that he and Zelensky would use a hastily arranged meeting at the White House on Friday to finalize that mineral compact his administration has pushed on Kyiv.

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Now, again, that mineral compact actually is a pretty good deal for Ukraine. It is a mineral compact in which the United States invests in future development of rare earth minerals that have yet to be basically identified in Ukraine. Trump told reporters, quote, my number one thing is to get the war stopped. My number two thing is I don't want to have to pay any more money.

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Yeah, well, I mean, that was always his priority. President Trump also said yesterday Ukraine will not be joining NATO. That is not a shock. And the sort of possible membership in NATO that had been dangled before Ukraine for years and years and years, that was bad American policy. If you're not going to do it, then don't threaten it. In any case, here is President Trump saying it yesterday.

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And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical. It minimizes coercion and practical. It drives creativity, invention, and prosperity. I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no.

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So President Trump did say, I'm not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We're going to have Europe do that because Europe is their next door neighbor. And so the question is whether the Europeans are actually going to pick up the ball. Keir Starmer is also visiting. He is the Labour left wing prime minister of the UK.

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He apparently is going to try and convince President Trump to continue to support the war in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, Starmer will face the same balancing act as Emmanuel Macron did without the benefit of years of interactions dating back to 2017.

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Unlike Macron, Starmer will arrive in the Oval Office armed with a pledge to increase his country's military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 into 3% within a decade. And Starmer is going to pare back on Britain's overseas development aid, echoing actually some of what President Trump is doing. Apparently, Starmer is going to show strong support for Vladimir Zelensky.

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He's going to tell President Trump that they shouldn't rush into a peace deal with Vladimir Putin that doesn't establish security guarantees for Ukraine. But again, here is the reality. The Europeans can, in fact, take the lead here. If the Europeans say, listen, we're going to keep funding this forever. Our economy is 10 times the size of Russia's. We're going to keep funding this.

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We're going to keep making sure that Ukraine has the hardware. And so, you know, we're part of this equation as well. And this negotiation is basically done. What is it they are asking the United States for that Trump is unwilling to do at this point that they can't do themselves? That is sort of the big question going forward.

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Because realistically speaking, if Russia believes that Europe as a whole is going to continue to fund the war, what Putin is gambling on is that basically the entire West just gets tired and he walks into Kyiv. But I've yet to see a unified Western belief that that is the next thing that is going to happen right here.

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Okay, meanwhile, the Supreme Court of the United States is making a couple of fascinating moves. First, yesterday, John Roberts, Chief Justice, granted the Trump administration's request to put on hold a lower court order that required it to pay an estimated $2 billion in foreign assistance funds for State Department and U.S. aid projects by midnight on Wednesday. So Roberts is getting tired.

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The Supreme Court is getting very tired of these district court judges who are putting nationwide injunctions on presidential actions. which of course is correct. Whether or not the Supreme Court rules with the president in the end, he's saying, listen, that's up to us. It's not up to random district court judge appointed by Joe Biden to shut down the workings of the American government.

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Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is also now hearing a case. about whether, in fact, you can sue for discrimination under anti-discrimination law if you are not a member of a quote-unquote discreet and insular minority.

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So there is a case from Ohio that was heard where a person named Marlene Ames claims a state agency where she works denied her a promotion and then demoted her because she's heterosexual, instead giving both her old job and the one she had sought to gay people.

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After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, says Jeff Bezos. It won't be easy. It will require 100% commitment. I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction. Okay, so that is a sea change, and it is a recognition, a true recognition, that the Washington Post was never.

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A federal appeals court in Cincinnati had thrown out Ames' lawsuit, finding she failed to show the background circumstances suggesting the employer was hostile to straight people, a threshold step that wouldn't have been required if the gay employee had claimed discrimination.

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So, in other words, the law did not require you to show, for example, if you're a gay person suing, that the entire agency was anti-gay. It just had to show discrimination in this particular case. But the judge in this case said you have to show evidence that the entire agency is anti-straight. But that is stupid.

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As Justice Samuel Alito said during oral arguments, that rule is apparently based on an intuition about the way most employers behave. Maybe it was sound at the time, but it's no longer sound today.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested the case could be resolved easily by, quote, a really short opinion that says discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, whether it's because you're gay or because you're straight, is prohibited. And the rules are the same, whichever way that goes.

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The double standard that is implicit in so much of our discrimination law has been part and parcel of the left-wing reorientation of the United States for decades.

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Christopher Caldwell wrote an amazing book called The Age of Entitlement all about this, about how anti-discrimination law, particularly parts of the Civil Rights Act, completely restructured the way that American law was done, how regulations were done in the United States. Well, that double standard should not apply. If discrimination is wrong in one direction, it is wrong in all directions.

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It should be that simple. And the Supreme Court looks like it's going to make that clear as well. Well, joining us online to discuss everything going on at the White House is our Daily Wire White House correspondent, Mary Margaret Olihan. Mary Margaret, thanks for joining the show.

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So let's talk about a story that Daily Wire actually broke a little bit earlier this week. There was this big confrontation that happened at a governor's meeting with President Trump at which President Trump basically told the governor of Maine that federal money was going to go away unless they got on board with the executive order saying that men can't play in women's sports.

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And then a meltdown occurred. Can you detail exactly what this was?

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The fallout is obviously going to continue. And meanwhile, the fireworks continue at the White House. So one of the big controversies over the course of the last week or so is the White House Correspondents Association being basically barred from deciding who's in the press pool.

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For people who don't understand this issue, Mary Margaret, why don't you explain what the press pool is, how it used to be decided, and now what the new sort of regime is?

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one of these places that had a broad spectrum of opinion. The tacit recognition in what Jeff Bezos is saying is, sure, there might have been a time when you could claim that the Washington Post was a place that was sort of a platform for a variety of opinions. Charles Krauthammer and George Will used to write for the Washington Post. And then something changed.

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It is pretty embarrassing, especially considering that the head of the WHCA is now going to go work at MSNBC and was supposedly a representative of the unbiased press pool. Mary Margaret, you're doing a great job over at the White House. We'll check in with you soon.

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And meanwhile, the left continues to just be incompetent. Michael Moore is somehow still being trotted out as a moral voice at this point. It's kind of amazing. So apparently, Michael Moore put out a Substack post on Tuesday, and he is making the claim that, effectively speaking,

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We need illegal immigrants everywhere because otherwise you're not going to have the people who are going to stop an asteroid on a path to decimate the earth. Quote, who's really being removed by ICE tonight? The child who discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The ninth grade nerd who would have stopped that asteroid that's going to hit us in 2032?

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And then he cited the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose dad was born in Syria. He said, we get nothing from that Syrian Muslim who sired a junior, Abdul Fattah, a nothing migrant with a nothing out of wedlock baby, except that nothing baby was soon adopted and given an American name, Steve Jobs. Yes, that Steve Jobs. I'm grateful for that Muslim migrant baby being born here 70 years ago today.

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Okay, well, I mean, first of all, Steve Jobs' story is largely about his adoptive family, not about his natural birth. So if you're going to give credit to anybody for Steve Jobs, you really should talk about his adoptive family. That's exactly who Steve Jobs gave the credit to. But if the case is that illegal immigration is somehow similar to legal immigration, I'm just wondering why.

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And so once the Washington Post became the exclusive preserve of the radical left on matters economic and social, Once it did that, it was no longer a platform. It was now, in the most real sense, a publisher, only of the things that the editorial board wanted to publish. And so he says, listen, if that's going to be the way that it is, then I want it to publish the things I want.

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Hilariously, in his list of various people who should have been allowed to immigrate because they're making America great, he includes Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, an actual terrorist supporter. He also includes Linda Sarsour. I don't think you're making the case that you think you're making, Michael. I really, really do not.

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Meanwhile, at the same time that Michael Moore is trying to make the case for open borders and open immigration, a representative named Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, she is questioning whether Elon Musk is loyal to America. Guys, you're gonna have to pick one lane here. Are you gonna be xenophobes or are you gonna be open borders people? Pick one.

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Only? That's a long time to be a citizen. 22 years. I know American-born citizens who've only been a citizen for 21 years. They're 21 years old. What the? Yeah, you're right. Elon is loyal to Canada. Nailed that one, lady. That's really good. But again, the left has no capacity to stand up to its own radicals. That was made clear yesterday over at Barnard.

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Barnard College, of course, which is part of Columbia University, The New York Post reports dozens of keffiyeh-clad anti-Israel protesters took over a building at Barnard College for several hours Wednesday evening, assaulting a school employee while protesting the expulsions of two students who stormed a Columbia University class in January and threw around flyers loaded with hateful rhetoric.

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Videos circulating online posted by X... By Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which is in fact a pro-terror group, showed the masked students lining a hallway in Milbank Hall, the oldest building on campus, beating drums and loudly chanting through the microphones. By the way, they did this on the same exact day that in Israel a eulogy was being held for the Bibas family.

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The Bibas family is the mother and two babies who were murdered point blank in cold blood, the babies with the bare hands of Hamas. This is the day that the pro-Palestinian protesters decided to take over Barnard College.

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Hundreds of thousands of people showed up in the streets, up to perhaps 10% of the entire Israeli population showed up in the streets to pay tribute to the family of Yarden Bibas. He is the surviving father who was released as a hostage. His wife was murdered by Hamas.

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Again, his four-year-old and his one-year-old were murdered in the captivity of Hamas, apparently according to autopsies, with the bare hands of Hamas and their bodies were battered with rocks to make it try and look like they were killed in an airstrike. Here are some of Yardin Bibas' eulogy. He's saying it in Hebrew. I'll give you the translation.

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If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn't have fired. I think about everything we went through together. There are so many beautiful memories.

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I remember Ariel and Kafir's birth. Those are the two kids.

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I spent $100 million on this newspaper. I own this newspaper. I get to decide what's in this newspaper. And to this, I say, of course, that's true. As the co-founder of a rather major publication, we publish the things on our publication that we think are appropriate. And we don't publish the things that we don't feel are appropriate.

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So thank you, my beloved. Okay, so the same day that was happening, these truly evil protesters showed up at Barnard College and took over the hallways in solidarity with pro-Hamas students who were expelled because they are foreign exchange students who actually support terrorism. This led... to the Columbia University spokesperson, Christina Miller, offering concessions to the protesters.

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Again, the absolute incompetence is not incompetence. They're on the side of the protesters. That's all. They are pro-hamasniks. Half of these administrators are pro-hamasniks. Cut the student aid to these universities. Taxpayer dollars should not be flowing to universities that teach pro-terrorism tripe and make room for it. Just gross.

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You ridiculous people just kick them out of the building and then expel the people who are foreign exchange students. It's that simple. But they never will do that because they have to concede to the pro-terror side. They must. It is apparently in their Columbia University contract. All righty, guys, coming up, we're going to jump into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.

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You have to be a subscriber to have your question answered in the mailbag. You should also subscribe because we just have so much awesome stuff. We've got Jordan Peterson stuff, the Gospels, Exodus, Depression, Anxiety. We've got Matt Walsh's big movies. And of course, we have all access live today. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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So you're not going to find pro-abortion positions at the Daily Wire. You're not. You are not going to find pro-communism positions at the Daily Wire. That's not a thing. You're going to find pro-sex trafficking or pro-pedophilia positions. There are lots of things you're not going to find at the Daily Wire. And what Jeff Bezos is saying is the same thing. He's saying, this is my newspaper.

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I bought it. I get to run it. And good for him. Good for him. I think that we are exiting the era, and we have exited the era, of quote-unquote objective journalism. And we've now moved toward the realization that there is no such thing. Now, you can make the case that there are, in fact, journalists who do their best to try to remove their personal bias from situations. However...

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The notion that writ large, there is a quote unquote objective news media was a lie and is a lie. It is untrue. There's a prism of politics through which the news is refracted at every one of these major publications. Everybody knows the Wall Street Journal editorial page, opts toward the right. And everybody knows the New York Times editorial page, opts toward the left.

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The Washington Post blew out its credibility more than any other major newspaper in the country. It was the paper of Record. It was the paper of Watergate. It was the paper that broke an enormous number of serious scandals about American government, and instead it turned into basically Salon.com. It was just Jennifer Rubin whining about how Donald Trump was a mean, bad, mean man.

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For Bezos to say, our editorial page is now going to promote economic and social freedom, for example, that's at least a perspective. Now you know who to call when there is a problem. And the left is absolutely losing it. So as stated, Washington Post opinion section editor David Shipley resigned, suggesting, of course, that this is not what he wanted to stand for.

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Meanwhile, Post chief economics reporter Jeff Stein posted, quote, massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into the Washington Post opinion section today. Makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there. Well, I mean, that's not his responsibility. It's his job to run the paper as he sees fit. He owns it. And turnabout is fair play here, gang.

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I'm old enough to remember when Twitter was owned by Jack Dorsey and when conservatives said that the standards that were being applied were unfair and that even the standards that Twitter said it was applying were not the standards they were actually applying. People on the left said, well, then build your own. And then Elon Musk bought it. And now they're whining about it.

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The same thing is true here. And when people complained about the editorial direction of the Washington Post, the left said, well, you know, you don't own the Washington Post. You don't like it, build your own. So we here at The Daily Wire, we did build our own. Okay, but so Jeff Bezos coming around and saying, okay, well now I'm going to run this thing the way I want to run this thing.

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That is not only laudable, it is useful. It is highly useful because let's just be transparent about this. Now the Washington Post has a direction. The New York Times always had a direction. It was the lie that killed the mainstream media. It was the lie that killed the legacy media.

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Jeff Stein, however, the chief economics reporter said, quote, I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage. But if Bezos tries interfering with the news side, I will be quitting immediately and letting you know. Wow, what a hero. What an absolute hero. Now, again, Bezos says he's not going to interfere on the news side of the business.

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And I will suggest that the sort of hard line, bright line division between news and opinion is not quite so bright. Again, I think we're more honest about this at Daily Wire. Our news pages lean conservative. Everything is refracted through a system of values. That's us being honest, not us being dishonest.

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Well, the ex-Washington Post editor, Marty Baron, of course, presided over the spotlight scandal that was uncovered by the Washington Post. He went after Jeff Bezos, attacked him for it, He put out a statement suggesting that it was just terrible. He said he was sad and disgusted.

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He said, Bezos argues for personal liberties, but his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section. It was only weeks ago the Post described itself as providing coverage for all of America. Now its opinion pages will be open only to some of America, those who think exactly as he does. Again, trying to preserve the lie. It was never for all of America.

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The Washington Post was never for all of America. It was a left-wing rag for decades. Barron said Bezos himself has done personal liberties a disservice by cravenly yielding to a president who shows no respect for liberty, one who aims to use the power of government to bully, threaten, punish, and crush anyone who's not in his camp, especially the press.

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And then he said, there's no doubt in my mind he's doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon, the source of his wealth, and Blue Origin, which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration. He has prioritized those commercial interests over the Post. He's betraying the Post's longstanding principles to do so.

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So first of all, if that's true, that would be terrible, right? You don't want actual journalism, conservative or leftist, being held hostage by any president. And it defeats the purpose of journalism. It defeats the purpose of opinion journalism, too. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this is, in fact, the case.

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It was Eugene Robinson whining about how America was terrible. It was all the usual suspects just saying the most radical, stupid things. And the Washington Post's subscribership began to seriously dip because they weren't making any of the same sort of smart business moves the New York Times made. The New York Times also became a liberal fan paper, but they also decided to diversify into Wordle.

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And the accusation, by the way, that anybody who does anything non-leftist is motivated by money, I know this is a favorite of people on the left. I know this is a favorite. It's so funny. The people on the left who claim they are least about money, they love money. All they think about is money. All they think about is, quote, unquote, income inequality. They never think about the poor.

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They only think about income inequality. Well, folks, the left tends to think that everything is free, but the truth is that most things aren't, including freedom. Freedom isn't free, and freedom has to be defended. What isn't said enough is that online freedom is not free either. It too has to be defended, not by military force, but by technological force. Encryption.

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Strong encryption can protect your right to privacy online and defend you from hackers. So how do you get this encryption? With ExpressVPN. Internet providers track and sell your data. Hackers plan public Wi-Fi. Governments monitor your every move online.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With ExpressVPN, their powerful encryption reroutes 100% of your online activity through secure servers, making your data invisible to prying eyes. Now, I'm constantly on the go. I'm constantly using public Wi-Fi. I'm in an airport, for example. And I don't need hackers checking my email for me. Don't take my word for it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They invited the world's top auditors, PwC and KPMG, to verify their own revolutionary trusted server technology. It's the only system that physically cannot store your data because it runs entirely on volatile memory. While other companies profit from invading your privacy, ExpressVPN goes the extra mile to protect it. So if you want to join me in defending your online freedom, get ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You can use my special link to get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free at expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben. As you all know, the Holy Land is under threat of attack every single day.

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In fact, this morning, there's another car ramming attack in Israel, surrounded by enemies who vow never to stop until Israel has been destroyed, while still recovering and rebuilding from the devastating October 7th attacks the people of Israel are suffering, along with many Americans who stand with Israel.

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I want to help in any way I can, and that's why I partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. The fellowship has been on the ground in Israel for more than 40 years, providing food, shelter, and safety to those in need. They deliver meals to the elderly. They place bomb shelters in the most vulnerable places, bulletproof ambulances, and life-saving equipment to hospitals.

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That's only scratching the surface of what they do. As anti-Semitism continues to rise around the world, the people of Israel and our Jewish brothers and sisters need us now more than ever. Please join me in supporting the fellowship in this life-saving work. A gift of $100 will help provide bomb shelters and other security equipment for the people of Israel.

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As the world turns its back on Israel, join me and faithful listeners like you in standing with Israel. Visit benforthefellowship.org. That's www.benforthefellowship.org. Thank you and God bless. The same people who claim that the people who are in favor of free markets are greedy are the people who spend all day trying to figure out how to pry money out of people who have actually earned it.

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So when you see Marty Baron suggesting the only possible reason Jeff Bezos, you know, one of the richest people on earth would be doing this is for money. No, my dude, that is not what is happening here. It is not. Bernie Sanders, of course, one of the greediest leeches in American society, put out a tweet saying, quote, this is what oligarch ownership of the media looks like.

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The second richest guy in the world, Bezos, owns the Washington Post. He has now declared the editorial page of that paper is going Trump right wing. Surprise, Mr. Musk agrees. We must support independent media. Question, it is independent media. Bezos is the owner. He's not owned by the government. Independent media typically means media that is not owned by the government.

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That did not happen with the Washington Post. The Washington Post simply kept doubling down on the anti-Trump radical leftism. And the suggestion that boys weren't just girls, boys had to be girls. This had to be taught to kids. The idea that all politics could be boiled down to racial and sexual identity. The idea that capitalism was in and of itself bad. Well, there is a new middle in America.

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That's typically what it means. Also, nothing in Bezos' note actually says that it's going to be pro-Trump. You can be very pro-free market and very pro-liberty, and you can object to some of the things that Trump is doing. The notion that these two things are coincident is because the left has so lost the plot. It's simply saying you like capitalism and free markets and liberty.

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Apparently, this now makes you Trump-coded. Well, that's your fault, gang. Not anybody else's. Good for Jeff Bezos. I hope he puts his money where his mouth is. I hope that he actually starts hiring columnists. You know, it'd be great. Seriously, it'd be great if somebody at one of the major newspapers voted for Trump. That would be great.

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I'm not sure I can name a single op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Washington Post, who voted for Trump. Maybe at the New York Times, Ross Douthat voted for Trump. Maybe. No one else did. So, you know, over 50% of the country voted for Trump. It might be nice if the Washington Post actually gave some exposure to those views. That might be good.

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But this is all part and parcel of a radical sea change that is happening in American politics, again, driven by the Democrats who are totally disconnected from reality. They're all on blue sky, mentally stroking themselves to left-wing idiocy. And then they are surprised that everybody is running screaming away from them.

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And meanwhile, other big news yesterday, President Trump had his first big cabinet meeting Obviously, a lot of famous people in that cabinet. And while the left is really quite exercised about Donald Trump's cabinet, all these people were individually powerhouses in their own right before they joined the cabinet. Trump had a lot of good things to say in this cabinet meeting.

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He began, of course, with his sort of signal issue, the border. He said, we will be closing the border. He was flanked on one side by his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and on the other side by Marco Rubio, his Secretary of State.

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So he is right about all of that. President Trump also continues to push forward on the layoffs of large numbers of executive branch employees. He said we could fire up to a million people in the executive branch, about three million who work for the executive branch right now.

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Now, one of the sort of big questions here was whether Elon Musk, who's leading Doge, was going to have a seat at the table because he actually does not have an official governmentally approved position. At this point, the answer is no. He showed up for the cabinet meeting, but he wasn't given a seat at the table with the other secretaries.

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Here was Elon Musk suggesting that he was essentially President Trump's tech support.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Hey, hey, and welcome, folks. This is The Ben Shapiro Show. So, we have something behind the paywall over at Daily Wire Plus. It is called Ben Shapiro's Book Club. It's precisely what it sounds like, a book club. Well, one of the books that we analyzed over the course of the last year was George Orwell's 1984. Here's what it sounded like. Hey, everybody, and welcome.

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Because romance is the building block. The romance between man and woman, societally speaking, is the building block of long-lasting and powerful institutions like family. And that's what the state has to wipe away. Because if people actually fell in love and got married and then had kids, it would destroy the impetus for the state having control over every area of your life.

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Meredith says, chapter one, it was always the women and above all the young ones who are the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers out of orthodoxy. This line really struck me as related to Karen's. Curious how you read or interpret this and if you could expand on your viewpoint. It's a great question.

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So this is largely, this has been true, and you see this reflected in other literature surrounding revolutions, that many of the most passionate revolutionaries are women and they tend to be childless women. That is sort of the idea of the state that when the state deprives women of their fundamental role as women, which is bearing and rearing children.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And by the way, that's not a slur against women. Again, it's a superpower. Women have a magical superpower. They can create other human beings from their body and then they can take care of those human beings and raise the next generation. It's literally the most important thing anyone does on Earth. And how motherhood became a dirty word or a slur against women is beyond insane. But.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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When you deprive women of that superpower and when you teach women that really they should give up the thing that is most precious in life, they have to find something to fill that with. And so when the state deprives the women in 1984 of their ability to have children, essentially, and to raise families, of course, they're going to become the most passionate adherents of the party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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They've traded away the thing that's most valuable to them. Brianne says, hello, Ben. I first read 1984 in high school in the 90s. After my initial reading and upon reading it again this past month, I still firmly believe Julia is an undercover party member used to bring down others. Wondering if I'm in the minority with this thinking, please let me know what you think about this idea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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So I think it's a great theory. So when I was reading the book again, right? Last time I read this was like you, probably 20 years ago. And when I was rereading the book and when he meets Julia again, I honestly didn't remember the book all that well. I sort of remember the point of the book and some of the more philosophical sections, but not Julia's character.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1123.25

The first thing that occurred to me is she's obviously gotta be a spy for the state, right? I mean, there's no question. I mean, who just walks up to somebody and slips them the note that says, I love you, and then meets them randomly for sex? Like, that's just not something that typically happens a lot. And so you would think that, yeah, she was an agent of the state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1139.173

You think that's the direction in which it's going to go? I think that it's sort of a red herring that Orwell is using there. Orwell doesn't hide the ball in this book. O'Brien is the person who's the red herring. O'Brien is the actual member of the state organization. You think that it's going to go the other way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And that is the real danger, a state that is so in control of everything surrounding you that you don't even have the ability to think anymore. You don't have the ability to be anymore. And then, of course, there are the three big slogans that are introduced on page 16 in this particular edition. This, I believe, is the Signet Classics edition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1153.881

You think O'Brien is going to be the person who actually is trying to help and he's trying to help Winston get out of the state and the Julia ends up screwing it all up. Instead, it's the opposite. And the reason it has to be the opposite is, again, Orwell's whole theory is that personal romance, personal relationships, which he attributes largely to the motion of the proles.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1172.036

I mean, he openly talks about that in the book, that that is what overcomes the state. So he couldn't make Julia the villain. There was no way to do it. PJ says, hey, Ben, given that George Orwell was an avowed socialist, how do we square the obviously anti-totalitarian slants of 1984 with his views? Do you think he was one of the it just hasn't been done right crowd?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1187.861

Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, yes. I think he was a little too skeptical to embrace full-scale communism and to believe that it could be properly tried because... Orwell was too hard headed for that. It's what made him an outcast from the left as well as from the right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1201.676

However, he never learned enough about economics, I think, to full scale reject the fundamental premises that underlie the totalitarian state. If you believe in individual rights and the individual rights include the right to own and dispense with property, if you believe in those things, it's very difficult to found a totalitarian state on those ideals. Very rough.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1218.705

Orwell, I don't think fully understood socialism is my answer to that, actually. Lisa says, hey Ben, so glad you're doing this. 1984 is one of my favorite works. Are you familiar with the David Bowie album, Diamond Dogs? Bowie was obviously extremely moved by this book as well. He wrote several songs about this classic book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1234.033

The most moving song to me is We Are the Dead, which captures perfectly the relationship between Winston and Julia. It gives me chills every time I hear that this book should be required reading for every American. It's so frightening how accurately it portrays what's going on right now. Again, I think what is so amazing about the book is that it's obviously about a particular type of regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1250.321

That regime is not what exists in the United States, but you can see the echoes. And this is the problem. If you can see the echoes, then you can see what's going to happen down the road.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1258.083

If you can sense the creeping totalitarianism in a society that basically delegates all power to one branch of government to control every area of your life, up to and including personal relationships and how you raise your children, that's a scary thing. Noah says, I was extremely depressed by the ending, especially considering what's going on presently.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1275.808

What hope do you think is out there for us to have a different outcome? Well, I think that the United States, thank God, is structured in such a way that makes it very difficult for full-scale totalitarianism to break out in the United States. The checks and balances created by the founders are very durable. The federalist system is very durable. With that said,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1290.447

One of the great dangers that I see is not necessarily the power of a top-down federal government controlling your life, but the power of a culture that mirrors a lot of the priorities that Orwell talks about in 1984, cramming that down on your kids via the internet, via social media. I'm worried about the cultural lessons of 1984 being applied mob rule up rather than top-down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

131.345

The three slogans of the party, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. In a moment, I'm going to go through what each of those means. First, I kind of wanted to go through a little bit of the iconography that has been associated with 1984 that's become so much a part of how we think about 1984. Of course, you all remember this commercial, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1312.405

That is the thing that frightens me most, which is why it's so important. It's so all-fired important. to make sure that you are raising your kids with values away from the influence of national media who have every intention of corrupting your children. They really do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1326.759

Jesus says, why do you think that even though there are so many parallels between what's in the book and what we're seeing in the society now, people are still in denial about how we're falling for the same traps as the book because nobody wants to believe that they're falling for a trap. There's a great Twilight Zone episode. I forget the name of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1342.013

In which there is a, it's called the Howling Man. That's the name of the episode. Great episode if you can find it. And that episode is, the basic premise is a man walks into an old monastery And he stumbles across a jail cell in the monastery. And inside the jail cell is a man who's howling. Hence the name of the episode, The Howling Man. And he goes and he talks to this guy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1363.645

Everybody's telling him, don't talk to him. Don't talk to him. He goes and he talks to the guy. And the guy behind bars tells them, these are all delusional priests. And these delusional priests keep saying that I'm the devil. They keep saying that I'm Satan. And they kept me here for years. And then the priests tell him he is the devil, right? We've kept it after World War I.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1380.017

We captured the devil. We put him here. It ended all war and we're keeping him here. And the devil convinces this guy, of course, to let him out. He lets him out. World War II begins. Okay. And the basic lesson is, as the devil says, the greatest, essentially the same thing they use in the usual suspects. It's a ripoff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1398.665

They say that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is telling you that he doesn't exist. The same thing is true of totalitarians. The same thing is true of utopians. The greatest trick they ever pull is telling you they are not totalitarian utopians. Don't believe them. Brittany says, hey, I'm a 40 year old mom of four living in Sacramento.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1413.693

This is the first time I read 1984, although I've heard a lot about it. Now I recognize many of the quotes I've heard people use over the years, especially the last couple of years as originating from this book. How old were you when you first read the book? How did it impact you at the time? So I was probably 13 when I first read this book. I was a big reader very, very early.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1432.487

And I remember just being shook by it. I remember, more than anything else, the feel of oppressiveness in the book is what struck me. And that's sort of how you remember books, is sort of how you felt while you were reading it, less than what's actually in the book. And what you feel when you read this book is just the walls closing in. And that is constantly... pushed, right? There's no air.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1452.979

There's no ability to breathe. And that's what Orwell does so beautifully is he really captures that feeling of you have nowhere to turn. You are surrounded on all sides. You cannot escape this. Stephanie says, I read that conservatives often misuse the term Orwellian because Orwell was a democratic socialist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1467.677

In 1984, the fictional book written by Goldstein precisely points out why socialism would fail and why a hierarchy of power will always prevail over equity. How could Orwell be so insightful regarding the threat of tyranny, yet so naive as to believe in any form of socialism? So you have to understand that Orwell's early career was spent covering abject poverty in Britain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And also, you have to understand that Britain has a very different system than the United States. The United States is a nearly classless society. This is something that Alexis de Tocqueville points out in Democracy in America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

149.631

This is a very, very famous commercial. from Apple. It was one of the first Apple commercials, the idea being that IBM, which was then the big company, is big brother, and then you have the lady who shows up out of nowhere, and she throws this hammer. Remember that? She throws the hammer at the screen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1492.913

He talks about the fact that you have these very rigid class-based systems in places like Britain or in France, in which you're born into a class, you'll probably die in that class, there's not a lot of class mobility. The United States never had that. So if you grew up in a society where the poor stayed poor, and no matter what decisions they made, they were always considered a sort of underclass,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1511.693

then you could see why somebody would say this system needs to be done away with. Free market economics doesn't work. We need a complete rejiggering of the system. If you read Road to Wigan Pier, this is what you see from Orwell, is that Orwell is an unbelievably clear thinker when it comes to diagnosing the problems of culture.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1526.36

In Road to Wigan Pier, for example, he talks about the laziness that is bred by the welfare state, but at the same time, he sees a rigid class-based system that people can't break out of. And this is why, by the way, socialism has never picked up popularity in the United States because we don't have that same rigid class-based system.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Scott says, in 1984, the movie, it opens with, who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. The state then proceeds to bend the past to its narrative as if it were silly putty. This is starkly different to the reverence it receives in Fiddler on the Roof, where they keep their balance with tradition, tradition, and tradition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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The state, which seeks to be God, ruthlessly controls its citizens and suffocates any independence or diversity in thought. These leaders are human and necessarily lacking in power, knowledge, and morality. The true God is not. He is perfect in every way, did not think to limit people in such a manner. He gave very few restrictions."

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1570.839

Winston is told, it is not enough to obey him, you must love him. What does it mean to love your destroyer? Well, this is the basic thing. So Winston has to love Big Brother because that means that his mind has been overcome. If you can learn to love that which has destroyed your independence, that's the only way you can survive. Once your independence has been destroyed, you have two choices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1591.195

You can either rage against the dying of the light and collapse completely into yourself, or you can join the mob. You can begin to think the way that the state wants you to think. You can start thinking that people you don't like are double plus on good and that two plus two equals five. And by the way, this is the easy path. It is the easy path. And this you see, I mean, how weak are we?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

16.547

I'm very pumped because this month, we read 1984 by George Orwell. You can see how I keep tabs. Literally, I put tabs in the book. We're gonna go through this book. We're gonna answer some of your questions. First, I'm gonna give sort of a brief intro to the book. I think, honestly, there's no better way to introduce this book

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1609.021

Honestly, as a society, how weak are we? We're so weak that it used to take full-scale totalitarian regimes with people being shot to death in the Lubyanka in order to convince people to believe things that were untrue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Now, to get people to believe that a man is a woman and a woman is a man just requires a bunch of idiots on Twitter yelling at you if you don't put your preferred pronouns in your bio. Marianne says, amazing parallels between Ingsoc and science deniers, natural immunity to COVID and trans athletes, using the pandemic to wield tyrannical government power and rewrite history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

163.54

Well, this commercial, maybe the most famous commercial in the history of television, was actually filmed at the same time as the film 1984 with John Hurt, which is a pretty good film adaptation. Again, the imagery here is so telling. This is the compendium of some of the covers of 1984. Again, the constant icon is the human eye and the eye of the state that is always watching you at all times.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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1619 CRT, very timely book choice. Yeah, again, you see a lot of these elements in the culture promoted by the left. When we talk about wiping away history, rewriting history, memory holing things, like the attempt to wipe away history, that is key to these folks. If you destroy history, then there's nothing to cling to. You can always remake the present, always.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1656.032

We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, here's something fascinating. Until the 1990s, the US government classified encryption as munitions. They literally categorized it alongside weapons. You know what? They weren't totally wrong. Encryption is indeed powerful. It's your shield against those who want to exploit your personal information online. That's why we use ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1672.048

It's an elegant solution that encrypts your internet connection and routes it through secure servers, keeping your online activity private the way it should be. I've been using ExpressVPN for years now. Honestly, I wouldn't go online without it. Think about it. Without encryption, your digital life is an open book. Your internet service provider can legally sell your browsing history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Data brokers track your every move across websites. Government agencies can peek into your online world. Here's the beautiful part, however. ExpressVPN makes privacy simple. One tap, and when the app turns green, you're protected. It works across all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets, and a single subscription covers up to eight devices. Encryption's a weapon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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It's one you have a legal right to use for your own protection. It's up to you to exercise that right. If you decide to take action today, you can get three extra months of ExpressVPN for free just by using my special link. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. That's ExpressVPN.com slash Ben to get three extra months for free and start protecting yourself today. That's ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Jen says, No, it's so much easier now. The digital world has made it so much easier. So in this book, he has to have like an actual memory hole where he takes physical things and he has to throw them in the hole. You know how easy it is to hide physical objects, right? This is why he's able to find curiosity shops with relics of the past.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1754.38

And the great tragedy, of course, is he can't find anybody to explain those relics to him. But the relics exist. There are always these scraps of the past. When everything is digital, you can rewrite history like this. It is that easy. I mean, to take just a sort of perfect example. So you remember that the star of Juno was a woman named Ellen Page.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Ellen Page was a straight woman and then a bisexual woman and then a gay woman and then a transgender man. That is the evolution of Ellen Page. Now Ellen Page calls herself Elliot Page. Okay, the day that Ellen Page said, my name is Elliot Page and I am a man, that day, everything on the internet changed. Every single thing. Her IMDB was changed from Ellen Page to Elliot Page.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Elliot Page was now characterized as the star of Juno and the star of the Christopher Nolan movie, Inception. Everything changed immediately, like within 30 seconds. Because in the digital world, you can memory hole information with a push of a button. That's what's super scary. You can just get rid of this stuff. This is why folks get hard copies of books. Really, I'm dead serious about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Get hard copies of books before they censor them. We're going to read a lot of censored books this year. You know, we're lucky that those are still in circulation. Within 15 years, if the left had its way, within 15 years, within a year, if the left had its way, a lot of these books would immediately be censored and out of circulation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Jen continues, also, Orwell makes a point of discussing sexuality and the death of having real intimacy with another person. The depth with which intimacy brings into a relationship cannot be overstated, but today we see the left destroying what it means to have a fulfilling relationship with another person, which includes the death of physical intimacy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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I believe this book applies just as much, if not more, to today than it did back when it was published. I mean, I agree. I mean, it was obviously much more immediate and you could see the metaphor much more easily because there were states on Earth that dominated half the globe that were mirroring what Orwell was talking about. But again, the hints are the really scary thing. That's what's scary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1864.437

Ellen says, I have only one comment on the book because I feel everything else will be covered. I note, Winston Smith had one corner of his flat where he could hide from the telescreen and the continuous watching eye of Big Brother. That has left us a ray of hope you can escape the ever-present observation. Right. I mean, he has this one corner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And so long as he stays in that corner, by the way, he's OK. The problem is he finds another corner and that corner is unguarded. And because that corner, you know, because they have the surveillance apparatus behind the picture in the room that he shares with Julia. he's screwed, right? The minute that your mind is laid bare to everyone, that is the minute that you are toast.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

188.37

Big Brother is indeed always watching in the iconography of this. So I want to start by going through a little bit about George Orwell and his history, because you sort of have to understand his history to understand what this book is and what it isn't. It's been read as sort of a pure right wing tone, which is very weird because George Orwell considered himself a socialist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1900.23

Lisa says, why do you believe Winston believes the ultimate salvation rebellion from Big Brother and the party will come from the proles rather than from the outer party members like himself, Parsons, Symes, Julia, et cetera. So what he says is that the party members have been indoctrinated into the cult of never having relationships with other people, right? He does say this late in the book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1919.114

He's talking with Julia. I can try and find the exact section. But he specifically is talking about why he believes that the proles are the great hope. And the rationale that he gives is exactly this. He says that the proles are the only ones who have real relationships. It's on page 164 of the Signet Classics edition of the book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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He says, the terrible thing that the party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you were in the grip of the party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing made literally no difference.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1960.036

What happened when you vanished, and whatever happened, you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. They were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet, to the people of only two generations ago, this would not have seemed all important because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties, which they did not question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1976.105

What mattered were individual relationships and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man could have value in itself. The proles that suddenly occurred to him had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea. They were loyal to one another.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

1990.154

For the first time in his life, he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They'd held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to relearn by conscious effort.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2003.639

And in thinking this, he remembered without apparent relevance how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage stalk. The proles are human beings, he said aloud. We are not human. That I think is the answer to the question, right? Is that the proles are still tied to other people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2019.725

Now, what I think Orwell neglects is that you require institutions to tie you to other people. And those institutions are things like family. It can't just be two people reaching out to each other in the dark. They have to be able to build families and they have to be able to build institutions. They have to exist in churches. The idea that sort of the proles don't have belief systems is wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2038.099

They do. It's just those belief systems are completely contrary to many of the utopian beliefs of the wild left. Kate says, when I finished the book, the main thought I had was that God gives us opposition in all things for a reason. Humans need to know sorrow so we can know joy and vice versa. The party, like Satan, does not want opposition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2056.167

The only way to have a life without opposition is to create a society fueled by hate and anger. The party is constantly giving them something to hate and forces them to indulge in the hate every day, the two minutes of hate. The party also purposely takes all joy out of society by eliminating natural affections with spouse and child.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

206.417

So to understand why George Orwell, a socialist, would write Animal Farm, which is a very anti-communist book, and 1984, which is a very anti-communist book, you have to understand that there is another side of communism that was promoted by Leon Trotsky. The basic idea here is that communism had never really been tried. You've heard this one before. Socialism has never really been tried.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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By corrupting these two sacred things, the person no longer is able to experience the basic joys in life and thus really has nothing to live for. So the person lives only for the party and can only feel the hate. I also wanted to tell you I felt compelled to read this book over Christmas. Was excited to hear this was your first book choice. Thank you so much for all that you do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2083.39

That's a very solid take. I think that's correct. Avery says... In my view, Orwell glances over the power that religion has on the will and psyche of a populace, and almost purposefully discredits it as a factor at all, as if it's a foregone conclusion that a higher power was a ridiculous notion altogether.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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To add to your summary, if an Orwellian-type future is to be avoided, it will certainly be, in part, attributed in no small contribution from people of faith. P.S. The book was so depressing, I had to immediately read some Wendell Berry afterwards to get the taste out of my mouth. It is a very depressing book, but that's why it's great. Yes, this is right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2113.163

I think that he does make reference to God. It's one of the best parts of the book, honestly. There are only a couple of references to God in the entire book. The section where he explains why Syme has been jailed, or Ampleforth, rather, right? So there's a poet, Ampleforth, right? And the poet Ampleforth has been jailed. He's been loyal to the regime. And this section is so good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2137.872

It's just, it's terrific. So he asked him, what are you doing in here? He says, to tell you the truth, there's only one offense, is there not? And have you committed it? Apparently I have. He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for a moment as though trying to remember something. These things happen, he began vaguely. I've been able to recall one instance, a possible instance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2158.338

It was an indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word God to remain at the end of a line. I could not help it, he added, almost indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. It was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was Rod's. You realize there are only 12 rhymes to Rod in the entire language?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2173.822

For days, I had racked my brain. There was no other rhyme. The expression on his face changed. The annoyance passed out of it for a moment. He looked almost pleased. A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedants, who has found out some useless facts shown through the dirt and scrubby hair.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2186.886

Has it ever occurred to you, he said, that the whole history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes? No, that particular thought had never occurred to Winston, nor in the circumstances did it strike him as very important or interesting. But it is interesting. Okay, the whole point here is that language defines how we live.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2205.193

And a single mention of the word God is dangerous to the regime. A single mention of the word God is dangerous to the regime. Mark says, hey, Ben, I last read 1984 when I was in high school in the 70s. I found it to be science fiction, which I did not really relate. Reading it for the book club was much more frightening as I saw so many parallels to American society today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2223.26

It left me in a pretty dark mood. Yeah, I mean, it is supposed to. That was the goal. Sophia says, hey, Ben, my name is Sophia. I'm 14 in eighth grade. I absolutely love this book. I actually wrote a book report on it for my English class.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

223.824

And the big problem is that Stalin took communism and socialism off the path of righteousness. And if only it had been properly applied, then everything would have been okay. Well... Obviously, that is untrue. We'll get to why that's untrue in just one moment. But Trotsky was indeed a great critic of Stalin to the point where he ended up with an ice pick in his eye in Mexico.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2233.83

One of the things I noticed in the book is that during Winston's time in the Ministry of Love, he seems to develop Stockholm syndrome after the time he spent being tortured by O'Brien. It's not really a question, but something I thought was interesting and wanted to know if you noticed it too. Absolutely. He is converted by O'Brien. And O'Brien breaks him down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2249.59

Now, there's been some criticism of the book on how O'Brien breaks him down. The criticism is when they actually bring him into room 101. And they sick the rats on him, essentially. And he breaks. And he says, do it to Julia. He says, do it to Julia. That this is not enough of a culmination. That O'Brien has broken him down piece by piece by piece by piece.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And to get him to turn on Julia using simple, pure physical fear is a misread. That you would actually need him to embrace Julia as a heretic to the state, that he would have to be convinced that he was wrong to have ever engaged in a relationship with Julia. And you couldn't use pure physical fear in order to accomplish this. It's a criticism that I think is well taken.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2290.495

It's a super creepy scene, obviously. It's very visual. But the truth is that the what the state would do in the Soviet Union is they would take that which you held most dear. It wouldn't just be through pure fear. It would take that which you held most dear and they would threaten you with it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2306.764

They would force you to believe that this person was bad or this person was terrible because there was something else that you believed in that was deeply threatened. And physical fear wouldn't be enough to do it. So long as physical fear is the only thing a totalitarian regime has, there are people who will resist. And I think that was the failure of the Soviet Union in the end.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2324.056

Tennessee Preacher says, hey, Ben, I have a good amount of questions to ask. Currently, is politics just fake war agreed to by parties to keep them relevant, necessary, in control, and in power? I don't think so. I think that there's some pretty significant differences of opinion. I think at times it can be that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2337.851

I think sometimes it's just a bunch of posturing, but I think there's some pretty serious issues at play right now. John says, rereading 1984, and the two minutes of hate seem like social media. Could the hatred expressed on social media be distracting people's energy instead of being able to see what the real problems are? Absolutely. Absolutely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2353.757

So I've said about social media that social media is two minutes of hate. And in much the same way, it's a mob that is organized but has no actual target. Unlike mobs of the past, where there was something that would happen, and then people for either a good reason or a bad reason would get together and form a mob.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2371.942

Now, we just have a roving mob on the internet waiting for a point of controversy, and then they just snap into action. It's like a badly firing immune system. And the two minutes of hate is pretty much every day on Twitter. Twitter is two minutes of hate. Beverly says, hey, man, did you find the book a little boring? Love your show. Drink daily from the leftist tears mug.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2388.242

No, I think this book is actually one of the least boring classics. I've tried to select books that I think are not boring. That is one of the rules that I have for the book club. So, you know, that is going to foreclose some of the... classics that I think are overlong. So to take an example, I really have no intention of reading Andrew Klavan's favorite book, George Eliot's Middlemarch.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2409.979

I tried to make it through that myself and it is interminable. And I'm not afraid to say that. There are certain books where you read 400 pages of it and you're like, yeah, I can put this down now. And that was one of them for me. Everybody has theirs. Joseph says, hey, Ben, one thing that circled my mind almost as much as the political theory implications of the book was human psychology.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

242.488

And Orwell was a deep critic of Stalin. One of the reasons he was such a deep critic of Stalin is because he actually went and picked up and fought in the Spanish Civil War. So folks tend to forget the Spanish Civil War because it preceded World War II, which, of course, was a much larger, grander, more vicious war. The Spanish Civil War was pretty vicious. It pitted

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2427.283

The kind of cultish collectivism that the public has toward the party cannot simply be tossed up to stupid people. There's something much more powerful going on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2433.548

The topic of psychology is most prevalent in the Ministry of Love in Room 101 at the end of the book, showing how a person can betray himself, his closest family members, everything and everyone in between when given enough stress and pain. What are your general thoughts and ideas surrounding the psychology of 1984? So I think that the psychology of 1984 is correct, but...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2451.181

There's a fascinating contrast, and we'll get to this when we read Brave New World, which I intend on doing sometime this year, probably. The sort of psychology of 1984 is that pain and fear is what drives people into homogeneity. That if you want everybody to obey you, you have to use pain and cuddling and fear. I think there's some truth to that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2470.516

You said on social media, if we inflict enough social pain on you, you will do exactly what we want. You will mirror our priorities and you will start kowtowing and malice struggle sessioning with the woke mob. I think that's true. The Brave New World theory is a little bit different.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2482.852

The Brave New World theory is that we can just enervate you, that we can make it so that you just don't care about major issues. We can inflict just enough pain, but also give you the upside of endless hedonism, and you just won't care about things anymore. And as the internet meme puts it, why not both? Because both now apply, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2499.599

We're bribing people with endless hedonism, and also we are applying just enough pain, just enough pain to actively get people to change their opinions. Patrick says, overall, I enjoyed the book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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It still is my mind working on overdrive to think if there would have been any way to even get O'Brien off foot, knowing very well you can't argue with an insane person nor one who makes the rules of the game you do not know. I think the answer is no. I think that it is impossible for O'Brien to be misfooted because again, he has created his own reality. Now he's sucking you into it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2530.061

It's the same thing as arguing with folks on the left about issues where they refuse to define their terms. If you saw Matt Walsh's fun interview appearance on Dr. Phil, but he literally asked for a definition of a term, a basic term like woman, and was told that it cannot be defined.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Okay, that is Orwellian, the refusal to use actual human language in ways that people understand, and instead to arbitrarily define words so as to exert control over other human beings. That is Orwellian. Pat says, hey, Ben, a variation on the common does Winston die at the end? Can it be argued he dies both spiritually and physically at the end simultaneously?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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In other words, Big Brother consigned him to a life of torment. The moment he finally gave in was the last moment of his life on Earth, kind of like Big Brother really does control you from birth to death. So I don't think that he dies physically at the end of the book. I think it doesn't matter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2573.361

I think the idea is that once he has embraced the state, once he has embraced Ingstock the same way that he saw the three old party members basically condemn themselves and then embrace Ingstock, it doesn't matter at that point when they execute him. He's already dead. Susan says there are at least two references to the Catholic Church and numerous mentions of churches throughout 1984.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2590.471

The enemy of the party is called Goldstein, presumably intentionally a Jewish surname. So that's because of Trotsky, because Trotsky was Jewish. Is Orwell pointing out that religion and belief in God contradicts any secular orthodoxy of the party? And it is not unlike the woke orthodoxy of today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

260.04

a guy named Generalissimo Francisco Franco against the communists who were backed by Stalin. So you had basically Hitler versus Stalin in Spain in the mid-30s. And Orwell, who, again, considered himself a socialist, actually went and fought on the side of the Reds in Spain. He wrote a book about it called Homage to Catalonia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2602.38

Is religious freedom necessary for a free society, even a constitutional republic built upon Judeo-Christian values? Thus, the absence of religion is not freedom, according to Orwell. Did he hold any religious beliefs? So Orwell was not a religious man, so far as I'm aware. but he does understand the social value of religion pretty clearly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2619.532

Trent says, hey Ben, just started reading 1984 for the first time. Do you know if well-known terms like big brother were originally coined by Orwell as he wrote the novel, or is that already a well-known term back in 1949 when the book was published? It'd be interesting to know which of the terms you know so well today are original to Orwell and his writings.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2633.697

The answer is virtually all of those are original to Orwell. So there's a whole section at the end of this particular edition. It's a piece of writing from Orwell talking about the history of Newspeak and where these terms come from and all the rest and how they narrowed down language so that there are only a few words in it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2653.571

How language has basically been broken down into as few words as humanly possible that convey as many meanings as humanly possible because the last thing you want is people to be specific and exact and meticulous in their language because then we might actually understand one another beyond the very basics of human existence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2668.877

Okay, so let's take a look at some of the study questions that I put together for the book club. What makes Winston unique in how he thinks about Big Brother? So this is a question that occurred to me while I was reading the book. Why is Winston different than everybody else? It seems like most people who are with the party are just content to go along with the party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2685.743

And it's not just a matter of pure intelligence. There are some very intelligent people like O'Brien, for example, who goes along with the party. Now, Orwell's explanation for this, I don't think it's completely satisfying. He suggests that O'Brien goes along with the party because he just wants power. It's all about that. I don't think that's right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2702.736

I think the idea for high IQ people is they go along with totalitarian systems because they believe they can mold other human beings. And people who are not as smart go along with totalitarian systems because they believe that there is power in numbers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2713.968

And they believe the lies that are told to them by government actors that they can have all their problems solved so long as enough power is handed over to a centralized government. Is any of this ring familiar? Any of this at all? But what makes Winston unique and how he thinks about Big Brother? Winston has a unique capacity for guilt. This comes out in the book. This is my take anyway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2731.919

Winston has a unique capacity for guilt. So, for example, there's a whole section where he tells Julia about his childhood and what happened to his mother. And he has nightmares about his mother frequently. And he has this guilt about his mom. Now, he didn't cause his mom to be arrested by the state. He didn't cause any of that, really. He was a brat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2751.448

He was stealing candy because his sister was starving. He was stealing the food from his sister and all of that. But he has all of these guilt issues. Winston has a developed moral sense that has been stifled by the state. And that's what leaves him so far open. Because before he even meets Julia, he's writing down with Big Brother naturally, like instinctively in his journal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2772.712

He feels disgusted with himself. When he talks about having visited a prostitute, he's disgusted with himself. He says that it would make no difference because he has committed thought crime and eventually he will be arrested. But again, here's a description. He says he discovered that while he sat helplessly musing, he had also been writing as though by automatic action. Page 18 of this edition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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It was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large, neat capitals, down with Big Brother, down with Big Brother, down with Big Brother, down with Big Brother, down with Big Brother, over and over again, filling half a page. For a moment, he was seized by a kind of hysteria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

280.166

And one of the things he discovered, it's actually a phenomenal book, Homage to Catalonia. And if you've never picked up a copy and you like 1984 and you like Animal Farm, you should really pick up Homage to Catalonia because it's pretty spectacular. He has another book called Road to Wigan Pier, which is about poverty in Britain, also spectacular. Orwell's a terrific, terrific writer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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He began writing in a hurried, untidy scrawl. They'll shoot me. I don't care. They'll shoot me in the back of the neck. I don't care. Down with Big Brother. They always shoot you in the back of the neck. I don't care. Down with Big Brother. And so he obviously he starts the book in a state of unrest that other people just don't. OK, here's another question. Here's another one of these questions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2829.069

Are Winston and Julia truly in love? So I don't know the answer to this question. And when I read their relationship, it doesn't seem like a particularly deep relationship because Julia is not a deep character. Julia rebels against the state simply almost because she seems like almost an infomaniac the way that Orwell describes her, frankly. Julia is shipping half the party, apparently.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2848.579

But she is rebelling against the party because she is a passionate person and the party is repressing those passions. And Winston is rebelling against the party because he is seeking true human connection with everybody around him, right? Everybody from O'Brien to Syme to Parsons. Like he's constantly trying to reach out to humans and he's failing to do so. like old drunks at bars.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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So is that a true loving relationship? I have a hard time believing that it is. And maybe that's why the relationship fails. Maybe that's why the relationship fails. Because in the end, Winston's, maybe that's the hope. really. Winston's relationship with Julia is not strong enough to survive because it is rooted in a misapplication of love. Julia and Winston almost have nothing in common.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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He's constantly trying to talk to her about ideas. He's trying to read her the Goldstein pamphlet, for example, and she's falling asleep. She's like, this is boring. I don't care about this. He's constantly talking to her about the problems within the state, and she just doesn't want to hear about it. She just wants to do what she wants to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And this is the difference between the formation of a real relationship and one that is just based on common opposition to a thing. A real relationship is formed on common values. I'm not sure that Winston and Julia have anything in common other than they don't like Big Brother. But that's not enough to build a real, like, how would they raise a child?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2921.25

Can you imagine them actually having a relationship where they raise a kid? Anywhere in here? It'd be very difficult to imagine that, and maybe that's why it fails. Why doesn't the odd man in the bar remember the past? So you remember the old man in the bar remember the past. You remember there's this old guy in a bar, and he is confronted by Winston, and Winston wants to know about the past.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And the old guy really doesn't remember much. And I think what we can chalk that up to is the fact that the truth is there really is not such a thing as individual memory, really. There's sort of collective memory. What I mean by that is how often do you think about things that have happened over the course of your life and you remember it like perfectly clearly?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Very few instances in life where you remember it perfectly clearly. Particularly, actually, I think more so in an age where there's so much available visually. I'll be honest with you. I don't remember off the top of my head even what my almost eight-year-old looked like as a baby. If I said, what does she look like as a baby? It's hard to remember that because she's changed so much every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Homage to Catalonia is really not about socialism versus fascism, per se. It is much more about the fact that Stalinism had crept into the communist ranks to the point where it was almost difficult to tell the difference between the side that you were fighting for and the side that you were fighting against. There's a very famous portion of Homage to Catalonia where, and this happened, where Orwell

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Even my current baby, right? The one who's almost two. If you ask me what she looked like when she was six months old, I would have to look at a picture again. I would. Because I'm reliant on pictures. And maybe that's because we've trained our brains this way. We spend so much time taking pictures and looking at pictures that we're now reliant on them in an unhealthy way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

2991.26

But the truth is that most memory kind of works like this. Memory is extraordinarily malleable. Memory changes, right? This is one of the reasons why witness testimony is generally not as reliable as circumstantial evidence in criminal trials. In criminal trials, if you're a lawyer, you're much better off relying on DNA evidence, for example, than a witness identification.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Witnesses change their testimony all the time. You can convince people of an awful lot of things. You can tell people things have happened in their life and they will believe you. And this is a thing that they will reflect. So why does the old man not remember the past? Because when you're surrounded by an entire society dedicated to wiping away the past, you lose it as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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The past just doesn't exist for you. You can see this happen in real time all the time, right? I mean, it is amazing. It happens politically on a regular basis, where a thing that was considered absolutely uncontroversial 20 years ago and you remember it, is now considered so wildly controversial you cannot even utter it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3045.094

If you say, for example, you think that same-sex marriage is immoral, try that in polite company these days. That was the majority position in the United States for literally the entire history of the United States until about 2011, 2012. Yeah, but you can't, nobody remembers a time when they were anti-gay marriage. This sort of thing happens all the time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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I'm just picking an example because that's an obvious one, but this is a thing that happens all the time in American life, the collective change of memory. It's a dangerous thing. Memory has to be preserved. It's why we, by the way, we ought to respect our elders because our elders do have a memory of a time that was different than this one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3079.692

Why does Winston think O'Brien is actually part of the resistance? So this is a good question. You know, I mean, I wrote it, so yay to me. But the reason why it's a good question is because you really don't know why. He just kind of looks at O'Brien. He thinks he's intelligent, and therefore he must be part of the resistance. And he looks at O'Brien.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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He feels a sort of kinship for him, almost like he's groping out anonymously to O'Brien. And maybe that's because O'Brien is putting out a particular kind of vibe, right? O'Brien is basically a magnet for resistors who he is then going to capture and torture. So maybe it's that. But I think what that really speaks to is that Winston is highly intelligent. That's evident throughout the book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3117.456

He thinks that everybody else who's highly intelligent is bound to come around to his point of view. And maybe this is also a fatal flaw for Winston, is he really does believe that if people are smart, they have to come to the conclusion that there's a problem with Big Brother. He doesn't think the problem is with him. And this is what keeps him sane. But it's also what leads to his vulnerability.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3136.22

Because it means that he believes that other people who are intelligent, he's guarding himself, but he's not quite careful enough. It turns out that very intelligent people can believe very evil things. And I think this is one of the flaws for Winston. Why do Winston and Julia go to O'Brien together? Now, this is, you know, just an interesting plot question. Why? Like, it doesn't make any sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3156.143

Winston has an appointment with O'Brien. Why does he bring Julia? Doesn't make any sense. He really should just go by himself. Like if he has any care for Julia, he should leave her behind. He knows it's a risky move. He's not actually sure that O'Brien is a member of the resistance. So bringing Julia with him is an enormous tactical error.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3172.863

And of course, is the dead giveaway to O'Brien that Julia is going to be the point of leverage over Winston in the first place. And I think maybe the answer is just that human beings need, again, Winston's entire character is that he's very needy. Winston needs other people. He needs other people because the state has deprived him of all other people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

318.57

started being targeted by the Stalinists inside the communist movement in Spain. He actually went to a hotel to meet his wife in Barcelona and he spotted her across the room and she came up to him and she hugged him and then she told him to run because the Stalinists were going to liquidate him. And so a lot of what Orwell is writing about is the Stalin regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3190.409

And so he brings Julia along with him because he needs the backup. He feels that he needs the backup. And once he's reliant on other people, he is cruising for bruising. What should we learn from Julia's disinterest in the Goldstein pamphlet? I think the idea behind Julia's disinterest is number one, I'm not sure that Julia and Winston are fundamentally compatible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

32.728

than just to read the first couple of lines, because it just is fantastic. I mean, George Orwell is an extraordinary writer. He writes with actual clarity. One of the things I really appreciate about Orwell is that he's not hiding the ball at all. He's not attempting to be obscure. He's not attempting to play around with language. He's just going to give it to you straight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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But beyond that, I think that the idea here is that you don't actually have to be an intellectual to resist the regime. And this is something I think a lot of intelligentsia on the conservative side of the aisle would be wise to recognize. You don't, the people who vote for the things that you like don't have to understand the vagaries of American trade policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3229.086

They don't have to have read all the old columns of William F. Buckley. They don't have to have believed in the writings of Edmund Burke or John Locke or even know who those people are. What they do have to have is an animus for untruth, and they have to have a willingness to fight it. Maybe that's why, you know, Juliet not caring about the Goldstein pamphlet, maybe that's why that matters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3251.24

Why is O'Brien so focused on converting Winston rather than disposing of him? So I think the answer here, O'Brien sort of says it himself, is that it is more important, the more you resist, the more important it is for the state to break you. If the state just shoots everybody who resists, then what you're really saying is we are too weak to overrun you, to change you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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You see this with every revolutionary movement. I think we are observing a bit of a revolutionary cultural moment in the United States from the left, not a bit of one, a pretty major one. And you see the fury with which the intelligent heretics are treated, it's extraordinary, it's exorbitant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3289.827

I mean, the outpouring of wrath, like the smarter you are, the more they hate your guts when it comes to the left. The more they feel like they must, they must break you. It is imperative that they break you. If you have the right credentials, particularly, they must come after you. They must destroy you. And it's the same thing here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Because if you can break the strongest person on the other side and convert them to your point of view, what can't you do? It's a sign of the, like, he must be allowed to live. Like, I actually don't think they kill people. Winston at the end of the novel. I think they let him be like a living example to everybody else.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3321.899

He just wanders around as a good example of a resistor, and they bring him up on stage every so often, and he talks about his sins. It's something totalitarian regimes do all of the time. Why is Winston's betrayal of Julia the end of his resistance? So this is a question that occurs. Why don't they just get back together? I mean, the state really isn't following them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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They could understand one another. They could say, listen, I understand you sick rats on, they sick rats on your face. I kind of get it. Or Julia says, you know, they were torturing me. So, you know, I'm going to forgive you and you forgive me and we'll get back together.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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And I think the answer is because what they actually betrayed is their belief that their own feelings and power to resist were unbreakable. Winston's confidence in his own inability to be shattered is what is broken. And once that's broken, it can't be revived. They can't have the passion they once had for one another. And they don't have the basis for a future because they can't have kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

337.037

And while he sort of lumps all totalitarianism together, right, he says it doesn't matter whether we're talking about Oceania or East Asia or Eurasia, none of that really matters. What he means by that is that once you have a totalitarian regime, whether it considers itself Nazi or whether it considers itself communist, You're now in the same boat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3377.534

But if they were able to have kids, then maybe they could get back together. If they could have kids, maybe they say to each other, we have to forgive ourselves because we have to live for the future and we have to create another generation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3386.857

But inherently, once you get rid of that next generation, once that next generation is no longer in the picture, then it really is about the level of pleasure you take in the other human being. And how could you take serious pleasure in another human being who had betrayed you to the authorities? Be very, very difficult, obviously. Alrighty, let's go back to a couple of your questions here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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Chris said, hey Ben, what are your thoughts on the character of Winston? Are we supposed to like him? I found myself really not liking him. I don't think you're supposed to like Winston. I think that you are supposed to see yourself in Winston. You're supposed to see your own weakness. Winston's not a likable character. He's somebody who's been perverted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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You're supposed to sympathize with him because he is almost a neophyte being ushered around this terrible, terrible world. But I don't think you're supposed to like him particularly. Martin says, of course, Orwell's dystopia is based on a perversion of socialism, or if you like, a perfect expression of socialism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3438.901

However, it can't be said the novel is also a warning against extremism and totalitarianism under any banner. The idea of excommunicating non-believers and punishing them can be applied within an extreme form of any political belief. Well, I mean, that is Orwell's point. He does make this point. He does say it doesn't matter what the actual political system of Oceania or East Asia are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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None of that matters. All that matters is that they're totalitarian. Their goals matter a lot less than their methods, which is really about the magnet, about the... the expansion of power. Maddie says, was Julia pregnant? It was that her waist had grown thicker and in a surprising way had stiffened. If she was, what is the significance?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

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So if she was pregnant, which is a thought that I actually hadn't thought about. So good on you, Maddie, for catching that line. If, if, She was, so I think there are two ways of reading that. One is that she's pregnant. The other is that she is, she's let herself go, right? The vitality has been sucked out of her.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3490.965

But if she were pregnant, then it would suggest that there is a hope and the hope lies in the future generations. It lies in the child that they have created together. Ava says, hey man, if you were to write a sequel to 1984, how would you continue after where Orwell left off? When Winston is released after being brainwashed, life is drained out of him, all hope is lost.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

3509.399

So maybe we combine this question with the last one. Maybe you follow it a generation down the line and Julia's had a baby and now that baby grows up and how does that baby resist big brother? Folks, if you enjoyed that, go check out the rest of the episodes over at Daily Wire Plus right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

353.576

Now, there are some fundamental distinctions between these ideologies that I think that Orwell elides, but his ability to critique totalitarianism is unparalleled, which is why 1984 stands the test of time. And there's no question, by the way, that many of the incidents in 1984 are attempts to draw from real life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

371.193

So, for example, there's this character of Parsons, right, who is this sort of fat, bloated idiot who lives in in Winston's apartment building. And he's very excited that his kids are informing on all the neighbors. They're constantly informing on all the neighbors. Well, this was a thing in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

386.97

There's a very, very famous situation where a kid named Pavel Marazov was a 13-year-old boy And Pavel Marazov supposedly informed on his own father to the GPU, which was the predecessor to the KGB. And his father received a 10-year prison sentence. And then supposedly Marazov's family beat him to death. And so he actually became a Soviet hero. There were songs written about him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

411.059

There were statues built to this 13-year-old kid who informed on his own father. That obviously is paralleled in 1984. In Oceania, your mind is not your own. You have these massive surveillance state apparatuses that have been built. That, again, is paralleled by what the Soviet Union did.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

426.526

And the goal of the surveillance in the Soviet Union was not just to keep track of people because they didn't actually have the ability to process all the material they were taking in. The idea was that everybody knew that they were being watched at all times. That inherently changes everybody's behavior.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

439.892

When you feel like you are on guard all the time, you start to shy away from exercising your freedom. This obviously has some weaker echoes in the modern social media era where you feel like if you say anything, then people are going to come after you and destroy you, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

452.737

We can feel sort of the faint echoes of Orwell all throughout our society, whether we're talking about the surveillance state or whether we are talking about social media mobbings or whether we're talking about people informing on each other for mob rule. Right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

464.814

So, you know, the way that that that historian Robert Conquest talked about the saline area said to die, to lose your loved ones is bad enough to be forced to denounce your father or husband in the hope of saving the rest of the family and in general to be compelled in public to express joy at the whole bloodbath. Maybe thought worse still. Truth almost perished. This was the surveillance state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

48.884

It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13. So right away, you know you're in a different world in which everything is going to be changed, the facts are going to be subsumed to something different.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

484.642

That's Big Brother is watching. Then you get to the actual slogans. War is peace. So the basic idea here is that when you have a suppressed population, you must go to war. You must. Because you have to direct that ire somewhere else. And you see this in totalitarian states all over the globe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

496.796

North Korea is constantly being aggressive with South Korea, not because they actually hope to win a war with South Korea, but because... Kim Jong-un has to constantly show his population that the bad guys live on the south side of the border. Same thing with China vis-a-vis, for example, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

511.15

Same thing, for example, with Iran, which is constantly driving its citizens ire at Israel or in the Palestinian Authority. And whenever you have country, Russia is a good example of this, right? You need territorial ambition in order to make excuses to your citizens for why you are a terrible government and why they have a terrible living standard.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

529.565

And so Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984 is the stand-in. Now, he's actually a stand-in for Trotsky in 1984 and pretty clearly a stand-in for Trotsky because Trotsky was used as sort of the all-purpose whipping boy for the Soviet Union during the Stalin regime. Everybody who was an enemy of Stalin was treated as, quote-unquote, a Trotskyite and then targeted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

547.169

But the idea, of course, is the perpetual war allows you to push all of the ire of your population abroad and go after all those other people. Now, here's where you get into... Orwell's failure to understand actually socialism and communism because he actually didn't understand socialism and communism on an economic level. There's a huge portion of the book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

564.64

It's actually the dullest portion of the book where he gets a hold of Goldstein's pamphlet and he reads the pamphlet. And the pamphlet is just straight Trotsky. It's pretty much an open paraphrase of the revolution betrayed by Trotsky.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

575.931

and and that the revolution betrayed basically says communism is good stalin is bad and you hear the same thing here right the idea in in the goldstein pamphlet is that the reason that the state has to constantly go to war is because if it were not for the state going to war they couldn't get rid of all of their excess wealth and getting rid of the excess wealth sinking it to the bottom of the sea as orwell puts it keeps the people in misery and keeping the people in misery is the goal because if they're in misery then it prevents them from being able to rise up now that's not

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

60.654

Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of victory mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. And so you're immediately immersed in Winston Smith's gritty world. This is not going to be a positive future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

603.641

true. OK, communism keeps people in misery because it inherently destroys all the wealth. Soviet Union did not need to go to war with surrounding countries in order to destroy its surplus wealth. It had no surplus wealth. It was an impoverished country masquerading as a first world nation. And then you get to the second slogan. Freedom is slavery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

620.305

So, again, the idea here is that to be free is to actually be a slave. To be fully free means that you are a slave to your own impulses, and only when you are liberated from individualism and you are subsumed under the rubric of the state can you experience true freedom. Now, in order to do that, you have to give up your own mind.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

636.299

And this brings us to ignorance is strength, which is the third slogan and the most important slogan of the state. Ignorance is strength. And when you give up your own mind to the state, then you find strength because now you are united with everybody else. You've been merged into the great collective. And the key to this, and this is, I think, Orwell's best point in the whole book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

655.062

I think his best point is this. The key to this is the pushing of subjectivism, the pushing of the idea that you can create reality within your own mind. And this is what is constantly being pushed by O'Brien. O'Brien, of course, is the emissary of the state who is trying to brainwash Winston. And Smith talks about this, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

675.206

He says, what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise than that two plus two equals four, but that they might be right. For after all, how do we know that two plus two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable, what then?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

693.934

So the idea is that you destroy all objective truth. And once you've destroyed all objective truth, all that is left is the subjective. And then when you apply pressure to the subjective mind, what you do is you destroy freedom. Because again, you can think yourself into anything is the premise here. Now, there is an external world, right? There are facts, there are realities out there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

712.132

This is why it is very important for us to cling to the facts of life. We do not cling to the facts of life. And if we believe that all reality is made up inside of our tiny pea brains, then it's very easy for people to exert control, to use the power of the culture, to use the power of the government to compel you to think things. Because after all, reality is created in your brain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

732.259

It is not an external thing out there for you to discover. This is Orwell's great point. The most dangerous philosophical thing you can get into is radical subjectivism. And that is where we are as a society. And he keeps hammering that home, right? He hammers that home over and over and over in 1984. Right. It's described in the book as, quote, every record has been destroyed or falsified.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

754.888

Every book has been rewritten. Every picture has been repainted. Every statue and street and building has been renamed. Every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day, minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right. What is the hope here? It's a pretty hopeless book. It's a pretty grim book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

77.164

This is not going to be a place with gleaming towers and wonderful flying cars or anything. This is going to be a very dark and gritty place. And the first thing that we notice is Big Brother is watching you. This giant poster of Big Brother, who clearly is described in the way that Stalin is described. He's a mustached figure with these piercing eyes, and he's constantly watching.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

772.324

By the end, Winston, who has fought back against the state, essentially by taking the lover. And again, I think that that is a misstatement of how you fight back against totalitarianism. It really is not about emotional subjectivism. It's about Vital institutions that you build on top of your emotional feeling for other people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

792.244

So institutions like marriage, institutions like church, you need those to fight the state. Otherwise, they can be wiped away. Winston falls in love with Julia. They have a relationship. The state destroys it anyway. So he says that he has hope in the polls. Trotsky says this too. He has hope for the lower classes because the lower classes still grip tight to their personal relationships.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

810.489

It really isn't about that. It's about the fact that elites in society have a nasty tendency to tear down the institutions that are necessary in order to allow life to continue normally. And the polls grip those institutions tightly. It turns out that William F. Buckley once suggested that he'd rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty at Harvard.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

831.168

The reason for that is because the faculty at Harvard think themselves into the belief that they can get rid of all the institutions. Whereas normal people, they live within those institutions. They live marriage. They live family. They live school. They live church. They live local community. Those are the things that are absolutely necessary, right? That really is the hope.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

851.052

There's one other point that I think Orwell is wrong about. There's a lot he's right about. There's one other point that I think Orwell is wrong about in the book. And that is this. He suggests through O'Brien, right, who is the emissary of the state, that the reason that this is being done is for pure power. It's almost a nihilistic desire for power. It is not about some sort of higher cause.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

866.263

I don't think that's right. I don't think that communists actually believe in just pure power rule. I think it's actually, forgive the phrase, a slur against Stalin. I don't think that Stalin was just about promoting his own power. He actually was a utopian. As the philosopher Karl Popper suggested, utopianism is the danger.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

884.232

It is not just that you have nefarious movie villains who twirl their mustache and talk about, we're so powerful, we're going to use our power to abuse everyone else. There are some people like that, for sure. Beria, who was one of the heads of the KGB for a while, the head of the GRU, he was like that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

898.398

But most people who do the most damage in life are people who are actual ideological utopians who believe that they can cure the problems of humanity if you give them enough power. And that we see every single day in American politics and unfortunately all over the world. Okay, let's go to some of your questions because I want to hear what you've been thinking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

916.488

You've been reading this book along with me. So let me bring up some of those questions. right quick. Here we go. Sarah says, Orwell has often seemed prophetic in his depictions of a tyrannical state and what is currently happening in the world. I was wondering what your thoughts were of the forced sexlessness of the party versus the hyper-sexualization of our current culture.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

932.757

How does this difference impact what we take away from the novel? This is a great question. So obviously in the novel, Orwell suggests that the state is trying to do away with romance. So it's true that our culture is trying to do away with romance, but in the opposite way. So in this book, it's really about the passion that Winston has for Julia. And the way Orwell writes it, it's just the lust.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

953.151

Essentially, the lust is what is supposed to fight the state. But the reality is that it is their falling in love that really should fight the state. And the sort of war against romance comes from both ends. And this is where Orwell is right. It's where he's wrong on modern politics a little bit, but it's where he is right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

96.836

And this is the constant theme of Big Brother. If you actually look at all of the covers for 1984 over the course of its publication history, nearly all of them look like this one. Nearly all of them have a human eye on them because the basic idea, of course, is that a state that is omnipotent and omnipresent can twist you into something that is not you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

969.676

And it's more, I would say the sexual morality that is reflected in Brave New World is more accurate to today's climate than the sexual morality that is reflective in 1984. 1984 really does do a good job of expressing what happens under a full totalitarian regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | 1984

984.6

Brave New World does a great job of explaining what happens under a full libertine regime, which is kind of what we have right now, which is people are giving up their freedoms and in exchange they get hedonistic pursuit of pleasure. At some point we'll do Brave New World in the book club, I am sure. In any case, the thing that the two have in common is the destruction of romance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

0.329

Well, folks, a big question I've been getting since we released the trailer for my interview with President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine is, why go to a nation under fire? Why take your crew and take that risk? And the answer is simple, because the truth matters and facts matter. We want you to be smarter and know more things. That's what this show is for.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

104.707

Russia has not accepted a peace arrangement along any of these lines. You should be clear about this. Essentially, the proposal that was published was the United States, Europe, and maybe Ukraine kind of negotiating against themselves because there's no one else at the table right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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So, Mr. President, there are a lot of questions in the United States about how American funding is spent. So we've spent nearly 200 or allocated nearly $200 billion to the defense of Ukraine. There are lots of questions about where the money is going to pensions, to war profiteering, to corruption. How do you answer those questions?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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What kind of transparency can you provide to the American people to guarantee that their taxpayer dollars are being used in the best possible way to fight Russia, to defend Ukraine, and to ensure that If the United States wants, wouldn't audit be possible by the United States of where those dollars are going? Yes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

118.158

Now, Zelensky rejected handing over Crimea legally because that would be making a major legal concession without actually getting anything from Russia in return. If you preemptively say Crimea is now part of Russia, you've now said it, and Zelensky doesn't want to do that. He has accepted the Trump proposal for a 30-day ceasefire without any preconditions. It has been true for weeks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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Vladimir Putin has not. not for one second, which is why last night the Russian missiles were falling on Kiev. They're also falling on Lviv, which is in the western part of the country. It was a bad night in Ukraine. Now, Putin, again, has at no point actually given any sign that he truly wants the war to end. If you want the war to end, the question is, Will Zelensky accept an end to the war?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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And will Putin accept an end to the war? Zelensky has said he will. Putin has given no sign whatsoever that he actually will. Instead, it seems like he's slow playing this thing. He seems to be biding his time, waiting for the United States to pull out of negotiations and out of funding Ukraine entirely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

169.964

And that's a bet that could pay off given the Trump administration's repeated statements that if no deal is accepted, the United States will simply walk away from the table. Here was Vice President J.D. Vance saying just that yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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You, our Daily Wire members, deserve the truth. This is the kind of journalism your support makes possible. This is the community that fights for your values. Join us right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So, Last night, Vladimir Putin's Russia blanketed Ukraine with missiles and drones in what was perhaps the largest-scale air attack on the country since 2022.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

1920.558

So I want to get to Russia's intentions in a moment and the possibilities of a ceasefire. But Americans have questions about things that are happening here. So there've been a lot of accusations that there's been a crackdown on religious freedom in Ukraine, particularly with regard to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

1934.447

I just watched you perform a meeting with the all church meeting with members of a wide variety of faiths. Maybe you can respond to the accusations that there's a restriction on religious freedom with regard to Russian Orthodox in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

210.307

Okay, well, whether the proposal is fair or not, if Russia refuses to accept the deal and then the United States walks away, Russia is the party that actually benefits from that. The Trump administration's pressure right now has been almost solely relegated to Ukraine at this point. That's just the reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

224.47

President Trump unleashed a post on Truth Social yesterday attacking Vladimir Zelensky and blaming him for the continuation of the war. He stated, quote, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is boasting on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There's nothing to talk about here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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So one of the other questions that's been asked is about military mobilization. So, you know, obviously you're in the middle of a war. At the same time, there have been reports online that people are being picked up off the streets and in places in eastern Ukraine and recruited into services. How do you respond to accusations and videos like that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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This statement says President Trump is very harmful to the peace negotiations with Russia and that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama and is not even a point of discussion. Nobody's asking Zelensky to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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As we mentioned, we left Kyiv on Tuesday night. On Wednesday night, Kyiv was hit with one of the biggest missile barrages of the war. We've been checking in on many of the people we met in Ukraine to ensure that they are safe. We'll bring you any updates. That was part one of our interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on Tuesday afternoon. Part two will continue on tomorrow's show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2433.257

We'll get some more on this in a moment. First, according to a recent ZipRecruiter survey, 76% of employers plan to expand their headcount for 2025. That's a lot of time spent hiring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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So if you're the owner of a growing business the way I am here at The Daily Wire, it's essential to find a platform that provides an efficient format that allows you to connect with several pre-screened interested applicants all at once to streamline that recruitment process. Luckily, ZipRecruiter does just that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2454.95

So, if you are one of those employers who is ramping up hiring this year, do not miss out on this advice. Add ZipRecruiter's latest feature, ZipIntro, to your hiring plan. That lets you post jobs today and talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Best of all, it does most of the work for you, so you save time. And right now, you can try ZipIntro for free at ZipRecruiter.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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ZipIntro gives you the power to quickly assess excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls. You simply pick a time. Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. And then you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the very next day. Save time hiring for 2025 with new Zip Intro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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Just go to ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire right now to try Zip Intro for free. Again, at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire Zip Intro. Post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. You know how most kids' vitamins out there are basically just candy with a vitamin label on them? They're loaded with a couple of teaspoons of sugar, artificial ingredients kids really don't need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2508.234

This is where Hiya comes in. They've created this amazing chewable vitamin that kids actually love. Best part? Zero sugar, but still totally delicious. Even the pickiest eaters. would approve. What really impresses me is their ingredient list. They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies, plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals. We're talking vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, and more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2525.724

All the good stuff that kids actually need to grow healthy. And they've thought of everything. It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, thoroughly tested for safety, which means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to a high-quality standard. Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

253.478

But if he wants Crimea, why didn't they fight for it 11 years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired? Well, if that's true. and nobody's asking for Zelensky to actually recognize Crimea as Russian territory? What's the discussion that's happening? President Trump continues, the area also houses, for many years before the Obama handover, major Russian submarine bases.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2538.753

Well, Haya now has Kids Daily Greens and Superfoods, a chocolate-flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids. It's packed with more than 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, digestion. Just scoop, shake, sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious, nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2553.097

They even send stickers with your first order so your kids can decorate the bottle and make it their own. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off with your first order. To claim this deal, you have to go to hayahealth.com slash Shapiro. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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Get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Meanwhile, in other news, the Trump administration signed an excellent executive order yesterday to eliminate the use of so-called disparate impact liability.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2583.959

Disparate impact liability is the idea that you can simply discern whether a branch of government or a company, for example, is racist based on the pure numbers of blacks versus whites who get a particular benefit. That if there's a disparate impact of a law or a policy, it must be that the law or the policy is racist. That, of course, is absurd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2602.551

There are plenty of reasons for disparities in outcome that don't have to do with discrimination. And so the White House, President Trump, signed an executive order restoring equality of opportunity and meritocracy. That's the goal of it. The executive order says, a bedrock principle of the United States that all citizens are treated equally under the law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2619.75

This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy in a colorblind society, not race or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American dream.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2636.72

A pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America's promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results. preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, efforts, or achievement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2649.951

A key tool of this movement is disparate impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups. Even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2666.536

has an equal opportunity to succeed. This is a great, great move by the Trump administration. Should have been done long ago by Republicans going all the way back to Richard Nixon. Good for President Trump on that score. Again, one of the benefits of the Trump presidency, taking seriously DEI and destroying it. Really, really important stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2683.101

Meanwhile, the White House seems to be backing off some of its trade war with China. Again, the signals are really quite mixed. Sometimes they seem like they're saying they're going to back off some of the tariffs unilaterally. Sometimes they say they're going to be negotiating something with China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

269.21

It's inflammatory statements like Zelensky's that make it so difficult to settle this war. He has nothing to boast about. The situation for Ukraine is dire. We can have peace, or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country. Again, this is President Trump saying this. Unquote. Now, listen, President Trump's frustration is clear and understandable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

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Again, I'm very much in favor of a trade war with China, as long as it is well thought out, as long as all the preconditions are there. President Trump yesterday said the goal is to have a fair deal with China. Can you clarify, Mr. President, on China?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2725.424

Again, the White House is considering slashing the China tariffs in order to deescalate the trade war, according to the Wall Street Journal. President Trump hasn't made a final determination. One administration official said Trump wouldn't act unilaterally. He'd need to see some action from Beijing to lower tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky

2739.546

But this seems to be something the Trump administration is trying to back off of, considering the market impacts as well as the polling impacts. According to Pew, President Trump is down to 40% in the approval ratings. According to a Harvard Youth poll, his numbers have dropped precipitously with young people Just under a third of young people currently approve of his job performance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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A large part of that is tied to economic uncertainty. White House spokesman Kush decides that President Trump has been clear China needs to make a deal with the United States. When decisions on tariffs are made, they'll come directly from the president. Anything else is pure speculation. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson did tell reporters Trump has not offered to take down U.S.

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tariffs on China on a unilateral basis, so it may take longer than expected. However, here was Scott Besson laying out the idea that we do need trade partners.

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Again, there is a very simple rule when it comes to the Trump administration's policy. Listen to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and stop listening to other members of the administration. Besant knows what he's talking about. That is not true of Trade Advisor Peter Navarro. It's not true of some other members of the administration.

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Besant does have a good, solid view as to what the Trump administration is attempting to do, and he understands markets well enough to understand the best ways to achieve all of that. Every time Besant speaks, the market spikes, and there is a reason for that.

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Presumably, it was Besant and his team who helped convince President Trump not to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell or threaten to fire him. That was roiling markets, according to The Washington Post.

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President Trump's abrupt shift in rhetoric on Tuesday toward Jerome Powell reflected the private lobbying of some of his senior advisors, which urged the president to back off his incendiary attacks on the central bank. And that is a good thing. Again, one of the things that's hilarious and amazing about what's going on, economically speaking, is that so much of it is just self-inflicted.

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If President Trump just stops doing some of these things, the economy goes back to something like normal. And if you're going to make major moves, you really do have to prep the ground for those major moves. Meanwhile, by the way, Great Britain is saying that they're not going to alter their standards or rush a U.S. trade deal.

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So one of the problems here for President Trump is many of the people he's negotiating with are not actually on board with his trade war. And so they're kind of eager to watch the United States twist in the wind a little bit here.

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According to Rachel Reeves, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, she said that Britain will not rush into a trade deal with the United States or change its food or car safety standards.

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She said she wanted to reduce trade barriers between Britain and other countries, but they're not going to rush to it, which again is because they now believe that they have President Trump a little bit over a barrel in terms of this trade war because the economy has been roiling thanks to the trade war. Okay, meanwhile, today marks Yom HaShoah, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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And Holocaust Remembrance Day was commemorated at Yale by throwing water bottles at Jews. So things were going really well over at Yale last night. The Yale anti-Israel encampments are back. The Tentafada is back. They set up in response to a visit by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gavir, who is one of the furthest right ministers in the Israeli government.

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Around 200 people calling for the university cutting of financial ties with Israel erected tents in Beineke Plaza on the anniversary of the first encampment, according to the Jerusalem Post. And and there they set up checkpoints for Jews. on the evening of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts at night in Israel. Just wonderful, wonderful people.

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By the way, I'm glad they're doing this because this is an excellent excuse for the Trump administration's Office of Civil Rights, led by Harmeet Dhillon, to crack down on Yale and maybe start taxing its endowment or removing its federal funding.

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Because if Yale refuses to do anything about, you know, like actually setting up checkpoints for Jews at the university, that is a violation of the Civil Rights Act in the same way it would be if whites set up a cordon to prevent black students from getting to certain parts of the campus. Here are these Yale protesters blocking Jews.

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I mean, I will say they're good at chanting like robots. So that's exciting stuff. By the way, worth noting here, they're all masked. For those who can't see the footage, they are all masked using like N95s because they're some of the most pathetic people alive. All these people would be immediately tossed off the top of buildings in the Gaza Strip if Hamas had its way.

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But let's be also clear about this. For this conflict to end, Russia has to come to the table. Why is the question what Ukraine is willing to do when the real question here is why Russian aggression has not stopped for a single moment for three years?

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Standing there and blocking Jews from getting to parts of campus on Holocaust. You know, good. I mean, I guess good for them. They've got the courage of saying the thing out loud. By the way, where do you think those chants are coming from? We are mourning all our martyrs. Have you ever heard that sort of language from the left typically?

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Like if you're at a normal commie idiot rally, do they use the term martyrs? Or is that language that is coming directly from fans and allies of Hamas? There's only one group on planet Earth who talks like that, who speaks about martyrs in English like that. And that would be radical Islamists. Most people do not speak like that, particularly not in the United States of America.

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And there's more footage of protesters blocking Jews and tossing water bottles at Jews and all the rest of it. Jewish students saying they just want to walk through this part of campus and they're saying no. Honestly, this is good news that I hope they continue to do this. And I hope that Yale gets absolutely clocked by the Trump Justice Department.

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I think that'd be an excellent and proper way to respond to the trash administration over at Yale. So I asked my friends and sponsors over at Perplexity just how big is Yale's endowment and also how much federal taxpayer money does Yale receive?

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According to Perplexity, Yale University's endowment stood at $41.4 billion as of June 30th, 2024, making it the second largest university endowment in the United States, only behind Harvard. They have plenty of money. So if they start losing taxpayer money, well, they can just deal with it because, you know what, violation of the Civil Rights Act, not okay, actually illegal.

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As far as federal funding, in fiscal year 2024, Yale received, wait for it, $898.7 million in federal funding. Federal funding to Yale is significant, but it's actually not the leader. Pennsylvania, UPenn received $1.8 billion. Columbia University, $1.3 billion. Harvard University, $686.5 million in the same period.

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So yeah, they're vulnerable and they should be held to account in the same way that Harvard is being held to account. I'm sure the Trump administration is very eager. to put its actions on Harvard in practice with Yale as well. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, anywhere worth going is worth going in a pair of awesome boots. Find your perfect pair with Tecovus.

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The first time I put my Tecovus boots on, it was like they were already broken in, which makes sense because every single pair goes through over 200 meticulous steps of hand crafting. I used to think Western boots were just for cowboys. But since these folks started back in Texas in 2015, they've been changing that story.

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Whether you're a lifelong rancher or just looking for your first pair of Western boots, Ticova's makes it feel easy. I mean, look at me. Do I look like a cowboy to you? But I still wear Ticova's. You can wear them from sunup to sundown. They're built tough enough for long days, but stylish enough for a night out.

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The American people, obviously, we need to understand just why it is important for Ukraine not to collapse amidst the escalation of Russia's invasion.

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Again, you can wear them pretty much everywhere, super comfortable, and you don't have to be the kind of guy who can pull off a cowboy hat to make it happen. No matter your size or style, they've got the perfect boot waiting for you. Plus, with Tecovus' Best in the West guarantee, you get free returns and exchanges for 30 days. Pretty tough to beat.

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Right now, get 10% off at tecovus.com slash Shapiro when you sign up for email and texts. That's 10% off at tecovus.com slash Shapiro. tecovus.com slash Shapiro. See site for details. Tecovas, point your toes west. That's 10% off right now at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. Okay, folks, coming up, we're going to jump into the vaunted mailbag, but in order to watch, you have to be a member.

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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So with the Russia-Ukraine war now in year number three, with tens of thousands of dead on each side and hundreds of thousands wounded, probably 50,000 dead on the Ukrainian side, maybe 200,000 dead on the Russian side, with Eastern Ukraine and Crimea currently in Russian hands, and with the Trump administration obviously trying to end the war through negotiation,

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We felt that now was a vital time to actually travel to Ukraine to discuss this crisis with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

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One missile apparently struck an apartment building in Kyiv and killed nine people and wounded another 63. This, of course, is a war zone. A little bit earlier yesterday, the Trump administration rolled out its proposed outline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. This was being negotiated in London.

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The American people have a lot of questions and they have a right to know why they should care about this conflict in a faraway place and to have their questions answered on matters ranging from how their tax dollars are being spent to the treatment of Christians in Ukraine, from the nature of Russia's aspirations in Ukraine to the Ukrainian desire to remain free of Russian domination.

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So the trip into Ukraine wasn't exactly easy. It's, of course, a war zone. First, we traveled some 12 hours from Florida to Krakow. That's Poland. And then we took a 10-hour car ride with security from Poland to Kyiv. The border crossing was pretty much deserted. Not a lot of people are trying to get into Ukraine at this point in time. The country itself, it's a beautiful country.

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The breadbasket of the continent, Western Ukraine, which is what you drive through to get to Kyiv, is rolling farmland dotted with forest. My great-great-grandparents came originally from this general region, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine. I tried to see it through their eyes as we were driving.

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What it must have been like 150 years ago, before the carnage of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which is the Stalin-created genocidal starvation campaign against Ukrainian farmers and their families, and against those who oppose the evil of Soviet collectivization.

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and what it was like before the Nazi invasion in 1941 and the mass slaughter of Jews, with roving bands of SS mowing down tens of thousands of Jews over open pits in Babi Yar, shipping Jews via train to death camps all over Europe.

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Timothy Snyder, historian and author of a book called Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, writes, quote, During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the bloodlands or in Europe or in the world. For both Hitler and Stalin, Ukraine was more than a source of food.

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It was the place that would enable them to break the rules of traditional economics, rescue their countries from poverty and isolation, and remake the continent in their own image. If you know history, the voices of all of our brothers' blood cries out from the ground of Ukraine. And the history of Ukraine's suffering doesn't stop with World War II.

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After the war, the Soviet Union again was in control of Ukraine. Its history was then steamrolled and homogenized to fit Soviet presumptions. After the Cold War, after the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine broke free. It became independent. It gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the West. Didn't go well for Ukraine, obviously.

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Torn between the attraction of joining the post-Soviet West and Russian pressure from the East, the country was governed by a series of corruption-ridden governments culminating in the victory of Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Russian swing led to the so-called Maidan Revolution of 2014. Yanukovych was ousted. Vladimir Putin, dictator of Russia, seeing Ukraine slipping out of his grasp,

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then launched invasions of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, as well as Crimea. Both of those were largely Russian-speaking areas that favored a closer relationship with Russia, but they didn't actually want to be fully ruled by Russia by the polling data available at the time. Instead, Putin brought in what were called little green men who he said were sort of domestic insurgents.

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They were actually Russian soldiers to take over those areas. Citizens of those areas were brought under Russian control. And then came 2022. Sensing weakness from the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the aftermath of Joe Biden's surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine.

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It's a peace deal under which Ukraine would have been forced to accept Russian annexation of Crimea. That's the very southern portion of Ukraine that is on the Black Sea, as well as control of eastern Ukraine. Russia is currently in control of large swaths of eastern Ukraine and has been since 2014. It would have removed NATO membership from the table for Ukraine.

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When the war began, few expected Ukraine to survive. Indeed, the first Russian push into Ukraine came within 10 or 12 kilometers of Kyiv, the capital city, which is located on both sides of the Dnieper River. Actually, Vladimir Zelensky was made offers by the Europeans to flee the country. But Ukraine instead fought back.

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Their forces actually pushed the Russians back toward the east and toward the south. After three years of war, that is where the lines remain. Carnage continues in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia. Bombs continue to fall. Drones continue to fly, particularly last night.

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The Russian government since 2014, in an effort to rucify Ukrainian children, has abducted tens of thousands of kids from eastern Ukraine and Crimea back into Russia. As the New York Times reported in 2023, quote, Russian officials have made it clear their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia.

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Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and contractors have died, according to the BBC. Around 50,000 Ukrainians have been killed, according to Zelensky's government. As of February, the numbers are probably higher. President Trump's entry into office provided the possibility of something new.

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Pledging to end the war, the Trump administration insisted on negotiations, and to that end, put pressure on both Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to come to the table. After a fraught conversation with President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office, Zelensky has agreed to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Putin has agreed to nothing.

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The United States, under Special Envoy Steve Woodcuff, continues to advocate for Ukrainian concessions, ranging again from recognition of Russian territorial annexation to abandonment of intent to join NATO. Putin, for his part, has mouthed words of interest, but has shown little willingness to make any real concessions at all. That is where things stood as we traveled into Ukraine.

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We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, do you know what I hate? Big government. Do you know what else I hate? Being overcharged. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is helping you save money on your cell phone bill. That is correct. Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful, irresponsible. Instead,

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They're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited Talk taxed 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. The best part? Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus. Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows.

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And as always, your free leftist tier Tumblr. With Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com. Also, not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful as you are. We'll be right back.

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Ukraine obviously is interested in joining NATO because that would mean that an attack on a NATO member would allow for Article 5 invocation, meaning other countries would have to come to Ukraine's defense. The deal would prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO member. It would have provided... little or nothing in the way of security guarantees for Ukraine.

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LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft. You cannot control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with LifeLock, you can help protect it. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock.

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She's told me that she feels a lot better knowing that their experts are always monitoring her sensitive information for suspicious activity. Act right now. Save up to 40% your very first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock. Use promo code Ben or go to LifeLock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply. It got dark as we were driving. As we neared the city, an app on our phones sounded a drone alert in Kyiv.

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Drone warfare has become one of the most highly publicized aspects of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces, at a material disadvantage in the early days of the war, engaged in technological creativity to counter Russian advances. Russia then responded by building new drones with Chinese help, as well as by importing drones from Iran. By the time we reached Kyiv, the drone sirens had stopped.

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After a very short night in the center of Kyiv, we visited the site of the Bobinyar Massacre, which is just across the street from a television tower struck by a Russian missile in the early days of the war. We visited a blown-out building, hit multiple times in a variety of Russian attacks. We visited a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor.

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The city is beautiful, but it obviously feels pretty empty. Approximately 7 million Ukrainians have left the country during the war. That's out of a total population of 44 million or so in 2021.

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I attended a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations with representatives of 15 different religious sects attending to discuss religious freedom and traditional values with Zelensky.

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A member of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was joined by a member of the Catholic Church, for example, to ask for a ministry of family to foster higher birth rates and support more kids in Ukraine. Other members of the council asked President Zelensky about military deferment for members of the clergy. And then, finally, it was time to sit down with President Zelensky.

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President Zelensky looks weary but upbeat. He is, of course, very camera-friendly, given his history as a TV star. We sat in the shadow of the St. Sophia Cathedral, the first foundations of which were laid in 1011, centuries before the Tsardom of Russia.

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Here, then, is part one of our interview with President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev, Ukraine, at perhaps the most crucial moment for the negotiations yet in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. President Zelensky, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks for coming, Ben.

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So the proposed Trump deal did not obligate the United States to come to Ukraine's defense or even allow for the EU's defense of Ukraine. Maybe they could have, maybe they couldn't have, but that was unclear. And it also would have full-scale ended sanctions on Russia. So clearly this peace deal It gave Russia a bunch of things that Russia was looking for if it had been accepted by Ukraine.

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So I want to start by asking you about the meeting that you had in the Oval Office with the President and the Vice President. This is almost a couple of months ago. Obviously, things went sideways. How do you feel that you could have handled things better with the President and Vice President? After...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

Well, folks, I'm not yet tired of the winning. President Trump is sprinting out of the gate. America's golden age is just getting started. Be here with us for every moment. There's never been a better time to join Daily Wire. Plus, use code 47 right now for 47% off your new annual membership. Well, President Trump's approval rating currently stands at 47%.

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Acting Defense Secretary Robert Solis said the troops will fly helicopters to assist border patrol agents and help in the construction of barriers. The Pentagon is also going to provide military aircraft for DHS deportation flights for more than 5,000 detained migrants. No more of this. We hold people and then we just release them into the interior. That is done.

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Solis has said in a statement, quote, this is just the beginning. In short order, he said the department will develop and execute additional missions in cooperation with DHS, federal agencies and state partners to address the full range of threats outlined by the president at our nation's border.

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By the way, the department is preparing right now to send 2000 more Marines to the border to help enforce the border. And President Trump, his team, they take this very, very seriously. Not only that, the DOJ has been instructed that if local officials actually obstruct the working of immigration law, they should be prosecuted.

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In the memo, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Booth, Trump's former defense attorney, outlines, quote, interim decisions and policy changes pending the confirmation of Trump's U.S. Attorney General nominee, Pam Bondi. He said that changes are necessary as an initial response regarding three of the most serious threats facing the American people.

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Those threats are cartels and other transnational criminal organizations like, for example, Tren de Ragra and MS-13. The memo added that the second threat is how brutal and intolerable violent crime by members of those organizations and illegal aliens is escalating rapidly. And the third threat is how fentanyl crisis and opioid epidemic are poisoning our communities.

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He said the Justice Department must work to eradicate those threats. And that means they're not going to simply allow local authorities to obstruct what it is that they are doing. Both reiterated in this memo to the DOJ, quote, federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration related commands.

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So if you are a local politician who is seeking to impede the workings of ICE or Border Patrol, prepare to find yourself in the dock. That is what the DOJ is saying, and they are correct to do so because if the plenary power of the federal government includes immigration, that means you can't obstruct it. That's not the way that it works. Perhaps the most hilarious headline of the day.

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comes courtesy of the New York Times and it is on this specific issue. The New York Times has an article today all about the drug cartels. And what the New York Times is saying is that it is bad for the Trump administration to label them terrorists. Here's the headline from the New York Times. Ready? Quote, how labeling cartels terrorists could hurt the U.S. economy. Are you out of your mind?

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Are you out of your mind? How it will hurt the U.S. economy? I'm sorry. They're killing people on both sides of the border en masse. They basically control the Mexican government. They've been shipping tons of fentanyl over the border, which is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. And it might hurt the economy to call them terrorists?

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The New York Times suggests that it could be bad because it could force some American companies to forego doing business in Mexico rather than risk American sanctions. Why? Well, because Mexico is basically terror run.

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So their claim is that if the drug cartels are working with the Mexican government, that people can't work with the Mexican government anymore or the federal government's going to prosecute them. Well, maybe the solution for that for the Mexican government would be to disentangle themselves from the drug cartels. Perhaps that would be the solution.

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According to the New York Times, these criminal organizations are now embedded in a wide swath of the legal economy, from avocado farming to the country's billion-dollar tourism industry, making it hard to be absolutely sure American companies are isolated from cartel activities.

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Now, again, I highly doubt the Trump administration is looking to shut down hotels in Mexico because they're part-owned by cartel members. However, it seems to me the more pressing issue is that the entire border on the Mexican side and parts of the American side is controlled by Mexican drug cartels.

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Now, meanwhile, by the way, Secretary of State Rubio, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on Monday night and sworn in on Tuesday morning, he is pausing refugee operations and he is ramping up visa vetting, according to Fox News. Immediately after becoming the next secretary, Rubio directed the Department of State to halt refugee resettlement programs.

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Instead, he ordered the department to implement enhanced vetting for visa applications from dangerous regions, which, by the way, seems like it'd be a really good idea because it turns out that a refugee from Morocco, or at least a person from Morocco who's on an American visa, went on a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv the other day.

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The person got into Israel by first going to the United States, having a visa, and then traveling to Israel to stab four people, including one with a serious condition with a knife wound to the neck. The attacker was shot dead at that point. Again, this person basically got in because this person was in America first.

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Why? Because innovation is back. Because entrepreneurship is back. Because the founder mentality is back. And the left does not know what to do. The fact that there are two controversies over the past 48 hours have been a fake controversy surrounding Elon Musk not doing a Nazi salute. And a bizarre left wing...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So yes, we should be vetting everybody who's claiming refugee status getting into the United States at this point. There are just too many people with quote unquote refugee status and we have no idea who they are and they may have terrorist affiliations. It turns out that enforcing immigration law is actually just common sensical. Well, you know what else is common sense?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Don't send your kid or go yourself to a university that indoctrinates you in woke nonsense. That is not Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. They believe we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career, calling you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 330 academic programs as of September, 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dream. The pursuit to serve others is yours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu. I visited Grand Canyon University. It is absolutely beautiful, wonderful people there. Go check it out yourself, gcu.edu. Also, when it comes to grocery shopping, everybody's got a huge problem. You get slammed with work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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You're not able to find time to hit the grocery store. That can all change thanks to Hungry Root. It's become the easiest way to eat healthy and stay on top of meals, even with a busy work week. Hungry Root is like having your own personal shopper who really gets you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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They can handle all your weekly grocery shopping, recommending healthy foods that align with your tastes, nutrition goals, and the like. They make it simple to eat high-quality, nutritious food, whether you're looking for anti-inflammatory options, gut-friendly meals, or just trying to get more nutrients in your diet. The best part? They learn your preferences over time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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It's amazing how well they're able to figure out exactly what you like. And everything in the offer is free from high fructose corn syrup and artificial preservatives. And it's really easy to use. They have tons of different options. You can order precisely what you need. And Hungry Root also learns what it is that you want. You're going to love Hungry Root the way that I do as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time. Get 40% off your first box. Plus, get a free item in every box for life. Go to HungryRoot.com and use code BEN. That's HungryRoot.com slash Ben, code Ben, to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. HungryRoot.com slash Ben, code Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, Tom Homan, the border czar and bulldog, he said that in the first 48 hours, there are about 700 plus total apprehensions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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bishop at the Episcopal Church, who apparently allegedly lived at one point with both her boyfriend and his girlfriend at one point. This person decided to lecture the president of the United States at the National Prayer Service about transgender children and why he should stop deporting illegal immigrants.

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Well, I mean, he ain't wrong. He also pointed out, hey guys, a secure border saves lives. This is all such common sense. Trump ran on common sense. His inaugural speech focused on common sense. This is just common sense.

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He ain't wrong about that either. He, by the way, did shock CNN's Dana Bash because she asked him whether people who are non-criminals might be deported. And he's like, well, I mean, they crossed the border illegally. So the answer is yes.

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President Trump did respond, quote, the so-called bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a radical left hardline Trump hater. She brought her church into a world of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our country and killed people.

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Again, this is such common sense. And the fact that she is shocked by this is really the shocking thing. Well, meanwhile, President Trump isn't just moving on immigration, he's also moving on infrastructure. So... A couple of days ago, President Trump announced that there'd be a massive investment in AI databases. This is the infrastructure that is necessary in order to power AI.

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So AI relies on crunching extraordinary amounts of data. When ChatGPT takes in what you are asking it, and then it pumps out an answer, it is analyzing pretty much everything it can get its hands on. You're talking about essentially the entire publicly available internet. And then it is predicting the most likely response that you're looking for based on your question.

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It's doing so via keywords, essentially. That's a very, very short and dirty version of how AI works. What that means is that the amount of data that goes into one of those answers is huge. The amount of energy that it takes to crunch that data is huge. AI databases require a few things. They require, one, a country or a place that has an energy surplus because they're very, very energy intensive.

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Two, they require actual AI know-how. You can't just build it in a place where people don't know about it. Not a random person can build an AI database or any database for that matter. And three, they do require climate that is somewhat friendly because they expend extraordinary amounts of heat.

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And while the United States has been generally a little bit underpowered in this area, China is leading the way when it comes to the development of a lot of these AI capabilities. The United States must lead the way because these capabilities are going to be scarily effective.

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not only doing things like curing diseases, but also doing everything from booking your vacations for you to helping you do the most basic tasks in your life. The power of AI is, I think, if anything, underrated at this point. It is a sea change. It is the equivalent of how the internet changed the world, but more so. And honestly, the best thing you can probably do

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say about AI in terms of an analogy is the industrial revolution, just in the terms of the massive society-wide changes that are about to occur that most people aren't thinking about. And that requires, again, enormous expenditure of resources to keep that sort of stuff at home. Well, here's President Trump announcing a $500 billion investment in precisely this sort of infrastructure.

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That is the highest approval rating that President Trump has ever had, including during his first term. Many of his policies are wildly popular, like, for example, saying that there are only two sexes. Turns out that's like an 80-20 proposition in the United States of America.

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Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the United States. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job. Fact check, true. She and her church owe the public an apology. I'm sorry, that's solid stuff there from the presidents of the United States.

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Again, that's a big announcement. Again, because AI is going to do it. Now, it doesn't mean AI isn't scary. It doesn't mean that there aren't going to be some severe dislocations because of changes in the market. This always happens when a new technology comes about, particularly one that effectively makes everyone very smart. That's what AI does.

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If the Industrial Revolution made it so that everyone, weak and strong, had the capacity to do extraordinary amounts of work because of machines... Well, the AI revolution makes everybody a lot smarter, a lot smarter. Like you don't have to be a genius anymore in order to process a lot of data and get it out. You just type it into ChatGPT.

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Okay, so here is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talking about how AI can impact medicine at this event.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Yeah, well, Elon Musk somehow kind of got crossways of the president on this announcement. He put out a tweet. OpenAI said, announcing the Stargate project. The Stargate project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately.

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So Elon Musk responded, they don't actually have the money. And the reason that he is saying that, he suggests that they have about $10 billion available to them, but that's not $500 billion available to them. The SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority. Now, what is the real reason that Elon is doing that? Well, Elon has a beef with Sam Altman.

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Elon was one of the original investors in OpenAI when OpenAI was basically a 501c3, but like $100 million into it. And then it turned into a for-profit company. And so Elon is still kind of ticked about all of that. However...

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Well, an administration can handle an awful lot of back and forth administration, particularly President Trump tends to operate on sort of chaos theory inside his own administration. The best answers come out of conflict of voices inside his administration. Obviously, undermining big initiatives of the administration is not something that's going to be looked on well.

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Elon Musk is always going to be a freewheeling guy. I am not sure that he's best served by tweets like that one after the president makes a gigantic, powerful announcement. And that is, in fact, a very powerful announcement. It's going to be responsible, apparently, for the creation of perhaps 100,000 jobs. And it is not a public sector thing. It is a private sector thing.

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What Donald Trump is doing right now is a very good thing. He is saying, look, you have predictable rules that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. In that environment, people are going to invest lots of money, and they should. And he's right, and that's good. Meanwhile, President Trump is apparently considering a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods beginning as soon as February 1st.

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He said, we're talking about a tariff of 10% on China based on the fact they're sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada. He said probably February 1st is the date that we're looking at. Apparently, he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone about fentanyl and trade.

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The Chinese side's readout said Xi called for cooperation and said that the country's economic ties were mutually beneficial. China's Vice Premier Deng Zhejiang told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday there are, quote, no winners in a trade war. He called for international efforts to support economic globalization and to distribute it better.

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He was asked a couple of days ago about this, leaving the National Prayer Service. Somebody shouted a question at him and here's President Trump's response.

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Now, again, I think that a lot of this is President Trump ratcheting up to ratchet down. I think President Trump really likes using the threat of economic sanctions, tariffs, in order to get what he wants. Perhaps one of the things that he wants is the sale of TikTok, for example, from China to a non-Chinese interest.

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Whatever it is, President Trump is not shy about the use of tariffs, and China is indeed a geopolitical opponent. It is kind of amazing to me how Justin Trudeau of Canada, who, again, is being threatened with a 25 percent tariff. He says, well, if you do that, then Trump is going to need Russia, China, Venezuela.

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If you enforce a 25 percent tariff on Canada, why don't you just ask Trump what he actually wants? Like, really, why don't you just ask him, Justin? You could do that.

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Now again, I don't disagree that it's better for the United States to trade with Canada than Russia or China. I just want to know why he doesn't ask Trump what he wants and then try to cut a deal because Trump obviously is willing to use leverage. That, by the way, is also true with regard to Russia. We'll get to that in a moment.

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First, the Daily Wire gave you front row seats to history during Inauguration Weekend. We covered everything from the pageantry to the political highlights. We were on the ground right there to bring you the dawn of America's golden age. The Daily Wire is where politics and culture collide with live, uncensored, ad-free daily shows from the most trusted voices in America.

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It's our growing catalog of premium entertainment that's reshaping culture. We are leading the charge. What we do matters, but we can't do it without you. Join Daily Wire Plus today. Save 47% with code 47, celebrating America's 47th president, Donald J. Trump. There's never been a better time to join. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Save 47% today with code 47. Okay, meanwhile.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When it comes to leverage, President Trump isn't just leveraging Canada. He is, in fact, leveraging the Russians. So President Trump has now threatened sanctions and tariffs on Russia if Vladimir Putin does not reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. I said this is what he was going to do. Remember? Remember?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I told you he wasn't just going to cut off aid to Ukraine and hand the country over to the Russians the way the Democrats and the media kept saying.

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He put out a statement on Truth Social that if the government, quote, cannot make a deal and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries. This is, again, he wants the end of the war. He said, I love the Russian people.

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I always had a very good relationship with President Putin, but this is a pressure tactic. It is clear that President Trump is not simply going to unilaterally let his foot off the gas when it comes to sanctions on Vladimir Putin. And it is also clear that Trump has no interest in allowing Russia to simply walk through Ukraine.

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Quote, I'm going to do Russia, whose economy is failing, and President Putin a very big favor. Settle now and stop this ridiculous war. It's only going to get worse. Correct. This is the proper response from President Trump. That is absolutely right. Meanwhile, speaking of peace through strength, Pete Hegseth has been moved out of committee.

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Apparently, there are three Republican senators who plan not to vote for him, meaning J.D. Vance will break the tie and he'll be confirmed. Isn't that a huge shock? Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, the most moderate left-leaning members of the Republican caucus, they were always going to be no's probably on Pete Hegseth. Mitch McConnell is apparently also a no.

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I'm Pete Hegseth, which I don't understand. He's totally wrong. Maybe he's on his way out and this is kind of a twist in the nose of President Trump. In any case, Susan Collins told reporters on Wednesday she found troubling information had been omitted from Pete Hegseth's FBI background check. And this seems like such a cheap shot. It seems like a massive cheap shot.

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And listen, I understand not all Republicans are going to vote the same way on everything. Susan Collins is in Maine. Maine is at best a purple state. It really is a blue state with a couple purple leanings. Okay, with that said, the reports that are being discussed right now about Hegseth focus in on his supposed treatment of his ex-wife.

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Senators received an affidavit containing new allegations against Hegseth, according to NBC News. The receipt of the affidavit came after Senate Armed Services Committee staffers were in contact with Hegseth's former sister-in-law for several days. That former sister-in-law submitted the affidavit, and apparently...

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She was asked to detail what she knew of instances of abuse or threats of abuse perpetrated against any other person and quote, mistreatment of a spouse, former spouse or other members of his family, among other requests.

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Jack Reed, the senator from Rhode Island, he said, quote, as I said for months, the reports of Hegseth's history of alleged sexual assault, alcohol abuse and public misconduct necessitate an exhaustive background investigation. Danielle apparently describes in the affidavit allegations of volatile and threatening conduct by Hegseth and made his second wife, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety.

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Among her allegations are that Samantha hid in a closet once from Hegseth and that she developed escape plans for use if she felt she needed to get away from Hegseth that would be activated with a code word and that she did once put the escape plans into action. There's only one problem. Samantha Hegseth denied it. The ex-wife denied it and the entire media ran with it and so did Democrats.

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And by the way, whomever decided inside the administration to subject Donald Trump to that is like that person should definitely be on the outs. I will say that the footage, as I said at the time of J.D. Vance doing Jim from the office, like one of the best vibes of this administration is J.D. 's Jim from the office vibe. And it's constant.

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Quote, first and foremost, I have not and will not comment on my marriage to Pete Hegseth. I do not have representatives speaking on my behalf nor have I ever asked anyone to share or speak about the details of my marriage on my behalf, whether it be a reporter, a committee member, a transition team member, et cetera. I do not believe your information to be accurate. I have cc'd my lawyer.

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Quote, there was no physical abuse in my marriage. This is the only further statement I will make to you. I have let you know that I am not speaking and will not speak on my marriage to Pete. Please respect this decision. Okay, so if this is the basis for Susan Collins opposing, that is ridiculous and insane.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In any case, these sorts of spurious allegations unsupportable by the actual available evidence have become stock in trade for Democrats from Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh. And it is not going to kill nominations any longer. Not on the right side of the aisle. Coming up, we'll get into actual supported allegations of physical abuse of women.

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I'm speaking, of course, about the former second gentleman, Doug Emhoff. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The constant reaction shots that you saw during his debates with Tim Walz, the reaction shots that you get when he's being lectured about transgender children, where he looks like he just can't even believe what's happening. It is a pretty wonderful thing.

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Well, now the left has decided to turn Bishop Marianne Buddy, who apparently is this no-name bishop who decided to lecture the president and vice president, into a resistance hero. It's time for a new resistance hero. How exciting. Well, Bishop Buddy was on with Aaron Burnett and decided to talk about her religious precepts, which include apparently transing the children.

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Further, 58% of respondents to a Reuters Ipsos poll agreed with the statement the United States should, quote, dramatically reduce the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum at the border. And these are big numbers for President Trump. The less popular items on his agenda include some of the pardons that he's issuing, but he's burying that in all of the popular policies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, she did not have their conversation in a respectful way. She hijacked a national prayer service to throw a bunch of politics in there. She then appeared on The View because, again, time for a new resistance. If this is the best you guys can bring, if Marianne Edgar, buddy, is your resistance hero, guys, you're going to have to do better than this.

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It was neither respectful nor kind, of course. The media, of course, are... already arraying against President Trump. It's not helping their ratings, by the way. I think one of the sort of going theories about media is that left-wing media thrive when there is a right-winger in office. That might have been true during Trump 1.

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I do not think that's going to be true during Trump 2 because it's just boring. You know exactly what they're going to say before they say it. It's tiring and it's annoying and it's boring. Listening to CNN hosts gush over a decline in inauguration ratings. I'm sorry, this is not going to bring CNN's ratings back. They are firing, by the way, hundreds of people this week.

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because they just have no ratings at all. They have no ratings, no revenue, nothing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, but let me just point out the streaming numbers actually were through the roof. I mean, we know our streaming numbers at Daily Wire and they were extraordinary. It was easily the highest rated thing that we've ever done. So there's that. Okay, but here's the reality. While they are busy covering the distractions of the Trump administration, things are actually getting done.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So yesterday, the White House issued an order that all federal employees in DEI roles be placed on paid leave by 5 p.m. on Wednesday. They are shutting down, according to the Office of Personnel Management, every single DEI office across the entirety of the federal government. According to this new memorandum, They're taking steps to close agency DEIA offices.

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Each should take prompt actions regarding the offices and agency subunits focused exclusively on DEI. Specifically, agency heads should, no later than 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025, send an agency-wide notice to employees informing them of the closure and asking employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And by the way, the stock market is a new all-time high. The S&P 500 is at a record high three days since President Trump took office. Here is CNBC reporting yesterday.

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A template agency-wide notice is attached as Appendix 1. So, in other words, also let us know if you guys are going to try and hide your DEI employees under another rubric. Trump 2.0 is smarter than Trump 1.0. They know the tricks that are going to be played and they are pursuing those tricks all the way down the rabbit hole. They're going to stop it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They already drafted a template email saying that pay and benefits were going to be paid during paid leave, that these jobs basically were going to be sunsetted. This is a massive change. The White House put a statement out at the time

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suggesting, quote, the Biden administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs going by the name diversity, equity, and inclusion into virtually all aspects of the federal government in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.

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This is a concerted effort stemming from President Biden's first day in office when he issued Executive Order 13958, advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government. Pursuant to Executive Order 13958 and follow-on orders, nearly every federal agency and entity submitted equity action plans.

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The public release of these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination. That ends today. Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect and to expanding precious taxpayer resources only on making America great. This is excellent. This is huge. DEI is being killed by the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'll get to more on that in just one second. First, in an uncertain economic landscape, smart investors are paying attention to the signs. With increased tariffs reshaping our trade relationships and sweeping changes to taxes and regulations, one investment vehicle stands the test of time. Gold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's why I'm excited to tell you about a groundbreaking resource from my trusted partner, Birch Gold Group. They've just released the Ultimate Guide for Gold in the Trump Era, featuring an exclusive forward by Donald Trump Jr. The numbers do not lie. Our national debt keeps climbing, and with it, the interest payments that burden our economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In these challenging times, gold is still your hedge against a weakened dollar, and Birch Gold is still the company I trust to help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold. Text BEN to 989898 for your free copy of the Ultimate Guide for Gold in the Trump Era. There's no obligation, only information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, thousands of happy customers, you too can trust Birch Gold. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898 today. I've been working with Birch Gold for years. Ask them all your questions. I'm not saying take all your life savings and stick it in precious metals, but smart investors diversify.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Birch Gold can help you do that. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898 to get started. Also, the new year means setting new goals, not just for your body, but for your financial well-being as well. Here's something important to consider. Your financial health is directly connected to protecting your identity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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monitoring hundreds of millions of data points every second to alert you to threats you might miss, giving you peace of mind while you focus on what matters most. If identity theft occurs, Lifeblocks U.S.-based restoration specialists will work tirelessly to resolve the issue, backed by the comprehensive million-dollar protection package.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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Save up to 40% your very first year. That's 40% off at LifeLock.com slash Ben. Terms apply. The brand new FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who is an excellent, excellent pick by the president of the United States. He, of course, is on the FCC. He's been elevated to the FCC chair. And I know the chair. He's a truly moral person who believes the right things.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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Here he was pointing out that his agency had been spending millions of dollars on DEI.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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There is a sort of international conservatism that is rising, and that international conservatism, again, it's being imitated everywhere. It includes Brendan Carr citing my favorite modern politician, Javier Mille from Argentina, when he says, if you're not on board with killing DEI, afuera, get out of here.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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By the way, this includes doing the most obvious things. Like, for example, stop it with the DEI when it comes to the Federal Aviation Administration. When you have a pilot, you do not care whether the pilot is white, black, green, brown, male, female. What you care about is whether the plane gets where it's supposed to go in the safest possible way.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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The notion that you are hiring pilots based on their intersectional credentials is one of the dumbest things anyone has ever pursued. And the White House has now put out an executive order on this quote.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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Illegal and discriminatory DEI hiring, including on the basis of race, sex, disability, or any other criteria, other than the safety of the airline passengers and overall job excellence, competency and qualification harms all Americans who deserve to fly with confidence.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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It also penalizes hardworking Americans who want to serve in the FAA, but are unable to do so as they lack a requisite disability or skin color. FAA employees must hold the qualifications and have the ability to perform their jobs to the highest possible standard of excellence. This is obviously really, really good. The biggest action that was taken by President Trump

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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yesterday was his move to destroy Executive Order 11246. Executive Order 11246 was an executive order that was originally signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. And it required, it required affirmative action

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In fact, it prohibited federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors who do over $10,000 in government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, which sounds fine, right? No discrimination if you are going to contract with the federal government. There's only one problem.

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It required contractors to discriminate, to quote, take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. That affirmative action means racial discrimination. It means not anti-discrimination, but yes, discrimination. Trump has now rescinded that executive order.

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Okay, that EO, that LBJ EO was notorious. It was notorious for having crammed affirmative action throughout the federal government. President Trump killed it dead. The stuff that Trump is doing in the first three days alone is astonishing, truly astonishing. Meanwhile, when it comes to immigration, President Trump is moving. This was his key promise since 2015, and he is not letting up.

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Ep. 2123 - Trump Kills DEI, Affirmative Action!

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According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon said on Wednesday it has begun deploying 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border, putting in motion plans that President Trump laid out in executive order shortly after he took office to crack down on immigration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

Well, folks, there was a terrorist attack last night outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. It happened about 9, 10 p.m., according to Cassie Akiva, writing for The Daily Wire. The attack occurred outside the Young Diplomats reception for young Jewish professionals hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

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These are theories that are not rooted in evidence, but in a basic supposition that bad things that happen in the world must be the result of some sinister plot by some cleverly hidden group. The philosopher Karl Popper spelled out a pretty good definition for this in his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies.

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He says, quote, the conspiracy theory of society is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon. Sometimes it's a hidden interest, which has first to be revealed and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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This view arises, of course, from the mistaken theory that whatever happens in society, especially happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people as a rule dislike, is the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups. That's the great conspiracy theory. And that great conspiracy theory has become insanely popular on both the left and the right.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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So why on the left? Well, in the left-wing great conspiracy theory, every group disparity is discrimination. If, for example, black Americans are disproportionately lower income than white Americans, this has to be because of some actual conspiracy, systemic racism, white privilege, or policy of discrimination without stating the actual policy.

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Now, again, it is possible to find policies in a wide variety of places and times across the world that do, in fact, victimize particular groups. That's true. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's actual policy. But If you cannot point to a policy or politician or institution that actually does the discriminating, you are now operating in the realm of conspiracy theory.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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And that's what the left does, both nationally and internationally. Crime rates are bad in the black community because all cops are bastards. White supremacy lies behind every corner. Racism is clearly the reason for disproportionate poverty.

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God bless you all. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, put out a similar statement. saying, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the murder of two staff members from the embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. Our prayers are with their loved ones. This is a brazen act of cowardly antisemitic violence. Make no mistake, we'll track down those responsible and bring them to justice.

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When you take that logic to the international stage, you end up with anti-Americanism because America is disproportionately successful and there are lots of other places that are not successful. You also end up siding with Hamas. You end up chanting free Palestine. In fact, support for Hamas is like the apex case of the left-wing theory, the great conspiracy theory. If the Palestinians...

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who collectively as a group have made every single bad choice it is possible to make as a political body by embracing and supporting terrorism, rejecting peace agreement after peace agreement, channeling funding toward violence and hatred rather than economic development, educating their own kids that wiping Israel off the map ought to be a lifelong goal and all the rest if they live in a failed state, both in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria.

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if no other country will take them specifically because they are shot through with enormous support for terrorism, then that's not their own fault. That must be the result of the more developed democracy on its borders. Even if, by the way, that developed democracy is one fifth Muslim.

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And if the Muslims in that developed democracy have the highest levels of political and civil freedom of any Muslims anywhere in the world. And by the way, some of the highest incomes in the region.

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If Hamas spends billions of dollars to line its own pockets, live in five-star hotels in Qatar, build terror tunnels, if they fire rockets at Israel for nearly two decades, and then launch a genocidal attack on Jews.

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An actual genocidal attack, like by UN definition, designed to exterminate a part of a larger whole for which Hamas seeks mass murder, and complete with the taking of hundreds of hostages again, dozens of whom are still, after a year and a half, being held in Gaza. Then the left responds by excusing Hamas, because after all, the great conspiracy theory suggests they are poor, supposedly browner.

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They, of course, ignore the 45 percent of Israelis whose parents and grandparents are from Arab countries and are, in fact, brown and less successful. This is why there were left wing protests in solidarity with Hamas before Israel even responded to October 7th, before the response, like on October 8th. The genocide charge from the left is a fig leaf.

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Israel's very existence is the problem to the radical left, just as the existence of America is a problem because the successful are by nature the exploiters according to the left. That's the great conspiracy theory. And then there's the right. And there is a horseshoe theory of the right that shares many of the same basic conspiracy theories as the left.

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You can hear it on a wide variety of supposedly right-wing or heterodox podcasts these days. This theory, again, is there a group of victims, often lower-income whites or Christians, who are being victimized by a shadowy group of people. Now, again, there are absolutely 100% policies that do victimize white people or Christians right here in America. We talk about them on the show a lot, actually.

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Say, affirmative action on race or anti-Christian, anti-discrimination regulations. that are directed at the Little Sisters of the Poor. These are actual policies, for example. Policies directed at Jack Phillips for baking, for not wanting to bake a transgender cake, for example. Those are all real things, like an actual conspiracy. That's not a conspiracy theory.

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We have information about the two people who were killed. They were, in fact, a young couple who were about to be engaged to be married. Apparently, the young man had just bought a ring to propose engagement to the young woman, Sarah Milgram. Again, according to Cassie Akiva, the young couple was gunned down at close range.

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If you can't point to a policy or politician or institution that is making that conspiracy happen, you are now in the realm of conspiracy theory. And what these conspiracy theorists often do is they target a shadowy group who they say are running the system. The shadowy group of people is often characterized as clannish or cosmopolitan or rootless, deracinating in some peculiar way.

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And the supposed policy that is somehow victimizing the conspiratorial rights victim class is either with regards to foreign policy or capitalism. So on the foreign policy front, you'll hear these folks claim that American foreign policy is being run by AIPAC. which is an absurd claim. AIPAC is one of the least effective organizations in America.

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Or that capitalism is being run by a conspiratorial elite who just so often have these Jewish last names. So why is the conspiratorial right now embracing the genocide in Gaza lie and very often making common cause with Hamas propaganda? Well, here's the thing.

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The problem for the conspiratorial right when it comes to Israel is that Israel factually happens to be the only state in the Middle East where Christians live safely and openly. Israel is also clearly responding to a Muslim genocidal terror assault. And those same people hate Americans and hate Christians. Hamas is not a fan of America or Christians.

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And this is why the conspiratorial right, unlike the conspiratorial left, didn't immediately start tearing into Israel on October 8th. They just went peculiarly silent. None of them had anything to say. They just went totally quiet. Nothing on their Twitter feeds. Nothing. No comment. Nothing. For a moment. Then the minute that Israel responded, they jumped into action.

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You see, the conspiratorial right needed a reason for why actually the same people who supposedly control American foreign policy and capitalism are the actual bad guys in the Middle East, too. And that's why they're fond of chattering about genocide in Gaza, despite the fact that there is no genocide.

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If you can claim that Israel is a genocidal state and the same people on the conspiratorial right who claim this also tend to claim that Israel is anti-Christian, a giant lie, and spend their days trying to dig up bad translations of the Talmud, then you can maintain your own great conspiracy theory in which this shadowy group of rootless cosmopolitans is in control of all the bad things in your life.

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The genocide lie is just as valuable to the conspiratorial right as it is to the conspiratorial left. So why does this matter? Well, because lies have consequences. Lies have consequences. This doesn't mean that we have to buy into the theory of stochastic terrorism that the left so often promotes. It doesn't mean that opinions ought to be censored or deplatformed. Let me say that again.

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For the morons in the room, this does not mean opinions ought to be censored or deplatformed. No one is calling for people not to be on X or on YouTube or on Facebook or anything like that. And this terrorist is responsible for his own actions. Of course, he is. Just as the congressional baseball shooter was responsible for his own actions.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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Or the Dallas police shooter back in 2014 was responsible for his own actions. Just like Hamas is responsible for its own actions. However, lies change the way people think and act. Again, if I have to explain this to you, I would suggest that you're mentally deficient. Of course, lies change the way people think and act. That is what they are designed to do.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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If you keep saying over and over again, for example, that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, it's not a giant shock when someone, actually multiple someones, tries to assassinate Donald Trump. If you keep saying all cops are bastards over and over and over again, it should not actually be a shock when someone tries to shoot cops.

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They were leaving the American Jewish Committee's Access Young Diplomats reception. Apparently, this included, by the way, a panel on how to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. The embassy spokesperson, Talmayim, called it an unbearable loss. At a Wednesday night press conference, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, talked about Lashinsky and Milgram.

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And if you keep claiming or implying that the Jews run the world and engage in genocide, it should not be a shock when someone murders people at a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. In other words, take some damned responsibility for the things you say and the positions you take. I know responsibility. I know, I know. It's a bad word now.

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Yes, you have responsibility for the things that come out of your face. It is worthwhile to be responsible in how we speak about issues and engage with the world. You know, we in the sort of speech sphere focus a lot on rights. And of course we should because the violation of rights is bad. But there are also duties like duties to the truth. and to fact, and to speak into reality.

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Again, I know responsibility, it makes people feel all icky when people say responsibility. I get it. I get that a lot of people over the past couple of decades have improperly used the Overton window, the so-called acceptable range of useful discourse, to crush debate and dissent.

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Hell, I personally have been censored on a variety of platforms by exactly that movement for saying basic things like men aren't women for years. It cost my company millions of dollars. So I get it. I get the impulse that says we ought to pretend no one has any duty to be responsible in the language they use or the questions they ask or the arguments they make.

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But just because bad people abused the word responsibility to suggest that true things were lies does not mean that lies don't exist and that responsibility does not exist. They absolutely do. And lies have consequences. So back to this case, propagating absolute lies about genocide in Gaza and then spewing that out into the world over and over raises the temperature.

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Ep. 2205 - Leftist Terrorist MURDERS 2 At Jewish Event In DC

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Two staffers, one is named Yaron Lashinsky, who's 30, and Sarah Milgram, who's 26, were shot at close range. They were murdered. They were murdered by a man who is shouting, free Palestine. at the time.

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Vomiting N-word Heil Hitler into public discourse raises the temperature, as does treating with absolute credulity a variety of specious claims ranging from Hitler's well-intentioned oopsies in Europe to Israeli genocide to conspiratorial Jews in their Talmud running the banking system in Hollywood. Stop with the bull about just asking questions. Just asking questions doesn't cut it.

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The whole purpose of a question is to seek an answer. The people you listen to should be seeking answers. Getting answers is better than just asking questions. Let me say that again. Getting answers is better than just asking questions. If you want to live a better life, if you want to improve yourself and the world, you need actual answers to hard questions.

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Responsible people base those answers on evidence, facts, reality. They don't just ask questions or ignore actual answers in favor of a pseudo ignorance, masking itself as a sort of semi-retarded profundity. I don't know the answers. All I know is what we've been told is insufficient.

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Or pretend that answers given by people we trusted a moment ago are now insufficient because those people aren't giving us the answers we want. Dan Bongino must be lying about Jeffrey Epstein because they probably got to him. People who do this sort of stuff aren't just play actors at a sort of teenage cynicism. They are actively misleading you. They are lying to you.

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They say they want answers when they absolutely positively do not want answers. In fact, they want to prevent you from getting actual answers because the evidence and the facts and the real answers too often debunk their theories. Such people, left and right, do not want you to have answers.

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They want you to be satisfied with their leading questions, which all lead to one gigantic false conclusion that in the world of conspiracy theories, you are a victim. And by the way, only they, the real askers, can guide you toward the light. Only they can be trusted. This stuff is demagoguery of the highest order, and it's ugly. It's ugly because it not only is a lie, it makes your life worse.

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Because in the end, their argument is actually really simple. It's not a question. It's an argument. Someone else is responsible for problems that you can solve. That argument is bad for you. It makes you dumb. It makes you useless. It makes you vicious. It's bad for your soul. It's bad for America. It's bad for the world.

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Meanwhile, yesterday, President Trump met in the Oval Office with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa was looking for what he called a reset in relations with the United States. President Trump has pointed out repeatedly that South African land expropriation policy is a disaster area that is, in fact, racist and is going to have racist effects.

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And you want to talk about actual racist policy? The land expropriation policy in South Africa is designed to be racially discriminatory. It is. The Expropriation Act of 2024 replaces the prior Land Act of 1975 in South Africa.

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And it says that land can now be seized for a public purpose and that compensation does not need to match fair market value, especially in cases of what is called public benefit. This is the text of the act. No compensation, meaning no compensation is possible when it is, quote, just and equitable and also in the public interest. So what exactly does all that mean?

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Well, the law itself defines public interest to include, quote, the nation's commitment to land reform and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa's natural resources in order to address the results of past racially discriminatory laws or practices. In other words,

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Because of apartheid, the argument goes, a disproportionate amount of land in South Africa is owned by white people. This means that if South Africa decides that for purposes of fairness, right, in order to, quote, redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws or practices, that land should simply be seized from the white farmers who own it and then redistributed.

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That that's okay under the Expropriation Act of 2024. And we keep being told that, well, you know, the judiciary will protect. The South African judiciary is going to say that that's what you trust. That's who you trust. And people who are attempting to draw distinctions between, for example, Zimbabwean land expropriation policy, which ended with the complete destruction of that country.

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And what's happening in South Africa are relying on some slim reads, shall we say. We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, Pure Talk, my wireless company, veteran-led company, believes every man and woman who has faithfully served this country deserves to proudly fly an American flag that was made in America.

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And that's why Pure Talk is on a mission to give an allegiance flag, the highest quality American flag, to 1,000 U.S. veterans in time for the patriotic holidays. Flag Day and the U.S. Army's birthday are coming up June 14th. Independence Day comes up in July. Just switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk this month.

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A portion of every sale will go to provide these high-quality flags to deserving veterans. With plans from just $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data, you can enjoy America's most dependable 5G network while cutting your cell phone bill in half. The average family saves over $1,000 a year. Now, I use Pure Talk for all my calls, business calls, personal calls, everything.

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I trust them. You can do the same and, again, save a lot of money in the process. Just go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com slash Shapiro. That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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Also, not everybody who handles your personal information will be as careful as you are about it. It only takes one mistake to expose that information to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the US. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity.

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If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US-based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed, or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million-dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft.

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You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with LifeLock, you can, in fact, help protect it. And we have producers who are using LifeLock right now. They feel a lot more secure. Act right now. Save up to 40% your very first year of coverage. Call 1-800-LifeLock and use promo code Ben or go to LifeLock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply.

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Go check them out right now. LifeLock.com slash Ben. Get 40% off or give them a call at 1-800-LifeLock right now. So President Trump faced down South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa. Of course, the South African ANC party has been linked to significant corruption. They themselves have accused others of genocide unfairly, including an ICC case in which they accused Israel of genocide.

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As we've discussed, that is absolute nonsense. So here is President Trump confronting Cyril Ramaphosa about this.

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Lashinsky, according to Cassie Akiva reporting, was a German-Israeli dual citizen and a devout evangelical Christian who immigrated to Israel at the age of 16 and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He studied Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was fluent in German, Hebrew, English, and Japanese. He moved to work as a political analyst at the Israeli embassy in 2022.

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So he's playing clips here of Julius Malema. We've played clips of Malema on this show. We've covered pretty extensively what's going on in South Africa with Ernst Rhodes, who's the head of Afroforum, among other organizations in South Africa. We've covered it pretty significantly on the show for the past several weeks. And actually, we covered it even going back a couple of years.

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Well, those clips, obviously, of Malema are very bad. And President Trump said, this is very bad. These are people that are officials. They're saying, kill the white farmer and take their land. Here's President Trump making that claim yesterday.

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So President Trump has used the suggestion or people around him have suggested that white genocide is taking place in South Africa. Now, as Roots suggested on the show, white genocide is not actually a good description of what's happening in South Africa. What is happening in South Africa is horrifyingly bad government policy that is discriminatory against white people. That's just a reality.

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There are over 140 laws on the books in South Africa that are racially discriminatory. That is a reality. And President Trump is totally right to call that out, obviously. President Trump said we have many people that feel they're being persecuted. They're coming to the United States. So we take from many, many locations if we feel there is persecution or genocide going on.

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Now, again, use of the word genocide is not accurate in this context, but there certainly is persecution going on in South Africa pretty clearly. Ramaphosa tried to claim that he had nothing to do with Julius Malema. He has, in fact, made overtures to Malema. Malema was a member of his party originally before he moved on to found a more radical left wing group called the EFF.

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Malema, for his part, by the way, responded by suggesting that he was going to double down on this sort of stuff. So President Trump played a clip that we've played on the show of Malema jumping in front of like tens of thousands of people at a rally shouting, kill the Boer, kill the farmer, shoot to kill and other incendiary slogans.

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He put out on X the following statement, a group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me. No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide. We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.

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And then his party issued a statement in which it declared to kill the boar, kill the farmer. Victory is certain. So is that movement afoot? Certainly in South Africa, of course. The EFF won about 10% of the vote in the most recent general elections. That is the fourth biggest party. That is right behind another radical party called the MK Party.

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At 15%, both of those parties call for the overt expropriation of land from white farmers. Well, the media came out in defense of of Ramaphosa and the government of South Africa, suggesting this was a good day for white nationalists and that songs like Kill the Boer aren't actually literal. Here is CNN reporter Larry Madawau making those claims.

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According to Israel's ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosser, He said that he was his master's student at Reichman University. He said he was a Christian, a true lover of Israel, served in the IDF and chose to dedicate his life to the state of Israel and the Zionist cause. He embodied the Judeo-Christian values and set an example for young people worldwide.

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Oh, so it's a song about white supremacy, killing the farmers and killing the boars. Well, I mean, again, I've heard these sorts of arguments before. They are not particularly convincing or good. Ramaphosa in the room decided to knock Trump about taking the Qatari jet. Here he was yesterday in the Oval.

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And by the way, we should not take United States planes from South Africa either. It's a general policy. We should not take planes from literally anyone as a foreign gift unless it is cleared by Congress. And we certainly shouldn't take planes from Qatar, which is an Iranian cutout, or South Africa, which is increasingly an Iranian Chinese cutout. Just a general policy consideration right there.

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It's one of the reasons why President Trump shouldn't do that is because it leaves him open to precisely that criticism from... bad characters like Cyril Ramaphosa. The fact that President Trump was willing to raise these issues with Ramaphosa is a particularly good thing. That is definitely worthwhile. So good for President Trump along those lines.

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Meanwhile, in huge news for President Trump, the Trump tax bill has now been passed in the House. It passed by an extraordinarily narrow vote of 215 to 214. One lawmaker voted president. That's a major win, of course, for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had to somehow maneuver this very complex piece of legislation through the process.

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Obviously, you had people on the right who were criticizing the bill for not cutting spending enough, people on the left who were criticizing the bill for not raising salt deductions enough.

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As The Wall Street Journal reports, the passage of the big, beautiful bill marked a major win for Trump and Johnson, who again found the formula and steered a course between hardliners who wanted deeper spending cuts and moderates who worried the bill would hurt their districts, hospitals, and clean energy projects.

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Thursday morning's vote was a significant step toward extending Trump's expiring 2017 tax cuts and cementing other conservative priorities while trimming spending on Medicaid and food aid. It again showed the president's power to unite fractious House Republicans whose narrow majority meant any handful of dissidents could have sunk the bill.

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One of his teachers, Ronen Chaval, said Lashinsky moved to Israel based on his faith and decided to immigrate to Israel, serve in the IDF, and later dedicate his life to the state of Israel.

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Now, again, one of the weird things about very narrow majorities is very often they're actually more durable than big majorities. Why? Well, because you can tell who the outliers are. If you have 220 votes as opposed to 240 votes, 240 votes, you might have a block of 30 people who all vote against the bill and it goes down in flaming defeat. But who exactly do you blame for that?

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30 people voted against it. If it's like three people, you know individually who to blame. The only Republicans who did not vote for the bill were Representatives Andy Harris, who voted present. Representatives Andrew Garbarino of New York and David Schweiker missed the vote. And of course, Thomas Massey voted against the bill as well.

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So Massey and another representative, Warren Davidson in Ohio, every Democrat was opposed. There were some late breaking updates on the bill. Those include an acceleration of the Medicaid work requirements to December 2026 from 2029, which makes the cuts effectuate faster because the Medicaid work requirement. Again, the fact that this is controversial on any level is insane to me.

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Of course, if you are able-bodied and just poor, you should have to work in order to receive Medicaid. That like 80 hours a month. Again, that's 20 hours a week. That's four hours per workday. My kids are in school for like twice that length of time. It's ridiculous to suggest that you are entitled to Medicaid if you are unwilling to work. That's silly.

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He was a Christian, a great lover of Israel, who immigrated to Israel, served in the army, and decided to dedicate his life to the state of Israel and Zionism, a wonderful life story of a man with moral clarity. He said, Lashinsky's LinkedIn page, again, this is the young man who was murdered.

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Also, it's going to end certain tax credits for wind energy and solar energy by 2028 instead of 2031. So those were the concessions to the fiscal hawks. The updates also locked in a $40,000 cap on state and local tax deductions starting this year, up from a $30,000 cap in the prior plan. Again, that was designed to satisfy people in New York and New Jersey.

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So Johnson was able to shepherd this through. Now, a completely different bill is likely to pass in the Senate, and then those two bills will come together. Now, the CBO is saying that, effectively speaking, this is going to eventually cause cuts to Medicare. Now, the bill doesn't cut Medicare. It doesn't. There's nothing in the bill that cuts Medicare.

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Why is the CBO claiming that the bill is going to cut Medicare? Well, because the idea is that it adds so much to the national debt that it would force cuts in Medicare beginning in 2026. because it would officially add apparently $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office projects.

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That would force budget officials to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit Medicare. The legislation significantly adds to the national debt. When it exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers sequestration or compulsory budget reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4% annually or $490 billion over 10 years.

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So again, those reductions, by the way, are not a foregone conclusion. So when the CBO says Medicare will be cut, that's not a foregone conclusion. In all likelihood, by the way, it won't be. In all likelihood, it would just take out some more debt.

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Congress can simply instruct the CBO to disregard the reconciliation package's debt impact, pass new legislation to reduce the deficit, or change federal budget scorekeeping rules. So again, this is a stretch by the CBO. Again, it's all provisional. It's like, oh, well, if everything got left in place and nobody changed anything, then maybe there would have to be cuts. Okay, that's ridiculous.

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All these things are going to change. Congress will move to stop cuts to Medicare. We all know that's going to happen. The real question here is not that. The real question is not, Cuts to Medicare. The real question is what the hell do we do about our debt? And that is a real question. The American national debt is a disaster area.

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There's a reason why the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 800 points yesterday, and that's because of a weak bond market. So again, what does that mean? It means that people have very little faith that in the future, 20, 30 years from now, they're going to be able to get back their money if they buy a bond from the US government.

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He wrote that he is an ardent believer in the vision that was outlined in the Abraham Accords and believed that expanding the circle of peace with our Arab neighbors and pursuing regional cooperation is in the best interest of the state of Israel and the Middle East as a whole. To this end, I advocate for interfaith dialogue. Again, none of that mattered to the shooter, obviously.

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A bond just means essentially you're loaning money to the US government at a rate of interest for a period of time. That's what a bond is. And so if people don't want to buy bonds, that's because either they believe they're not going to get their money back or they believe that it's going to be paid back in inflated dollars.

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And that was sort of the evidence from a bond auction that happened yesterday. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 817 points or 1.9%, leading indices lower. Longer-term U.S. Treasury yields rose again, with the 10-year yield approaching 4.6% and the 30-year surging above 5%. That was the highest in the 30-year bond since October of 2023.

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Yields extended their gains in the afternoon after a $16 billion auction of 20-year Treasury bonds attracted soft demand from investors, selling at a higher yield than traders had anticipated. A higher yield just means a lower price. And the yield is the difference between the interest rate on the bond and the price that you're paying for the bond, right? That's the yield.

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So if the yield increases, that is a reflection of there not being a lot of desire for people to buy the bonds. And that's why the markets are freaking out because they're saying, okay, maybe at some point the debt is going to become a serious real issue. So again, the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good explanation as to why the yields are actually increasing. Some are not bad.

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And for example, people run to bonds when they're unsure about the economy. They run to stocks when they think the economy is going to go up. So as people worry less about recession, they're not running as much to bonds. But there is persistent inflation anxiety. You don't buy a bond if you believe that your gains in the bond are going to be inflated away.

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In fact, here is a video of the shooter screaming free Palestine, not just screaming it, by the way, chanting in full campus mode, free, free Palestine, which, by the way, this is a good indicator of what the free Palestine globalized the Intifada movement actually is. This is the pro-Palestinian cause in a nutshell, standing for a

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If I lend you $100 expecting to get back $105, but I know you have a money printing machine in your basement that's going to just print out counterfeit bills that are indistinguishable from the real ones. I'm not going to lend you the money. That's essentially why you have a problem. People believe that eventually the American government is going to inflate its way out of all of this.

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And again, there are also rising yields overseas because everybody is now doing debt-led growth at this point in time. This is a serious, real crisis. It's a debt spiral that is beginning to occur in the United States. Neither party is willing to take it on. That is just a reality. It is just a reality. Neither party is willing to take that on. And that is a disaster area.

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That is a failure of your politicians. But let's be real about this. This is a representative democracy. This is a failure of the American people. The American people have come to expect that the government is going to pay extraordinary amounts of their bill. And if you believe that, then you can't be surprised when the government has to take out extraordinary amounts of debt.

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And that means later, either extraordinary cuts, extraordinary inflation, or extraordinary tax increases. Those are really the only options. And this is a point made by William Galston over at the Wall Street Journal today. He says, the Congressional Budget Office in March issued a report on America's long-term fiscal situation.

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If current laws remained generally unchanged, the 2017 tax cuts would expire at the end of this year and discretionary spending would shrink as a share of GDP. Under that scenario, the annual budget deficit in 2035 would remain roughly in line with where it now stands, about 6% of GDP.

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And we would add more than $20 trillion to publicly held government debt between 2025 and 2035, raising debt as a share of GDP from about 100% to a record 118%. And he says, let's be clear about what changing course means. As the U.S. population continues to age, the cost of Social Security and Medicare as a share of GDP will mount inexorably.

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Milgram grew up in the Kansas City suburbs, the young woman who was murdered. She was a full-time employee at the embassy's Department of Public Diplomacy. She got her Master of Arts at American University, and she was also a graduate of the University for Peace.

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Together, these two programs will account for more than 100% of the increase in federal spending as a share of GDP over the next decade. These demographic and political realities point to the same conclusion. Increased revenue will be needed to secure these programs for the long term. And so what is coming is probably a tax bomb somewhere along the line here.

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Either a tax bomb or an inflation bomb or austerity measures. Those are the only choices. There are no other choices because at a certain point, you can't just sell your debt into a market that doesn't want to buy your debt. That may not be the short-term concern, but it certainly is a mid to long-term concern and really, really should be. There's more on this in a moment.

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First, choosing SimpliSafe for my studio, really, really easy decision. Whenever we arm the system before leaving or calling it a day, my team and I get instant peace of mind knowing our equipment and creative work are protected. With SimpliSafe standing guard, I can focus on my projects and rest easier, confident.

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I'm covered if anything happens, especially while I'm out of the office and traveling. I would love for you to experience that same security in your home. With SimpliSafe, Families enjoy the gold standard in home security and genuine peace of mind whenever they arm their system.

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Unlike traditional systems that only respond after a break-in occurs, SimpliSafe's active guard outdoor protection works to prevent intrusions before they happen. Their AI-powered cameras with live professional monitoring detect suspicious activity, allowing agents to intervene in real time, speaking to potential intruders, activating spotlights, contacting police before anyone enters your home.

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With no long-term contracts, affordable monitoring at about a buck daily, and a 60-day money-back guarantee, SimpliSafe delivers both protection and value for a homeowners. Visit simplisafe.com slash Shapiro to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month for free. That's simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. There is no safe like SimpliSafe.

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Also, starting a business can be really exciting. The financial chaos that comes with it, not so much fun. When we launched The Daily Wire, we became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee expenses, spending countless hours reconciling statements. That was all a nightmare until we got it figured out.

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Again, when you start a business, you just don't have time to do any of this stuff. And that's why I want to introduce you to Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card that automates your entire tedious and time-consuming expense process.

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Most finance teams are trapped, spending about 80% of their time on tactical busy work like chasing expenses and reconciling statements, with only 20% left for strategic thinking. Ramp flips that equation entirely.

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Their corporate card automates operations, freeing you and your finance team to focus on those strategies that truly drive growth, forecasting, strategic planning, high-value decision-making. It's no wonder over 25,000 businesses trust Ramp, including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America. That's why they were just named number one in spend management by G2.

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She talked in her About section on LinkedIn that her passion lies at the intersection of peace-building, religious engagement, and environmental work. So certainly, these were not members of the so-called political right, very clearly. The shooter was clearly a member of the political left. The shooter was apparently a member of a group known as the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

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Plus, switching to Ramp is simple. For new members, Ramp offers a complimentary white glove onboarding service to help you migrate from your current corporate card to start using Ramp. And now, for a limited time, listeners of this show can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro. That's ramp.com slash Shapiro, R-A-M-P.com slash Shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton Bank.

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Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. And meanwhile, in a bit of shock news, apparently Donald Trump Jr. is now hinting that he wants to run for president at some point in the future. Here he was yesterday.

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Here we go.

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That's probably just a couple of people we know.

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You never know. Okay, again, that would be Omid Malik and Don Jr. sitting at the Qatar Economic Forum in a session that was originally titled Monetizing MAGA. Not a great look. Not a great look. By the way, Tucker Carlson, who is funded by Omid Malik and Don Jr. at 1789 Capital, has said, not a particularly good look.

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George W., after George H.W., was not great for the country.

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No. We elected Donald Trump for a reason, but connection with President Trump's name does not mean that you should be president of the United States. President Trump ran against dynasties when he opposed Jeb Bush in 2016. This was literally one of his leading gambits, was attacking Jeb Bush for being part of a political dynasty. Why the American obsession with political dynasties?

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And that's not a critique of Donald Trump Jr. as a person or as a future, that's just a reality that dynasties in American politics are typically bad. Kennedy dynasties, Bush dynasties, none of this is good. And when you combine that with the fact that many of the organizations that Donald Trump Jr.

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is connected to are making an enormous amount of money during this period of time when his father is president, which raises awkward questions, certainly, about Trump administration policy. ranging from Trump mean coin to world liberty financial to gigantic real estate deals in Qatar, none of this is an amazingly good look.

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It's, this administration is doing too many important, I'll say it again, this administration is doing too many important things to be bogged down with conversations about how members of the Trump family or the Witkoff family or any of the other families surrounding the administration are making bank

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while President Trump is president in countries that President Trump is attempting to negotiate with. That is not a good thing. At the very least, it is not a useful thing. Meanwhile, President Trump seems to be coming to better conclusions with regard to Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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On a call Monday, President Trump told European leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't ready to end the Ukraine war because he thinks he's winning, according to senior European officials familiar with the conversation. Good. That is actually a realization of reality from President Trump. Obviously, that's true.

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In a statement after an earlier version of this article from the Wall Street Journal, Caroline Leavitt disputed the account, saying that President Trump says he believes Putin is winning the war, but he never said Putin isn't ready to end the war. Leavitt said that Trump said several times during the call that he believes Putin wants peace and wants the war to be over.

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One of the officials who was on the call said Trump began the discussion by saying, I think Vladimir does not want peace. Well, I certainly hope the Europeans are right and Caroline Lovett is incorrect here because Putin does not want peace. I would like to see one single solitary piece of evidence that Vladimir Putin wants peace. Seriously, like one. That's all. That's all I'm asking for.

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Like one sign, one indicator. President Trump lives in reality. I'll say it again. And reality never lies. Reality is reality. And the reality is that Vladimir Putin obviously does not want peace, which is why he's avoiding direct negotiations and has been for months. While Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine is literally doing every... President Trump says to Zelensky at this point, jump.

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And Zelensky says, how high? That is the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Clearly. Apparently, Trump held an earlier call with European leaders on Sunday, a day before his two-hour conversation with Putin. It indicated he could impose sanctions if Putin refused to cease fire, according to officials. By Monday, he shifted again.

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Ryan Morrow, who's an investigative researcher for Capital Research, he notes that that group is one of 150 pro-terrorism groups he identified as responsible for the anti-Israel protests and his marching towards violence study. The group is Marxist-Communist, endorsed the October 7th attacks, pro-Iran, as well as linked to China.

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Instead, he said he wanted lower-level talks between Russia and Ukraine at the Vatican. So Europe is seeing some upside here. The entire process is showing that Vladimir Putin actually is not particularly interested in serious negotiations, which of course he is not. Putin is waiting everybody out. That's all. America's enemies are waiting America out, which by the way, not a bad strategy.

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Traditionally speaking, waiting America out in Afghanistan, in Iraq, anywhere is a good strategy. The American people get bored and they get tired, and their presidents like pulling them out of places, even if it ends in ignominious defeat, as it did in, for example, Afghanistan. Speaking of ignominious defeat and ignominious people, the scandal surrounding Joe Biden continues. Who knew what when?

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Jake Tapper has been making the round with his new book, Original Sin. Say what you will about Tapper's coverage of the president's infirmity over the past several years. And you can say a lot. Tapper is now saying many true things. OK, that is just the reality.

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And Tapper was on MSNBC where he told Joe Scarborough that actually Joe Biden was almost singularly focused on convincing Joe Scarborough that he was not senile.

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OK, well, I mean, that's pretty amazing. It's also amazing that Scarborough fell for it, meaning, I mean, what Biden didn't have the ability to string together two sentences. And no matter how strong the PR operation is, I'm not sure how you get that past somebody like a Joe Scarborough. By the way, all these revelations from the book are pretty incredible.

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According to Axios, needing video of then-President Biden speaking sharply and fluidly in a freewheeling setting, his campaign stage day closed to the press town hall with a friendly audience in April 2024. The resulting footage was unusable. That's unbelievable. So they literally staged a fake town hall for him so he would look like he could talk and they couldn't use any of it in April 2024.

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And then the part that just boggles the mind is that then they allowed him on camera to challenge Donald Trump to a debate. Now, I don't know what they thought. Did they think that Trump wouldn't take him up on it? Of course, Trump had to take him up on it. What was he going to do? Not debate Biden? Of course, he was going to debate Biden. Like that was that was red meat for President Trump.

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The shooter also released a manifesto that is replete with the same lies that you have heard from the quote-unquote free Palestine movement, which is effectively just a pro-terrorist movement. In this manifesto released by the shooter, and again, the shooter is just a Marxist leftist. The shooter is not Muslim. The shooter appears to be secular, but is a member of the radical left.

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Are you kidding? Like that's the part that's astonishing. And I think the only plausible explanation for some people buying into the idea that Biden wasn't quite as senile as it seemed was you would have to be insane to trot a senile man out. In the middle of a campaign to do a debate with his chief opponent, who is a debate bulldog, like just rips people apart.

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like bulldog jaws on President Trump in debate, like the meanest debater of all time. He's a mean man when he debates. There's no question. Like putting him in the debate ring with challenging Trump to debate. A lot of people must say, oh, well, maybe he's better than he looks. I mean, you'd have to be like a complete nut or maybe senile in order to, you know, challenge Trump. And then he did it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the book, The event at a high school gym in Biden's home state of Delaware was supposed to be the basis for a campaign commercial. The idea was to create scenes of Biden taking off the cup questions from voters that could be used in ads. The campaign had a pre-screened list of questions the voters would ask. The cameras rolled for 90 minutes with Biden on stage.

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Apparently, some blamed the lighting for the problem. The problem was not the lighting. The problem was, I'm sure, his performance. The campaign regularly needed recorded remarks from Biden that could be played at events or used in fundraising pitches, but the candidate was often unable to tape even mundane remarks without botching the lines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When supportive groups requested a taped five-minute video address from Biden, the White House would respond by saying the video could be one or two minutes. What? What? What? What? As a workaround, Biden would be filmed with two cameras instead of one. So any flubbed lines could be smooth with jump cuts. And by the way, we knew this, right? We were covering this on the show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We literally play tape of Biden. And then we would have like a counter in the corner of the screen going like one, two, three, four, eight jump cuts in 13 seconds. Because that's evidence that the dude couldn't speak words from his face hole. Unbelievable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Staff, apparently, according to the book, blamed Biden's inability to find words or stay on a train of thought, not his stutter for the issue, despite the fact that the media kept claiming that it was a stutter. Thompson and Tapper write, every shoot was anxiety-inducing for Biden's team. Meanwhile, Jill Biden continues to push back. The Biden spokespeople are not commenting on any of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Shocker there. Of course, they're not commenting on any of this. The minute they comment, they're finished. Meanwhile, it's fun to watch Democrats scurry around trying to avoid the consequences of their own complicity. It's really, really funny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to Politico, 24 hours after the Sunday announcement that President Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, one of his staunchest supporters, Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, said Monday he had yet to connect with him. Another Close Hill ally, Senator Chris Coons, had not spoken with Biden as of mid-afternoon on Tuesday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Biden's longtime friend, Bill Bob Brady, the former House member from Pennsylvania, who's known Biden for decades, said he still had not talked with Biden. Again, Biden is not hearing from anybody. Ain't nobody hearing from Biden. Most Democrats are still trying to pivot from Biden's health to stay on message.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Representative Gabe Ammo of Rhode Island, who is a former Biden White House aide, he's now in Congress. Faulted Biden's critics for capitalizing on what he called the politics of the moment. Yeah, we're back to the Republican pounces nonsense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, who is a Biden reelected co-chair, says, quote, We are living through a historic, terrifying backsliding of our democracy. I'm so profoundly uninterested in talking about this issue. Yeah, I noticed you guys are profoundly uninterested in talking about the biggest presidential cover up in history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Like literally the only one that would even be remotely close would be the cover-up of Woodrow Wilson being completely feeble and feeble-minded by the end of his administration. And to be fair to the media, that happened in 1919, as over 100 years ago. What a media fail. What a gigantic media fail. Meanwhile, speaking of cover-ups,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He writes in his manifesto, the atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification. At the time of writing, the Gaza health ministry records 53,000 killed by traumatic force and the Gaza health ministry would be Hamas. He says the Gaza information office includes the 10,000 under the rubble with the dead in their own count.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Daily Wire is now reporting, according to a Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, that Biden administration officials knew as early as February 2021 that the vaccines for COVID-19 were associated with myocarditis and pericarditis. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscle itself. Pericarditis is inflammation of the thin sac that surrounds the heart.

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They waited to warn the public until June while they continued to push the vax. The report concluded that U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis, downplayed the health concern, and deliberately delayed informing the public about the risk. That is insane. That is legitimately insane.

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Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs that committee, said in being concerned about vaccine hesitancy, they violated the inviolable principle of informed consent. Well, yes. He says that Israeli officials were informing the United States as early as February 2021 about side effects they were noticing from the vax.

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In late February, there was a CDC official named Lori Markowitz, who co-led the Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group, who sent an email concerning draft minutes and summary report from a call. And apparently that call included an update about nearly 1,000 death reports to VAERS following vaccination.

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Notably, the email said that in the cases where cause of death was known, it was often cardiovascular. Apparently, according to the report, the Israeli Ministry of Health notified CDC of large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine. This is totally insane. And honestly, if you covered that up, that should be a prosecutable offense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you know about legitimate, well-researched risks and you don't inform the public about those legitimate, well-researched risks, that should be a prosecutable offense. For sure. Without a doubt. massive scandal. Truly amazing. But this was an administration of cover-ups. That is for sure. Meanwhile, the time has come. It's time for a Diddy update. I know.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I know you've been waiting with bated breath for me to actually, you know, get back into the trial of Diddy. And again, it's sort of fascinating on a prurient level. It's also fascinating because, once again, the gap in American perception between the illegal and the immoral has, I think, never been wider. It's very bizarre. In any case,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Washington Post, the government is working through its list of witnesses in the second week of testimony at the Sean Diddy Combs sex trafficking and racketeering trial in New York.

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Special Agent Gerard Gannon continued testifying on Wednesday, describing finding gun components, platform heels, and a ton of baby oil, apparently, when the Department of Homeland Security raided Combs' mansion in Miami last year. A forensic psychologist also testified that domestic abuse victims often love their partners, abuse drugs, and repress memories.

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Testimony that recalls Cassandra Ventura's account of her 11-year relationship with Combs. Thursday, apparently, we'll see more testimony from a former assistant to Combs who said that Ventura quit after he saw his boss abuse her. Prosecutors also hope to call five new witnesses that will include Kid Cudi, Cudi, Cudi, I don't care, Cudi, whatever.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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A rapper who briefly date events her while she was involved with Combs. Miss Cudi's car, that would be Kid Cudi, Cudi, exploded after a jealous Combs threatened to blow it up. If you threaten to blow up a car and then it blows up, that's a kind of an indicator that maybe had something to do with it. It's kind of weird. Cars don't tend to blow up all that much. Just like randomly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So again, this case, what I'm curious to know is whether it fulfills the definition of the federal crime. Again, the defense is going to claim that he's just as bad as you say he is. Was it sex trafficking on a federal level? And I'll be interested to hear what the actual charges for sex trafficking are. It'll be fascinating.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He says, like the Yemen death toll, which has been frozen at some few thousand for years under Saudi UK US bombardment before being belatedly revealed to stand at 500,000 dead. All of these figures are almost surely a criminal undercount. I have no trouble believing the estimates that put the toll at 100,000 or more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And meanwhile, speaking of Diddy, there are all these sort of, again, when we talk about conspiracy theories that are sort of being put out there, Again, I think that you can plausibly ask a question about which there is no evidence, but when you do it over and over and over again, I start to get a little suspicious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, podcaster Patrick Pet-David, he went after the Diddy case, suggesting that Diddy has been working with intelligence agencies. Maybe, maybe. Again, anything is possible, but anything is possible usually is not my standard for sort of airing a theory, because anything is indeed possible. I mean, if you have evidence of this, then you could show it, as opposed to just speculating.

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Maybe it's true, but evidence, please.

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I don't even know what we're talking about now. So his dad worked for intelligence? I mean, Tucker Carlson's dad worked for the intelligence community. So what? Who cares? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Again, I'm not defending Diddy from anything.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'm just wondering, at some point when we hear all of these theories, could we hear a shred of evidence that doesn't involve a distant relative? The reason this is irritating to me is because People should actually sort of demand that when people make outlandish claims or outsized claims, they have outsized evidence to back those outsized claims.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And I've named several conspiracies on the show today that actually existed. The conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's mental health problems. The apparent conspiracy now evidenced by Senator Ron Johnson at the highest levels of the Biden administration to not report to the public what they knew, for example, about myocarditis in patients who are using the Pfizer vaccine.

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Those are actual real conspiracies. But that's because I'm citing evidence to you of those things happening. I mean, again, you can play these theoretical games all day. I suppose if it floats your boat, that's fine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He then justifies his violence by saying, an armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions. Nonviolent protests in the opening weeks of the genocide, and again, we'll note that word genocide, seemed to signal some sort of turning point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Where I start to get even more uptight is when you start impugning the honor of people that I know, like friends of mine, because you believe that your specious conspiracy theories are somehow more important than the people who actually see the evidence. So Dan Bongino, of course, a friend. Dan's great. Dan is now the deputy FBI director.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He did an interview recently in which he stated that Epstein killed himself. Now, again, if Dan says it, I'll take his word for it because Dan's seen the evidence and I ain't. I've seen the same evidence everybody else has, the same evidence that Patrick Pet David has seen, unless Patrick Pet David has evidence that I don't know about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I trust that Dan is not lying to me because, again, I know Dan. And so when I hear this kind of junk where people suggest that government officials are being pressured by various agents to suppress information, okay, again, anything is possible, but anything is possible should not be your standard of reportage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I foresee, okay, do you have any evidence of a conversation like that taking place? Like at any level? Or is that you just impugning Dan Bongino and saying that Dan's lying? Sure, he's lying for the good of the country. Sure, he's lying for the good of the Intel, but he's lying. That Dan's a liar. I know Dan. I don't believe that Dan's a liar.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And by the way, if Dan had come out and said Epstein did not kill himself, all these people would be like, yes, because Dan's a truth teller because Dan is in fact a truth teller. But if your definition of a truth teller or a liar comes based on their confirmation of the theories that you are spinning out in your own head, I'm sorry, this is just, it's unintelligent and it is not useful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Never before had so many tens of thousands joined the Palestinians in the streets across the West. Never before had so many American politicians been forced to concede that, rhetorically at least, the Palestinians were human beings too. Public opinion has shifted against the genocidal apartheid state, writes the terrorist murderer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Speculation without any evidence whatsoever. I'll bet there was a conversation that took place between Dan Bongino and And Jimmy Hoffa in the back room over at the FBI, in which Jimmy Hoffa, who they've been hiding in the back room for 30 years, came out and told Dan Bongino that he definitely needed to cover up the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies in the assassination of JFK.

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And Dan Bongino said, yes, sir, I could totally foresee a conversation like that happening. What evidence do you have that Dan Bongino is a liar? What evidence do you have that Dan is somehow lying to a public that he has spent years informing and talking to? That he's lying to his own audience, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You think Dan doesn't know what his audience is speculating about with regard to Jeffrey Epstein? You think Dan is unaware of that? Dan had one of the biggest audiences in this entire space. Is it... Honestly, this is just if you fall for this kind of garbage, truly, if sure, it's fun. It's always fun. It's just after dinner, drunk conversations about who killed JFK. Fine. It's fun.

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It's enjoyable. I get it. But if we're going to pretend this is like a source of useful and good information. I'm just wondering on what basis. Conversations like this. Not everything Patrick Pet David says. Conversations like this one. How is that useful or good? And the answer is, it's not. It's stupid. And it's useless. And it's counterproductive.

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Because it makes us unable to distinguish fact from fiction or speculation from reality. All right. The show continues in a moment. with the vaunted Ben Shapiro show, Mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member right now and get access to all of our amazing Behind the Paywall content. Use code Shapiro.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the American government has simply shrugged and they'll do without public opinion, then criminalize it when they can, suffocate it with bland reassurances. They're doing all they can to restrain Israel where it cannot criminalize protest outright.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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presumptive terror state with genocidal intentions against Jews and Israelis is the stuff that's been happening on college campuses across America with the full aid and support of a compliant legacy media. Here's the video of the shooter standing outside. Apparently, he committed the shooting and he went inside. He looked a little bit shaken.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And he then suggests a word about the morality of armed demonstration. Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity. I sympathize with this viewpoint and understand its value in soothing the psyche, which cannot bear to accept the atrocities it witnesses, even mediated through the screen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But inhumanity has long since shown itself to be shockingly common, mundane, posaically human. A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger capable of moral strength at times when it suits him, and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then he suggests that actually these sorts of shootings should have been taking place 11 years ago, well before October 7th and well before the October 7th war during Operation Protective Edge, which he says, which was the time, quote, I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. So this person is, of course, a radical leftist who is promoting lies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Of course, this person and his positions find some sympathy with the radical left, even in Congress. Representative Ilhan Omar, who, of course, is rhetorically in the past a supporter of various terror atrocities. Here she was responding to the news of the shooting this morning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She's going to go. She has nothing to say, no reaction to the shooting, not even the sort of AOC bland assertion that the murder of two people walking away from a Jewish event is actually bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that, of course, is not any sort of shock at all, because the radical left fully endorses violence against people that it considers less than human monsters, so to speak. for not agreeing with them and their lies. And these are lies, by the way. Let's look into this lie because this lie actually has consequences. Lies do have consequences, as it turns out. Lies have consequences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So begin with the actual definition of genocide according to the United Nations. According to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This, of course, was drafted by the UN member states in 1948, specifically to try and define what had happened in the Holocaust.

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Quote, in the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

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such as killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, etc. So genocide requires intent to destroy in whole or in part an entire national group. It simply does not apply under these circumstances, not even close.

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And so people inside didn't realize he was the shooter and started offering him refreshments and water before realizing that he was, in fact, the alleged murderer. He then walked outside when he was arrested, whipped out a red keffiyeh and started chanting this way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First of all, Hamas has a desire to obviously propagate this myth. This is why Hamas was thanking the UK, France, and Canada for helping to propagate this myth. This is why Hamas deliberately hides behind civilians. The basic logic of Hamas is that they know that the Israelis don't want to kill civilians, which is the reason they hide behind them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The whole goal is to get as many civilians killed as possible, so as to then claim that Israel is purposefully killing the civilians when Israel is doing literally everything humanly possible in an urban warfare environment in which terrorists deliberately hide behind their own children, not to kill the children. By the way, Israel has done a remarkable job of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Hamas has been lying the entire time about its own casualty statistics. They quietly, by the way, back in April, changed their own casualty statistics. They completely reclassified an enormous number of casualties in the war. They got rid of a certain number of deaths, like more than 3,400 deaths just disappeared off the rolls.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is why Hamas will immediately start releasing death statistics before it is even possible that a count can be taken. And the West simply buys into it because the West does not understand the mentality of Hamas, which is use whatever tool is at your disposal to destroy the state of Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. And if that means killing their own children, they will 100% do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Israel has not only not engaged in a genocide, Israel has engaged in the most humane war in the history of civilization in an urban warfare environment in which the enemy has taken hostage 250 of their citizens. still is hiding dozens of those citizens in Gaza terror tunnels. Today, deliberately hides its weaponry and its terrorists beneath hospitals and schools and in mosques.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Israel has somehow achieved a civilian casualty to combatant ratio of about one to one, unheard of, totally unheard of. It may be even better than one to one. John Spencer, who's an expert on urban warfare, like a person who actually has spent his entire life studying it.

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And yes, people actually spend their life studying this stuff and actually have an enormous amount of knowledge about this stuff. And those are the people that presumably you might get answers from. John Spencer points out in Newsweek that Israel has taken extraordinary efforts.

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Quote, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings.

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By my analysis, he says Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history, above and beyond what international law requires, and more than the United States did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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As he points out, Israel gave warning in some cases for weeks for civilians to evacuate major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign back in fall of 2023. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world. Israel made over 70,000 direct phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages,

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Left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians they should leave combat areas where they should go and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute. They began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground.

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They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate. As far as humanitarian aid, Israel shipped in literally tons of humanitarian aid into the very same area where the hostages were being held, where civilians were helping to hold the hostages.

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You may have noticed there's been no popular movement in the Gaza Strip to free the hostages. None. Zero. It doesn't exist. Even the protests that are out there against Hamas, our protests against Hamas, they are not protests to free the hostages. Not one. Zero. Zero.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And yet Israel has been supplying humanitarian aid throughout the war to that exact same population at the expense of its own hostages because Hamas routinely steals that aid and then uses it in order to prop itself up. And the media, of course, have been complicit in this lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Zach Goldberg, an independent researcher formerly at the Manhattan Institute, points out a massive spike in the use of the word genocide with regard to Israel in reporting from every single outlet.

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He points out that actually coverage linking Israel to so-called genocide now exceeds that of every actual or widely recognized genocide of the last 40 years, including Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Myanmar, and the Yazidis.

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He points out in the New York Times, the spike in 2023, 2024 mentions of genocide along Israel is more than nine times larger than the peak for Rwanda in the mid 1990s and nearly six times the peak for more recent Darfur genocide. These are lies. They are clear and obvious lies. And yet these lies have become quite popular. And it turns out that lies have consequences.

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Okay, so this is a leftist activist, this shooter. We'll give you some background on the shooter in a moment. First, President Trump immediately released a statement saying these horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on anti-Semitism, must end now. Hatred and radicalism have no place in the United States. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So we understand why the genocide lie is so popular with those who wish to overtly destroy the state of Israel. We get it, obviously, because it means they win the PR war. Countries in the UN, for example, who are enthralled to their Muslim populations. Yes, I'm looking at you, France and the UK.

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Or countries who might want to please their Chinese paymasters who are seeking to foster anti-Americanism in the Middle East. And yes, that would be you, like Canada and South Africa. And I think we all get why Hamas is playing the genocide game. It gives Hamas an excuse to continue to exist and to be as actually genocidal as they want to be.

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I mean, their literal founding document calls for genocide. But the real question here is why this genocide lie has become so popular in the West more generally. And as we stated, it is in fact a lie. By no definition is what is happening in the Gaza Strip a genocide. The answer is because our civilization, largely speaking, has fallen in thrall to a great conspiracy theory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Conspiratorial thinking has become wildly popular on both left and the right. It crosses all political boundaries. Now, there are, of course, actual conspiracies in real life. Those conspiracies involve actual planning and implementation by actual human beings. So, for example, there was a conspiracy among members of the Biden family and the White House staff to cover up Joe Biden's infirmities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's like an actual, well-substantiated conspiracy of people making a plan and then implementing that plan for a specific purpose. There's a difference between a conspiracy where there's evidence people doing things. And then there are conspiracy theories. These are not the same.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

What if everything you were told about the trial of Derek Chauvin was a lie? Today, we're examining the terrible miscarriage of justice that took place in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. This is a comprehensive multi-episode breakdown of the case. All the facts, all the evidence, all the political context. We're tearing this case apart piece by piece.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This critical moment is captured clearly on both Officer Thao's and Officer Lane's body cams, but was conveniently downplayed during the trial, which we'll get to in episode four. Here's what's absolutely critical.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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MPD officers were explicitly trained they could maintain a prone position with the body weight until the scene is a code four, meaning until everything is under control and the scene is safe. The prosecution's own witness, Lieutenant Johnny Mercer, confirmed this under oath.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What's particularly telling is that when paramedics arrived two minutes later, even they did not consider the scene code for due to the increasingly hostile crowd. That's why they performed what's called a load and go quickly loading Floyd into the ambulance and immediately moving to a safer location before attempting treatment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, they did not attempt treatment on the ground because they did not deem the situation safe. The entire prosecution narrative collapses under this evidence. They need you to believe Chauvin acted with conscious indifference to loss of life while performing an act that was highly likely to cause death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the evidence shows an officer following his training while simultaneously dealing with a potentially violent crowd during those final 50 seconds. That is not murder. That is clearly, clearly reasonable doubt. Floyd was loaded into the ambulance unresponsive. Officer Lane actually joined the paramedics in the ambulance and assisted with CPR efforts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This fact has received very little attention in media coverage, but it's important to note that one of the officers on scene did attempt to help with resuscitation efforts. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. George Floyd was pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center at 9.25 p.m.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Within 24 hours of the incident, before any thorough investigation could be completed, all four officers involved were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department. On May 26th, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry publicly stated, quote, being black in America should not be a death sentence, effectively prejudging the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The following day, Mayor Fry explicitly called for criminal charges, asking why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail? On May 29th, Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Later, those charges would be upgraded to include second-degree unintentional murder. Viewing these videos, we need to ask ourselves, does this constitute murder?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The prosecution argued, and the jury ultimately agreed, that Chauvin's actions directly caused Floyd's death and that his use of force was excessive and unreasonable. However, there are several problems with this conclusion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, as we'll discuss in our next episode, the autopsy findings revealed that Floyd had a potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system, along with methamphetamine, had significant heart disease as well that put him at risk for sudden cardiac death. Second, Chauvin was using a restraint technique that was part of his departmental training.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Minneapolis had been a laboratory for progressive criminal justice policies. Racial tensions had been mounting for years. Following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent Hands Up, Don't Shoot narrative, the Black Lives Matter movement had gained significant influence over police policy nationwide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Third, the body cam footage shows none of the officers on scene believed they were witnessing a murder. Lane's assistance with CPR efforts indicates that the officers were not acting with malicious intent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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What we are left with is a tragic situation where an officer used a department-approved restraint technique on a resistant suspect who's experiencing a medical emergency related to drug intoxication and pre-existing health conditions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Then on May 31st, 2020, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced that Attorney General Keith Ellison would lead the prosecution of Floyd's death, taking the case away from the Hennepin County District Attorney's Office. This was a purely political decision designed to ensure conviction regardless of the evidence. The media abandoned any pretense of objectivity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They repeatedly showed the edited bystander video while ignoring body camera footage that provided crucial context. They highlighted Floyd saying, I can't breathe while on the ground, while failing to mention he was saying this before Chauvin ever restrained him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They portrayed the knee on the neck as the obvious cause of death while ignoring the medical examiner's findings about Floyd's heart condition and drug use. Coleman Hughes, a writer and commentator who also happens to be black, analyzed the case in depth and concluded the media narrative was fundamentally flawed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As he noted in his piece, What Really Happened to George Floyd, Chauvin did not improvise the restraint position. He was utilizing the maximum restraint technique, again, part of the MPD training manual. But the photo on the training slide demonstrating this technique was redacted at trial. In the documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, six current and former MPD police officers affirm that

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The MRT was indeed standard training, training they themselves had received. When asked if he was trained on MRT, Rich Walker, an African-American MPD sergeant with 19 years on the force, replied, yes, all the police officers were trained in MRT. Politicians, celebrities, corporations all rushed to signal their virtue. Companies pledged millions to Black Lives Matter organizations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Sports teams knelt during the national anthem. Social media profiles posted little black squares. Anyone who dared to suggest we should wait for the legal process to unfold was immediately branded a racist." As Hughes noted in a subsequent piece on Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, and reasonable doubt, there are two different theories of what caused Floyd's death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The positional asphyxia theory put forth by medical examiner Dr. Michael Bodden, hired by Floyd's family, and the adrenaline surge theory, a term coined by Hughes and presented by the county medical examiner Dr. Baker.

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As Hughes correctly points out, as a juror, if you have two reasonable explanations for cause of death, one of which implicates the defendant and one of which does not, you are supposed to acquit. But that's not what happened. In our next episode, we'll examine the autopsy findings in detail and explore how the prosecution's narrative required jurors to disregard key medical evidence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Stand up for the rule of law. Go to pardonderrick.com today and sign our petition. We'll also put the website to donate to Derek Chauvin's Legal Defense Fund in the description. And join us right here on The Ben Shapiro Show on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next few weeks for future episodes in this series. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Minneapolis was at the forefront of implementing reforms that restricted officers' ability to effectively police high crime areas. To understand the full context, we actually need to go back to the 1990s, when critical race theory began to migrate from the academic fringes into mainstream discourse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, if you're with one of the big phone providers, you could be saving a fortune every month by switching on over to Pure Talk. That's right, Pure Talk. My cell phone company is cutting the fat from the wireless industry. For just $35 a month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data with Hotspot on America's most dependable 5G network.

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The average family of four saves over $1,000 a year when they switch on over to Pure Talk. That is real money back in your pocket. Plus, it's back. When you switch to Pure Talk's super low $35 plan this month, you'll get one year of Daily Wire Plus for free.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Access to the library of DW Plus movies, series, and documentaries, including Lady Ballers, What is a Woman, Mr. Burcham, Run, Hide, Fight, and more. Uncensored ad-free daily shows. One year free of DW Kids platform, Benkei, plus a free Leftist Tears Tumblr. The only way you can do all that is by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans. for Americans. Again, their coverage is awesome. I use it for all my phone calls. I value my phone calls the way you do yours. So check them out right now. PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, the big news of the day was that President Trump released the JFK files. And oh my goodness, the secrets that were buried within so many nothing burgers. Just gigantic piles of nothing burgers everywhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration released more than 30,000 pages of previously classified or censored documents related to the death of former President John F. Kennedy, potentially providing answers to decades-old questions that helped make the 1963 assassination an emblem of distrust in government. But... What was in it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The answer was pretty much absolutely nothing. And you could see that there was nothing by the way that people treated it. So there were people online who immediately started trafficking around one page that was essentially just a recapitulation of a story from Ramparts magazine, which was essentially a communist front magazine in the 1960s, suggesting that the CIA had done it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And people traffic this around, like, look what I've discovered. This is amazing. Okay, that actual Ramparts Magazine piece has been part of the JFK lexicon for a very long time. Nonetheless, people were trafficking it around like there was something brand new. As The Blaze points out, the contents of the document...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Scholars like Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw push the idea that America is fundamentally racist at its core, that our entire system is designed to oppress minorities, that concepts like colorblindness, equal opportunity, meritocracy are themselves racist constructs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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A July 19th, 1967 CIA memo marked secret consists of excerpts from a June 1967 article in Ramparts and now is a funk leftist magazine that was deeply antagonistic to the CIA and suspected by the FBI as acting as the agent of a foreign principal, meaning the Soviet Union. Actually, David Horowitz, who became a very prominent conservative voice, started off at Ramparts magazine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And people online started treating this as though it were absolutely shocking news. My goodness, this was finally the smoking gun that the CIA killed, JFK. That Ramparts article had noted that a person named John Garrett Underhill Jr., known as Gary Underhill, left Washington in a hurry following the assassination and then showed up to a friend's house in New Jersey in an agitated state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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supposedly Underhill, who served with the military intelligence service during World War II and then worked on special projects for the CIA, told his friends that a cabal of CIA agents was responsible for the assassination. Six months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound in his Washington apartment, which was ruled a suicide. Now, again, this is nothing new.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This person, for example, had met with Jim Garrison. You remember Jim Garrison, the district attorney from Louisiana, who is the subject of the Oliver Stone gigantic movie? Again, none of this is anything new, but it was treated by people who really know nothing about the JFK assassination as though this was magical, new, important news.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Senior reporter at the Epoch Times wrote, quote, this seems to be the biggest doc so far from the JFK files. A popular ex-account concluded the CIA assassinated JFK, the sitting president of the United States. And the answer is no. The answer is no. Here is the reality about the JFK assassination. It was performed by a man named Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Lee Harvey Oswald happened to have many screws loose. In fact, just a few weeks earlier, he attempted to shoot a general in Texas and missed. He happened to be a full-on Soviet sympathizer. He'd actually gone over to the Soviet Union, and he lived in the Soviet Union before the Soviet Union realized that he was a complete useless turd bucket of a human.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then he ended up exported back to the United States, and he showed up in Mexico at the Cuban embassy in Mexico. And so there was suspicion that maybe the Cubans had something to do with it, and it turns out nothing there either. Nonetheless, did any of this evidence put any of the conspiracy theories to bed? Of course not. Of course not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This ideology, once confined to university grievance studies departments, increasingly began to influence Democratic Party politics and policy, particularly during Barack Obama's second term. Barack Obama had initially presented himself as a post-racial candidate. His 2008 A More Perfect Union speech promised a transcendence of racial division.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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because that's the whole point about conspiracy theories like the ones about JFK. They do not require evidence. The way that you can tell there's an actual conspiracy is evidence. I know this is something that seems to have fallen out of fashion across a wide spectrum of our political conversation, but evidence is generally required for outsized claims.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you are going to claim, for example, that Donald Trump was a front man for the Russians. You need some outsized evidence to demonstrate that that is a fact before it becomes the narrative that drives your entire political party and legacy media for four long years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you're going to claim that the CIA murdered JFK, well, you need more than some suppositions that you personally stitched together in your basement like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind with some string, like Charlie Day in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. You actually need evidence. because I've noticed that these conspiracy theories are becoming quite prominent on the right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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People just throw things out there, and then they stitch together a pastiche of nonsense. They'll take one fact, they'll take something that is utterly untrue, they'll stitch them together, and then they'll pretend that this constitutes hard evidence that the conspiracy is real. Why does any of this matter? Why do we care?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, the reason that this matters is because there is such a thing as what Karl Popper, the philosopher, called the great conspiracy theory of life. And that is that if you fail in your own life, it is because there is a conspiracy that is out to get you. And you see this great conspiracy theory of life pop up in politics all the time because demagogues can take advantage of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you are on the left, you are told that you are a failure because, not because of your own decision-making, but because the American system is deeply and systemically racist or sexist or capitalistically evil.

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And if you're on the right, you're told that perhaps you're a failure because of a secret cadre of the Jews, or maybe you're a secret failure because the industrialists all got together in the back room to screw you. Now, if you wanna make a case that bad policy has led to your current life outcome, you can provide evidence of that bad policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you wanna show that there's a conspiracy, typically some evidence should be required. This is how we distinguish fact from fiction here in the real world, not on X, where it just becomes viral

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in a hot second, but like in the real world where you live in your house with your family, if your child came home and said to you, mommy and daddy, the aliens controlled my grade, you would say that's psychotic unless you have evidence of aliens. And yet we constantly do this in the political sphere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We just suggest that unnamed, unknowable forces are responsible for really weird things happening in the world. And again, it turns out that many of the conspiracy theories that are not conspiracy theories are backed by say some evidence and generally tend to be kind of plausible from the get-go. So for example,

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The left labeled it a conspiracy theory when Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, suggested that perhaps a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for, you know, a virus in Wuhan arising from bats. And it wasn't a wet market. That was a pretty plausible theory because, you know, it was the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That, you know, was where the pandemic started, was in Wuhan. That's pretty plausible just on its face. And then, of course, evidence started to be produced for the fact that there was gain-of-function research that actually was done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And that there had been, in fact, prior problems with leaks from the lab.

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And so that starts to look like a theory that has evidence to support it. But when you are doing a conspiracy theory for, at this point, 62 years, and evidence has not yet emerged to back your conspiracy theory, and you just keep saying, as soon as evidence emerges, that doesn't back it, well, that's irrelevant. You know, you're just part of the conspiracy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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By the end, I think you'll agree with me that President Trump should immediately pardon Derek Chauvin for his federal convictions. New episodes of the series drop Tuesdays and Thursdays. Watch them, share them, join discussion with Daily Wire members and Ben Shapiro Show producers inside the Daily Wire Plus app. The truth matters, justice matters, and you won't hear this anywhere else.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is, if people do this to you, the first thing you should do is wonder whether they are trustworthy on any issue. Seriously, if people lie to you by promoting conspiracy theories that have no evidence long past the sell-by date, then you should start wondering whether or not they are telling you the truth on many other issues, it seems to me.

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Because there are a lot of people who have spent the last two days continuing to promote completely specious, evidence-free conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination because it matches their priors politically. It was the American, secretly was the American government. It had to be the American government. Why?

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Because the American government is bad and because the CIA is evil and because the CIA is responsible for all the world's ills. Or maybe, maybe the assassination was the fault of the evil industrialists who didn't like JFK. The military-industrial complex that wanted to get us into war in Vietnam, even though it was JFK who got us into war in Vietnam and had no intention of withdrawing us.

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Or maybe it was Mossad. I mean, there's no evidence of it, but sure, maybe. Now, I'm noticing that if your priors line up really, really well with your conspiracy theory and then evidence... of your conspiracy theory never emerges. And your first move is to suggest that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, that there being no evidence for your conspiracy theory means that it's only not there because of the conspiracy. I think you're lying. I think you know you're lying. And if you don't know you're lying, you probably should give a rethink to how you do the logicking in the real world.

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And if you are a fan of people who do this sort of thing, I would suggest that perhaps you think twice about whether they are credible on many other issues. Are they willing to spin out full-scale theories that have no support for them for years on end, long after they have been effectively debunked by all available evidence?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In other words, if you were surprised by anything in the JFK files, like namely the fact that there's nothing new there, I don't know what to tell you. Also, if the evidence had been different, then the theory would change.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But if your theory is precisely the same before and after the release of the evidence, and there's no new evidence to adduce to your theory, and your theory never had a lot of evidence, then I just think you're being kind of dishonest for the clicks. That's my take. All right, meanwhile, Tesla has been victimized by wild, crazy people on the left.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Apparently, wide variety of attacks on Tesla dealerships across the country because of Elon Musk's association with President Trump. Now, the violent left is quite a real thing, as it turns out.

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Chuck Schumer, the absolutely god-awful Senate minority leader from New York, he has a new book out about anti-Semitism, which, again, is an absurdity considering how much anti-Semitism he himself has fostered within his party. And he has not been going on his book tour because he's afraid that somebody's going to take a swipe at him or something. Not from the right, from the left.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, the celebration of anti-Tesla violence also continues on the left. According to the Associated Press, Cybertrucks set ablaze. Bullets and Molotov cocktails aimed at Tesla showrooms. Attacks on property carrying the logo of Elon Musk's electric car company are cropping up across the United States and overseas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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While no injuries have been reported, Tesla showrooms, vehicle lots, charging stations and privately owned cars have been targeted. There's been a clear uptick since President Trump took office and empowered Musk to oversee a new Department of Governmental Efficiency that has been slashing government spending. And members of the left, some members of the left are absolutely fine with all of this.

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Rick Wilson of the Excrable Lincoln Project, he put out a full article about how tearing down Tesla is great for the country. Tesla failing would be great for the country, which is weird because it's one of the most highly valued companies in the American market.

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If the Tesla stock goes completely south, it's going to hurt a lot of people, not just people who own the Tesla stock, but people who work for Tesla. It's going to hurt the market more generally. President Trump, for his part, says these attacks on Tesla are obviously domestic terrorism, which they are.

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But by his second term, his administration had embraced much more racially divisive rhetoric and policy. The Department of Justice under Eric Holder and later Loretta Lynch pushed a narrative of systemic police racism, despite comprehensive studies contradicting this narrative.

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Okay, and he is right about that. Meanwhile, Tim Walz, I mean, and thank God Tim Walz never became the vice president of the United States because this guy, what an unbelievable schmuck he is. Tim Walz, this goofball weirdo with all the wrong political principles, he was celebrating the decline in Tesla's stock price.

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Because after all, when a great American company starts to fail, then probably you should celebrate it, according to Tim Walz. A man who literally has never produced a job, has never actually had to pay anybody, who's like an employee, he's never had to make payroll, who brags that he owns no stock and no real estate. This person was almost vice president of the United States.

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Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who happens to be black, conducted the most extensive empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force and found no statistical connection linking police brutality and racism.

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Thank you.

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As he stated in his findings, when it comes to the most extreme use of force, officer-involved shootings, quote, we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. Fryer ultimately faced professional repercussions for publishing those findings, showing just how ideologically entrenched the narrative had become.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Minneapolis specifically became a hotbed of far-left politics. Keith Ellison, a progressive Democrat with past ties to radical organizations, had been elected as Minnesota's Attorney General in 2018. The city council was dominated by progressives who had campaigned on transforming policing. Mayor Jacob Fry was a progressive Democrat who had positioned himself as a champion of police reform.

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Into this politically charged environment came a concerted effort by progressive billionaire George Soros and organizations like Color of Change to install progressive district attorneys nationwide through initiatives like Winning Justice, the prosecutor project.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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A quick search on Open Secrets shows that Soros had donated a million dollars to Color of Change, as well as another $12 million to the campaigns of progressive DAs like George Gaskin, Larry Krasner, and Alvin Bragg, according to a report from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. These progressive prosecutors openly advocated for reduced incarceration and more lenient treatment of criminals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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And I'm just going to note here that Bernie's pitch here is actually better than the pitch of many other people in the Democratic Party, which is why the economy needs to stay on good footing, because if it does not, it's going to be the Bernie bros who actually rise.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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All right, coming up, we're going to get to Hillary Clinton, who is still out there littering the international landscape for some reason. We get to that, plus the mailbag. First, you have to become a member. And we have so much good stuff coming. Pendragon looks great. I'm just telling it. You're going to want to see it. We've got Am I Racist? What is a Woman? We've got Run, Hide, Fight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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We've got Morning Wire. All Access. Backstage Live. So much good stuff. But the only way that you can watch all of that and the rest of my show, because I don't end the show right here, is to join Daily Wire Plus. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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They created a perception among officers that proper enforcement of the law would not be supported by city leadership. This toxic political climate directly impacted police morale and effectiveness. Officers increasingly found themselves caught in an impossible situation, tasked with maintaining public safety while being told that traditional policing methods were inherently racist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The so-called Ferguson effect was taking hold, a phenomenon where police withdraw from proactive enforcement due to fear of public criticism, all of which resulted in increased crime rates. And as I mentioned earlier, let's not forget the unprecedented context of the COVID-19 lockdowns that served as the backdrop to this entire situation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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By May 25th, 2020, Americans had been subjected to nearly three months of draconian restrictions. Businesses were shuttered, unemployment was skyrocketing, citizens were effectively imprisoned in their homes by government mandate. The psychological and economic strain on Americans was immense. People couldn't work, they couldn't socialize, they couldn't go to church.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Basic freedoms were suspended indefinitely with constantly shifting justifications from health authorities, all of which created a pressure cooker of social tension waiting to explode. The lockdowns had particularly devastating effects on low-income communities, where people couldn't simply work from home on their laptops. Jobs were lost, savings were depleted, futures were uncertain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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This is the case for Derek Chauvin. Episode 2, The Incident. So, folks, yesterday, Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt explicitly said that President Trump is not considering a pardon for Derek Chauvin at this time, which, of course, is perfectly fine and, frankly, expected at this stage. The clear pattern we've seen time and again is the grassroots movement build momentum first.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The media stoked fears about the virus, while simultaneously downplaying the devastating consequences of lockdown itself. It was in this powder keg environment, with people frustrated, economically stressed, socially isolated, already primed to see everything through a racial lens after years of media conditioning, that the incomplete video of Floyd's arrest went viral.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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On the evening of the arrest, Eric Chauvin was working as a field training officer in the Minneapolis Police Department's 3rd Precinct. He was partnered with Officer Tao Thao, patrolling one of the higher crime areas of Minneapolis. Meanwhile, George Floyd spent part of his day with friends.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At approximately 8 p.m., Floyd walked into the Cup Foods grocery store at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis' Powderhorn Park neighborhood. Surveillance footage from inside the store shows Floyd moving around, acting erratic, interacting with store employees and customers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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According to Christopher Martin, the 19-year-old cashier who testified at Chauvin's trial, Floyd appeared to be high, but was very friendly, approachable, and talkative. Floyd purchased cigarettes with a $20 bill that Martin believed to be counterfeit because of its blue color and texture.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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After Floyd left the store, Martin and other employees at their manager's direction went outside to ask Floyd to return to address the issue of the potentially counterfeit bill. When Floyd refused, the manager instructed an employee to call the police. This single phone call set in motion the chain of events that would end with Floyd's death approximately one hour later.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At 8.08 p.m., officers J. Alexander Kung and Thomas Lane arrived on the scene, responding to a call about a man who'd allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill. They briefly entered Cup Foods before crossing the streets of Floyd's SUV, which was parked in front of a restaurant called Dragon Walk. Floyd was in the car along with his alleged drug dealer, Maurice Hall.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Hall would later invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during the trial. The body cam footage from Officer Lane shows him approaching the driver's side of Floyd's vehicle while Officer Kung approached the passenger side. Lane tapped his flashlight on Floyd's window, startling Floyd inside.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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When Lane instructed Floyd to show his hands and Floyd did not immediately comply, Lane drew his weapon and pointed it at Floyd. When Floyd placed his hands on the steering wheel, Lane holstered his gun.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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That initial interaction is critically important to understand. Within seconds of approaching Floyd's vehicle, an officer had drawn his weapon because Floyd had immediately failed to comply with command. That escalation set the tone for the entire encounter. Lane ordered Floyd out of the vehicle. Floyd apologized repeatedly while explaining that he had been shot before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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After Lane ordered Floyd to step out and face away, Floyd remained in the car for about 13 seconds. So Lane used both hands to grab Floyd's left hand and right arm and partly pulled Floyd out of the car. Lane continued pulling Floyd from the vehicle and handcuffed him. The body camera footage shows Floyd did not physically resist being pulled out in handcuffs, though he did appear distressed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At 8.12 p.m., Lane sat Floyd on the sidewalk against the wall in front of the restaurant and began to question him. Floyd explained that he wasn't on something right now when Lane asked, although he appeared agitated. Kung mentioned to Floyd that he was acting real erratic, to which Floyd responded that he was scared.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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When questioned about the foam around his mouth, Floyd said he had been hooping earlier, a slang term that could refer to playing basketball, or in some contexts, apparently using drugs rectally.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Concerned citizens speak out consistently. Eventually, those voices permeate the administration's awareness and influence what makes it onto the president's agenda. That's precisely what happened with the January 6th defendants and others who received pardons or commutations. The administration initially distanced itself from those cases too, but then public pressure mounted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At 8.13 p.m., Kung and Lane informed Floyd that he was under arrest for passing counterfeit currency and walked him across the street to their police vehicle. This is where the situation began to escalate significantly.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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As the body cam footage shows, Floyd told the officers repeatedly he was not resisting, but that he was claustrophobic and anxious about getting into the backseat of the police car.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The footage shows Floyd becoming increasingly distressed as the officers attempted to place him in the vehicle. He told them multiple times, I can't breathe, well before he was on the ground. That critical fact has been largely overlooked in public discussions of the case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Floyd was claiming breathing problems while he was still standing before any significant restraint was applied, suggesting that any breathing issues may have been related to his anxiety, his medical conditions, and or the drugs in his system.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At 8.17 p.m., officers Derek Chauvin and Tao Thao arrived on the scene in a third police car. This is key, because Chauvin was not involved in the initial interaction with Floyd. He arrived after Floyd was already handcuffed and refusing to get into the police vehicle. When Chauvin arrived, he asked if Floyd was going to jail, and Kung replied that Floyd had been arrested for forgery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At 8.18 p.m., body cam footage and security video from Cup Foods shows Kung struggling with Floyd for at least a minute in the driver's side backseat of the police vehicle. Thao stood watching as this occurred. At 8.19 p.m., Chauvin pulled Floyd across the backseat from the driver's side to the passenger's side as Floyd is heard asking to lay on the ground.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Floyd then exited the vehicle while being pulled out by police. Again, Floyd asked to be withdrawn from the vehicle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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This statement from Caroline Lovett isn't a reason to stop educating yourself on the issue or to remain silent if you believe a terrible injustice has occurred. In fact, it is even a better reason for citizens to familiarize themselves with the facts, analyze the case objectively, and speak out if they believe our justice system has failed. Now, let's dive into the incident. Memorial Day 2020.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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What happened next has been viewed by millions around the world. At approximately 8.20 p.m., Chauvin placed Floyd in the ground in a prone position. Kung applied pressure to Floyd's torso. Lane applied pressure to Floyd's legs. Thales stood nearby, managing the growing crowd of bystanders. Multiple witnesses began recording videos of the incident from different angles.

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The footage shows Floyd repeatedly saying, I can't breathe, please, and mama.

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What the mainstream media deliberately omits from their coverage is that Chauvin was using a departmentally approved restraint technique that was explicitly taught to Minneapolis police officers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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Court documents filed in State of Minnesota versus Derek Chauvin show the Minneapolis Police Department's official training materials, which specifically instructed officers on the neck restraint as a non-deadly force option.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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These training materials explicitly define this technique as compressing one or both sides of a person's neck with an arm or leg without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway front of the neck.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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When you actually watch that complete unedited body cam footage, which by the way, the legacy media rarely showed you in their entirety, what becomes clear is that for portions of the nine minutes and 29 seconds, Chauvin's knee is on Floyd's shoulder blade or upper back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The autopsy report from Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker explicitly states there was, quote, no life-threatening injuries identified, no bruising on the neck, no damage to the trachea, no evidence of asphyxiation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We also know from officers late in Kung's body cam footage that Floyd was saying, I can't breathe, at least six times while still upright in the police vehicle before any restraint was applied.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The video further shows Floyd exhibiting what the American College of Emergency Physicians documented in their 2009 white paper as excited delirium syndrome, characterized by strange behavior, dilated pupils, superhuman strength, imperviousness to pain, and hyperthermia, a condition explicitly taught to Minneapolis officers as part of their use of force training.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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At approximately 8.22 p.m., the officers called for an ambulance on a non-emergency basis, upgrading the call to emergency status one minute later. At approximately 8.25 p.m., Floyd appeared to lose consciousness. Bystanders can be heard in the videos urging the officers to check his pulse. Officer Kung checked Floyd's wrist but reported he couldn't find one.

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According to Dr. Martin Tobin's testimony, that's the prosecution's star witness, there were approximately 50 seconds between Floyd's last words and the moment he died.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The prosecution wanted the jury to believe that these 50 seconds represent the smoking gun of Chauvin's alleged murderous intent, that any reasonable officer would have immediately recognized that Floyd was in distress and removed his knee. The body cam footage tells a completely different story. At precisely 8.25 p.m.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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The country was nearly three months into the COVID-19 lockdowns. Businesses were closed. Millions were unemployed. People were increasingly frustrated with government-imposed restrictions on their daily lives. Minneapolis, like many urban centers across America, was experiencing this pressure cooker environment, along with pre-existing tensions between law enforcement and minority communities.

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Ep. 2162 - The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

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and 20 seconds, just as Floyd loses consciousness, Chauvin's attention is suddenly drawn away from Floyd to a hostile crowd member wearing a boxing hoodie who aggressively threatens him, shouting, I'm not scared of you, bro. You're a f***ing ass dude, bro. These aren't the words of a concerned bystander. These are the words of someone potentially preparing to attack officers.

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Chauvin immediately responds, don't come over here. Don't come over here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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So yesterday, President Trump decided that he was going to go whole hog on Vladimir Zelensky. The Trump team is in Saudi Arabia negotiating with the Russian team over the end of the Ukraine war. Ukraine is not present in these negotiations, a matter of some consternation in Ukraine. And let's be very clear about that. Where I stand when it comes to the Ukraine war, Russia attacked Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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So again, I think Zelensky is taking a rather unwise position vis-a-vis the Trump administration because a position of personal animus with President Trump is a bad place to be if you're a foreign leader. However, the result of this is likely to be Again, what has been suggested for years? One, the Ukrainians are likely to rally around Zelensky because of Trump attacking him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Number two, Ukraine was going to have to have some pretty significant security guarantees to make sure that Putin didn't just do this again. One of Putin's demands was that Ukraine essentially disarm. That was never going to be a going concern. It was never going to happen. So that was always going to be the outline of the deal. Security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia keeps Donbass and Crimea.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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So oddly enough, you'll end up in a stronger domestic position because of Trump's attacks than he otherwise would. And again, the sort of bizarre parallel here is Joe Biden full-on attacking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and that making Bibi significantly more popular in Israel because they were in the middle of an existential war and the slow walking of the aid was happening via Biden, who's attempting to oust the sitting prime minister. It seems like the same thing is happening with Zelensky.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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According to Politico, Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine and leader of the oppositional motherland faction in the Ukrainian parliament, put out a statement backing Zelensky, quote, Ukraine is a sovereign state. Vladimir Zelensky is the president of Ukraine, legitimate until another is elected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Only Ukrainians can decide when and under what conditions they should change their government today. There are no such conditions. And again, this is coming not from Zelensky himself or Zelensky's puppets. This is coming from people who legitimately oppose Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine. So, for example, Member of Parliament Ivana Klimpush-Sinsadzy didn't defend Zelensky outright, but...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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This person is the senior figure in Ukraine's European Solidarity Party. The leader of that party, Petro Poroshenko, is seen as one of the chief rivals to Zelensky. But this MP described Trump's remarks as unacceptable. She's pushing for the president to form a unity government and to involve all political parties in the negotiation process as well.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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She put out a statement saying, quote, Yes, we heard completely unacceptable statements by the U.S. leader about who started the war, about resolving the conflict in Ukraine by completely satisfying Putin's wishes, about de facto potentially forcing Ukraine to surrender everything we've been fighting for for 11 years against aggressive dictatorial Russia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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She said Zelensky should bury the acts of war with the opposition and unite the country. And again, pretty much all of the politicians, right, left, and center in Ukraine, are coming to Zelensky's defense because they don't like the characterization of the war by President Trump. So ironically, Zelensky gains in popularity domestically.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Meanwhile, the Europeans are finally deciding that, hey, maybe if the United States isn't going to lead the way here, we ought to lead the way here. So, for example... Kemi Badnok, who's the leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain and who's generally warm toward President Trump, put out a statement, quote, President Zelensky is not a dictator.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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He's the democratically elected leader of Ukraine who bravely stood up to Putin's illegal invasion. Under my leadership and under successive conservative prime ministers, we have and always will stand with Ukraine. President Trump is right that Europe needs to pull its weight, and that includes the UK. We need to get serious. The PM will have my support to increase defense spending.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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There is a fully funded plan to get to 2.5% sitting on his desk. That should be the bare minimum. Summer should get on with it, get on a plane to Washington and show some leadership. We cannot afford to get this wrong. Meanwhile, President Zelensky put out a statement after a conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rudy. Same quote.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Mark informed me about his meeting with General Keith Kellogg. Keith Kellogg is an envoy from the United States to Ukraine. Quote, the key messages align with our goal of achieving guaranteed peace, not just a temporary ceasefire. There must be confidence that in a few months or years, Putin won't return with his war. We also discussed our future contacts with partners and coordinated next steps.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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We cannot allow Putin to deceive everyone again. Before any potential negotiations, all partners must clearly understand strong security guarantees are the priority for lasting peace. Thank you, Mark, for your support and assistance. And again, that is him calling on NATO, which... is American, but also European, for support. So the predictable result of actually all of this could be salutary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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That was always how this was going to look. It's been this way for almost three years at this point. Now, there's some other additional elements that President Trump, as the president, is throwing into the mix. One of those is that he believes the United States has spent an exorbitant amount of money in Ukraine, and somehow Ukraine should repay all of that money forthwith.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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As I say, it is quite possible that the predictable result of this is we get to the deal everybody knew was coming. The Europeans are the ones who actually have to enforce it and pay for it, not the United States. And Zelensky ends up more popular in his own country. That's quite possible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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That does not alleviate the sort of moral responsibility to say true things as opposed to false things about Vladimir Putin. But from a real politic sort of point of view, This could end in a decent way. Well, speaking of actual solutions to real problems, you've heard me talk about FitBod before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Let me reiterate, it is a true game changer when it comes to building muscle and creating workout routines that are ideal for you and your body. Everybody hits a wall in their workout routine at some point, wondering if they're really making any progress. With FitBod, that concern and frustration disappears. Just last week, I opened the app before I headed over to the gym.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Within seconds, it created a personalized workout based on my goals and available equipment. The app also noticed which muscle groups had been hitting harder, so it automatically adjusted to focus on other muscle groups that were fresh and ready for action.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Also, I gotta say, I love how the app helps me record my reps and keep track of how much I'm actually lifting every session so I don't just kind of lose it in the wash. Look, there are plenty of fitness influencers trying to sell you generic workout plans for giant prices, but Fitbod is different. It's like having a personal trainer in your pocket minus that hefty price tag.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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The app adapts as you get stronger, ensuring every workout pushes you just enough to make progress without burning out. I also love how it tracks my muscle recovery and suggests new exercises to keep things fresh. With over 1,000 demonstration videos, I'm constantly learning new exercises.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Whether you're just starting out or trying to break through a plateau, Fitbod creates a custom fitness plan that works for you. Level up your workout. Join Fitbod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app for free for seven days at fitbod.me slash Shapiro. That's F-I-T-B-O-D dot M-E slash Shapiro. Let me tell you something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

1321.309

I never realized just how bad my old mattress was until I got rid of it and got a Helix mattress. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back already hurts? Well, that was happening like a lot on my old mattress. It was kind of collapsing in the middle. And don't get me started on how it turned into a heat trap at night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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But since switching on over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest days. Here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect mattress just for you. Again, for me, I need a mattress that is actually firm but also breathable because I heat up at night. Helix got me a mattress that does all those things. Right now, Helix is offering an incredible President's Day sale.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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They have an exclusive offer for my listeners that is even better than you will find if you just visit their main website. Visit helixsleep.com slash Ben, get 27% off site wide, plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase, plus free bedding bundle. It's two dream pillows, sheet set, mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 27% off site wide, plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase and free bedding bundle. Again, two dream pillows, sheet set, mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order. helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer. Now, Democrats, of course, are sounding off in extraordinary ways about all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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And here, I'm sorry, I do not care what Chuck Schumer has to say about this. I do not. The Democrats are the ones who created this situation in the first place. It was Democrats who had control of the boat for three years and they did nothing. Democrats had a choice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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They could either increase the amount of aid to Ukraine sufficient to allow them to actually attempt to liberate Donbass and Crimea, or they could have found an off-ramp. They had three years to do it. And instead, they decided that they were going to slow walk aid such that Ukraine couldn't actually take back any of those areas despite heroic defense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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And so he's got a couple of proposals on the table for that. One of those proposals was a sort of economic proposal that was pretty punitive with regard to Ukraine's future industry. Now, the case in favor of that particular economic proposal, which effectively speaking, forced...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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And they decided they were also not going to look for an off ramp. They were going to simply allow this war to continue to percolate with tens of thousands of people dying on both sides. That was going to be their plan. So I don't want to hear from you guys about Donald Trump and his mean words about Vladimir Zelensky.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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It was you who left Ukraine in the lurch while simultaneously promoting the continuation of a war to which you had no endpoint. Here is the Senate minority leader on this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Now, again, the moral suasion argument from the same people who slow walked aid to Ukraine, who did not give them the jets that they needed, did not give them the weaponry that they needed in the middle of a war that they then were encouraging them to run across into Donbass and get themselves killed. I'm not willing to hear that from Chuck Schumer. He has no moral leg to stand on here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Again, I think that Trump is factually and morally wrong when he says that Zelensky started the war or when he labels Zelensky a dictator or when he suggests the true immoral power here is Ukraine. But I'm not willing to hear that from Chuck Schumer, who is largely responsible for the terrible Western policy toward Ukraine over the course of the last three years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Same thing coming from Senator Tammy Duckworth again. It's the same routine message. I'm just not buying it from these folks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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the Ukrainian government to split pretty much all exportable material with the United States, or at least profits from that exportable material with the United States. The good news for Ukraine in a deal like that was that it would have tied the United States into Ukrainian security for the future.

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Now, again, that's not true. Any deal here is going to end with security guarantees from the NATO powers to Ukraine to prevent a further invasion. It will end with that. Because otherwise, Ukraine won't be able to accept it and the war will continue. No matter how much pressure President Trump puts on Vladimir Zelensky. That's just the reality. Putin is not going to end up with Kiev.

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He's not going to end up running Ukraine. That is not, I've said this for years, Trump does not want that happening. No matter how much he personally dislikes Vladimir Zelensky, he does not actually want Vladimir Putin walking down the streets of Kiev in triumph. That's not something that he wants. It was Democrats who blew this. And that's how they end up with Donald Trump as president.

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He's the one who's going to have to negotiate the deal. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is looking into overspending at the Department of Defense. And it is unclear to me what exactly the policy is. So if the policy here is to unleash doge on the Department of Defense to find golden toilet seats, I'm all for it.

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If we're talking about getting rid of the sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that we've seen in pretty much every other department, I'm in favor of it. It's not clear that's what the policy is. Apparently, according to the Washington Post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has now ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S.

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military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter. That is a massive, massive reduction in military expenditure. Among the areas that the Trump administration wants exempted, operations at the U.S.

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southern border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of some one-way attack drones and other munitions. Robert Salisa, a senior Pentagon official, said in a statement the money saved could be realigned to pay for new priorities in the Trump administration, including, for example, Iron Zone for America.

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So if what we're talking about is to save money in some areas to move toward new weapons systems, all in favor of it, that sounds great to me. Because obviously the money that's been allocated to many of the older weapons systems is money that is wasted.

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If the goal, however, is actual spending cuts that are not reallocated into growth of our military power around the globe, that to me is a large-scale mistake. The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, with broad consensus on Capitol Hill that extensive spending is necessary to deter both China and Russia.

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If adopted in full, the cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years. Now, again, if the goal here is to simply cut that waste, fraud, and abuse, that's one thing. If the cuts are being identified by size and not by location, that is another thing. The argument that I'm making here is if you find a bad weapons program, you should cut it no matter how much it costs.

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Because if the United States and Ukraine had a big economic deal that was already in the offing and was already operating, then the United States would have a pretty significant interest in making sure that Ukraine was not then invaded once again by Vladimir Putin. That was the case in favor.

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If the goal is to cut 8% and you're just spotting places to cut to hit that 8%, that is a bigger problem because you could be cutting into actual muscle. At that point, you're no longer cutting fat. At that point, you're cutting into actual muscle.

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And this is a problem because the reality is that the United States is actually not spending like a country that is preparing to retain its position of world dominance. We're not. Here, for example, is a chart of US military spending by percentage of GDP historically. This particular chart, You can see that during wartime, it spiked. It was all the way up at near 15% in 1953.

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And then it's been steadily declining since the end of the Cold War. By the end of the Cold War, the United States was spending north of 6% of GDP. Today, we are spending approximately 3.6% of our GDP on defense. And that's in the face of a very aggressive China. China is a rising power. China is extraordinarily aggressive.

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Cutting our own defense capacity in the face of all this would be a fairly large-scale mistake. The commander of Indo-Pacific, Admiral Sam Paparo, he said, quote, We're very close to the point where on a daily basis the fig leaf of an exercise could very well hide operational warning, meaning China doing these sort of military exercises around Taiwan.

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Their aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan right now are not exercises, they call them. They're rehearsals. They're rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland. Papparo said, our magazines run low. Our maintenance backlogs grow longer each month. We operate on an increasingly thin margin of error. Our opponents see these gaps and they're moving aggressively to exploit them.

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And that is right. And when it comes to, for example, Chinese military spending, the reality is that China, while the claim is that China's only spending like 1 point something percent, 1.6 percent of their GDP on defense, that's not actually true. Other estimates suggest they're not spending $280 billion on their military every year.

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They're spending close to $700 billion on the military every year and hiding it in order to prevent the United States from seeing exactly what it is that they are doing. And this raises some generalized questions about what exactly the Trump foreign policy is going to look like. And we have some indicators.

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Obviously, it's an aggressive foreign policy willing to use economic power in order to leverage change in places like Colombia or in Mexico. President Trump is willing to think outside the box in the Middle East in, I think, new and amazing ways. And President Trump obviously wants to get to a solution in Ukraine.

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The case against is that the amount that Trump was actually asking of Ukraine was extraordinarily burdensome, according to the at least leaked reports as to what exactly it was that was being asked.

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If, however, the goal is to cut defense, if the goal is a sort of generalized American retreat from the world, the sort of neo-isolationist position that if the United States retreats from the world, that nothing fills the gap, that is just not true. Something will fill the gap, and the thing that fills the gap will not be friendly to the United States.

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Now, maybe you make the calculation somehow, somehow, that the turning of the Far East into a giant Chinese pond. It's somehow not all that damaging to the United States, or at least, you know, if we save a couple hundred billion dollars here or there around the military, somehow that outweighs the amount of cost to China taking over the South China Sea.

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I fail to see how that pencils out precisely. Because what we're talking about here in ramping up American military capacity is deterrence. The goal is to never have to go to war. That is what peace through strength is all about, to push people off the line.

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Something, by the way, that Trump is very familiar with and that he's been very successful at in the past, that credible threat of use of force has been President Trump's friend, historically speaking, withdrawing from areas all over the globe in this sort of

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hackneyed belief that the rest of the world will then become a friendly place, that a multipolar world will be constructed similarly to the current world order, that allies that we have across the world won't simply reorient toward China, which is much more ambitious and willing to expend capital and willing to expend military force where it wants. That's just not true.

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There are countries that we take for granted, say Japan, Australia. These are countries that have been longtime American allies. If the United States were to abandon its footing in the Far East, what do Japan and Australia do?

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The New York Post, which obviously is a Trump friendly newspaper, suggests that that offer that Trump was making to Vladimir Zelensky and the Ukrainians was far too burdensome for Ukraine to really undertake.

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Well, either they arm up, in which case you have arms races in the Far East, which raises the prospect of serious conflict, or you have these countries trying to make some sort of accommodation with China, which of course strengthens China at the expense of the United States. Economics is not a zero-sum game because if two sides trade, both sides get richer.

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But foreign policy power is a zero-sum game and trajectory matters. The United States is, in fact, the guarantor of, say, freedom of the seas. The United States is the force that is keeping North Korea from walking across the border in South Korea. It's our trigger force in South Korea.

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There is no good reason for Russia to attack Ukraine. Russia's goal in attacking Ukraine was to take over all of Ukraine up to and including Kiev and originally to kill Vladimir Zelensky and anyone else who is ruling in power and who is not going to act as a puppet of the Putin regime. None of this is speculative. That is all just the reality in February of 2022.

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It is, in fact, American presence in places like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, in the Baltic states, that does prevent further Russian aggression in those states. It is not the grand threat of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia's military prowess. preventative power, it's always very easy to do the counterfactual.

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And the counterfactual is like, well, you know, if we just withdrew from these areas, if we didn't have military power, if we cut the defense budget, then probably everything would be okay because that's an imaginary world. The costs right now are real, but the success... of the counterfactual is imaginary. So it's easy to make that case. Well, you know, the costs are real.

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We have to keep soldiers in a lot of places and spend a lot of money. And we really want to be doing that. The counterfactual, however, fails to acknowledge the reality of life, which is that America has aggressive enemies, all of which have their own interests in mind. They act on their own. They're not acting in opposition to the United States in the sense that the U.S. does something.

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They simply react. They have their own priorities. They have their own agendas. And those agendas do not align with the agenda of the United States. Again, I don't think that that is what President Trump is looking for. I think what President Trump is looking for here is a peace through strength policy. I think that because he told me that on this show.

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And that is why I think it's important to see who gets staffed up in, for example, the Defense Department. There's a bubbling battle over a potential Defense Department nominee named Elbridge Colby. And there's a lot of controversy over exactly what Elbridge Colby thinks. Very good piece over at Tablet Magazine by Lee Smith talking about Elbridge Colby.

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Quote, the proposed contract, which reportedly hit Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky's desk last week, demands half the country's revenues from natural resources, ports and infrastructure indefinitely as payback for U.S. military aid since the war began. So apparently that was met with a rather cold reception in Kiev. And so that ticked off President Trump.

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But the bizarre thing about Elbridge Colby, who, again, is being pushed by some segments of sort of the MAGA right. The bizarre thing about Elbridge Colby is that his actual history is working in Democratic circles.

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He began his career working for the Center for a New American Security, which is a think tank founded by Clinton officials and allies with the purpose of turning military officers into loyal Democrats. He then worked at West Exec Advisors, founded in 2017 by two former Barack Obama officials, Anthony Blinken and Michelle Flournoy.

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Avril Haines, the West exec consultant, went on to become Biden's director of national intelligence. Blinken, of course, went on to be secretary of state. And Flournoy was theoretically going to lead the Pentagon, where supposedly she was going to actually hire Elbridge Colby.

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Instead, Colby ended up working in the first Trump administration under James Mattis, who, of course, was not a friend to the Trump foreign policy. He's advised a bunch of people in the GOP, including, for example, Jeb Bush. So Colby's foreign policy doesn't truly align particularly well with many of the things that President Trump has said.

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Colby's argument historically has been that we need to reorient American interests away from, say, Europe and the Middle East and toward China, which is a fair enough argument if what you mean to do is actually then ramp up your capacity around Taiwan. But as Lee Smith points out, many of the people who are being put into place in the Defense Department don't even want to confront China.

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Michael Domino, who's named as the Pentagon's principal Middle East policy advisor, and Andrew Byers, who's tapped for a South and Southeast Asia job. Both of those people are fellows at Defense Priorities, which is a Koch-funded think tank. The Koch brothers are quite isolationist on foreign policy.

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Byers believes the United States should abandon belligerent military initiatives targeted at China because the two are, quote, more geopolitical rivals than full-fledged adversaries. Meanwhile, Colby himself, he says we ought to orient again toward China. But he says, quote, it is true that Taiwan is very important strategic interest to the United States.

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It is not, however, an existential interest. America has a strong interest in defending Taiwan, but Americans could survive without it. And then he posted Taiwan is very important, but not existential interest for America. The real focus is denying China regional hegemony there. Thus, defending Taiwan must make a cost benefit sense for Americans.

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And then he suggested that the only logical and coherent position was to raise the alarm that we are heading to a situation in which defending Taiwan won't make sense and may not even be possible. So in other words, swivel attention from the Middle East to China and then ignore China, which is a very, very weird policy and certainly not one that seems to align with the Trump foreign policy.

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But the Trump foreign policy remains in the early stages here. We'll have to see how all of this shakes out. We'll have to see how this ends up defining itself over time. Suffice it to say that America that abandons a leadership interest in the world is going to watch its interests get wrested away by opponents of the United States.

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Because, again, those opponents don't stop existing just because you wish they would, and then you start unilaterally cutting defense or divesting from certain parts of the globe. It doesn't mean every intervention everywhere is a good idea, obviously, clearly. Many interventions aren't worth it. It doesn't mean that we ought to expend money in stupid places.

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Beyond that, Vladimir Zelensky has a way of getting on President Trump's nerves. There's just no question about this. This goes back years. This goes all the way back to the phone calls that they were having, the perfect phone calls that President Trump was having with Vladimir Zelensky during Trump term number one. And then, of course, Zelensky decided to make best friends with Joe Biden.

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It doesn't mean we ought to expend money on bad weapons systems. It does mean, however, that pretending away America's enemies and pretending that there will be no cost to the United States if those enemies gain regional power is whistling past the graveyard. Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the latest with regard to Doge.

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First, if you were with us for election night or the inauguration, you already know, The Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over, and now we are headed back to D.C. to do just that at CPAC. Join me, along with Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage, live, tonight, February 20th. Check it out.

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No scripted talking points, no corporate approved narratives, just real conversations that actually matter streaming live at Daily Wire Plus. And we are taking your questions. Don't just watch CPAC be a part of it. Live tonight, February 20th at Daily Wire Plus. Meanwhile, controversy continues over Doge.

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President Trump announced yesterday in a piece of interesting news that he is considering a Doge dividend, which would essentially take a per capita dividend. payment, saved by Doge, and then pass it back to the American people in the form of a check or tax cut.

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Now, there's a case to be made that we actually should use that money to pay down the national debt because, of course, that is one of the reasons that you're cutting the spending. However, I'd rather the taxpayers have back their money than that that money be blown on random turning-the-kids-gay-in-Guatemala nonsense. Here is President Trump.

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So again, I think that not a bad idea. How much is Doge actually cutting is sort of one of the open questions at this point. Because Doge is working so fast, And because they are citing a bunch of different things they're cutting, it's sort of hard to get a handle on what exactly is being cut.

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Apparently, according to the website for Doge, they account for $16.6 billion at this point of savings via cuts. But there was an error in some of the data that was published at the Doge website. They mislabeled the contract as an $8 billion contract. It was actually an $8 million contract. So you're talking about under $10 billion in actual itemized savings at this point.

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Nothing ticks off President Trump more than that sort of nonsense. Then you recall in the late stages of the election, Vladimir Zelensky actually came to Pennsylvania and for some odd reason was going around to munitions factories with Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, which was seen correctly by the Trump campaign as an attempt to warm up Kamala Harris in anticipation of a Kamala Harris victory.

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It may be much, much more than that. It may be less. We don't actually know. At this point, the itemized list includes a huge number of failed spending initiatives. And you can imagine that by the time we go through the entire federal government, it is going to amount to, say, $100 billion. Now, in the vast scope of federal spending, is that going to make a huge dent?

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Are you talking about trillions of dollars that is suddenly going to get clawed back? I seriously doubt it. And herein lies the problem that I've noted for a while. Doge is doing great work, and I love what they're doing. And I love the idea of naming all these programs because the American people need to be made aware of how much of their money is being wasted.

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But the reality is the big drivers of America's debt are, of course, the giant entitlement programs. Kevin O'Leary on CNN makes this case, says, listen, Doge actually needs to be radically increasing the amount of cuts.

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By the way, this is exactly how a company should be run. If you come in and there's a lot of fat dripping from the edges of the company, you got to cut and cut nearly everywhere. By the way, there's tons of fat that needs to be cut. A Washington Free Beacon report now says that the Biden EPA actually awarded a group linked to Stacey Abrams with no real track record.

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a $2 billion environmental grant in 2024, which looks very much like just a money laundering attempt to left-wing causes, which, of course, is what so much of the spending actually is. And Democrats are trying to fight back against this, and they are doing so unsuccessfully. They have two angles. One is, how dare you cut all of our fat? That fat needs to remain.

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Chuck Schumer, the awful Senate minority leader, he tried to say this. He said, listen, I'm fine with taking a scalpel, but you're using a meat ax. Well, yeah, because the government is as bloated as any government in human history.

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So, no, actually, the Meat Act is a good thing. And, you know, good for Trump and good for Musk for taking the initiative on all of this. Angle number two Democrats are trying is to find single incidents of cuts that really tug at the heart. And they're having a problem here because it turns out that government employees are not the most sympathetic victims.

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And so Trump didn't like that either. Then Trump made some not particularly nice remarks about Vladimir Zelensky a couple of days ago. And Zelensky responded by suggesting that Trump was part of a disinformation echo chamber. And this led to the big blow up yesterday. So President Trump first went on Truth Social. And he made a very lengthy statement. Quote, think of it.

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So, for example, here you have Chelsea Milbourne, a former federal employee fired from the Education Department, brought on to CNN to cry about it.

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Inhumane? I mean, not respecting you as a human? Like, what if we just don't want you doing the job that you were doing because we don't feel like paying you for that? You are not owed a job. Good luck with this. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is trying to blame President Trump for airplane crashes now. They're getting desperate. Here's Chuck Schumer yesterday.

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OK, but there's only one problem, which is they've yet to connect any of the cuts to any of the airplane crashes. This is what Delta CEO was saying to Gayle King, who tried the same exact routine yesterday.

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So, no, actually, it is not President Trump at all. They're having some real trouble, some real trouble out there. Okay, in just one second, we're going to get to Democrats who are trying to vie now for leadership of a failing Democratic Party. The Democratic Party ratings, by the way, are absolutely in the toilet. We're talking like 30% in the 20s. Truly terrible.

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. We've got so much great stuff behind the paywall, ranging from our various movies and TV shows to things like all-access special... Behind the scenes stuff all about Matt Walsh's work. Just tons of great stuff behind the paywall.

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Go check it out right now over at Daily Wire Plus.

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A modestly successful comedian, Vladimir Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won. It never had to start, but a war that he, without the US and Trump, will never be able to settle. Okay, so just on the facts, this is not true. On the facts, Ukraine did not talk the United States into the war. Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Russia is the aggressor party in this particular situation. As far as the United States' expenditures, the United States has spent an extraordinary amount of money. The United States has given or lent to Ukraine. It really is more of a gift because it's never going to be repaid. The United States, up through the end of last year, had committed somewhere in the arena of $120 billion to Ukraine.

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About $25 billion of that is basically coming back to the United States in the form of defense expenditures. So it's somewhere around $100 billion that has been given to Ukraine.

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Now, to be fair, the result of that has been the complete evisceration of Russia's forward military power, which as a bit of a bargain is not terrible if you see Russia as a geopolitical enemy, which of course it has been historically for the United States.

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President Trump continues, the United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe and Europe's money is guaranteed while the United States will get nothing back. I see no evidence of this particular proposition. Europe apparently has actually spent slightly more money than the United States.

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When you aggregate all of the European countries together, they spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $138 billion or committed that much money. And it's gone up again recently, so closer to $180 billion committed to Ukraine. So they actually have spent slightly more money than the United States in Ukraine.

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As the idea that Europe's money is guaranteed, meaning Ukraine is going to pay it back, no, no shot. President Trump said, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization? And that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean of separation.

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Now, Ukraine did a masterful job of fending off that attack. And by summer of that year, it was very clear that basically a stalemate had set in. And despite all of the best attempts by the Europeans and the half-hearted attempts by the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with additional arms, the lines just weren't moving that much.

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Now, this is the first point that Trump is making that is actually correct, which is, OK, why is the United States footing the bill for this war? The Europeans really need to step up. And as we will see, whether that is the intended effect of Trump's attacks on Vladimir Zelensky or whether that is the kind of positive byproduct of those attacks, Europe is going to have to step into the breach here.

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He's right. The Europeans have much more of a stake in Ukraine remaining Russian-free than the United States does. Trump continued, on top of this, Zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is missing. He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle.

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Okay, well, as far as refusing to have elections, martial law is declared because you may have noticed there's a war on, a war that has currently cost at a minimum 43,000 dead between February 2022 and December 2024 in Ukraine, large swaths of Ukrainian territory. is currently occupied by Russia. Like, do those people get to vote in Donbass and Crimea in a Russian election?

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Millions of people are refugees from Ukraine because they've left since the war began. And you have hundreds of thousands of men in fighting positions. So it makes it kind of difficult just on a logistical level to actually have a workable election. As far as him being very low in Ukrainian polls, that's not particularly true.

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Either Vladimir Zelensky is riding above 50% in the Ukrainian polls and going up in part because of the conflict with Trump. Trump says a dictator without elections, Zelensky better move faster. He is not going to have a country left. Now, again, this may be just a tactic by Trump to put pressure on Zelensky to come to the table and recognize the obvious.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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But the truth is that he doesn't have to recognize the obvious. The United States can basically just sign his name on the dotted line. In fact, I have been suggesting just that since August of 2022, that the United States would have to basically go around Ukraine, cut a deal Ukraine doesn't like, and then cram it down on Ukraine.

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I still don't believe that that requires the moral blindness of suggesting that Zelensky is, in fact, a dictator, you know, as opposed to Vladimir Putin, who has not held a legitimate election in the country of Russia for a quarter century at this point. Zelensky was elected in 2019. His term expired at the end of 2024. And there will presumably be another election.

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By the way, we should point out at this point that these statements have resulted in Zelensky's opposition in Ukraine coming to Zelensky's defense. So the idea that he is a dictator who's quashing the opposition doesn't really explain why all the opposition parties are now coming to the defense of Vladimir Zelensky.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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President Trump says, in the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something I'll admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Now that part is true. Trump is the only one who's attempting to get to a solution. Biden did never try. This is one of the signal failures of the Biden administration.

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I pointed this out throughout Biden's entire term. Europe has failed to bring peace. Again, he is correct about this. Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going. Again, that is a pretty nasty accusation that Zelensky is willing to let tens of thousands of his own people be slaughtered in the streets simply so the money can keep flowing to Ukraine.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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And so since summer of 2022, the lines have been pretty much set. The Donbass area has been occupied by Russia. Crimea has been occupied by Russia. And love nor money is not going to move Russia forward. off of that particular land, not unless the Biden administration was willing to do much more, which they simply were not. What does that mean?

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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I love Ukraine, says President Trump, but Zelensky has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. And so it continues. Now, again, these are the sorts of words that presumably the Russian delegation is very happy to hear. We'll get to more on that in a moment.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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First, you know that creepy feeling you get sometimes like you're being watched while browsing online. Well, here's the thing. You actually are. Every time you hop on the internet, your service provider can see literally everything you do. And get this, in the United States, they can legally sell your entire browsing history. Yep, even that incognito browsing isn't so private after all.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Who would have thunk? That's why I started using ExpressVPN. It's this brilliant app that encrypts everything I do online and routes it through secure servers. Since I started using it, my internet provider can't see any of my browsing history, which means they've got nothing to sell because they actually don't have anything on me. But here's what I really love about ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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It also hides my IP address, so those annoying data brokers can't build a profile about me to sell to advertisers. Plus, it's incredibly user-friendly. You don't have to be a tech wizard to use it. They made it so simple, even your kids could figure it out. All you have to do is tap one button and get protected. They've got apps for all your devices.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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It's rated number one by CNET, The Verge, and other major tech reviewers. So if you want to start taking your online privacy seriously, don't wait. Use my special link. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free at expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben, expressvpn.com slash ben. Also...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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You know, they say money can't buy you happiness, and that's mostly true, but it turns out money can buy you a lot of other things. And when you're not in control of your money, your money actually controls you. Acorns is a financial wellness app that helps you take control of your money with simple tools that make it easy to start saving and investing for you, your retirement, and your kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you start investing with the spare money you've got right now, even if that's just your spare change. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. Plus, Acorns has tons of videos, articles and tips to help you grow your financial literacy. Ready to take control of your money?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Sign up right now. Join the over 13 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Plus, Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment. And we should point out here that just in terms of the return to the United States on its investment here, the Russian military machine has been absolutely crippled by the war in Ukraine.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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According to one NATO official quoted today in the international press, Russia's overall dead and wounded in this war amounts to 837,000. That is a massive number, a huge number. At a minimum, you're talking about 90 to 100,000 Russian troops have been killed in this war, war in which Putin was supposed to stroll into Kiev.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Now, as we can talk about and as we will talk about, Joe Biden was a signal failure in leading the world on this. And when it comes to practical policy, the policy that is likely to emerge from what Trump is doing here is likely to be a much better policy than anything Joe Biden was doing.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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It means that any sort of settlement between Russia and Ukraine was always going to have the following basic outline. One, Russia was going to retain control over Donbass and Crimea. Because otherwise, there was no off-ramp for Russia.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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However, Trump's statements about Zelensky, the attacks on him as a dictator, the suggestion that somehow Russia is the moral party here, that is wrong and it's not true. Trump then reiterated this in a speech. This is clearly White House policy now. This is not Trump making a mistake, whether it is animus for Zelensky on a personal level or frustration with Zelensky or whether –

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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in a sort of Machiavellian way. It's an attempt to pressure Zelensky, make Zelensky look bad so that he can cut a deal without Zelensky and then cram it down on Zelensky. And he feels he needs the imprimatur of public opinion to do that. I don't know why he's saying this. The motivations are unclear to me. He is obviously reiterating this. This is purposeful. Here he was last night.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Now, Russia is attempting to make economic overtures to President Trump. This, of course, is one way to the Trump team's heart because President Trump has a very longstanding policy when it comes to foreign policy, which is that the United States should earn money. And again, that's not a bad policy. It's just that there are other countervailing interests that sometimes overcome those interests.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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You can earn a lot of money doing business with China. You can also completely undermine your manufacturing base, have all of your IP stolen, and pave the way to Chinese aggression all over the region. And so money is not the only consideration. It is, however, a fair consideration.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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Vladimir Putin was not going to lose face as the dictator of Russia and simply hand back territory that had originally been invaded in 2014 and has been held by Russia ever since. That was number one. Ukraine was not going to win back that territory. It was a victory for Ukraine simply to continue existing in the face of the Russian bear.

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According to the New York Times, the Russian government's top investment manager, who has Harvard and McKinsey credentials and fluent English, brought a simple printout to Tuesday's talks with the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia. Its message, by pulling out of Russia in outrage over the invasion of Ukraine, American companies had walked away from piles of cold, hard cash.

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The document, which was handed over by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, showed to a New York Times reporter, it said total losses $324 billion. And appealing to President Trump, the Kremlin has zeroed in on his desire to make a profit. President Putin on Wednesday praised the US delegation in Riyadh for not criticizing Russia as previous administrations had done.

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Now, again, you can make the case that the reason Trump's not doing that is what's the point? If he goes out there and he just shouts at Putin about being a dictator, then is he able to get to the actual end point that he wants? By the same token, is there a real politic rationale for attacking Zelensky in this way? If there is, you know, I'm hard pressed to see it.

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And again, on a moral level, what he's saying is obviously not true. Russia attacked Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is, in fact, a quite murderous dictator who has no problem poisoning his enemies or throwing them off of the top buildings and such. The predictable result of all of this, however, could be salutary in the end.

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And the reason I say that is if you already knew how this war was going to end, which, once again, many of us have been asking for and demanding for nigh on three years at this point, perhaps it gets to an end faster because of the kind of activities that Trump is participating in. Now, it may not get there faster with the United States as part of a broad economic deal.

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

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That economic deal that was proposed by the Trump administration is almost certain to be refused by Ukraine because it wouldn't pencil out for them in any way, shape or form. In all likelihood, what is going to happen here is the United States is going to try to cut some sort of deal with Russia.

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And then there will be a countervailing negotiation led by the Europeans and Ukraine on the other side. Europe is going to be forced to step up here. And that part is what Trump really does have right when it comes to Russia, Ukraine.

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President Zelensky has pulled out of his trip that was planned to Saudi Arabia to avoid what he called coincidences following that meeting between the United States and Russian officials in Riyadh. This is according to Euronews.

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Zelensky's announcement came as he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Ankara, during which he said any Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations should not take place behind the backs of the parties involved. He said the Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia came as a surprise to us, just as it did to many others.

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When we saw the media coverage, I don't know who will stay, who will leave, where anyone is going. To be honest, I don't really care. What matters to me is that our partners take time to think about us.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Hey, hey, welcome. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. So folks, here at Daily Wire, we have something called Ben Shapiro's Book Club. It's exactly what it sounds like. I read books with you. Well, one of the books that I read with you over the course of the last year and a half or so was The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Here's a bit of our discussion. C.S.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Marxism says you can create a new human, change the economic conditions, change the man. Secular humanism says the same thing, that if you just get rid of God, then magically a new human being will flourish. Religion says no. Human beings are exactly the same as they were when Adam ate the apple with Eve in the garden. We're exactly the same, and nothing has changed.

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The only thing that has changed is that we've built institutions and systems in order to channel us toward our better selves. And when you blow up all those institutions, what you end up with is something very, very bad. which is precisely what has happened. Screwtape also talks about how human relationships can undermine faith as well.

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Because human beings have a really tough time living with each other, and so most sin is not between man and God, most sin is between man and man. When he talks about the relations in marriage, for example, Lewis is right on the money. He says, This is true in virtually all human relationships, right? You say something and you say it in kind of a nasty way.

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Most of what he writes is applicable across religions. Obviously, his specific defenses of Christian theology, his apologetics for Christianity, I disagree with a lot of that stuff. But when it comes to his overall take on the Bible and religion, I very much agree with an enormous amount of that. Charles says, It's scary how each book you pick relates to the current state of our country.

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And then when somebody gets offended, you're like, hey, what did I say? What did I do? Did I say? No, just look. And I'll read back the words that I said. It's like, well, no, the tone mattered an awful lot right there. By the way, this is one of the reasons why just a piece of Shapiro advice here. Try to have as many conversations via voice as you can and not via text.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Text is open to misinterpretation. Voice really, really is not. But we do have a double standard. We insist that everybody interpret us in the best light, and then we interpret everybody else in the worst possible light. And then his descriptions of men and women are also extraordinarily accurate. This is one of my favorite sections of the book.

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He says, a woman means by unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others. A man means not giving trouble to others. As a result, a woman who is quite far gone in the enemy's service will make a nuisance of herself on a larger scale than any man, except those whom our father has dominated completely.

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And conversely, a man will live long in the enemy's camp before he undertakes as much spontaneous work to please others as a quite ordinary woman may do every day. In other words, women tend to be very helpful And if Satan can get a hold of them, then intrusive and invasive. And men tend to be very blasé, which means that they allow people their space.

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But also, if Satan can get a hold of them, then they are completely disconnected from other human beings and selfish. A sensible human once said, "...if people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit." And again, she's the sort of woman who lives for others. You can always tell the others by their hunted expression.

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Screwtape also talks to Wormwood about the misinterpretation of the word love, how love has come to mean sexual desire, and how we have moved away from marriage as a duty-based relationship to the voluntarization of marriage. Screwtape says, quote, In humans, the enemy has gratuitously associated affection between the parties with sexual desire.

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He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it, thus producing the family, which is like the organism, only worse. For the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way. The whole thing, in fact, turns out to be simply one more device for dragging in love.

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The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and if obediently entered into, too often will produce affection in the family.

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Humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire, which they call being in love, is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy.

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So in other words, family is a relation that is created by nature, but if we can reduce it, if the devil can reduce that down to the subjective feeling of love, then the minute that you lose the love, you lose the duty. So, obviously, this is what's happened with regard to marriage. This is how the slogan, love is love, has ended up being a definition of marriage. And it has no boundaries.

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Love is love could include bigamy. Love is love could include polygamy. Love is love could include two brothers getting married. Love is love has no definition. Because, obviously, love is not, in fact, love. Love in the traditional sense meant duty. Love in the traditional sense meant familial relations between man, woman, and children.

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If you redefine love as that subjective feeling within you, then love is love, I suppose, is true. The problem is that is a complete redefinition. It is a robbing marriage of its identity and then wearing it around as a skin suit. Screwtape also points out that one easy way to hell is to get people to disregard the individual human beings in front of them in the name of mankind writ large.

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Do you believe we can survive as a country? We were founded on religious principles, which have been removed by our current government. I don't see a way forward without returning to God. We as conservatives must lead a revival in religion. I totally agree with this, obviously. Religion doesn't just provide the communal gathering place for people of like mind. It also provides an aim to shoot for.

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This obviously is the project of the left, which is willing to completely run over its neighbors in order to pursue a better world for everybody else. Screwtape says, the great thing is to direct the malice of his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference to people he doesn't know.

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The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There's something I say about people. You know, I always say that I'm sort of a not people person, but that's actually not particularly true. My thoughts about mankind at large are not particularly generous. I don't think that human beings are saints. I don't think that human beings are devils.

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I think that we are somewhere in between. When it comes to interpersonal, like day-on-day relations, I get along with, I love individual human beings. Individual human beings are great. It's the species that's a problem.

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And when you start to think that the human species is filled with joy and wonder, but the individuals who live next door to you are the worst people in the entire world, you can do some pretty terrible things to your neighbors. One of Screwtape's other tools, one of the tools that he likes to use as well, is the human incapacity to understand the divine.

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So God obviously has to limit his power in our lives in terms of being right in our face all the time in order for us to have free will. This means a sort of unbridgeable gap between human beings and the divine. And so we have a picture in our head of what God is and that picture is not real.

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And then when God doesn't manifest in the way that we think the picture ought to manifest, we get angry at God or we say that he doesn't exist. We think he's an old man in the sky who's a gumball machine and you pray to him and he gives you what you want. That's not how God works.

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So one of the big questions that you are supposed to not ask is really the nature of God because you're not really able to comprehend God. There are certain things you can comprehend about God. The idea that God is generous in creating humanity. The idea that God has bound himself to a particular logic of the world. These are things that Aquinas talks about or Maimonides.

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But the idea that you can know God at the most intimate level, obviously the Bible itself says that this is not the case. Moses, in the book of Exodus, specifically asks God whether he can see his glory, and God says, you can't see my glory and live. He says, you can see my back. The idea being you can identify what I am by sort of my actions in the world, but you can't actually see my face.

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You're not capable of understanding who God totally is. Attempts to delve too deeply into what God is end up in what Screwtape calls materialist magic. Quote, if we can produce our perfect work, the materialist magician, the man not using but veritably worshiping what he vaguely calls forces while denying the existence of spirits, then the end of the world will be in sight.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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So the materialist magician in this world is the person who believes in larger forces like physics or global warming or evolution or disease as controlling our fates while denying that God has any say in the matter whatsoever. It is sort of the notion that the environment is taking revenge on us. The world is taking revenge on us.

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It's sort of an animistic philosophy that separates us off from God. We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, you voted big government out and efficient government in. Well, now it's time to trim the fat on big wireless. If you're still on Verizon AT&T, AT Mobile, why? I personally use Pure Talk.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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You have to be shooting for that highest goal as a community, or you're not gonna have anything in common. Religion is one of the biggest intermediary institutions in life. And there are many sets of institutions in life ranging from the very lowest level, the family, all the way up to the national government or even to sort of humanity writ large.

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I can tell you it gives me the exact same service on the exact same towers with better customer service because they're based right here in the United States, all for 50% of the cost. I've been using PeerTalk myself for two, three years at this point. The coverage is excellent. It's exactly the same as some of the big wireless carriers, and it costs me less money. I know what you're thinking.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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There's simply no need to spend 85 or 100 bucks per person on your wireless bill. Now when I can tell you firsthand, you will get unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data with mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. I've seen it myself. The average family of four saves about $1,000 a year with Pure Talk while enjoying America's most dependable 5G network.

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So cut the fat out of your wireless bill. Switch on over to Pure Talk. Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage with Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Go check them out right now. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.

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Screwtape also says that the notion of complete human autonomy apart from God is ridiculous. Screwtape laughs, much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they own their bodies, those vast and perilous estates pulsating with the energy that made the world in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of another.

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Again, this is a pretty good point. We tend to think of our bodies as our own. Did you ask to be born? Were you asked about when you wish to die? Do you have permission? Does your body take your permission every time you get sick or when you get cancer? The notion of complete bodily autonomy, that may be true from other human beings. It is not true in terms of godly duty.

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Screwtape also makes clear what Satan wants out of all of this. We want cattle who can finally become food. He wants servants who can finally become sons.

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Our cause, says Screwtape, is never more in danger than when a human no longer desiring but still intending to do the enemy's will looks around upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys. That's what God wants. God wants our devotion. God wants us to understand that we can't understand the logic of the world.

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God wants what he wanted from Job, which is an understanding that we don't understand. That's what God actually wants from us. And so the chief curative for devotion, for devotion to a God that you can't fully understand, for screw tape, is moderation. And you see this a lot in the religious world. Well, I don't want to be too religious. I don't want to be too spiritual.

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I don't want to do too much. That's immoderate. Quote, if you can once get him to the point of thinking that religion is all very well up to a point, you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all and more amusing. And this is sort of the idea that you see on the secular left these days, that religion should be relegated to your house at best.

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It should be relegated to your church. You should never act out your religion in your everyday life. A truly religious person infuses their life with their religious ideal all the way through their life, from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to bed at night. The more they do that, the more religious they are, the better they've done.

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Lewis' The Screwtape Letters is all at once a deep rumination on religion, a high comedy rooted in the hilarity of both humanity's flaws and Satan's foibles, a tragedy about the nature of death, and a tale of redemption and everlasting life. There is so much to unpack here, we're going to do all of that in just one second. First, let's turn to some thoughts from the community.

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But maybe the chief intermediary institution outside of the family is, in fact, your religious community. Without engagement with religious values, it's going to be very difficult for America to regain her footing, which is why I think that there will be, in fact, a revivification of religious values. I think the spiritual emptiness that has been provided

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But if you can limit religious life to certain aspects of your life, then religion loses its sway. So what exactly does it mean to reach sort of the ultimate goal So Screwtape says, the idea of acting in accordance with a higher will is the goal. He says, this indeed is probably one of the enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world, a world in which moral issues really come to a point.

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He sees as well as you do. Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the highest point of highest reality. So if Screwtape can make you listen to your animal instincts, if Screwtape can enmesh you in the material, if Screwtape can make you feel gray, if Screwtape can make you focus too much on your subjective emotions, then he wins.

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And the best way to fight all of that is active repetition of good habits. This is true going all the way back to Aristotle. It is obviously true in Judaism. It's true in Christianity as well. That acting dutifully in the world is the best way to overcome all of these flaws in yourself. Now, the end of Screwtape Letters is tragic, obviously. You're talking about a man who has found a woman.

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He's going to get married to her. You think they're going to have a happy life. And instead, his life is cut short in a bombing raid in World War II. And so that's supposed to be the tragic ending, but the whole point of Screwtape Letters is that if you believe in a spiritual world, there is no sad ending. There is only a happy ending.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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From the perspective of the divine, the young man has now gained access to something higher. Quote, you die and die, and then you are beyond death. How could I have ever doubted it? It's a beautifully written book.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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It's got wonderful pieces of advice, even for people, by the way, who are not totally religious, and how to act better in your inner world, how to treat other people better, how to have better relations with your spouse. But when it comes to the spiritual world, there's so much good advice in here, so much good advice. Okay, let's take a look at some of your questions.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Pam says, is our culture experiencing a strong demonic influence? I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to say no. So I am, as I say, a believer in the Jewish tradition. And so the idea of demons is pretty controversial in the Jewish tradition. There's sort of a debate within Judaism about active demonic forces in the world.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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But you'd be hard-pressed to say that it is not demonic in the either traditional or the colloquial sense to say that young children should be ushered into a world of gender confusion and sterilized. I mean, to say that it's not demonic is beyond me by any definition of the word demonic that you choose to use. Kate, ask a question. Kate, let's go.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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by modern secular theology is really garbage and people are paying the price. I think it's one of the reasons why you're seeing a mental health crisis in this country, why you're seeing high levels of suicidal ideation, chaos among the young. You refuse to allow people a system of rules. When you immediately dismiss time-tested wisdom, what you end up with is not freedom.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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I agree with this. I mean, I do think a religious revolution is on the way. Now, typically speaking, throughout human history, it's taken some sort of vast external shock in order to jog people back into religious adherence. So World War I, obviously, is that sort of shock. You see in the Great Depression that there was a big return to church.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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A society which had gotten pretty dissolute in the 20s in the United States suddenly became a lot more religious in the 1930s. Right now, in the aftermath of COVID, when people are seeking community, when everybody's existence was virtual and they were very unhappy, you could see that sort of thing happening.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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I'm not sure because COVID was so shielded from sort of its worst effects, except for obviously people who died or the families of people who died, because so many people were shielded from the worst effects by governments that just expended fire hoses of cash at people, I think that the sort of crisis of faith that falls upon a society when it reaches rock bottom has not happened yet, which...

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suggests that rock bottom will happen. And when that happens, there will be a crisis of faith. But I think that you are starting to see a burgeoning movement of people who are spiritually unsatisfied with what has been offered, this sort of materialist haven of libertinism. And people are not happy with it, particularly those of us who are still having kids.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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And they're moving more toward religion. This is the other thing, is that as people have kids, they have to figure out a system in which they want their kids to live. Secularism does not offer that system. Secularism offers no system. Secularism suggests that you ought to listen to the vague whims of children. which of course is precisely the worst way to raise a kid.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Pat says, here's my response to the study question, which is primary in faith, reason or emotion? I think the answer is neither reason nor emotion predominate in faith. Faith is a connection that is beyond reason or emotion. It's experience unlike any other. Faith can generate emotion and inspire the use of reason, but ultimately faith is beyond either of these processes.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Primary in the experience of faith is the concept of openness. No matter how much emotion one may feel about spiritual matters, or how much reasoning one engages in on theological questions, faith cannot be truly understood unless one is open to the acceptance of faith.

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Once a person humbly and gratefully opens his heart to the possibility of belief, faith comes as a gift at the perfect moment in that person's spiritual path. One cannot experience faith by wishing for it or simply setting an intention to believe. Belief will come when the necessary preparation has been done. That's the best part of this response. That is correct.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Just like any other good thing in life, you have to prepare for the good thing to happen in order for the good thing to happen. This is why I've suggested, if you want to find your marital partner, get yourself ready for marriage, and you will find your marital partner. If you want faith, get yourself ready for faith. Do the things that dutiful people do.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Do the things that faithful people do, and faith will come upon you. And there's a famous story in the Talmud in which a... a non-Jew comes to Hillel, a pagan comes to Hillel, a famous rabbi, and says to him, can I be the chief priest, the high priest? And Hillel says to him, yes. And everybody goes to Hillel and says, what are you talking about?

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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A convert cannot be the high priest in the temple by Jewish law. And Hillel says, well, by the time he figures that out, he'll be so deeply ensconced in the faith that it won't matter. And of course, that's precisely what happens. The person studies, becomes enmeshed in the faith, and then hits on the idea that he can't be high priest.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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What you end up with is libertinism, which eventually devolves into nihilism. Alrighty, so let's talk about the Screwtape Letters. It is a spectacularly good book. One of the beautiful things about Screwtape Letters is it is a fictional encapsulation of much of C.S. Lewis's other work.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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He comes to Hillel, and Hillel says to him, but is your life better now? And he says, yeah. So platonic lie there from Hillel. But the basic idea, which is that you have to prepare yourself for faith in order to accept the faith, is in fact true. James says, what are some temptations Screwtape and his minions did not use you think would have been more effective? So, you know, C.S.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Lewis talks about the... effect of sexuality on the human psyche. But he talks about it kind of minimally here. He talks about it almost as an afterthought.

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The truth is it's become so predominant in Western life that the big gain that secular modernism made is that you can be who you want in terms of sexual identity, and that is the most important part of you, that it's completely shifted the nature of identity, that Lewis doesn't address that. And I think one of the reasons Lewis doesn't address that is because reality still existed in 1942.

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By this I mean that the advent of welfare states and the birth control pill have basically attenuated the results of reality. It used to be that if you said, I identify sexually as a profligate libertine, and I'm a woman, I'm going to have sex with a thousand men. Well, if that's the way that you were working things in 1942, the chances that you ended up pregnant were very, very high.

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In 1965, the chances had reduced pretty radically, and so suddenly a new identity could be put center stage. And it's something that I think that because reality itself changed, because science itself changed reality, that's a temptation that is highly effective. In fact, it is the chief temptation of the left. It's the most important part of you is your sex drive.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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We can hand you complete satiation of your sex drive through identification, place that at the center of your identity, and you will have endless supply of sexual partners, and you will be able to finally access the most passionate part of you. Now, that promise has turned out to be empty. People are deeply sexually unsatisfied in modern society, as it turns out.

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People are living in a virtual world without partners. People are, in fact, less happy. They've not formed traditional families, which are the locus of happiness throughout human history. But that is the temptation. Grace says, my grandfather introduced me to Screwtape and Lewis, and from there to George MacDonald, from whom Lewis drew extensively.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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The letter on humility has always been especially thought-provoking to me, even as a 13-year-old when I first read it. Lewis noted genuine humility comes not from having a low opinion of one's own abilities or worth, but stepping outside the self to take God's true or balanced perspective. Knowing myself to be no better than the next man cuts it both ways.

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This obviously is true and speaks to what we were talking about earlier with regard to humility. Claudio has a question about humility as well.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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If you've ever read Mere Christianity or Men Without Chests or any of his other essays, a lot of that ends up in the Screwtape Letters. And that's sort of how C.S. Lewis writes. I mean, C.S. Lewis famously writes the Narnia series. The Narnia series encapsulates a lot of his values in sort of a fantasy context. He does the same thing.

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So the answer, obviously, is yes. I mean, when it comes to Judaism, one of the chief focuses of Judaism is humility. And this comes across in a wide variety of circumstances. So, I mean, obviously on Yom Kippur, you are supposed to abjectly apologize to God for your sins and the sins of your community. arrogance is forbidden in Judaism. We don't all succeed with that.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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I don't always succeed with that, obviously. When it comes to humility, the reason that Moses, the greatest Jew of all time, is described as the most humble man who ever lived is because anava, which is the quality of humility in Hebrew, is so important in Judaism, and all of the great rabbis are described as particularly humble.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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In fact, it's very controversial in Jewish law as to whether when you, for example, write a book, you should put your name on it, because the idea is that that is an aspect of egoism, whereas if you were to just write the book and put it out anonymously, put out those ideas, then maybe that is the best way to defeat the ego.

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The countervailing view is that if you actually have some ability to get the ideas in the public space because you're because you're an active advocate for your position, then you should do so. But yes, Judaism takes humility unbelievably seriously.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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This is why when Maimonides ranks the types of charity, the top form of charity is giving somebody a job, but the second form of charity is giving anonymously, specifically because when you give anonymously, you have to humble yourself because you don't get to take credit for the thing. Kate says, on question five, screw tape sees humor as a weapon.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Do we use humor to disarm virtue or to target sin? I think the answer is both. Lewis was certainly successful in using humor to target sin, as you often are, Ben. Unfortunately, it does seem more popular to use humor to belittle the virtuous in society. Any invocation of faith during an argument is met with derision.

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Any suggestion American culture should turn back to God often gets you mocked as a Bible thumper. I think the advantage of the virtuous in this sort of targeting is the confidence given by real faith. They can laugh all they want. On the other hand, as Moore said, the devil cannot endure to be mocked. Austin picked the most impactful for me personally so far.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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I've enjoyed reading with DW this year. Cheers. I mean, there is no question that the devil cannot endure to be mocked. I mean, mockery is the one thing the left cannot allow. You cannot mock the left. Every joke. I mean, this is why they're going after comedians. This is why they're trying to attack Dave Chappelle on stage.

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With regard to, he wrote a sci-fi trilogy that starts with Out of the Silent Planet, Perilandra. He does a lot of that sort of stuff. He takes his values and he sort of telescopes it into a fictional story for ease of use. Screwtape Letter's a little bit different because it's so obviously theology and obviously philosophy where it's a little bit more guarded in Narnia or Out of the Silent Planet.

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Any idea of secularism that is attacked, anytime you joke about their most highly valued priorities, they cannot laugh at it. Now, there's a difference between mean laughter and sort of warm laughter. So, for example, my business partner, Jeremy Boring, and I, we are not of the same faith, obviously. Jeremy's a Christian, I'm a Jew.

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And what that means, we are constantly making jokes about each other's religion and our own religion. And the reason that we can do that is because we're very comfortable, number one, in the belief in our own religion, but number two, because we share a commonality of belief in the first five books of the Bible, at the very least, right?

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Judaism and Christianity share a lot in common, and so we don't feel that we're at odds in terms of values. If, however, somebody is making Jokes, you can always tell because they're just not funny.

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People who make mean-spirited jokes about religion, they're typically not funny because they're not coming from a place in which, like the best humor is always coming from a place of warmth or at least absurdity. It's not coming from a place of meanness and nastiness. This is why late night has sort of fallen off the radar. It's because all of their humor is not really jokes. It's just critiques.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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A joke is not a critique. They're very different things. Dustin says, with it originally being published in 1942, do you think that the book's intended audience has changed over time or remained the same, and why? Well, I mean, I think that the book's intended audience was people who were curious about Christianity but didn't know enough about it and wanted to learn more.

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I think now the audience is significantly broader than just people who are interested in Christianity. I think Lewis, like everybody else in 1942, assumed a certain baseline of values that everybody shared because we were still living on the fumes of the Christian heritage in the West.

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But now, because all those values have fallen by the wayside, the book reads as a revelation rather than as an explication of things that most people already knew.

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Jackson says, taking a Jordan Peterson-esque approach to the book, breaking it down psychologically, what do you think is the significance of the end letter both in itself and of itself and its effect on the book as a whole when it is finished? So which end letter are we talking about? So I'll have to check out what we're talking about here. Let's see.

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So there is an end letter at the very end of the book in which Screwtape proposes a toast, in which he talks about how hard it was to write Screwtape letters and all of that. I think that the significance is that when Screwtape proposes a toast, the devil never goes away, unfortunately. And so the devil is still there, and he is still feeling his oats.

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Trisha says, an eerily but accurate page right out of the left's playbook, especially Screwtape's dinner speech at the end. I must know, Ben, how you're right on the money with picking out these book titles. Also, how accurate is this depiction of the battle between good and evil on a person's soul to say the teachings of the Torah?

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So, again, as I've said, I think that a lot of the messages are completely on point with regard to the teachings of the Torah. There's some stuff here that is explicitly Christian about the power of Christ in people's lives, for example, that is not necessarily reflected in Judaism. Most of the broad points about human relations or the relations between man and God

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are very much on the money with regard to Judaism as well. Kelly says, So when I read it, it doesn't read as vicious about women to me. It's just as vicious with regard to men. Men are seen as lustful and silly. I think that In our society, it's become almost an article of faith that women are never to be characterized in any particular broad way, even though we're allowed to do that with men.

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Here, he basically just says it straight up and it's very funny. One area where Lewis is often criticized is in not being funny enough. That when you read Narnia, there's no humor in the Narnia books. But when you read C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, there's a lot of humor and very funny humor, actually. So Lewis himself described writing Screwtape Letters. He actually said it was tough.

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And so anytime there's a critique in a book of women writ large, when we'd be perfectly fine taking the critique of men, then I think that that's sort of fallen out of favor. But the question is whether the critiques are well taken or not. And it is true that because women tend to be... Here's a generalization for you. Because women...

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were built by either God or evolutionary biology or both in order to be comforters and caretakers. By every available study, this happens to be the case. Women tend to be more comforting. Women tend to gravitate toward careers that focus on interpersonal relationships this way.

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Because of that, this means that the way that women are humble is by, quote-unquote, serving others, to take the generalization that Lewis uses. The problem is you can overdo it to the point where you annoy people. And that's what he's saying. You can overdo anything. And if you overdo it, if you overdo, you know, men's tendency is to, I'm not going to get into your business.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Freedom is me not getting into your business. You take that to its logical extent, you end up with Scrooge. Well, I mean, Screwtape, I think, sees God as good at his job. It's really that Screwtape doesn't believe, because Screwtape is small-minded. Screwtape doesn't believe that God actually can be acting out of love.

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But deep down, he suspects that God actually is acting out of love and he can't understand it. As far as which vice you'd nudge a young American toward, sexual liberation is the vice that is most obvious in today's day and age. It's always been the thing that human beings have been most prone to. And then also I would say the engagement in the virtual.

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the complete subsuming of all of your interests to engagement with things that don't exist, the making of images. If you want to talk about idolatry, the worship of images online is obviously extraordinarily high. I think online pornography may be a form of idolatry, actually. Kathleen asked about my view of spiritual beings. Here's Kathleen.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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So I'm more of a rationalist along my monodean lines. So I tend not to believe in the idea that there are sort of demons who are haunting the earth and invading people. However, I don't think you have to believe in demons in order to believe that, for example, when you watch somebody who has a severe mental illness, this person is possessed.

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I don't think that that's like an external force that is taking over the person's body. It may well be driven by a biological misfiring in the brain. In my view, that's precisely what it is. With that said, this is not the person. And having dealt with people who are in the midst of severe mental illness, I can tell you that when you're dealing with a person who has that, it feels like a demon.

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It feels like something has taken over the person's body and the person you love is not there. And it's extraordinarily difficult to deal with. And you can see why for the vast majority of human history, people characterize that as an outside force taking over the body because that's literally what it looks like. Kea says, hey Ben, I'm 15 years old from Utah.

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He said, though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. Though it was easy to twist one's mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch.

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As an Orthodox Jew, what's your opinion on the devil? Do you believe such a being actually exists or is it a symbol? Do you think the Screwtape Letters would make a good movie? Thanks, I really enjoy your show. Screwtape Letters would be a difficult thing to turn into a movie unless you were from the perspective of Wormwood, right?

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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And it was just Wormwood trying to seduce the young man all day because the only character you actually see here is Screwtape, but the only interactions that happen are between Wormwood and the young man and the young woman. So you could theoretically do it that way. It would be interesting. My opinion on the devil. So in the Bible, Satan literally means adversary. Satan means adversary.

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And so the way that Satan is portrayed in the Talmud and in the Bible, in the Jewish Bible, is not as an opposing fallen angel, fallen force who is now opposing God, but as actually a messenger of God who is supposed to do certain things. In fact, there is a famous rabbi in the Talmud named Rish Lakish, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, that Satan, the angel of death, and the evil inclination are all one.

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So it's a name that we give for the adversary, and he's the accuser. I mean, if you read in the prophets, there's one particular area of the prophets where Satan is standing and accusing a former high priest of having failed in his duty. He's sort of the lawyer for the other side. And in the same way that in our legal system you have a public defender,

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who's set up and a prosecutor publicly funded to prosecute. Satan is sort of the prosecutor. It does raise the question of if angels exist and they are singular forces and they don't have any will of their own, right? They're not human beings.

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If they don't have any will of their own in sort of the Jewish view, whether if they have emotional states, and there seems to be some description of angels with emotional states in the Talmud, whether Satan actually likes his job or not. It's kind of an interesting question for theological speculation.

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I would suspect no, by the way, is that if your job is to constantly be tempting human beings and you also work for God, that's a very different job than you get to sort of revel in the evil that you do in opposing God. Mariel says, do you think there's a danger of relieving ourselves of responsibility too much when we imagine our temptations externally the way they are in Screwtape?

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Or is it a helpful way to distance our will from our impulses when learning discipline? So I think that there is usefulness to actually externalizing the problems within you. The biggest problem is when we internalize the worst parts of ourselves and then suggest that that is core to our identity, which is exactly what we've done in modern society.

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But it is wildly entertaining because he is, you know, obviously writing in the voice of one of Satan's minions. Now, I will say there's a bit of difference between sort of the Christian theology of Satan and the Jewish theology of Satan.

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So for example, when it comes to dealing with virtually all issues sort of addiction problems. One of the things that we tend to do is externalize, right? There is a force. I'm an alcoholic means there's a force that works on me, on the real me, and that is alcohol. When the alcohol hits me, it turns me into a person that I don't want to be. Well, the alcohol doesn't have an attitude.

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The alcohol doesn't hit you. You drink the alcohol. It's your choice. But externalizing the problem is one way of fighting the problem because the problem is once you start saying that these things about me are the most important things about me, it makes it very difficult to excise those parts of you. People don't like to separate off from things that they see as a chief part of their identity.

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David says, what is the nature of Satan and the demonic? It seems like the most practical way to talk about evil is with personified agents like in the Screwtape Lovers. What evidence do you see for Satan and demons as the actual being?

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So again, I tend to be more of a rationalist, and so the idea here that God extends forces into the world, which is something I do believe, and that those forces are malachim, they're messengers, and that we can call those angels, that I agree with. I tend to be less of a personified demon believer, for example. Ray says, first of all, thank you for this month's selection.

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Lewis is one of those writers I never tire of. In this case, the book only gets better with each new reading. I had a question, not specifically about the story, but with Lewis's comments before the Screwtape Proposes a Toast section. He mentions that if the story would be completely true to life, there'd be a corresponding archangel writing to man's guardian angel.

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But Lewis felt unqualified to write it because such letters would have to smell of heaven. While I don't exactly disagree, it made me wonder if he was not wrong to make the attempt. I actually think he could have done so while keeping the humor strong, but with a different focus. The joy of Screwtape is in the mockery of the devil, but with an emphasis on human failings.

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If told by an angel, there would still be the laughing judgment of human faults, but in the same way that a parent laughs at their child's shortcomings. Do you think this is a fair assessment, or am I missing something incredibly obvious? What do you think might be needed if the same story were told by an angelic narrator?

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So the Christian theology of Satan, which is that Satan is the opponent to God, almost a dualistic structure where Satan is responsible for evil in the world and is a rebel against God, fallen angel and all of this. Jewish theology is a bit different. In Jewish theology, all of the angels, including Satan, are emissaries, the word in Hebrew for emissaries.

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So, you're right, but I think that the hardship of writing that is that presumably an angel would be upset when somebody fails. Screwtape is happy when somebody fails, and so he can write that as laughter. an angel is presumably going to see every human failing as a tragedy. But you're right. I mean, it might be possible to write it in the way that a parent would write about a wayward child.

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But there comes a point with adults, obviously, where the child is no longer wayward, where it becomes willful. And then I think that the letters would presumably bristle with outrage, tragedy, and anger. Jackson says, after reading letter 26, I found myself confused. I couldn't seem to distinguish what Lewis is calling unselfishness from what we know to be selflessness.

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Selflessness and caring for others is virtuous. Could you give me your understanding of the nuance in the language I seem to be missing? To put it differently, why is it good to be selfless but not unselfish? So the case for selfless is that you actually have divested yourself of your interests, which includes if people don't want to be around you. then you go along with that as well.

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Unselfishness can become a vice in the sense that I'm so interested in giving myself. I'm interested in giving myself. I'm in your business. I want to give of myself. The most important thing is still give of myself. Myself is still part of the sentence there. Selflessness would not have myself as part of the sentence. It would just be, what do you need? How can I help? That's selflessness.

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Unselfishness is, look how unselfish I am. I want to give of me. It's about me and my feeling of unselfishness. Charmy says, the patient is the common Christian man that has understood. What kind of prayers do you think the patient prayed? Well, you know, I would assume the traditional Christian liturgy because that is what Lewis would have focused on.

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And since he's being educated as a Christian, that obviously is Lewis's chief focus, I would imagine. Corey says, what is a real life example in the world today of when Lewis says, men are not angered by mere misfortune, but by misfortune conceived of as injury? This is, okay, so what's an example of this? Perfect example would be, there's a financial crash.

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And the financial crash is through no one's fault. 9-11 happens, there's a financial crash. It's nobody's fault. We're not made angry by that. 2007-2008 crash, we get very, very angry because somebody was screwing around with the financial system. Whether it was the government, whether it was Wall Street, whether it was both, we get angry about that.

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Now, the problem is it's very easy to conceive of misfortune as misfortune conceived of as injury. This happens all the time. We misinterpret somebody's intent. Somebody does something, it hurts us. Instead of us saying that was an accident, they probably didn't intend that, we immediately go to, that person wanted to hurt me. And then we get angry, and then we act out against that person.

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Or we do it on a societal level. We misinterpret the fact that, for example, there is inequality in outcome in daily life, and we say, this is the result of a concerted plan to hurt me. Therefore, we must restructure the entire economic system in order to redress the injury. The perspective, as you see, of the progressive left when it comes to economics.

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Emery says, what characteristics and limits define temptation in these screw tape letters? Well, I think that the characteristics that define arrogance tends to be a big one. Narcissism is a big one in terms of temptation. Always looking within. Focusing on self. That would be, I think, the biggest one. That's why humility is the biggest quality, right? You're not focusing on yourself.

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for messenger is the same as the word for angel. The word is malach. And so whenever you see that in the Bible, a messenger, that also is an angel. So when it talks about angels visiting Abraham, it uses the word malach, which is also messenger. The idea being that angels are essentially, in Jewish theology, sort of single forces in the world without will.

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You acknowledge what you are in the world, then you acknowledge that the qualities you've been given were given to you, and you acknowledge that the shortcomings are largely your own. Zach says, what are your thoughts on the greater picture of society since many examples written through the book still hold true? Letter 17 over gluttony, for example.

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I mean, everything in 1942 but worse is my picture of modern society because, again, circumstances have changed and the mechanisms of sin have gotten more plentiful and people have fallen away from church and the moral strictures that we used to impose upon ourselves and our communities have fallen away in the name of nonjudgmentalism.

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Lewis says, not necessarily about the screw-tape letters, but a question about C.S. Lewis's trilemma. As Christ makes the claim that he is God, Lewis says there are only three things the claimant can be. Crazy, a liar, or what he claims to be. Do you believe this is a bad argument, or is there something that is missing from this proposition? So I get this a lot, right?

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As a Jew, up front, Christians should go to church. I'm a Jew. I don't believe the same thing that Christians believe. So the Jewish answer to the so-called trilemma, the crazy liar, or what he claims to be, is that...

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My perspective on what the Gospels are, the Gospels are written significantly after the time of Jesus, significantly enough that many of the Gospels are written well after Jesus had already died, and in the Christian view, been resurrected, but in the Jewish view, just died.

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And so the Jewish view of Jesus is that Jesus probably did not claim to be God, or the Son of God, in the notion that he was an actual divine figure. In the Jewish view of Jesus, Jesus was a historical figure who lived, probably attempted to lead a rebellion, a well-founded rebellion against the Romans, like many other people did of the time, was attempting to lead a spiritual corrective.

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Within Judaism, again, not unusual. You see many of the prophets doing this inside of Judaism. And then was killed by the Romans because they perceived him as a political threat. And so the idea here would be that the Gospels got it wrong. That's the fourth possibility. Now again, Christians aren't going to accept that because the Gospels are literally to Christians gospel truth.

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That's where the phrase comes from. But as a Jew, obviously I don't agree with the Gospels. That's the Jewish view. It doesn't have to be the Christian view. Ian says, Ben, something I found interesting is how much worse today's society is and how much easier it would be to bring them to hell. Screwtape discusses weak pastors and it makes me think about how it's only gotten worse today.

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Another thing I found fascinating was the discussion of laziness. Screwtape was telling War Mode to get the patient to focus on nothing and have them stare at the wall all night. I see that today and people aimlessly staring at their phones for hours on end. Yep. Turn off the phone is a big one. Everybody needs a Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath is absolutely correct. God nailed that one.

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The idea that you've got to turn off the phone, you've got to turn off the computer for a full day, Friday night to Saturday night, it is great. And by the way, I've advised some of my friends and colleagues that they should turn off their phone much more during the week. They should get Twitter off their phone. Things that are just time sucks, eating up your time. You should avoid them.

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Cole says, in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis claims, quote, a democracy does not want great men and denigrates human excellence. Screwtape boasts how devils twist democracy to pervert liberty and equality among men. They espouse envy and I'm as good as you sentiments to reappropriate the progressive and liberalizing movement to the destruction of the individual.

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If we accept his premise that people hate personal freedom, and have tendencies to pull those who excel down to a common state. Should we expect our democracy will devolve into doing the work of tyranny, as Lewis predicts?

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It is almost prophetic that he speaks of language games being played with the word democracy and how the devils must never let democracy be clearly defined so they may lead the people by the nose. He speaks of how democracy is used to cudgel people into a sense of togetherness or risk being labeled undemocratic or supremacist. I can hear Joy Reid lamenting our democracy right now.

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Whereas in the Christian theology, obviously Satan has a will of his own and he's rebelling against God, which makes him a really fascinating character. Lewis opens the book with a couple of epitaphs, one by Martin Luther, the best way to drive out the devil if he will not yield to texts of scripture is to jeer and flout him for he cannot bear scorn.

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Is tyranny by the people an inherent defect of democracy and one that plagued the founding, or is it a post-1950s phenomenon? This, at least in part, addresses the overwhelming momentum behind diminishing our educational system, historical heroes, and military standards. I mean, all of that is true. Also, it is an inherent defect of democracy. It's something the founders talked long about.

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It is why the founders did not look for great men to be president of the United States, at least not after the very early iteration of Washington. It is fair to say that basically between Madison and Lincoln, there were not a lot of great men who were presidents of the United States. Jackson might be the thing that was closest to a quote-unquote great man, Quincy Adams maybe.

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Certainly between Jackson, who leaves office in 1836, and Lincoln, you'd be hard-pressed to find a great man anywhere in that entire gamut. And that's also true, by the way, after the Civil War. After Ulysses S. Grant, you basically got a series of quasi-no-names all the way until the next quote-unquote great man, Teddy Roosevelt.

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And democracies tend not to move toward people of quality and virtue. They tend to move toward people who give them what they want. And sometimes the people who we perceive to be great men are actually demagogues who are channeling that great men persona into something quite bad. This is why the founders believed in checks and balances.

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The idea of a great man who's going to lead us to a glorious future, you may as well have a monarchy if that's what you're looking for. If what you're actually looking for is a good man to do the work of government, then you're more likely to end up with a person who may, in fact, through crisis, end up being a great man. Well, folks, hope you enjoyed it.

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If you did, head on over to dailyware.com slash subscribe and get a subscription right now. You can see all the rest of the episodes.

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Edward says, Ben, how in your life do you find that balance in loving others and yourself so you can objectively give yourself credit for accomplishments without being selfish or arrogant? This is an important lesson people can use in not just everyday life, but also the workplace.

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And one by Sir Thomas More, the devil, the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked. Both of them are focusing on a simple fact of the matter, something that we seem to have lost in modern society, which is laughing at evil. And we've decided that it's very important to earnestly engage with bad ideas. You're not allowed to laugh at bad and damaging things anymore.

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If, for example, somebody says a man is a woman, an inherently hilarious idea because it's definitionally idiotic. If somebody says that and you laugh, you are now considered intolerant. Whereas before, you would have been able to just laugh at that and everybody would have moved on with their lives.

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Now, because we have decided that nothing is worth laughing at save religion, the only people who are not allowed to laugh are the religious because you're not going to laugh at your own religion, typically speaking, or if you do, it's going to be with a warm eye because you like your own religion, presumably, but you're not allowed to laugh at anything else.

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The only people who are allowed to be mocked in modern society are essentially religious people. Those are open for mockery, but as C.S. Lewis points out, mocking evil is a great way of dismissing evil because that's what mockery essentially is. Gertrude Himmelfarb points out that religious Americans now find it difficult to transmit their own principles and practices to their children.

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Instead, they rely on non-judgmentalism, but laughter is inherently judgmental. And so religion ought to be filled with laughter, laughter at evil. Screwtape Letters, if you haven't read it, or even if you have, it's written from the perspective of Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood.

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Wormwood has been given the on-the-ground task of convincing a young man away from his incipient Christianity, and Screwtape is sort of middle management in hell. And it's his job to advise Wormwood on the best way to procure the young man's soul. And this gives Lewis extraordinary intelligence. leeway to sort of stick and move with Satan to make fun, to mock, to play with the entire idea.

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And what emerges is a great work of literature. So there are a bunch of large scale arguments that Lewis makes in Screwtape Letters. The first one is that Satan's best weapon is the quote unquote real world. And this is right. I mean, if you talk to people who are secular, they'll always say that the spiritual world, God, is unreal. The real world is the material world.

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Well, you know, I think that people tend to mislabel humility or misdefine humility as telling lies about yourself, and that's not true. When the Bible suggests that Moses was the most humble person who ever lived, that didn't mean that Moses didn't know what he had or who he was. What it means is that he attributed his qualities to God, because it was God who was the source of those abilities.

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And then when you ask them about what's important to them, they'll talk about their feelings, which of course are inherently unreal in the same way the spiritual world is unreal. And this is a point that Lewis makes, is that the definition of real is capacious and changing on a regular basis from secularists.

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So Lewis believes that man's draw to the divine can be rooted in reason, and that reason actually guides you toward something beyond yourself. It guides you toward the transcendent. That's an idea that I obviously agree with.

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I believe that the notion of free will, free choice in the universe, guides you toward the idea of there must be something beyond us, that if there's a logic to the universe, that guides you to the question of who is the chief logician, who made the rules, for example. Lewis makes the same point, and then he says that the job of the secular materialist is to get you to focus on the thing.

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It's to get you to focus on the thing in itself. That's sort of the language of Bertrand Russell, a famous atheist.

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And so Lewis says this, even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, this is as screw tape, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it real life.

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Don't let him ask what he means by real. So just keep them focused on the immediate. Have them focused on the now. There's nothing that's done this more than the internet age where our attention spans have been reduced to the next 15 seconds. Sitting and ruminating on life leads you to higher ideas.

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If you can prevent people from doing that sort of stuff, you end up with a very materialistic society. So what exactly does reality mean? Well, according to Screwtape, people ought to be taught that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are real, while the spiritual elements are subjective.

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And in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them, the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist. So the idea is that when you're thinking about death, that the only thing that is real is the death. You're not supposed to look to the spiritual element of death.

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Or if you look at something that makes you very happy, you're not supposed to look to the spiritual element of what makes you very happy. Just focus in on the pure materialism of the thing. The goal is to enmesh mankind in the world. And this is something that Catholic theologians talk about a lot.

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The idea that the spiritual world, if you can enmesh it in reality too much, then you can bring people away from the reality of something higher. This means, for example, that you have to get people to stop thinking about death. It says, Screwtape says, How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces.

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One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime, not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever. The material world, then, is the chief ally of Screwtape because people desire not to think of God. God is a distraction. God has obligations. God has duties.

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Screwtape says human beings hate every idea that suggests him, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a passbook. Passbook meaning like a checkbook. So the idea is that if you're not thinking about duty and then you're forced to think about duty, you don't like it very much. The other thing that Screwtape tries to get you to focus in on is the future at all times.

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So when you do what you're supposed to do in life, that's not really... you at all. You're just doing what you're supposed to do. You don't get extra credit for doing the things that you're supposed to do. You do blame yourself for failing where you're supposed to succeed.

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If you can focus in on the future at all times, then people will be very neglectful of the president. So, says Screwtape, it's far better to make them live in the future. The future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time. For the past is frozen, it no longer flows. The present is all lit up with eternal rays.

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Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought, like creative evolution, scientific humanism, or communism, which fix men's affections on the future on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. See, the idea is if you're thinking about the future,

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then you're not thinking about the spiritual consequences of the things you do in the here and now. You're thinking about the material consequences of the things that you do in the here and now, and that allows you to do bad things in the name of a quote-unquote better future.

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Screwtape says the best thing you can do is convince people that their utopian thoughts are the things that are mandated by God. So on the one hand, you try to get people sunk in reality, and this drives them away from God. On the other hand, Screwtape advises Wormwood that people should be led to examine their own emotions constantly.

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If you can be narcissistically checking yourself all the time, you're going to end up without God. So if you feel wildly enthusiastic about becoming religious, then Wormwood ought to encourage people to wait for the anti-climax, right, because you get enthusiastic about a thing, then you become less enthusiastic about the thing, and then you pounce.

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Quote, work hard then on the disappointment or anti-climax, which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. In every department of life, it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The enemy takes this risk because he has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what he calls his free lovers and servants.

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Sons is the word he uses. So in other words, very often in life, we engage at the beginning of a task with great enthusiasm, and then the enthusiasm wears away. This happens all the time with a variety of tasks. And once that happens, that is when you encourage people to

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look into being morose, look into being depressed, to reject the spiritual aspect of their duty, to stop trying to take joy in the spiritual aspect of what they're doing and instead focus in on the fact that it's just sheer drudgery. So, for example, when it comes to prayer, human beings should be encouraged to seek a feeling of inspiration specifically because it's very hard to find.

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I mean, I pray three times a day. I've talked about this before. Finding a feeling of inspiration while you're praying can be really, really difficult. And so if you're constantly searching your feelings, I'm not inspired enough, I'm not inspired enough, eventually I'm never getting inspired, and you stop doing it. And that's the goal.

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Also, you have to surround yourself in life with a group of people who are willing to tell you when you're wrong, and you have to be willing to hear that group of people. So don't surround yourself with an echo chamber. You have to allow enough criticism in to actually allow you to better yourself while preventing people who wish to tear you down from doing so.

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Whereas the reality is that when you're praying, you should stop searching inside your own feelings all the time. You should focus on the doing of the prayer. And then when eventually you stumble onto the feeling, it's an incredible thing. But at least you won't stop doing the thing when you lose the feeling. So if you focus in on the feeling, when the feeling goes short, you stop doing the duty.

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If you focus in on the duty, then eventually you come to feeling, is the case that Lewis is actually making. Screwtape says that the rule of thumb for seducing mankind away from God is to encourage people to be unselfconscious when considering sin. So to be unabashed, unashamed, you should be very just out there and blasé about your sin.

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But to be self-conscious and awkward when you consider acts of faith. And this is This is modern society in a nutshell. The more you sin, the more proud you should be. You should engage in full-on festivals celebrating your sin. When it comes to going to church, you should be shy. I don't want to be judgmental. I don't want to make you feel ashamed.

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I don't want to make you feel bad about the fact that I go to synagogue on a routine basis. I know my yarmulke makes you feel uncomfortable as a Jew because it might make you think that you're not being religious enough. But when it comes to my sin, man, I will tell you about my sins all day long because we can all be comfortable. We can be the boys when we're talking about our sins.

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Other roads to hell include depression and anxiety, Screwtape says. When people are depressed, they are more likely to despair that their actions and thoughts even matter, and so they sort of sink into a malaise. This leads you to what C.S. Lewis calls grayness. If you're passionate about things, then very often you can find spirituality.

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But if you're gray about things, it's very hard to find spirituality.

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He says, the Christians describe the enemy as one without whom nothing is strong, and nothing is very strong, strong enough to steal away a man's best years, not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over a knows-not-what and knows-not-why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that man is only half aware of them.

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It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing. I mean, is this a great description of the internet age, or is this a great description of the internet age? You spend all day on social media, consuming your time with absolute stupidities. You don't feel anything good about it. It just feels like bleh.

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And then when you go outside in the sun, you still feel unenthusiastic. The goal of modern society is almost solely, apparently, to do the work of Wormwood here. The point that Lewis makes is that You're able to get at people through art, through popular culture.

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And there are a lot of people out there who are like that. Ramona says, Has this book been insightful for you at all? I miss your Jewish teachings and wish that would be a new show of yours. I appreciate all that you do. God bless. Well, maybe we'll be doing some more of that sort of stuff next year. The book is fantastic. I mean, I love C.S. Lewis. I love pretty much everything C.S. Lewis writes.

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He says, we've engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude in art and its exhibition on the stage of the bathing beach. It's all fake, of course. The figures in the popular art are falsely drawn.

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The real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to believe that it is being frank and healthy and getting back to nature.

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As a result, we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist, making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important, and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast. That is the greatest description of internet porn that has ever been written, and C.S. Lewis is writing this in 1942.

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That you are setting up increasing expectations for what women are supposed to look like, what sex is supposed to be, what it's supposed to look like, and then people are engaging in it less and less. You're making the demands nearly impossible, and yet you are satisfying those demands with the virtual. Again, C.S. Lewis is a man ahead of his time, because here's the thing, sin is always the same.

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This is the thing that people always say about the Bible, and it's so stupid. They'll say, oh, the Bible, it's archaic. The Bible's talking about things that, things have changed. You know what has never changed? Human nature. C.S. Lewis could have written this 4,000 years ago. It would not have mattered. Human nature does not change. Human nature is the same as it was thousands of years ago.

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The only thing that has changed is that we believe that we have been able to overcome human nature. which of course is extraordinary arrogance and silliness.

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Ben Shapiro’s Book Club | The Screwtape Letters

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Well, folks, there's a fire hose of news today on the show. We will be hosting the Secretary of State. We'll be talking about the state of the economy, what the vision of the Trump administration is, what's going on with this case of this illegal immigrant who's being held in El Salvador, just tons of stuff going on.

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Unfortunately for the left, certain types of violence are to be either... ignored or to be justified. So last night on Sean Hannity's show, he had on Taylor Lorenz. Taylor Lorenz used to be a journalist for the Washington Post. She now works for Mehdi Hassan at his new outlet. And she is an absolute horror show of a human being. She has made her bones lately by celebrating the murder of the

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United Healthcare CEO was killed by Luigi Mangione. She's sort of a fanboy of Luigi Mangione because she thinks that he's good looking and she has a sort of a crush on him. She obviously has a screw loose. Here she was on Sean Hannity's show proclaiming her support for the violence. Simple question. Do you condemn that?

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However, the reality is that unfortunately, on a proportionate level, it is far more common for young black men to kill people of other races than the other way around. Now, let's be real about this. Just statistically speaking, the vast majority of murders are intraracial, meaning that most black men who are murdered are murdered by black men.

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Okay, so again, this is the left justifying violence on the basis of the politics. And this is the theme. Okay, the running theme of today shows that depending on whom the violence is, directed at, and whom the violence, who perpetrates the violence. We can tell who the media will side with, whether they will ignore the story or whatever.

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Another great example of this, just this week, targeting a Democrat, by the way, not targeting a healthcare CEO. So it turns out that the person who set fire to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's residence on Sunday indicated that he was motivated by his views on Israel and Gaza, according to the Washington Post, and believed that Josh Shapiro needed to stop the killing of Palestinians.

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Now, Josh Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania. He's not the president of the United States. He has zero plenary power over foreign policy of the United States, even if you were to agree with this guy. But the reason that the media aren't playing this up as an act of politically motivated attempted murder is because much of the media agrees with this guy.

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Imagine if this were a right-winger Trump supporter who had decided to try and kill Josh Shapiro. That would be a narrative for the rest of the year, minimum. You would never hear the end of it. It would be right-wing violence being bred by the podcast sphere in order to target people like Josh Shapiro.

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But because the person who decided to try and kill Josh Shapiro and his family is apparently a psychotic left-winger, who hates Shapiro because Shapiro's a Jew and too pro-Israel for his like, the media are not going to talk about the problem of radical anti-Israel feeling leading to violence, despite the fact that very often in the past year or so has led to violence.

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And certain types of violence are not to be discussed, to be ignored, or to be downplayed. That is also true with regard to illegal immigrant crime.

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So yesterday, the White House, in an attempt to push back on the narrative that is being pushed by the legacy media, that the people who are being deported from the United States are all innocent and wonderful and all the rest, and the administration doesn't care about Americans, they put forth an angel mom. That angel mom's name is Patty Morin.

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She's the mother of a woman brutally slain by an illegal immigrant named Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez as she was exercising on a Maryland trail. This is according to DailyWire.com, Mary Margaret Olihan reporting. The 23-year-old murderer was arrested in June in Tulsa, Oklahoma and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape in Rachel Morin's death.

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And here is what the angel mom had to say. Again, this received almost zero legacy media coverage because they treated it as an irrelevant story.

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Most white men who are murdered are murdered by white men. I believe the only race in the United States for which it is not true that the plurality or majority of killings inside the race are committed by other members of the same race are Asians. I believe that for Asian men, the preponderance of killers are outside the Asian race. However,

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Okay, for the legacy media, this was not worthy of coverage because, again, an illegal immigrant murdering an American is not worthy of coverage. It is heavy coverage when an illegal immigrant with a pretty significant violent history, apparently, is deported.

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Even if the due process concerns are a real concern, the level of sympathy that is being put forward by the media and the attempt to sanctify Kilmer Abrego Garcia stands in stark contrast to the way that they are treating people like Patty Morin, whose daughter was beat to death with a rock. It's pretty incredible stuff. The person she is referring to there is, of course, Senator Chris Van Hollen.

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Van Hollen headed down to El Salvador to try and visit a prison at which illegal immigrants are being held, deported illegal immigrants. Chris Van Hollen said, they won't let me talk with the deported man. He went down there to apparently make a show of his sympathy for this wonderful deported man. We'll get to the details on the deported man in a moment.

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But if you're listening to the show anywhere but the Daily Wire plus app or dailywire.com, you are not getting the full uncensored version of this show. Welcome to the world of big tech, where some truths are things we can't say. Some opinions aren't the kinds of opinions that they like. Become a DailyWire Plus member. Watch the show the way it was meant to be, uncensored, unfiltered, ad-free.

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So much sympathy for Kilmer Abrego Garcia. Now, again, if you want to protest lack of due process, you should be standing in front of the courts. You should be standing in front of the White House, flying down to El Salvador to show sympathy for a man who, according to the UK Daily Mail, is violently accused by his own wife of beating her up multiple times. Bad look for Democrats.

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But again, that's the sort of stuff that gets brushed under the rug in service of a larger narrative. Apparently, according to the Daily Mail, Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration over connections to MS-13. His wife accused her husband of violently beating her multiple times in a 2021 court filing exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail.

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In November 2020, he hit her with his work boots. In August 2020, he hit her in the eye, causing her to get a black eye, according to her petition. That same day, Abrego Garcia started driving quickly, scaring his wife as their one-year-old was in the backseat. She said she was afraid to be close to him.

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In May 2021, after an argument at a gas station, the Salvadoran migrant punched and scratched his wife, leaving me bleeding. Remember, this is a person who was pitched by the media as Maryland father. Maryland father. It sounds like a wonderful, wonderful person.

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It turns out, by the way, that according to Robbie Starbuck, Tennessee Highway Patrol caught the same Abrego Garcia in 2022 driving without a license and suspected him of trafficking the seven people inside. When they called Joe Biden's FBI because he was on the terror watch list, the FBI told them to photograph everybody and let them go. Sounds like a wonderful person.

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When it comes to interracial crime, which, again, the media like to use as a proxy for discussions about the evils of the state of race in the United States, there's only one type of story they like to track. And that, of course, is white on black crime. The reality, as I say, is that proportionately speaking, black on white crime is significantly more common.

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So glad that Democrats have decided precisely where to place their sympathies. What kinds of crime are worthy of reporting on and which kinds of crime are not worthy of reporting on?

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And it is precisely for this reason that because Democrats have picked some of the worst people in humanity to spend their empathy and sympathy on, Americans are likely to ignore some of the due process concerns about, for example, this person because it's a totally unsympathetic victim.

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So Chris Van Hollen, again, down in El Salvador, he says that according to the El Salvadoran vice president, the reason that this guy is being held there is because Trump is paying.

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The point that Van Hollen is making is that the Trump administration has claimed they no longer have control over whether Abrego Garcia comes back to the United States for one final hearing before he's deported permanently. He's saying that's not true.

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Again, multiple things can be true at once. One can be that the due process concerns that are being raised by the courts are legitimate concerns and the Trump administration should deal with them.

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The other is that Democrats have politically decided to spend their empathy and sympathy on some of the worst people in humanity, truly, and to ignore particular types of crime that don't fit the thing they are attempting to push.

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Now, speaking of the due process concerns, yesterday, Judge James Boasberg, you'll remember him from the hearings where he suggested that planes of migrants from Venezuela needed to be turned around midair, and then they were not. And the Trump administration claimed, well, we did keep some planes on the ground. Other planes were already in the air. There was nothing we could do.

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It was an oral order. It wasn't a written order and all the rest. Now, Boasberg says he's going to launch proceedings to determine whether any Trump administration officials defied his order not to remove those Venezuelan migrants from the country.

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Now, this is kind of a weird filing by Boasberg in the sense that the Supreme Court has already decided that the Trump administration can use the Alien Enemies Act in order to deport people. We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, self-care routines can seem overwhelming, time-consuming. What if the most transformative self-care upgrade required zero daily effort?

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From the very first night, I could feel the difference. These aren't just any sheets. They really do have this incredible softness that puts you in instant relaxation mode. Plus, you can pair them with Bowling Branch's airy blankets, duvets, and quilts for the perfect seasonal upgrade. What really impressed me is how they get even softer with every wash.

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I didn't think that was possible, but after a few months, it felt even more luxurious than when I first got them. And believe me, I've tried other premium sheets before, nothing comes close to the breathable comfort of these things. By the way, when I'm on the road, I literally bring Bull & Branch products with me on the road because they help me sleep better.

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And that is why I think it is worth noting the case of Carmelo Anthony, not the basketball star that would be spelled with a C. This is Carmelo Anthony with a K. This case arises from the murder of a young man, alleged murder of a young man named Austin Metcalf. So Austin Metcalf was a football player in Frisco, Texas, and he had a confrontation with the aforementioned Carmelo Anthony.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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And second of all, the Supreme Court has also decided that this case was filed in the wrong place. It should have been filed in Washington, D.C. It should have been filed in the place closest to El Salvador, which is actually at a federal court on the southern border.

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Nonetheless, Boasberg is now trying to suggest that he is going to hold in contempt members of the Department of Justice for not listening to his judicial orders. Democrats, of course, are celebrating all of this because they are saying it just underscores the unwillingness of the Trump administration to follow the law. Attorney General Pam Bondi fought back against Boesberg yesterday.

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Here's what she had to say.

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Okay, so again, that's going to be the angle from the Trump administration. And it isn't a terrible angle, specifically because Democrats picked the exact wrong people to defend. And meanwhile, the State Department continues to do good work in terms of deporting many of the worst people in the United States.

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The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, joined us online yesterday to discuss all of this, to talk about what the State Department has been doing.

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Not only has the State Department been deporting people who come to the United States on things like student visas and lie about their actual belief systems and what they are here to do, but also the State Department yesterday shut down a branch of the State Department that is specifically designed very often to target American information that the left doesn't particularly like.

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Here's my interview with Secretary Rubio. Joining us on the line, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Secretary Rubio, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

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So let's talk about this major move that you just made at the State Department, getting rid of a big chunk of the censorship bureaucracy that had been created and pushed a while back, but then exacerbated over the course of the last few years, hidden. What's the story with what you are doing over at the State Department to get rid of the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center?

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Carmelo Anthony is black. Austin Metcalf was white. And according to the police reports, there was some sort of confrontation inside an athletic tent. Basically, some tents had been put up at a football game. And Carmelo Anthony was not supposed to be in that tent. He was actually sitting in that tent. And the football players for the opposing school were in the tent.

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And Secretary Rubio, it's a really good object lesson in what happens with some of these government agencies, which start off decades ago with the right purposes and then gradually are infiltrated by people with a significant political partisan agenda who then proceed to weaponize these institutions against Americans. We've seen this in USAID.

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Obviously, we see this here with the GEC turned into another sort of body that was then hidden inside these agencies. And when people like President Trump talk about the deep state, this is the kind of stuff that he's talking about.

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And according to the police report, the... white guy, Austin Metcalf, went into the tent and said to Carmelo Anthony, you don't belong in here, at which point a confrontation ensued. Carmelo Anthony allegedly reached into his backpack, pulled out a knife and stabbed Austin Metcalf to death in front of everybody else, then tried to run away and threw away the knife.

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Secretary Rubio, obviously, it's a big move by the State Department. You make a lot of moves over at the State Department that are different than your predecessors. That includes moves to get out of the United States people who are terror supporters, not just people who say bad things, but people who are actual terror supporters act in ways that are conducive to actual terror groups.

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I wanted to give you a moment to sort of explain the approach that the State Department is taking in taking a look at, for example, student visa holders and What are the standards that are being used to determine whether somebody should stay in the United States or should go? Because obviously opponents of the administration are arguing it's violations of free speech.

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People have the ability to say what they want. That's not an argument that the administration is actually arguing with. The administration is not trying to crack down on free speech. You're trying to actually stop something else.

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That is according to the police reports. Not only that, according to Officer Eduardo Cortez, he says that he was the person who was assigned to bring the suspect, Carmelo Anthony, to the police vehicle and take him off to jail for his booking. And here is his police report. He says, I was protecting myself. It should be noted I had not questioned him about the incident when he made that comment.

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Secretary Rubio, I think that the controversy that's arisen over, for example, the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, who is one of these students at Columbia University, who has a green card, but who was also engaged in protest activities that violated the law, who obviously was sympathizing openly with terror attacks by Hamas and all the rest of this.

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The sort of controversy here, there's a common thread to the opposition to the Trump administration on this stuff, which is, as you mentioned, this bizarre idea that people are somehow owed entry to the United States. I think that ties in very strongly to the Democrats' new approach to what's going on with this Salvadoran migrant who's now been deported

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To El Salvador, the administration has taken a legal position that basically now that he's in Salvadoran custody, that it's up to the Salvadorans whether to return this person to the United States or not for further due process concerns. But that's really not the case that's being made by opponents of the administration.

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Many of the opponents of the administration are making a more significant case, which is the idea that basically if you get into the United States, you are somehow owed. a permanent status in the United States.

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And you're seeing this across the board, ranging from the Trump administration's moves to get rid of temporary protected status for people who have entered en masse under the Biden administration, to the resistance to DHS or the State Department making moves with regard to the tens of millions, possibly, of illegal immigrants who've been brought into the country by the Biden administration.

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There's this bizarre supposition that everyone on earth is somehow owed passage to the United States and permanent membership in our society.

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Well, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, really appreciate your time. Thanks for what you're doing inside the State Department to get rid of shadow organizations designed to crack down on free speech, as well as to move people out of the United States who actually don't like America very much. Secretary of State Rubio, thanks so much for stopping by.

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Thanks for having me. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped pretty significantly yesterday. It was set to open significantly lower today as well. There's a lot of dyspepsia in the markets over the Trump tariff war, obviously.

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This was also prompted not only by the Trump administration's announcement that it was going to bar the export of particular chips to China from NVIDIA, which has been sinking NVIDIA stock, but also NVIDIA's Jerome Powell yesterday warned of challenging scenarios facing the Federal Reserve.

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He's saying essentially that the tariff war is likely to drive up inflation, so it makes it harder for him to drop the interest rates. And he said he saw a strong likelihood that consumers would see higher prices and higher unemployment as a result of President Trump's tariff wars. Here was Jerome Powell yesterday, the head of the Federal Reserve.

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Powell then added, you would worry the process will take some years that the inflationary process might be extended. When you think about supply disruptions, that's the kind of thing that can take time to resolve. It can lead to what would have been a one-time inflation shock to be extended, perhaps more persistent. That means that it's unlikely that he's going to lower the interest rates.

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Powell also added that the federal debt right now isn't at an unsustainable level. Theoretically, we could get out of it. But he said it's certainly on an unsustainable path. So further spending, further sales of bonds in order to fund our national debt, that's probably not a good idea.

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President Trump decided that the best solution here would be to attack Jerome Powell. He's not going to change his economic policies. He says the European Central Bank is expected to cut interest rates for the seventh time. And yet, quote, too late. Jerome Powell of the Fed was always too late and wrong. Yesterday issued a report, which was another and typical complete mess. Oil prices are down.

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Groceries are down. The USA is getting rich on tariffs. Too late should have lowered interest rates like the ECB long ago, but he certainly should lower them now. Powell's termination cannot come fast enough. Naturally, the stock market was like, dude.

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I asked him if he had any weapons. He said no. I patted him down for weapons while we were walking along the fence. I did not locate any on his person. I instructed the male to continue walking along the fence. He complied toward an area where there was an opening in the fence that led off the track. While walking him off the track, the suspect also said he put his hands on me.

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And so the stock market dropped on the news that President Trump was going to ignore the sort of warnings that Powell is giving out about the economy. The question is whether Powell learned his lesson or whether Trump is right and he's too late. I think the answer is Powell learned his lesson, right? It was Jerome Powell who spent a year saying that inflation was transitory.

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And then it turned out it was not transitory at all. And the lesson he learned from that is that when you screw up the supply chains, inflation is likely to be a persistent feature of the economy. World trade wars are likely to lead to persistent inflation in the economy. That's exactly what he is saying right now.

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Meanwhile, the U.S.-China decoupling is arriving, according to the World Trade Organization. The WTO anticipates trade between the U.S. and China will screech to a halt this year. Trade of merchandise between the two countries will drop by 80%, a drop that would have topped 90% without the White House's recent exemption for smartphones and other tech goods.

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The total volume of goods traded around the world is expected to contract by 0.2% this year. That is an abrupt turnaround from a near 3% increase last year. And the WTO is anticipating that the trade slowdown is going to spill over into weaker global growth. About 0.6 percentage points below its initial forecast. So what is President Trump trying to do here? That's sort of the big question.

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What is the end goal? Well, there is something that has been called the Mar-a-Lago Accords, proposed by the chairman of the White House Council on Economic Advisors, a man named Stephen Morin. He outlined that idea in a 41-page essay. It was titled A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System. It's according to finance.yahoo. He's a Harvard-trained economist.

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And basically, he proposes what he calls the Mar-a-Lago Accords, He says the deep unhappiness with the prevailing economic order is rooted in persistent overvaluation of the dollar and asymmetric trade conditions.

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His basic idea is that everybody should show up at Mar-a-Lago, all these various heads of various countries, and rejigger the entire global trading system so as to please the United States. Mirren wrote, President Trump views tariffs as generating negotiating leverage for making deals.

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It's easier to imagine that after a series of punitive tariffs, trading partners like Europe and China become more receptive to some manner of currency accord in exchange for reduction of tariffs. To lower the value of the U.S. currency, Moran said U.S. partners could sell dollars in their possession. What's the goal of devaluing the U.S. currency?

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Presumably, the goal would be to more easily raise debt so the U.S. would not have to repay our debt quite as regularly. It would limit the potential rise in interest rates caused by fear over inflation. There are some who call this a de facto default. And the whole goal would be to reshore some manufacturing in the United States. The goal would be to devalue the American dollar.

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I then detained the suspect in handcuffs and had him sit on the ground. Another officer had arrived on scene at this time. I conducted another pat-down of his person and searched his person after he gave me consent. No weapons located. While the suspect sat on the ground, I advised I had the alleged suspect. The suspect then responded and said, quote, I'm not alleged. I did it.

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basically pay people back in inflated dollars. That is sort of the economic goal here. But there may be a broader goal. And here is the question for the Trump administration. It's totally not clear at this point what the Trump administration approach is going to be to global politics. Now, President Trump is a utilitarian, as I've said many times. He lives in the world of reality.

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That means he tends to pick fruit off the tree of policy. Meaning he tries to find the best policy, he uses that. Then he finds the next best policy and he uses that. There's no kind of thoroughgoing gestalt to the Trump administration.

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There are people who try to weave a gestalt around President Trump, who try to suggest that there is a thorough Trump philosophy of life and of administration that is going to be applied. And I see no evidence of that. It's much more sort of grab bag politics with President Trump, which definitely has its upsides and it also has its downsides. It means that there's not a ton of predictability.

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It also means he's unlikely to stick with plans that don't work. But some of the people who are attempting to sort of weave a Trumpian philosophy around President Trump, there you would see a debate inside the administration. That debate inside the administration is taking the form of, on one side, J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, David Sachs.

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On the other side of that divide would be presumably Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz. And the question there is one that David Sachs, I think, expressed really, really well on the All In podcast the other day. So the case that Sachs makes, and again, David is a brilliant guy. I think he's wrong on a lot of this, but he's quite brilliant.

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He says that the Trump agenda is basically to reverse the attitude of the United States toward everything from immigration to foreign policy, a consensus that he says was built in the 1990s. And I think that he's right on immigration. I think he's wrong on all the rest. But here is what he is saying Trumpism is really all about.

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Okay, so what are the three pillars of globalism that he is talking about? So he suggests three. One is open borders. Totally agree. That has been rejected, not just by the United States. It's been rejected all over the West, which is why you're seeing the rise of populist anti-immigration parties. And that's totally justifiable. The second is free trade.

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Apparently, as they were walking to the squad car, the suspect was emotional and said he put his hands on me. I told him not to. He said, I did not question the suspect about the incident while he was escorted to the patrol vehicle. So another officer named Alan Fisher talked to the brother of the victim. He said, I asked him what happened.

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He says, well, there was a great consensus about free trade, and that has fallen on its face. Free trade is bad. Well, actually, free trade is quite good. The question is why we let China into the club. And so the debate that's happening inside the administration is whether free trade itself is the bad or whether free trade with China is the bad.

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And it's totally unclear which side of that ledger President Trump comes down on at this point. He seems to really like tariffs. Again, there are people like Peter Navarro. There are people like Howard Lutnick. There are people like David Sachs, presumably, who are very much in favor of curbing free trade capital and all the rest of it. That would be a really dire thing for the American economy.

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The American economy is the most powerful economy on planet Earth, specifically because we have been oriented toward freedom of commerce, free trade. This has been true for, in terms of freedom of commerce, it's been true for legitimately a century in the United States. And we are the dominant global power economically because of exactly this.

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Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join right now. It's always fascinating to determine which stories are national news stories, according to the legacy media, and which are local news stories, according to the legacy media. It's particularly true when it comes to national crime stories.

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The idea that free trade needs to be thrown out because it's quote-unquote been debunked, I think that's a just wrong statement on its face. And then finally, Pax Americana. So here the idea is that America puts troops all over the world in order to defend the consensus because they'd be greeted as liberators.

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Well, no, actually, the Pax Americana is not based on the idea that American troops will always be greeted as liberators. The Pax Americana is based on the idea that if we don't fill the gap, somebody we don't like will. It has nothing to do with the feelings of the people who are on the ground.

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That was the mistake that Bush made with his sort of Wilsonian foreign policy, the idea that we had to be greeted as liberators. It was all about the permission of the people who we were going in and dealing with, as opposed to America should pursue her own national interest. And that national interest is actually deeply entangled with America remaining the global hegemon.

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But what does this speak of if we are rejecting open borders, free trade, Pax Americana? I think everyone agrees. No open borders. Everyone. OK, but free trade impacts America. Let's say we reject those things. What does the world then look like? What the world looks like is America retreating from the world.

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It looks like America basically saying screw it to policing the world's oceans, for example, in the Red Sea. Here you saw that represented by J.D. Vance in that open signal thread that got revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg, where he was actively arguing who cares if the Red Sea gets shut down.

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They're members of the Department of Defense who have been stacked in by allies of the vice president who are very much in favor of the idea that it doesn't matter if Taiwan gets taken over by China or if the Middle East is beleaguered by Iran or whether Russia takes over not only Ukraine but other parts of Eastern Europe. That really makes very little difference at all to the United States.

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He stated they were all sitting on the bleachers under a Memorial High School tent when another male who he did not know walked over and sat under the tent. Apparently, this person then said Austin, the victim, told this male that since he'd not got a memorial, he had to leave the tent. Austin, the male, went back and forth. Then Austin stood up and pushed the male to get him out of the tent.

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That America ought to withdraw from its place as the leading power on planet Earth and instead we should sort of speed run the end of American empire. We should try to reshore as much as humanly possible. If prices go up, well, you weren't here for the cheap TVs anyway. And If you crater the global economy, it won't have any dire effects for American citizens. I think that's totally wrongheaded.

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I actually don't think that's where President Trump is. I don't think President Trump wants to speed run the end of American power on the globe. President Trump has said over and over and over again that he's a peace through strength guy.

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So if there are people who are attempting to sort of defeat the peace through strength idea with the idea of an American withdrawal, which sounds, frankly, just like Barack Obama. Totally like Barack Obama. It's a multilateral world. We need people like China. China just needs to be a more responsible player. But even if they're not, does it really matter if the United States is involved in that?

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Iran can be brought into the family of nations so we can withdraw from these particular areas. Russia, we need a reset button. I'm struggling to see the difference between some of the foreign policies proposed by the new neo-isolationist sort of right and Barack Obama's foreign policy. They look exactly the same to me.

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I can't tell the difference between them, but just in terms of actual practical policy, you can see this coming to a head over the president's Iran policy. So the president has been oriented since 2015 in a very anti-Iran direction for good reason. Iran has spread terrorism all over the Middle East. Iran is threatening global oil supply.

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Iran obviously has attempted to assassinate President Trump himself. So one of the big debates is what should be done with the Iranian nuclear program? Now, the reality is that right now, Basically, a single sortie would take out the Iranian nuclear program. And Iran does not have the capacity to generate any sort of serious conflict that would affect the United States in the Middle East.

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What are they going to do, hit Hawaii? And the reality is that Iran's proxies have been devastated. Iran has never been more vulnerable than it is right now. If Iran gained a nuclear weapon, that immediately turns around. Suddenly, Iran is a threat to pretty much everybody, including the Saudis, including the UAE, including Israel, including Europe, by the way.

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That is why the Trump administration has expressed over and over and over that Iran shouldn't get a nuclear weapon. But the approach that they're now apparently taking is a very Obama-esque approach.

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We played you earlier this week, Steve Witkoff, the absolutely befuddled negotiator on behalf of the United States, suggesting that Iran should be allowed to keep a certain level of enriched uranium, which is exactly what Barack Obama was arguing.

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And now, apparently, according to Axios, there's open debate inside the administration in which people are taking sides along the lines that have already suggested. One camp, according to Axios, unofficially led by Vice President Vance, believes a diplomatic solution is both preferable and possible and that the United States should be ready to make compromises in order to make it happen.

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At this point, during the time of arguing, the male was reaching around in the bag he had. It was this time the male took out a knife and stabbed Austin and then left the scene. Now, again, this sounds like a confrontation that escalated to the point where Carmelo Anthony pulled a knife out of his backpack and then stabbed Austin Metcalf to death.

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Vance is highly involved in the Iran policy discussions. This camp also includes Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Now, again, it's unclear where Pete Hegseth actually falls along these lines. Certainly many of the people have been staffed under DOD, underneath Hegseth, are people who are sympathetic to sort of the Vance Witkoff position.

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It also gets outside support from MAGA influencer and Trump whisperer, Tucker Carlson. So first of all, if Tucker Carlson is giving you your foreign policy advice, All right, I mean, that is a choice. That is a choice.

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By the way, culminating today in a New York Times leak is something that used to happen all the time, where the Obama administration would get some sort of information on a potential Israeli military action, and then it would end up on the front page of the New York Times the next day. Now, apparently that's happening in the Trump administration as well.

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There's a piece titled Trump waved off Israeli strike after divisions emerged in his administration. Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month, but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program.

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Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran's ability to build a bomb at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically. Almost all the plans would have required U.S.

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help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself. Again, this is according to, I am sure, Department of Defense sources who are working aligned with the sort of Vance philosophy of the administration. This article, by the way, is devastating for intelligence.

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I mean, it lays out like actual details. The article talks about what exactly Israel was going to do. There's the possibility apparently of a commando raid.

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Quote, initially at the behest of Mr. Netanyahu, senior Israeli officials updated their American counterparts on a plan that would have combined an Israeli commando raid on underground nuclear sites of the bombing campaign, an effort the Israelis hoped would involve American aircraft. Israeli military officials said the commando operation would not be ready until October.

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Netanyahu wanted to accelerate it. Israeli officials began shifting to a proposal for an extended bombing campaign that would have required American assistance, according to officials briefed on the plan. Some American officials were potentially open to it. That would have included General Michael Carrillo, the head of U.S. CENTCOM, and Mike Walz, the national security advisor.

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And then, of course, I mean, it's pretty clear who's leaking this, honestly. And so the question for the Trump administration and for President Trump is whether he actually wants internal divisions being leaked to Barack Ravid at Axios and whether he wants them being leaked to The New York Times.

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Now, the case presumably he's going to be making in court is that it was self-defense, that he was in fear for his life because another student was pushing him. That's going to be a very difficult case to make. He had a knife in his backpack. He pulled out the knife. That is a deadly weapon. Pushing is not a deadly weapon.

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And so the question becomes, what exactly, again, is the philosophy of this administration if they are looking for an easy off-ramp with Iran that basically allows Iran a clear pathway to a nuclear bomb in the belief, as David Pak says, that the Pax Americana must end? Okay, then we should hear about that. Like, what does the future look like?

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Because frankly, I don't think that that is what President Trump historically has supported. That's not what he told me on this show. He has always said that he's a peace through strength president. So what exactly is the philosophy? That is the great debate inside this administration. Again, it's taking a head over Iran, but it's not just about Iran. It's also about world trade.

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It's about America's position in the world. It's about whether America wishes to remain a global leader or whether America wishes to recede into a sort of multinational hodgepodge, a sort of lobster pot of grasping for power. That is a very dangerous game. And the fact that it's being pushed by very prominent voices inside the administration is a problem.

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It also, by the way, means less success for the United States. And we should point this out. If there is an economic downturn, I can't say this enough. If there's an economic downturn, if the world situation gets more chaotic, not less under President Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be the next president of the United States. It will be someone from the left.

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It will not be the extended run that Republicans are hoping for, that I am hoping for. It is not going to be a conservative century if, in fact, the Trump agenda fails or if the Trump agenda just turns into the Obama agenda on foreign policy and trade.

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If that is what happens, if somehow President Trump's own campaign promises are thwarted by people inside his administration who do not actually agree with those campaign promises, who have a different view of foreign policy, a different view of global economics, if that is what ends up happening here, the result is not going to be a Republican century or even a Republican decade.

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The result is going to be a backlash that comes in the form of a populist left progressive who comes in and wipes away everything that conservatives actually like and want. That is the danger. This is a high stakes game.

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And so I think it's worthwhile having a conversation over what exactly the world vision, the global policy of the administration is at this point, because frankly, there are too many mixed signals. And those mixed signals are leading to confusion, not just in markets, but also in terms of foreign policy. And that confusion is likely to lead to violence, confusion in foreign policy.

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But the sort of more sympathetic case to Carmelo Anthony would be that he was sitting there and somebody told him to leave, pushed him. He turned around. He stabbed him. And it was because he felt that he had to in order to defend himself. Okay, here's where it starts to get very dicey. Not just in terms of the criminal case.

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Predictability in foreign policy as in markets leads to more quiet, calm, peace, growth. Chaos, as in not like the madman theory of politics where you don't know if he's going to punch you or what, but a sort of chaotic view of foreign policy in which the default position is American withdrawal is not likely to lead to a more peaceful world. It's likely to lead to precisely the opposite.

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And by the way, I should point out here that when we talk about Department of Defense officials who are oriented against the peace through strength idea, the reality is the Pentagon has now been hit with a series of leaks. And those leaks are coming in large part from people who are very much aligned with the sort of isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

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Dan Caldwell, senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Darren Selnick, Defense Department deputy chief of staff, were escorted out of the Pentagon by security officers and had their building access suspended pending further investigation. You know, it'll be fascinating to see how all of this plays out and the future of America rests on it.

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And meanwhile, the hottest story of the day is that Elon Musk has a messy personal life. Now, of course, we know that already. That, of course, is no shock. A long article in The Wall Street Journal. basically featuring Ashley Sinclair, who I have to say, there are no heroes in this story. There are just no heroes in this story.

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Everybody is acting horribly and badly and it's ugly and seamy and gross. I have long been an advocate for traditional marriage and children within it. I know this is like a wildly controversial position in today's world. I think it's bad not to do that. I think it's actively bad not to do that.

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And if you're the girl who took Elon Musk's check in order to get pregnant, and now you're disappointed with the situation, don't make you a hero. And if you're Elon Musk and you're impregnating everything in sight, that also does not make you a hero. Those are villainous actions, all of them. They are all bad.

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And I can say that even though, again, I like many of the people involved on a personal level, the actions themselves are sinful and wrong. We ought to, at the very least, recognize sin for sin. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ashley Sinclair wanted to prove Elon Musk was the father of her newborn baby.

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It starts to get very dicey in terms of the GoFundMe that was then set up for Carmelo Anthony. So a GoFundMe was set up for Carmelo Anthony and it immediately raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, imagine a reverse scenario in which the races were reversed here and a GoFundMe was set up for the family.

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But to ask the billionaire to take a paternity test, the right-wing social media influencer had to go through Musk's longtime fixer, Jared Birchall. Sinclair told Birchall, quote, I don't want my son to feel like he's a secret. Birchall offered Sinclair some advice. His boss was a very big-hearted, kind, and generous person, he said, but Musk had a different side.

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When a mother of his child goes the legal route, that always, always leads to a worse outcome for that woman than what it would have been otherwise. Birchall's job is running Musk's family office, but behind the scenes, he also manages the financial and privacy deals Musk wants for the women raising the world's richest man's babies.

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Musk has at least 14 children with four different women, including pop musician Grimes and Siobhan Zillis, an executive at his brain computer company, Neuralink.

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Multiple sources say they believe the true number of Musk's children is much higher than publicly known, which, I mean, you would assume that that's the case, given the fact that he is basically swearing people to silence and giving them a lot of money to keep their mouth closed. Apparently...

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Elon Musk offered Ashley Sinclair $15 million and $100,000 a month in exchange for her silence about the child, whom they named Romulus. Similar agreements have been negotiated with other mothers of Musk's children, Birchall told Sinclair. By the way, she could have kept silent. She could have and just taken the money.

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And, you know, that probably wouldn't be better for the kid, is the truth, because now the kid is going to be at the center of every controversy. Also, there was a clue that it was Elon Musk's kid. The kid's name is Romulus. So there's that.

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The fight with Sinclair over the terms of the deal for their baby has been going on as Musk has assumed one of the most influential roles in the United States government, of course. Musk's baby-making project is relevant to his ambitions for NASA. He said on X, making people multi-planetary is critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, he is driven to correct a historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter. Again, not into it, not into the eugenic nature of that, not into the idea that you shouldn't be a father to your children.

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And again, there are some of these kids who Elon's actually a really good father to, right? I mean, he's actually taking little X around with him pretty much everywhere. He's very connected to that kid. But you should be like that with all of your kids, not just some of your kids. And that also means you should be connected to the mother of your kids. Because how kids...

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behave in their future relationships between man and woman is modeled on how their parents behave with one another. If you don't know who daddy is because mommy's taking a big check to have been impregnated with you, that is not exactly a great way to grow up.

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Again, all this stuff is a curiosity to most people, but it is part of a broader collapse in traditional morality that is terrible for the West. There are two questions when it comes to the collapse of the West with regard to birth rates. One is, How do you have more babies? And the other is, how is that connected with marriage?

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And the West's answer to that for literally as long as the West has been the West has been those two things are the same. It's the same question. That the way that you have more babies is to get married and then have more babies because babies need a father and women need a husband to support them and protect them. And the fact that that is now sort of seen as passe is quite bad.

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Because guess what? Elon Musk can make that happen for himself. He's the world's richest man. But number one, it's not good for the kids. Number two, it's not good for their moms. And number three, it's not good for the people who are gonna model themselves on this sort of behavior. This sort of bizarrely pagan belief system that predates traditional religion.

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Would there be any doubt the media would be all over it talking about how terrible it would be for a white student who stabbed to death a black student after being pushed to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in GoFundMe money? Apparently, the money was then used, according to the New York Post, for a wide variety of goodies,

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It's also mirrored by people like Andrew Tate, which has impregnated as many women as possible. It does not make the world a better place. It makes the world a much worse place.

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Young men who have no father figure in their life because daddy was off sleeping around with a bunch of women, impregnating them and leaving, those kids don't end up particularly well in the long run or even the mid run or even the short run. That is not the way to build a civilization. The show continues in a moment.

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We'll get into Democrats who are somehow finding ways to blow it, despite the fact that there is emerging a target-rich environment for them. Plus, we'll get to the mailbag. Remember, you have to be a member in order to watch. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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According to the New York Post, Carmelo Anthony is holed up with his family at the pricey home inside the gated community of Richwoods in Frisco, Texas, after he was released from jail Monday on a reduced $250,000 bond for allegedly killing Austin Metcalf earlier this month. The home had a white Suburban, a black Acura, and a third sedan in the driveway on Tuesday, according to the outlet.

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A neighbor said the family had just bought a new ride. He got a new car, the resident told the outlet. Residents in the gated community were allegedly unaware the family was living at the home until Anthony was released on Monday. Another neighbor told the outlet that Anthony's family is not poor if they live in a gated community. It's unclear how long they've been living at the home.

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Now, every crime story is, in its essence, a local story because every crime story involves the perpetrator and the victim. And all of that happens locally. So unless you can identify a broad national trend springing there from and basically that local news story is the hook for a discussion of the broad national trend. No local story on its own should be a national story.

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Again, this is all controversial stuff. We have to wait for all the facts to come out in the particular case. However, it is worthwhile noting that, again, the basic sort of narrative that would be drawn if the races were reversed. It would be about systemic American races.

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You might even have a story about privileged white Americans beating up on black Americans, if in fact this kid comes from a relatively well-off background. You're not going to get anything like the reverse. We have a series called Facts. That series goes through some of the facts that are relevant to the interracial crime narrative.

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So I want to bring that to you now, brought to you by Birch Gold. Protect your savings through gold investments. Text Ben to 989898. Receive your free, no obligation information kit on gold today. Here is our episode of FAX discussing interracial crime statistics in the United States. You've been told that black Americans are being violently victimized by white Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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White supremacy groups.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Every major media story about interracial violence of the last 20 years has featured a black American being harmed by a white American. You know their names. George Floyd. Ahmed Arbery, Breonna Taylor, who was shot by the cops accidentally when her boyfriend started shooting at the cops. Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a Hispanic man under disputed circumstances, but close enough.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Whenever a black person is shot by a white person, the media are all over it. Joe Biden does press conferences and invites the victim to the White House. Benjamin Crump shows up on CNN and MSNBC to complain about the inherent victimhood. of black existence in America. 20 million people go out in the streets to protest in the middle of June 2020. Joy Reid sets her hair on fire.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Here's the statistical reality. White Americans are significantly more likely to be victimized by black Americans than black Americans are to be victimized by white Americans when it comes to violent crime. The stats are not close. Now, let's start with a simple fact. Nearly all crime is intra-racial. White on white, black on black, Hispanic on Hispanic.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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The only group for which that is not true is Asian Americans. But when it comes to black versus white crimes, or white versus black crimes, black Americans are far more likely to be perps than victims. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, citing the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2019, there were 562,550 interracial crimes concerning blacks and whites.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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89,980 of those crimes featured a white perp and a black victim. 472,570 of those crimes featured a black perp and a white victim. In other words, 84% of violent interactions involving black and white people involved black people victimizing white people. That's not a statistical aberration.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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A common argument that you hear all the time is that, well, maybe the problem is that when white people attack black people or when black people attack white people, that maybe not all of it is getting reported. Maybe it's a reporting problem. Well, this is why murder is a useful statistic, because murder is always reported. There's an actual dead body.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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You can't hide behind dumb arguments about white crime being underreported or black crime being overreported when it comes to dead people. Every year, the number of whites killed by blacks exceeds by a factor of about two the number of blacks killed by whites. Let's take 2019. According to FBI statistics, there were 3,299 white Americans murdered that year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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But it's fascinating what kind of crime stories particularly are the ones that spark national discussions about, for example, race in America. So according to Legacy Media, the only kinds of crime that ought to spark discussions of race in America are crimes where the alleged victim is black and the alleged suspect is white. Those are the only ones that you will ever hear about.

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2,594 of them, 79% were killed by white perpetrators. 566, 17% were killed by black perpetrators. Now, 2,906 black Americans were murdered that same year. 2,574 of them, 89% were killed by black perpetrators. 246, 8% were killed by white perpetrators. Compare those two numbers. 566 white Americans were killed by black Americans. Only 246 black Americans were killed by white Americans.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Now, let's adjust for population size, because it turns out there are a lot more white people in America than black people. So, generally, you'd expect to see, if all the other factors were equal, a lot more white-on-black crime than the opposite. There are about 235 million white Americans. There are about 47 million black Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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This means that one out of every million white Americans killed a black person. By contrast, 12 out of every million black Americans killed a white person. The disparity between the stats is perfectly obvious. The reason that crime is currently wildly under-policed in major democratic areas is because the left will not acknowledge reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Way better to pretend that the criminal justice system is discriminatory than to acknowledge the obvious truth, disproportionate crime among black populations. But ignoring that problem doesn't make it go away. It makes the problem worse and the people who generally suffer are not white Americans, they are black Americans.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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According to Alan Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, quote, relative to their share of the U.S. population, 60%, white people were underrepresented among offenders in non-fatal violent crimes overall, 52%. They accounted for 45% of offenders involved in aggravated assault and 31% of offenders involved in robbery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Black people were overrepresented among offenders in non-fatal violent crimes overall, 29%. Relative to their share of the U.S. population, 13%. Half of all offenders involved in robbery, 51%, a third involved in aggravated assault, 34%, more than a fifth involved in simple assault, 23%, and rape or sexual assault, 22%, were black.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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According to Pew Research Center, black men are the most likely to go to prison. There were 2,272 inmates per 100,000 black men in 2018, compared with 392 inmates per 100,000 white men. In 2018, black Americans represented 33% of the sentenced prison population, nearly triple their 12 to 13% share of the US adult population.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Whites accounted for 30% of prisoners, about half their share of the adult population. According to another study printed in the journal Science Advances, quote, Lifetime risk of imprisonment for black males rose from more than 1 in 5, about 20% in 1986, to nearly 1 in 2, about 49.6% in 2004, before falling to roughly 1 in 6, 16.2% in 2016.

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Even though the current number is way lower than the prior numbers, it's still way higher than ever recorded among white men. So, why is this happening? Why disproportionate crime in the black community? The single most obvious factor correlating with violent crime is lack of fathers in the home.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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According to the Institute for Family Studies, only 37% of black children are living in a home headed by their biological parents. 72% of black fathers have had a child out of wedlock. Studies show the number of fathers in a neighborhood can actually help alleviate the problem of lack of fathers directly in the home. There's a network effect, a neighborhood effect.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Whether you're talking about George Floyd, whether you're talking about Daniel Penny, whether you're talking about... George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, whether you're talking about Michael Brown, anytime you have a racial conflagration, it is always on one side of the racial ledger, according to the legacy media.

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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But it's rare to find a black neighborhood with a lot of present fathers. As a study from Harvard, Stanford, and the U.S. Census Bureau found, just 4.2% of black kids currently grow up in areas with a poverty rate below 10% and more than half of black fathers present. That compares to 63% of white kids.

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Now, there are those who will argue that it's white racism that's causing the absence of black fathers. That's a weird argument given the fact that in 1960, when white racism was really a serious American problem, less than a quarter of black children were born to unwed mothers. Today, that number is like 72%.

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So as racism in the United States plummeted, the rate of single motherhood in the black community went up. Blaming racism for the rise in single motherhood makes no sense statistically speaking. Differential crime rates don't have anything to do with inborn racial differences. This isn't actually about race. It has to do with behavior. When you incentivize father absence, crime goes up.

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When you fail to police crime, crime goes up. When you make excuses for black-on-white violence or pretend that the real problem of violent crime in America is white-on-black, crime goes up, particularly among the populations who are being ignored, black Americans. Again, why is all of that relevant?

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Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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The reason that all of that is relevant is because when you are talking about the sorts of narratives that the legacy media would proclaim as important, those are the kinds of narratives that they will never talk about. And they are important because, again, if you actually wish to reduce, for example, interracial crime, then you want to look at where the interracial crime is actually occurring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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And you want to focus in on cases that are good evidence that such interracial crime is in fact occurring. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, it's been over 10 years since the U.S. government's surveillance of citizens was revealed. Not much has changed. Americans are losing the privacy battle against our government. Big Brother is watching you if we don't fight back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2181 - When Murder Is Apparently Totally Fine

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Because again, the narrative that the legacy media would push is the idea that America is a systemically racist place against black people. And so the kind of crimes they like to cover are, of course, the ones where a white person or in the case of George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic person kills a person who is black.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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Well, folks, tons to get to on today's show. President Trump over in Qatar. What's happening over there? Plus the big, beautiful bill being negotiated. What's in that on the House end? Does it pass RFK in front of Congress? We'll get to all of it. But the news is moving faster than ever. People have been telling us they can't make sense of it all. So we are giving you more Ben Shapiro show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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That, by the way, was actually the Social Security privatization plan that George W. Bush proposed back in 2006, except this time it's a thousand bucks for every kid in the United States.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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That would actually be a smart investment play if you want the government investing in this sort of thing, because then you actually have people who are invested in, say, the stock market and you get the natural growth along with the economy of those funds, as opposed to most other social welfare programs or pyramid schemes like Social Security.

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where the government just tells you that they're taking your money and putting it in a lockbox and they spend it on some other dude. And then when you get real old, we tax somebody new to pay for you. So that is the debate inside the Republican Party right now. Again, the right side of that debate does include all of the secretaries in the Trump administration.

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The attempt to get people back to work is really important. Brad Wilcox, who does excellent work over at the Institute of Family Studies, He has statistics showing that before 1980, only about 5% of able-bodied men aged 25 to 40 were not looking for work. Today, that number is 11%. So it is more than doubled over the course of time. And how can they not work?

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And the answer is because the federal government is paying for them. Nonetheless, this is creating an enormous amount of dyspepsia inside the Republican Party. Some Republicans, particularly in purple districts or purple states, are upset about this. They're afraid that maybe they're going to lose their seats if there are any sort of restructurings of Medicaid.

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Meanwhile, those same Republicans very often are arguing about state and local tax deductions. So the original Trump tax bill did not allow state and local tax deductions. So the so-called SALT deductions basically allowed you to take off the taxes for your state government before you paid your federal income tax.

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So if I was in California and I paid a 13% state rate on, say, a million dollars of income, just to make the statistics easy, so I take $130,000 off my income before I submitted my federal tax return. I paid the state tax first, and then I paid the federal income tax on the remaining income of $870,000.

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Trump got rid of that because what he said is, why is it that a person who's in a zero tax state like Florida should essentially be subsidizing a person who lives in California? Why should the federal government be giving benefits to people who live in blue states that tax their citizens highly? Well, now a bunch of Republicans who are in those blue states have been pushing for SALT deductions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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Now, as you know, from sort of conservative discussions for the last 50 years, there's something called the Laffer curve. The Laffer curve is a suggestion by the economist Art Laffer that if you're looking for sort of the proper rate of taxation, it can't be zero because then the government has no money to spend. And it also can't be 100 because then the government has no money to spend.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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The current plan approved by the House Ways and Means Committee includes a $30,000 cap for individuals and married couples that starts phasing down when the income reaches $400,000. That is a boost from today's $10,000, but it's still not high enough for some of the Republican lawmakers in places like New York, like Mike Lawler and Nick LaLotta.

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They're trying to push for more, an increase in the so-called salt cap. But there are a bunch of Republicans in red states with zero tax rates who are looking at this and saying, why are we giving a bunch of tax breaks to people who live in New York and California?

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According to the Wall Street Journal, it's a tables have turned moment inside the House GOP, where the typical pattern is that hardliners draw red lines while moderates get in line. Salt is one of several concerns conservatives have with the latest version of the Big Beautiful Bill.

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They want faster repeal of clean energy tax breaks, a quicker start to Medicaid work requirements, and smaller federal support for the expanded Medicaid program created by Obamacare. Meanwhile, there's all sorts of hubbub inside the Republican caucus over what to do with the Doge cuts. So Elon Musk and Doge have gone through, they found a bunch of cuts that they have identified as potential cuts.

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In order for those to become permanent, you need Congress through a process called rescission to actually vote on making those tax cuts, on making those cuts in waste, fraud, and abuse permanent. Russ Vaught of the Office of Management and Budget, he says that that's one of the goals here is to make those Doge cuts permanent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, there are a lot of Republicans in the House and the Senate who don't actually like many of those cuts. Now, we should we should, again, point out a lot of the cuts that we are talking about. Yes, they are sizable in sort of the absolute in terms of comparison to the spending of the federal government. They are not, in fact, sizable at all.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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If you really wanted to prevent fiscal crisis in the United States over the course of the next 10 years, it requires moves much bigger than simple work requirements for Medicaid. Our Republicans, unless they have a broader majority, aren't going to be able to do any of that. That's why you are seeing an incrementalism even from the conservatives inside the Republican caucus.

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It's going to take, again, an act of political leisure domain, some political magic for Mike Johnson to pull this thing off. And even if he does in the House with this extremely narrow majority, in some ways, the narrow majority helps Johnson, right? Because it means that every Republican is going to be pressured in order to vote for the bill.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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If you had a broad majority, then you could see a bunch of people who weren't going to be identified as the problem who'd vote against it. But if you need everyone... Then in the end, President Trump is going to put his boot down and force a bunch of reluctant Republicans to support whatever the big, beautiful bill is. But then you go to the Senate.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And again, the Republican majority in the Senate is not particularly large. The Republicans currently have 53 seats in the Senate. You could easily see some of the quote unquote moderate Republican senators, like, for example, Lisa Murkowski in Alaska or Susan Collins in Maine drop off. If the bill is not conservative enough, you could see people from the opposite side drop off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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No one will actually go out and do business. if they are going to have all of their money removed by the federal government. So the Laffer curve is a suggestion that there is, in fact, a point at which if you tax people more, then you will actually end up with declining government revenues as a result, because people will simply work less in order to avoid the top tax bracket, for example.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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This is a very complicated process. Now, the markets right now have a tax cut already priced in. They believe it's going to happen. If this tax cut does not happen, if somehow this whole thing falls apart, disaster area for the Trump administration, quite obviously.

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Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Wednesday, one of the more conservative members of the Republican caucus, he said that he's worried the House Republicans reconciliation bill is going to go down.

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Okay, so again, if somehow Trump pulls this off, major act of political magicing by the Trump administration and by Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, and by Mike Johnson in the House. It is pretty amazing that the United States is so addicted to spending that even talk about work requirements for welfare. This is incredibly controversial. It's an amazing thing.

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That, by the way, is the mark of a country that has been high on its own supply for far too long. It is an unserious country that refuses to come to a reckoning with the reality that is, for example, our $37 trillion national debt that is not going to get smaller anytime soon. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, you know what's kind of funny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When we started Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the show. Turns out dealing with all the behind the scenes stuff like the hiring, the HR policies, employee issues, that's the stuff that really eats up your time. And I know I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And get this, Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month, whether you have 10, 75, even 100 employees. If I had Bambi when I was first building this business, it would have saved me countless hours and headaches instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance Thank you so much for watching. Choosing SimpliSafe for this studio, one of the easiest decisions we've ever made.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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I would love for you to experience that same security in your home. With SimpliSafe, families enjoy the gold standard in home security and genuine peace of mind whenever they arm the system. Unlike traditional systems that only respond after a break-in occurs, SimpliSafe's ActiveGuard outdoor protection works to prevent intrusions before they happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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Their AI-powered cameras with live professional monitoring detect suspicious activity, allowing agents to intervene in real time, speaking to potential intruders, There's no safe like SimpliSafe. So obviously a lot going on in Congress. Congress is also considering measures to enshrine the Trump administration's moves against transgender propaganda and ideology.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And there's certainly truth to that. It's unclear where exactly the inflection point is with regard to the Laffer curve. However,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Joining us online to discuss is Mary Margaret Ohan, the Daily Wire White House correspondent. Mary Margaret has been at the White House. President Trump, of course, is overseas, but a lot is going on domestically as well. Mary Margaret, thanks for joining us.

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So the big news of the week in D.C., outside of the Middle East, obviously, is the Trump Justice Department moving against transgender grants. Maybe you can tell us about what's going on on that score.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It has been longstanding conservative economic dogma that if you increase taxes, you will end up quashing economic growth because you're taking money away from the more efficient private sector and sticking it in the public sector where it gets doled out by a bunch of politicians to their favorite pet projects.

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So, Mary Margaret, you've also been covering some of the stuff that's been happening in Congress. Obviously, Republicans are trying to follow on this in Congress. They're trying to actually endorse what President Trump is doing via the executive branch in the so-called big, beautiful bill. How are those negotiations going?

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Also, how you look at government revenue differs between conservatives and people on the left. People on the left believe that the government basically owns your money and then allows you to keep some of it. Conservatives believe you own your money and then you have to give some of it to the government in order to do public services, for example.

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That's Mary Margaret Olihan from the White House. Mary Margaret, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And meanwhile, the markets continue to roil. I know there's a widespread perception, particularly on the right, that the markets have now recovered. Everything is hunky dory. President Trump backed off the most damaging aspects of his trade war, and now everything will be fine. That is not what the markets are saying right now. The markets are saying, we don't know where the hell this is going.

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And it turns out that the tariff rates that President Trump left in place are still wildly higher than they were before Liberation Day. As I said yesterday on the show, the removal of many of the provisions that Trump put in place did not remove all of the provisions that Trump put in place.

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And the provisions he put in place leave the United States with an average tariff rate that is higher than any time since the 1930s. What's the impact of that? Well, Walmart apparently is now going to raise its prices. This is what people have been predicting.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the retailer said on Thursday it plans to raise prices this month and early this summer, passing along some of the costs as tariff-affected merchandise hits store shelves. Walmart CFO John David Rainey said the magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history.

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He said sales rose steadily in the latest quarter as shoppers flocked to deals and fast shipping, but the full impact of the trade war has yet to come. He said it's a dynamic and fluid environment. Already, for example, tariffs have driven up the price of bananas. The US, again, has agreed to temporarily lower the tariffs.

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But if we think that we are past the woods here, I do not think that that is in fact the case. And again, President Trump continues to make comments that are likely to lead to uncertainty in the markets. And uncertainty in the markets is its own form of damage to the markets.

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For example, yesterday, President Trump said that he has a disagreement with Apple's Tim Cook about the construction of the iPhone. So Tim Cook has been attempting to reshore manufacture of the iPhone away from China and toward India. That's a giant win for the Trump administration. Take the win, Mr. President. That is a good thing.

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India has been increasingly oriented toward the United States basically since the late 1990s. China is a geopolitical enemy of the United States. Moving the manufacturer of the iPhone from China to India is a win.

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More facts, more analysis, more clarity. Same time every day in a new, longer format. Tune in on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plus, tomorrow night, we cross the line. Not sure what that line is, but it'll probably be obvious after we do it. That's right. It's Ben After Dark.

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So when it comes to even the discussions of what government revenue looks like, the real discussion that should be had, and it's the discussion no one will ever have, is what is the proper role of government in our lives? Why is it that our government is spending $6, $7 trillion a year on the federal level? This was not the case when the original country was founded.

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But President Trump said in Doha Qatar yesterday that he is interested in reshoring the manufacturer of iPhones completely to the United States, which would only increase the price of the iPhone by, what, double? I mean, really, like this sort of talk, just let Scott Besson talk about the economy. Please, Mr. President, just let the Treasury Secretary do his thing. Here's President Trump on Apple.

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So what do markets do? Markets are effectively prediction mechanisms and markets are trying to figure out what Trump means, what he's going to do. And this sort of uncertainty, this is not tactical uncertainty. This is not strategic ambiguity here. This is actual confusion.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says a thing, and then it's immediately contradicted by Peter Navarro or Howard Lutnick or the president.

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this particular case that is not going to make the markets any more sanguine so what do we actually need if we want a successful economy we need the tax cuts to be made permanent obviously that doesn't happen disaster area we need the trade barriers to continue to come down 10 cannot be the minimum trade barrier it's not going to be good okay that will have some dire impact on for example pricing in the united states and small businesses in the united states that rely on imported goods

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Screwing around with the free market system, it's a lot easier to screw up that system than people believe it is. It turns out that the basic theory of free markets, which is that diffuse knowledge is better and more efficient than centralized knowledge. If you ignore that rule, you are going to do damage to the economic efficiency that the American people have come to rely upon.

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And that is a problem. Meanwhile, President Trump was in Qatar yesterday and President Trump did some good things, like, for example, He cut a deal with Qatar, apparently to generate $1.2 trillion in economic exchange, according to the White House in a fact sheet.

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When the United States was founded, the original expenditures by the federal government were absolutely minimal. And it stayed that way, except for times of war, like the Civil War, all the way up through essentially the end of World War I. And then government spending began to grow slowly. And then with FDR, it just exploded all out of proportion.

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That agreement includes a $96 billion deal with Qatar Airways to buy up to 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 777X airplanes with GE Aerospace engines, according to the fact sheet. Also, a statement of intent that would lead to $38 billion in investments at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base and other air defense and maritime security capabilities. Qatar, of course, wooed the hell out of President Trump.

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They put on a big show. They had a bunch of cyber trucks painted red. They were ushering him. They understand how to woo President Trump. The way to woo President Trump is that you do big shows. President Trump, obviously, loves that sort of thing. And so they did. They brought out all the camels. Not even kidding. It was basically the scene from Aladdin where Prince Ali arrives in Agrabah.

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They brought out the golden peacocks and everything. Here's what it looked like. He's got 75 golden camels, purple peacocks. He's got 53. Yeah, that's what it was in Qatar. President Trump loves that kind of stuff. And then President Trump announced this sort of investment package and Qatar itself announced that they would be purchasing a bunch of Boeing aircraft. Here's what that sounded like.

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How exciting. Okay, so people signing these defense contracts and all the rest. Alrighty, there's only one problem. Qatar doesn't do this stuff without strings attached. They just don't. And pretending they do is silly. And President Trump, when he does business deals, presumably there are strings attached. That's true of every business deal. Why would Qatar?

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They have a population that is about one-eighth the size of the state of Florida. And they are expending $100 billion to impact American policy. And so just so we know, how big is Qatar? The answer is it is tiny, tiny, tiny. So I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what is the population of Qatar?

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And then to compare that to the size of the United States state, so we know what we're talking about. According to Perplexity, Qatar's population in 2025 is estimated to be approximately between 2.75 million and 3.6 million people. A bunch of different stats coming in. But That's roughly comparable to the population of Connecticut. Okay, maybe 3.6 million people.

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As far as the size of the state, Qatar covers about 4,500 square miles. That is smaller than any American state except for Rhode Island. So it is tiny. It is a tiny country and it is expending tens of billions of dollars to impact American policy. You think they're doing that without any strings attached? Any? I would love to hear the theory of what even Qatar is doing. They spend more money.

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And so now we have $7 trillion being spent every single year. That's what's racking up the national debt. And so there are a couple of sort of different takes on what should be done. A traditional classical conservative might say, we need to cut massive reams of government spending. I push it all back down to the states.

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They spend, I believe, two thirds of the amount of money that China does lobbying. China has 1 billion citizens plus. Qatar has 2.6 million. What are they doing? And the answer is they are punching above their weight and basically buying people. This is what they do. The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece titled How Qatar Spent Billions to Gain Influence in the United States.

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And of course, they do. That is exactly what they do, whether it's buying politicians like Robert Menendez or whether it is subsidizing an American airbase in Qatar so as to gain control over American foreign policy in the region.

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whether it is subsidizing American universities to the tune of billions of dollars and subsidizing radicalism at those universities, or whether it is signing people on as foreign agents, which is literally what they do, that have included in the past a former Qatar lobbyist, Pam Bondi, the current attorney general who just signed off on this 747 arrangement. I mean, this is what Qatar does.

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And then they throw their weight around. And that has some impact. So Qatar, for example, the prime minister of Qatar, He came out yesterday and he was talking about the situation in Gaza. And he said the Palestinians want to end the war. No, they clearly do not. If by the Palestinians, you mean the people, I'm sure many of the people do.

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If by the Palestinians, you mean the leadership like Hamas, clearly they don't. Hamas clearly does not actually want a deal. If they did, all they would have to do is go into exile, give up their aspirations to rule the Gaza Strip and release the hostages and the war would be over today. That was true October 8th, by the way. But here is Qatar trying to promote its agenda.

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And again, when you have your hands stuffing money into the pockets of Americans, it makes it a lot easier to make this sort of nonsensical play.

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I'm sorry, what a joke these people are. Seriously, what a joke these people are. Pretending these people are on the side of Western civilization is a lie. He literally calls it a massacre when Israel, in one of the most targeted strikes ever, killed, it appears, the entire leadership case of Hamas that is remaining in the Gaza Strip.

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If the states wish to do things like Medicare and Medicaid, then the states can do that. But it shouldn't be up to a taxpayer from Montana to pay for the health care of a guy from California because he's 70 years old, for example. And then you have the sort of Republican Party position, which is let's cut around the edges.

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They were hiding beneath a hospital, the European hospital, a tunnel beneath the European hospital. They hit the area right outside the hospital, hit that tunnel. And he calls that a massacre because he's on the side of Hamas. How do we know? Because they funded Hamas to the tune of two billion dollars, two billion. And these are the people who we're praising and calling honest brokers.

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It's a joke. Of course, they're paying lots of money into the United States to impact American policy. That is the explicit goal. What are we pretending that these are charitable, wonderful people now? Are you even kidding? By the way, the only reason that any of these regimes continue to exist in the Middle East is because the United States props them up militarily. That is true for UAE.

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It is true for Qatar. It's true for Bahrain. It's true for Saudi Arabia. It's true for Jordan. It's true for Egypt. It's true for all of them. Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge in most of these places. So it's good that these regimes are in charge.

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It also happens to be the case that all of these places would be dirt poor if it were not for the technological innovations of the West that built their entire oil industry, all of it. It is deeply irritating to be lectured on foreign policy by people who support terrorism everywhere they can find it, particularly Qatar, particularly Qatar.

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Meanwhile, again, if you think there are no strings attached, there clearly are strings attached. The reason Qatar is doing all of this is to influence policy everywhere from the Houthis in Yemen to the Iran deal itself to Syria. So yesterday, President Trump praised the new leader of Syria. Okay, here is the thing.

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If you want to make the case that we need to relieve sanctions on the Syrians temporarily to allow them to find some sort of more stable fiscal footing with actual strings attached, like for example, all the things President Trump wants, normalization with Israel expelling terrorists, allowing some level of religious diversity in Syria.

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If you want those things to happen, then what you gradually do is release the sanctions as you have proof of concept. What you don't do is relieve them all at once and then meet al-Jilani, the new head of Syria, who is a terrorist. He was a member of Al-Qaeda. He's a member of ISIS.

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And then he broke away from them and created his own terrorist group called HDS, which is sponsored by the terror backing Turkish government. But here's President Trump speaking in warm tones about a man who just a few weeks ago, people were noting, was killing the Druze at an extraordinary rate and also possibly targeting Christians. And yet here we are with praise for Al-Jawani.

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And then you have the Democratic Party position, which is let's never cut anything ever for the rest of time. The latter two positions are the ones the American people have opted for. The latter two positions are, let's spend all the money in the world, and let's spend just slightly less than all the money in the world.

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Yeah, no wonder President Erdogan thinks he has a shot. President Erdogan is in charge of Syria. Erdogan is a dictator who is a terrorist supporter of Hamas and HDS and a bunch of other Sunni terror groups. Erdogan himself has Ottoman aspirations for the Middle East. The reason HDS took over Syria is because they were sponsored by Turkey. Yeah, no wonder Erdogan likes al-Jawani. He is a client.

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He is a proxy. Pretending this is not happening is not a way to do policy. And when you say has a strong past, do you mean like murdered a bunch of people? Because that's what al-Jalani did and apparently continues to do with the Druze, so much so that the Druze in southern Syria, remember, the Druze are not Jewish.

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The Druze are openly appealing to Israel to go in and try and protect them in southern Syria from HTS and from other terrorist groups in Syria. And you think there are no strings attached? Of course there are strings attached. I think President Trump is too smart to be played in this way. I think he is too intelligent to be played in this way. But certainly that's not what the Qataris think.

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And certainly not what the Iranians think either. Speaking of people who think they can play the president of the United States, Iran clearly believes that they can outplay the presidents of the United States. Yesterday, a top Iranian official said to Richard Engel of NBC News that they are ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Trump.

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Ali Shamkhani, a top political, military and nuclear advisor to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions. He said that Iran would commit to never making nuclear. Oh, maybe they're pledging to be goody, goody gumdrops. Wow. They're pledging to be just the best Probably they'll keep their word.

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The Iranians have never lied to anybody. The Iranian regime, the Ayatollahs, never lied to anybody. They are perfectly honest all the way across the board. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale. He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be weaponized.

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And that's what a lot of the debate is with regard to this current GOP tax bill inside the Republican caucus. There are a bunch of Republicans who believe that cutting spending in any way, shape, or form is detrimental to Republican electoral chances. The American people don't want it. And by polling... Basically, there's truth to that.

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Agreed to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use. Okay, what does that mean? If you keep your nuclear facilities and you can enrich to 3.67%, then you can also ramp up the centrifuges and enrich to 70 or 80 or 90%. That is the whole point of keeping them. Iran does not need nuclear energy. It is one of the most oil-rich states on earth.

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Why are they looking for nuclear energy in Iran? Because they're so green in Iran? They're environmentalists, are they? That's the suggestion? All in exchange for immediate lifting of all economic sanctions on Iran. Shamkhani said they'd sign an agreement today if those conditions were met.

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Well, you bet your ass they would, because those conditions mean that they get a nuclear weapon in short order and their economy is open. And notice some of the conditions that are not placed there, using that economic foundation to build back its terror bases, using that economic foundation to build ballistic missiles.

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Of course, they'd sign on to that because it's just the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in human history. You can't just take the Obama deal, stamp a big T on it and call it a good deal. It ain't how this works. President Trump, however, was expressing optimism about the Iranian deal yesterday. Here he was.

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Okay, so I'm just going to make one thing clear. When he says the only thing is they can't have a nuclear weapon, you don't need 30 pages of detail, you absolutely need 30 pages of detail. Abso-fricking-lutely, you need the detail. They can't have a nuclear weapon just means they can't have the actual nuclear weapon. How about the centrifuges that can spin it up in two weeks? Can they have those?

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That's the question. Do they have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon? How about if we open sanctions on them? Can they use that to rebuild Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or fund the Houthis? What can they use the money for? There are a bunch of like that 30 pages makes a big difference.

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You know, it turns out putting on my lawyer hat for a moment that when people structure the outline of deals, all the devil always is in the details. Because the deal he's talking about right there is the Obama-Iran deal. It is just the JCPOA. Congress has already said that's not going to fly, by the way. Congressional Republicans are saying, no, it's complete denuclearization.

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By polling, the American people say they don't want the government to be so big and provide so many services. And then when you ask them which services they would like cut, they scratch their head and really have no idea of the answer to that question.

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And President Trump himself has said consistently, complete denuclearization. If somehow his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, or anybody else in the Trump orbit tries to steer him in the direction of the JCPOA, it will be one of the most giant fails of Trump administration too. The Iranians are counting on their ability to play these people. That's what they are counting on.

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Qatar is counting on its ability to play these people. The Trump administration, that's what they are counting on. And right now, right now, President Trump should make clear that he is not going to be played on all of this. This means conditions attached, for example, to the desanctioning of Syria. It means actual pressure on Turkey, which needs our F-35s to stop its support for terrorism.

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It means, for example, that Qatar should be cut off at the knees in its support for terrorism. And frankly, if Qatar wanted tomorrow, what they just showed by the release of Idan Alexander, is that if Qatar decides to tell Hamas what to do, Hamas actually listens. If the United States actually wanted to end the conflict in Gaza, they could do it literally today.

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The Trump administration could just say to Qatar, here's the deal. The airbase goes away. It moves over to UAE. Unless all the hostages come out and Hamas goes into exile. That'd be the end of the war today. Literally today.

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But that would require seeing Qatar clearly for what it is, which is a deceitful state that plays both sides and stuffs cash wherever it can find it, oil cash that they're digging out of the ground. And meanwhile, in other non-saluatory news, Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, she is consolidating control of the president's daily brief. Why does that matter?

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Well, because the information that President Trump receives when it comes to intelligence matters an awful lot to his decision making. So Tulsi Gabbard is now attempting to sort of centralize the power over the daily brief. And she's doing so in ways that seem to sort of be geared toward confirming the president's priors on a wide variety of issues.

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Then you have sort of traditional Republicans who say, listen, if we're ever going to get to anything more like big restructuring of government, you have to start somewhere or we are going to plunge off the debt cliff. So all of this is manifesting in the debate over the current big, beautiful bill in the Republican House. There is no question spending is going to continue to increase.

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Gabbard's decision, according to the New York Times, comes as President Trump has openly mused to aides over time about whether the office she leads should actually continue to exist. Gabbard's office announced the decision internally on Tuesday. The memo said there was much to be worked out about the transition timelines and our own processes.

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Again, the goal here with regard to the daily brief is to take control away from, for example, the CIA, whose current director is John Ratcliffe. One of the reasons that she's doing that, presumably, is because there was a controversy that arose over Venezuela. So, for example... Gabbard removed the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. Why?

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Well, because he had actually written, along with the rest of the council, that Venezuela is not, in fact, actively deploying members of Trenda Aragua, MS-13, into the United States. And President Trump has used that idea as a lever for using the Alien Enemies Act for deportations. Okay, well, it's either true or it's not. If it's not true, then sure, fire them.

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But if in fact it is true, then simply censoring the intelligence that reaches the president because it doesn't match with his priors, that is not a good way to make policy. Reality continues to exist whether you like it or not. In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion.

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The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence. And the National Intelligence Council reaffirmed what the intelligence community was saying. And so Laura Loomer then attacked the National Intelligence Council as career anti-Trump bureaucrats who needed to be replaced if they wanted to promote open borders.

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Again, the job of the DNI, the job of the intelligence community is to provide best available intelligence. It is not supposed to be politically driven. It is not a good thing if you are firing people, not based on your belief that they are doing a bad job, but based on the idea that the facts that they are presenting to the president don't match with the things you want the president told.

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That is not a good thing. It turns out intelligence bubbles have had some pretty dire ramifications over the years, the most obvious being the invasion of Iraq, which was based on an intelligence bubble suggesting universal support for the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

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What you want is the best available intelligence available to the president full time, all the time, without some sort of political bias or censorship being attached on top of that. The president, when given full information, makes good decisions. If you deprive him of full information, that is a problem.

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Meanwhile, on the foreign front, there were talks that were supposed to be happening in Turkey with regard to Ukraine. Vladimir Putin originally said that he was going to show up in Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky said, I'd like a 30 day ceasefire and then I'll show up. President Trump pressured Zelensky. Zelensky said, OK, and then he showed up in Turkey. And Putin then didn't show.

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The only question is whether the rate of the increase is slightly slower or slightly faster. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Republican tax bill looks very different depending on your income and your political lens. For the top sliver of taxpayers, it gives a permanent extension and expansion of expiring tax cuts from 2017, coupled with some new limits.

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Instead, he sent a second tier team of negotiators to hold peace talks with Ukraine. Spurning keeps challenged to go there in person to meet with Zelensky.

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Of course, the reason that Putin won't meet with Zelensky is he claims that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader, which is an amazing statement from a man who has consolidated his power over the course of the last two and a half decades by murdering nearly all of his political opponents or jailing them. In any case. President Trump kind of changed his tune on this.

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Originally, yesterday, he was saying that maybe he would fly to Turkey if Putin showed up to help broker this thing. Here's what he had to say yesterday.

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OK, and then President Trump reversed himself after Putin said that he wasn't going to go. And he said he was never going to go. So originally, President Trump was like, maybe he'll go and then I'll show up and we'll actually make a deal. And then Putin said he wasn't going to go. And Trump said, no, no, no, it was never going to happen.

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The show that started as a harmless late night experiment is now a full length weekly show with significantly fewer boundaries. Exclusive for Daily Wire Plus members, Ben After Dark gives you everything you never knew you needed because you didn't. unfiltered takes that probably should be behind a paywall segment. No one approved.

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Okay, so, you know, again, this sort of idea that too many people are dying, we need to get, so if Putin never shows up, what's the plan then? Russia continues to make outsized demands, by the way. Russia is demanding territory it hasn't even occupied yet in Ukraine, according to its newest round of proposals. According to the New York Times,

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Andrei Kartapilov, the head of the Defense Committee in the lower chamber of Russian parliament, reiterated his message on Tuesday, saying Ukraine needed to recognize that the Russian military was advancing in 116 directions. If Ukrainians did not want to talk, they must listen, quote, to the language of the Russian bayonet.

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And so Putin continues to sort of run around and not go to the negotiations while constantly maintaining a vigilant and increased military presence in eastern Ukraine. What is the alternative going to be? I mean, presumably it's going to be President Trump saying that we continue to support the Ukrainians to prevent them from collapsing.

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Middle income households would get permanent tax cut extensions as well. They would also gain temporary tax cuts, including a larger standard deduction and child tax credit and targeted benefits for senior citizens and people receiving tips and overtime pay.

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And to President Trump's absolute credit, he is recognizing what Putin is doing right now in some ways. So President Trump, in recent weeks, asked advisers if they think that Putin has changed since his last time in office and expressed surprise at some of Putin's military moves, including bombing areas with children. That is according to The Wall Street Journal.

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So at least he's waking up to the reality. That is a good thing. It also happens to be that he is, I think, becoming increasingly concerned with the simple fact that the Russians have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children back into Russia for some sort of radical indoctrination. All of that, again, reality just exists.

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And as I've said before, President Trump is very much attuned to reality. And so the more he is attuned to the reality, the better his policies will be. Here are some realities on the foreign front. Vladimir Putin is not going to come to the negotiating table unless he believes he has no other real alternative.

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Two, Qatar is attempting to manipulate the president of the United States and American foreign policy. Three, Iran is not going to denuclearize. They are not. They've openly said this. This is not conjecture. They are not going to denuclearize in any way, shape or form that provides any sort of security for the Saudis, for the UAE, for the Israelis or anyone else the Iranians are targeting.

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Four, al-Jalani in Syria needs to be held to account before you start shoveling money into his pockets. Five, Erdogan in Turkey is a disaster area and trusting Erdogan in Turkey with American foreign policy is about as bad an idea as I can think of. Those are all realities. And so whether or not those realities are acknowledged, they will continue to exist. Reality is undefeated.

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And again, the reason President Trump historically has done well is because he recognizes reality. I think he will again, I hope sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. headed over to the Hill for a grilling from lawmakers on a wide variety of topics.

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Actually, one of the people who was kicked out at the very beginning of his grilling on Capitol Hill was Ben and Jerry's co-founder, Ben Cohen, who was recently on Tucker Carlson spewing about his views of foreign policy, which obviously are trash, but you know, His ice cream is tasty. We'll say that. In any case, RFK showed up and made some really good points.

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There's not much in the tax cut bill for people who are low income, mainly because people who are low income are not paying taxes in the United States. And so whenever people say, this tax bill disproportionately benefits the rich, well, I mean, I would assume because the rich... absolutely overpaid proportionally based on their income, like wildly disproportionately.

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And then he was grilled on some not so wonderful points. So on the good points, RFK Jr. had been ripped by Rose DeLauro, she of the purple hair from Connecticut, because she was upset with how grants were being held up or spent under HHS. And here is RFK slamming her back.

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OK, so again, good for RFK Jr. Also, Democrats went after RFK Jr. for supposedly cutting into Medicaid. And he made the point that we were talking about earlier, which is that what they're actually attempting to do is get people who are on Medicaid to do the work that they are supposed to do to be eligible so that they're not engaging in Medicaid fraud. He obviously is right about that.

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He also talked about some of the changes that he's been making that even some Democrats are happy with, especially concerning things like food dyes.

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There's just kids. Again, this is the stuff that makes RFK Jr. popular across the aisle is the fact that he does talk in these sort of universalist terms. Now, where he did get himself in some hot water is he was talking about vaccines and his comments on the COVID vaccine and whether it should be on the child vac schedule. Of course, the COVID vaccine should not be on the child vac schedule.

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That's ridiculous. As I've said before, I took the COVID vaccine originally because we were told by the Pfizer's and the White House, actually, that it was going to prevent transmission, which it turns out there was no data to support and was not true.

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But when it came to my kids, none of my kids were vaccinated because the statistics on vaccination for children were sketchy at best and damaging at worst. And so... You know, there was there's really a lot of counterproductive data suggesting that.

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In fact, one of the people who we had on routinely during the pandemic, Dr. Marty McCary, is now one of the heads of President Trump's health division. Well, Senator Kennedy went beyond that. He was asked specifically about the measles vaccine and he started talking about the problems with the measles vaccine.

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And here you get into hot water because some of the stuff he's saying here is not factually accurate.

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The top quintile of income earners in this country pay all net taxes in the country, all of them. Net taxes, meaning the amount you pay to the government versus the services you get back from the government.

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So, you know, the idea that the measles vaccine has not been extensively tested. I mean, it's been deployed for literally decades. So actually, we do have really good evidence on the measles vaccine. The notion that there's fetal tissue that's in the measles vaccine. Now, in the development of the measles vaccine, fetal stem cells from wines that were developed in the 1960s have been used.

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But that's not the same as like fetal tissue, like fetal tissue roaming around in the measles vaccine or whatever. And it's that sort of stuff that actually undermines a lot of the good stuff that I think RFK Jr. is attempting to do. Overall, Democrats really did not lay a significant glove on RFK Jr. in the end. Meanwhile, how much is President Trump winning on issues like immigration?

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He's winning so much that Gavin Newsom is now backwalking an enormous part of his own agenda. So he has now proposed scaling back healthcare for illegal immigrants.

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A lot of middle income people are paying taxes, but they're also receiving tremendous benefits back from the government in the form of various forms of welfare, social support and all of the rest. Representative Blake Moore of Utah said this is not a bill for billionaire relief, but Democrats are casting the bill as an unacceptable giveaway to well-off people at the expense of most Americans.

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According to the New York Times, quote, Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday called for California to scale back healthcare coverage for undocumented immigrants to help balance the state budget, retrenching on his desire to deliver universal healthcare for all.

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That move came two days after the Trump administration targeted a different state funded program for immigrants in California and signaled it would continue to scrutinize benefits for undocumented individuals. Again, it's always the New York Times saying undocumented individuals are called illegal immigrants.

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In a budget presentation on Wednesday, Mr. Newsom proposed freezing the enrollment of undocumented adults in the state's version of Medicaid known as Medi-Cal as soon as January. So he's backwalking a lot of this stuff. which of course is perfectly predictable for a man who wants to run in the sort of moderate lane for the Democratic Party for president. Fascinating to watch him revise all that.

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Speaking of his home state of California, the Daily Wire is now reporting on continued discrimination at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. That's actually where my wife went to medical school. Apparently, according to the Daily Wire, on May 8th, 2025, Do No Harm sued the Geffen School of Medicine for racial discrimination in admissions.

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The Geffen Dean of Admissions has both publicly and privately said she uses race as a factor in making admissions decisions.

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A white Do No Harm member was unfairly rejected by Geffen despite stellar academic achievements and whistleblowers describe how the Geffen admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, saying that whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

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They continue, by the way, not to produce MCAT scores in response to public records requests. So MCAT scores would be a great way of telling whether there are people getting in who should not be getting in.

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If there are a bunch of people who aren't getting in with high 30s MCAT scores and a bunch of people getting in with 20s MCAT scores so long as they have the right race, that's obviously racial discrimination. So I would presume this isn't going to stay a civil lawsuit.

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Obviously, if this sort of thing is happening at UCLA School of Medicine, that's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The DOJ could step in. So we will stay on top of that case, obviously.

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And meanwhile, in sort of the biggest nice news of the day, Klaus Schwab, who is the bizarre James Bond villain, mastermind of the World Economic Forum, it turns out that he may have been a scam artist.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Schwab was seemingly headed for a graceful exit from the organization he founded more than a half century ago after a 2024 investigation by the Wall Street Journal exposed evidence of a toxic culture at the forum for women and black employees, which again, it's delicious to watch.

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All of these people who push wokeness and DEI and all this nonsense now be eaten by the machine they created. By Friday, April 18th, the trustees audit committee recommended opening a probe into a new wave of whistleblower allegations against Schwab and his wife Hildy.

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Incensed, Klaus Schwab fired off a two paragraph message to the board's audit committee, threatening trustees with an investigation into how they were carrying out their duties. That email was specifically aimed at stopping trustees from responding formally to accusations that for years, the Schwabs improperly intermingled their personal finances with the well-entowned nonprofits accounts.

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Instead, that letter, that threatening letter backfired on Schwab. So again, he had handpicked executives at the forum and then fired employees who crossed him. And his wife was granted wide leeway as the head of a forum-linked foundation. But it turns out that probably there was intermingling of funds, or at least those are the allegations.

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So there are a bunch of different provisions that are controversial here. One is the tax data, and then one is the question of where some cuts are coming from. So if you look at the actual material in the bill, the Tax Foundation has a good rundown on the bill, taxfoundation.org.

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There are allegations that he was using private flights, for example, that he was having enormous fees paid to people associated with him and all the rest. So it is perfectly on brand that all of this is now backfiring on Klaus Schwab, that one of the great elitists of all time who believed that basically the world should be remade from the top of Davos is now falling apart.

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Behind the scenes, tensions ran high and in August 2024 email to trustees, Straub defended his legacies, quote, I could have created the forum as a commercial company since I carried the full entrepreneurial and financial risk when creating the forum. I would now probably be celebrated as a self-made billionaire. However, again, the controversy continued to roil.

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There are 11 areas of complaints ranging from allegations of misuse of foreign resources to cluster Schwab's behavior with female employees, including personal remarks and other communications that made the women uncomfortable.

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And his son, Olivier Schwab's handling of the sexual harassment issue, it expounded on other alleged governance failures, including lavish spending on a luxury property called Villa Mundi, a project overseen by Hilda Schwab. The Forum spent $30 million on the mansion next to its headquarters overlooking Lake Geneva and launched into a roughly $20 million renovation, and Hildy steered the project.

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And she maintained control over how the World Economic Forum could use that property, limited an entire floor just for the Schwab's exclusive use. So, yeah, unsurprising, but delicious nonetheless. All right, meanwhile, a brand new poll shows that the Democratic front runner, I've been saying this, the Democratic front runner for 2028 for the Democrats, AOC, according to a new poll taken

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by coefficient from May 7th to May 9th, 26% of those surveyed say they think no one is the face of the Democratic Party. But 26% say that it's Alexander Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders receives 12%. So you combine those two, and you're talking about 38% of the Democratic vote believes that either Bernie or AOC is the face of the Democratic Party. Bernie's not running.

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He's going to shift that support over to AOC. So you could theoretically be talking of upward of 30% support for AOC going into the Democratic primaries in 2028. That is a disaster area for all of these other candidates. And it shows how wildly to the left the Democratic Party is swinging. Meanwhile, AOC continues to posture for the cameras.

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So she had a bit of a run-in in Congress the other day after Representative Randy Weber accused AOC of grandstanding for the cameras, which is, of course, her MO. Here she was responding.

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I'm going to have to stop.

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And what they find through their preliminary analysis is that the tax provisions would increase long run GDP by 0.6%, which is a solid increase in GDP and national growth. It would reduce federal tax revenue by $4.1 trillion over the course of the next decade. Again, what does that mean?

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Oh, my gosh. She will not yield to disrespectful men. This is the kind of stuff that earns you street cred inside the Democratic Party. And still she persisted. We saw this routine with Kamala Harris. We saw this routine with Elizabeth Warren. And now AOC is trying to play this card as well. Stephen A. Smith, for his part, he's saying, here's the problem.

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AOC, even if she were to get to a general election, is going to have a problem in that general election.

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So, again, I think he's right. But will Democrats be able to escape that? Going to be difficult to see how Democrats escape the AOC juggernaut that is coming. Meanwhile, amidst all of this economic uncertainty, one consistent winner has been gold. I've talked about this before. Obviously, Birch Gold is one of our big sponsors here at the Ben Shapiro Show.

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I, full disclosure, personally invest with Birch Gold. Philip Patrick is a precious metals specialist and spokesman for Birch Gold Group. He joins us right now to discuss the status of the American dollar and where we are. Philip, thanks for taking the time.

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So let's talk about the status of the dollar right now. There's been a significant amount of de-dollarization over the course of the last couple of months, but it's been going on for years at a time. First of all, why don't we talk about what that means? Why is the global reserve status for American currency important?

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It means the federal government will take in less money than it would have if it left the top tax rates at a higher rate. So you're increasing growth, but you're decreasing the revenue to the government, the amount of money that the government steals from the taxpayers. On a dynamic basis, the revenue reduction would fall by 19% to $3.3 trillion over 10 years before the added interest costs.

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Okay, so let's talk about the status of the dollar, given the fact that there's a lot of economic uncertainty. We've been hearing rumors about an upcoming meeting of the so-called BRICS nations. That'd be Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. They're meeting in Rio de Janeiro this summer. What is the goal?

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So given the fact that there are all these nations aligning against the American dollar, that obviously means that that you would expect that gold will be more in demand. I mean, there's an attempt by all these nations to find some sort of new global reserve. The Russian currency is not strong enough to withstand that. Neither is the Chinese currency. All these are subject to manipulation.

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And so you're seeing people rush for various safe havens. Gold obviously historically has been one of the big safe havens, maybe the key safe haven.

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So they're saying that basically that $4.1 trillion that you're missing, that's assuming a static level of economic growth. If you include the economic growth, then you end up with more revenue back to the government, but you're still going to end up with, in addition to the deficit, of some $3.3 trillion.

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All right. Well, that is Philip Patrick, precious metal specialist and spokesman for Birch Gold Group. As you say, they're a sponsor on the show. If you wish to check them out and get involved, then you should actually check out Birch Gold Group and text my name, Ben, to 989898 to get started today. Philip, thanks so much for the time.

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All right. Coming up, we're going to be reviewing the brand new Superman trailer plus Dove is in trouble because they are now Dylan Mulvaney-ing themselves. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapira. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Overall, the bill would prevent tax increases on 62% of taxpayers that would occur if the Trump tax cuts were to expire. But there are other provisions that are being eliminated, like, for example, bonus depreciation and research and development expensing. So in some ways, this is a significantly more populist tax cut bill than the Trump tax cut bill the first time around.

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Celebrity guests who agree to come on then immediately regret that decision. Tomorrow, I ask Ambassador Mike Huckabee the question that's been keeping me up at night. Does he know who the latest WrestleMania champion is? Producer Savvy introduces me to internet talent that made me question America's future.

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This is why, for example, there's no tax on tips included, but they're getting rid of bonus depreciation. The House passed budget resolution would allow a $4.5 trillion increase in the deficit from tax cuts over the next decade, so long as spending is also cut by $1.7 trillion.

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But if they don't cut the spending, if that spending never materializes, then the cap on the tax cuts gets reduced dollar for dollar. So the question is where those cuts come from. This is where most of the controversy is occurring, not with regard to the tax rates per se, but with regard to the cuts. Where are the cuts occurring to offset some of the loss in revenue to the federal government?

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And the answer is in restructuring of Medicaid particularly. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, free online services like Google actually charge you. They use your personal data. They track your behavior. They sell this information to advertisers. When something is free, you're not the customer. You are now the product being sold.

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Your digital self is traded to unknown entities who might want to sell you products, influence your political views, or even manipulate your vote. To reclaim your privacy and protect yourself online, you should use ExpressVPN. Without a VPN, your internet provider can legally track and sell your browsing data in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, data brokers collect your information across websites and apps, creating detailed profiles of you through your IP address. ExpressVPN solves this by routing all your activity through encrypted servers, preventing your ISP from seeing or selling your data while also hiding your IP address so brokers can no longer track you.

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Whenever I'm traveling, I've got ExpressVPN on because if I'm on public Wi-Fi, that means that somebody could be hacking me or grabbing my info. It's incredibly simple to use. Just one tap for protection. It works on all your devices with a single subscription covering up to eight devices.

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You don't need technical expertise to use it, though tech reviewers at CNET and The Verge do rate it as the number one VPN worldwide. I partnered with ExpressVPN because I want all my viewers to have access to this important privacy protection. That's why right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you go to expressvpn.com slash ben.

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben to get an extra four months totally free. Also, not everybody who handles your personal info is going to be careful the way that you are. It only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's LifeLock.

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LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US-based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed, or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the Million Dollar Protection Package, meaning...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft. You cannot control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with LifeLock, you can help protect it. And identity theft is quite terrible. Producer Jess left the office, which means that the rest of the team is fighting over who gets to work with LifeLock right now. Act now.

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And of course, a new Ben destroys because someone did something so weird, I needed a segment just to process it. It's weird. It's wild. It's everything late night TV would be if it had a smaller audience and no legal department. Then after dark tomorrow night, only at DailyWirePlus.com. We will regret it. You won't. All righty, folks.

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Save up to 40% your very first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK. Use promo code Ben. Or go to lifelock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply. Go check them out right now. 1-800-LIFELOCK. Act now. Save up to 40% your very first year. So Medicaid has been a massive income suck for the United States for an extraordinarily long time.

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It has basically become a massive welfare program, including for many people who don't want to work.

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So Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner, that'd be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Administrator for CMMS, right, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, they have an editorial in the New York Times talking about what exactly is going to happen to Medicaid.

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And the point they make is that there are a lot of people who are on Medicaid. Again, Medicare is for the elderly and Medicaid is for people who are too poor. Basically, they're very poor. And so they require government assistance on the federal level. That's what Medicaid is for. Again, the United States, the idea of the United States is somehow mean to the poor is ridiculous.

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The United States has the most progressive tax system on planet Earth, meaning that the differential between what the top tax brackets pay and what the people at the bottom pay is the widest of virtually any OECD country. The United States also has massively generous welfare benefits.

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Whenever you see the so-called income gap in the United States, that is always ignoring the welfare benefits that go to people in the bottom half of income earners. Because when you include that, a lot of the income gap actually erodes pretty quickly. In any case,

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These administrators and secretaries over at the Trump administration point out welfare programs have now deviated from their original mission, both by drift and by design. Millions of able-bodied adults have been added to the roles in the past decade, primarily as a result of Medicaid expansion.

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Many of these recipients are working age individuals without children who might remain on welfare for years. Some of them do not work at all, or they work inconsistently throughout the year. The increased share of welfare spending dedicated to able-bodied working age adults distracts from what should be the focus of these programs that truly needy. This should not be the American way of welfare.

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As leaders of the agencies, they say that oversee the largest welfare programs in the nation, SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, and Federal Housing Assistance, among others. We see the data, hear the stories, and understand that these programs are failing to deliver results. For able-bodied adults, welfare should be a short-term hand-up, not a lifetime hand-out.

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So President Trump's economic success rests on the passage of his one big, beautiful bill. We've been talking about this for months and the timeline on the big, beautiful bill is still somewhat in doubt because obviously it has to pass through the House and then a version has to pass through the Senate. And then there's going to be reconciliation between the House bill and the Senate bill.

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But too many able-bodied adults on welfare are not working at all, and too often we don't even ask them to. A recent analysis from an economist at the American Enterprise Institute examined survey data from December 2022, that's the most recent month available, and found that only 44% of able-bodied working-age Medicaid beneficiaries without dependents worked at least 80 hours in that month.

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That's an insane statistic. So only four in 10 Medicaid recipients who are, in fact, able-bodied and working age were working at least 80 hours a month. 80 hours, by the way, if you just do the math right there, 80 hours would be 20 hours a week, i.e. five hours a day. And only four out of 10 Medicaid recipients were working five hours a day.

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That is not because of lack of job opportunity, by the way, folks. We still have more job openings in the United States than people applying for those jobs. establishing universal work requirements for able-bodied adults across the welfare programs we manage, they say, will prioritize the vulnerable, empower able-bodied individuals, help rebuild thriving communities, and protect the taxpayers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And they point to the Clinton welfare reform as a model for this sort of stuff. They say it's true a work requirement protects taxpayer dollars as it provides income to the worker and lessens dependence on government funding. But it's not just about money. Work provides purpose and dignity. In other words, get off your butt and work. Now, the counter perspective is being provided by Josh Hawley.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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As I say, there is a debate inside the Republican Party between people who sort of side with Democrats like we'll never cut any welfare spending ever, ever, forever because the American people don't like it. and people who say, we need to restructure some of this or we're going to hit the fiscal cliff sooner than humanly possible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And then there are sort of true believers in the Republican caucus, the people who believe that the federal government has no role in virtually any of this. And that would be people like, for example, presumably Chip Roy in Texas or Rand Paul in the Senate in Kentucky. Josh Hawley is on the populist side.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And in a piece indistinguishable from that of any Democrat, he wrote in the New York Times just a couple of days ago, don't cut Medicaid. And he says, polls show Democrats down in the dumps at their lowest approval level in decades, but we Republicans are having an identity crisis of our own. You can see it in the tug of war over President Trump's one big, beautiful bill.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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Will Republicans be a majority party of working people or a permanent minority speaking only for the C-suite? So the question I have for Josh Hawley is, if to be the party of the working people means that you are supposed to basically allow tax increases and broader welfare spending, how does that distinguish you from the Democratic Party across the aisle?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And if you're going to get into a battle of who spends more on blue collar people in terms of other people's money, Democrats are always going to win that race because they have no principles at all that hold them off from just continuing to expand benefits. Howley says Mr. Trump has promised working class tax cuts and protection for working class social insurance like Medicaid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans call it the party's Wall Street wing is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance. Again, this sounds exactly like what Elizabeth Warren might write.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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And so whatever you see in the House bill might not end up in the final bill. However, massive controversy already breaking out in the House over where the cuts are going to come from. Many House Republicans are calling for cuts that are going to make up for the loss in revenue to the federal government that occurs when taxes are not increased.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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So again, he suggests that we should give more child tax credits, which again, a child tax credit should be for people who pay taxes. Right now, child tax credits go to people who do not pay taxes, which means it is just a handout, basically. If you want to do a handout, by the way, a handout that actually works, there is a proposal in this bill that's quite great called Invest America.

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Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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That proposal basically says the federal government for every child who is born, that child gets a savings account with the federal government. that is essentially invested in the S&P 500. And then it's just left there. Right.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

Well, folks, as always, there's a lot happening in the news. The Democrats are now threatening a government shutdown. No one really knows why. Pete Buttigieg apparently wants to run for president. A lot happening. But you don't just watch The Daily Wire. You are The Daily Wire. Put your money where your values are. Join All Access.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, so again, he was having a good time over at the White House. However, he then got into commentary on tariffs. I was at the gym yesterday watching President Trump talk about tariffs. And I watched in real time as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as he talked. When he talks about tariffs and he discusses trade barriers, the markets start to freak out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Because at the very least, it means more volatility. We don't know what's happening next. I'm not saying this because I wish to criticize President Trump. I'm saying this because I wish President Trump to succeed. If you look at the chart of President Trump's first term, what you see is the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a straight arithmetic increase line up, up and to the right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And so far in his term, the line has been down. And that is not exactly what you are looking for. Well, President Trump is upping the ante by now saying that he wants to increase tariffs on the EU. Now, again, if the goal of all of this is to get the EU to lower its own tariffs against the United States, I'm for it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Only 39% approve of President Trump's tariffs. And in terms of helping the middle class, only 43% approve. These are bad numbers for President Trump in this polling. Now, again, that doesn't mean that if the economy picks up or continues to truck along, that President Trump can't heal all of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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If the goal is to leverage some other deliverable from other countries, if the goal is to protect national security, I'm for it. If this is just because tariffs are fun and games or because President Trump has been talked into the idea that trade wars are both good and easy to win, that is not good economic policy. It just isn't. Right now, inflation is cooling, actually. That is good news.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It should be good news for the Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, inflation actually cooled last month. Consumer prices were up 2.8% in February from a year earlier. Now, again, remember, that is still an increase in inflation. You're looking generally for a 2% year-on-year increase.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It is a decrease in the rate of inflation, but it is actually an increase in the actual inflation of the cost. There was a January gain of 3%, so it's moving in sort of the right direction. Prices excluding food and energy rose 3.1%. That was the lowest year-over-year reading since 2021, and it was lower than 3.2% expected by economists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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But all of the sort of uncertainty that is being injected into the process by President Trump is not helping matters. And tax cuts, deregulation, consistent policy, these are the things that make for a strong, healthy, and growing economy. And yet this morning, President Trump threatened a 200% tariff on alcohol from the EU.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He said the EU, this is on Truth Social, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% tariff on whiskey. That, of course, was a retaliatory tariff put in place by the Europeans after the United States put tariffs on other European products.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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If this tariff is not removed immediately, the US will shortly place a 200% tariff on all wines, champagnes, and alcoholic products coming out of France and other EU-represented countries. This will be great for the wine and champagne businesses in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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I mean, it's not great for the wine and champagne consumers in the United States, but he is correct that when you institute taxes on American competitors, it tends to be good for the businesses in those particular areas. Here's President Trump ripping on the EU yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, well, I mean, one of the reasons that Ireland has been drawing American businesses is because they lowered the corporate tax rate, which is something we should do in the United States. Ireland never signed on to the idiotic Joe Biden worldwide global corporate tax rate that he was proposing at 15%. Ireland just went right under it at like 10% and drove a bunch of businesses to reshore.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It just means that because of all the volatility that's been injected into the economy, because of all the talk about tariffs, which, again, I don't really see the purpose of. I want President Trump to succeed in effectuating his agenda. And if that agenda gets thwarted by Democrats, an economic downturn, that would be a very large scale mistake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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That's something the United States could do. If we are the best place in the world to do business, businesses will come here. It is that simple. That is why the United States historically has been such an unbelievable powerhouse in terms of foreign investment, in terms of economic growth. That's why the dollar is the world's reserve currency and all the rest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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President Trump, when he said that the EU was set up to take advantage of the United States, that's not true. The European economic community was actually mostly set up in opposition to the communist bloc in Eastern Europe. It was meant to create a robust trading and free trade infrastructure inside Western Europe to combat the influence of communists from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And the real question in all of this is what is President Trump intending to do? If President Trump wants to explain what the goal is and how long it's going to take and how we get there, that would be a welcome development for everyone who invests. And again, I'm a person who invests, right? I have a lot of money in the stock market, in real estate, in various different investment vehicles.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And as an investor, I'm looking for certainty. I'm looking for reliability. I am not unique in this respect. The markets are speaking as a sort of aggregated knowledge of pretty much everybody who has money in the markets. Now, President Trump is relying on some advisors like Peter Navarro.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Peter Navarro has always been a sort of trade hawk who has sought higher tariffs as a form of actual positive policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Again, his mouth to God's ears. That's what we're all rooting for. But the tariff policy is, in fact, a wrench in the plans of the Trump administration. Caroline Lovett, whose job it is to defend the president's policies, obviously, from the White House podium, she says that President Trump is going to continue to use tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, so, again, the kind of notion that we actually need to protect as a sort of matter of national security, the domestic American steel industry, their problems with that basic idea. So I thought this would be an excellent time to ask our sponsors over at Perplexity, quote, what percentage of total US steel production goes to US military consumption? In other words, US military consumes steel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Well, that's an opening for Democrats, a clear and obvious opening for Democrats. And yet Democrats are not only not going to take advantage of the opening, they're going to shoot themselves directly in the head, which I got to say. I, as a Republican, approve. I'm just not sure what you are doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Of the total US steel production, how much of that steel is consumed by the US military? Because if we're kind of even, you would imagine, okay, fine, we need to subsidize US steel production. We need to protect US steel production. If let's say, that 70% of all U.S. steel was consumed by the military, you'd be like, yeah, we really need to protect that. As it turns out, that is not the number.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Quote, according to recent data, the percentage of total U.S. steel production that goes to U.S. military consumption is relatively small. The American Iron and Steel Institute reported that in 2020, military applications represented approximately 3% of annual domestic steel production.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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However, some sources suggest that the actual figure may be even lower, with the Pentagon historically purchasing significantly less than 1% of the U.S. steel industry's output.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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So yeah, in other words, the idea that you need like massive steel tariffs to protect the American steel industry so that our military has access to the materials it needs, that doesn't line up with the factual reality here. The predictable effect of all of this is that the EU is going to unleash new tariffs. Canada is unleashing new tariffs as well.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Get everything, every article, every show, every documentary, every film 100% uncensored and ad-free. That's not all. As an All Access member, you're not just watching, you become part of the conversation. You can live chat with me,

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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According to the Washington Post, both the EU and Canada hit back Wednesday at President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs with levies of their own on billions of dollars worth of US products, including bourbon and motorcycles, warning of further retaliation as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Apparently, the European Commission, which is the executive branch of the EU, according to the Washington Post, said it will reimpose tariffs dating to Trump's first term on April 1st. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said we deeply regret this measure. Jobs are at stake. Price is up. Nobody needs that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And by the way, if you're trying to face down Chinese predation and Chinese growth, actually pushing away countries that are then going to turn to China for more of their product and to Chinese markets, that's not the way to do this on sort of a national security basis. Folks, none of this is a great way to face down Chinese growth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The fact is that China is a geopolitical enemy of the United States. They do everything. from cheating on trade to stealing our IP to maybe threatening your identity. Tax season is upon us. While we may be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention. $16.5 billion in IRS refunds flagged for potential identity fraud last year.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Identity theft tax fraud surged by an alarming 20% in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Americans. But there is hope in these numbers as well. LifeLock vigilantly monitors 100 million data points every second, creating a shield around your financial identity when it matters most. Their sophisticated systems work tirelessly to protect your personal information.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The reason I say this is because Republicans were able to, through the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and no thanks to Thomas Massey, pass a continuing resolution that will fund the government until about September.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Should the worst happen, their dedicated U.S.-based restoration specialist will make it right, backed by their comprehensive million-dollar protection package. They don't just promise help. They guarantee restoration or your money back, no questions asked. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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She's emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing their experts are always monitoring her sensitive information for suspicious activity. We'll be right back. Let's talk about that car you own. You know, the one you're not using, the one that's rusting in the front yard, the one you're paying to keep registered and insured. It's taking up space on the driveway. It's just sitting there.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It's not doing anybody any good. Well, here's what you should do about that car. You should give Cars for Kids a call and have them take care of it for you. That's right. Just give them the info. They'll come to you as soon as the next day. Take that car right off your hands at no cost to you. Even better, they'll turn that car into funds to help kids. So visit carsforkids.org slash Ben.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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That's K-A-R-S with a K. And then the number four, to donate, call K-A-R-S for Kids directly. Cars for Kids directly at 1-877-CARS4KIDS. They will get that car picked up for you. Plus, you get a tax deduction and vacation voucher. Who doesn't want those things this time of year? They've been around for 30 years. They've done this over a million times.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Call now or head on over to carsforkids.org to help fund kids' futures today. That's carsforkids.org. Remember, that's cars with a K. Again, that's carsforkids.org. And you're not doing anything else with that junky old vehicle. You may as well give it to your friends over at Cars for Kids. Go check them out right now. Carsforkids.org.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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That's cars with a K. Meanwhile, Canada is turning toward the left, not toward the right. And if you want parties who are more right-wing elected in allied countries, then perhaps what you ought to do is not provide fodder to the opponents of those allies in those countries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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That gives the Republicans plenty of time to negotiate a budget deal amongst themselves, come up with the one big, beautiful bill that they need to pass, and get that done without the government simply falling apart. So that's why the government shutdown was averted by the Republicans in the House. So now it gets passed on to the Senate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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If Pierre Pelliev becomes not the prime minister of Canada because of President Trump's tariffs, that is not going to be a good thing Meanwhile, the Canadians are injecting their own brand of uncertainty into the markets because they're saying to everybody else, listen, if President Trump is coming after us, who the hell won't he come after?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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We have like a free trade agreement that we signed with President Trump that he negotiated in his first term and he's still coming after us. According to Politico, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly plans to welcome her G7 counterparts to Quebec with a warning, quote, if the U.S. can do this to us, their closest friend, then nobody is safe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Jolie told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday she plans to raise the issue with European and British members, advising them Canada is the canary in the coal mine. Speaking to reporters from Ireland on Wednesday, Secretary of State Rubio said that there will be a lot to talk about at the G7 meeting. Quote, it is not a meeting about how we're going to take over Canada.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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But again, the more that the Trump administration makes that joke, because we're not taking over Canada, the more the Trump administration makes that joke, the more the Canadians, particularly on the left, respond as though he is serious. Here is the Canadian Minister of Finance, Dominique LeBlanc, who says precisely that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Again, this sort of thing, what's the impact? Why is it smart? Why is it smart? Stop this. What is the goal? What is the goal? At least articulate the goal. I don't want President Trump's numbers going down. He's doing too many important things right now. Here's CNN reporting on President Trump's numbers on the economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And in the Senate, obviously, the Republicans also have a majority. In fact, they have a 53-seat majority. Rand Paul has said he's going to vote against the continuing resolution. But there are still 52 votes left. Even if it got down to 50 votes, Shady Vance would then break the tie in favor of the continuing resolution.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Now, as I say, there are too many important things that President Trump has to do in the next two years to get caught up in this particular battle to no great upswing in the economy or really in long-term manufacturing in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And the reality is that unless you have a robust tariff regime for a very long period of time that is specifically designed to increase prices on American consumers, you are not going to get a vast number of manufacturing jobs back into the United States. And even if you do, companies are going to start trying to drive down prices through automation. So. What is the goal?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Again, that's the question we should all be asking ourselves. I hope the Trump administration is asking itself that. What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? Because there are too many other important things and there's too many good things happening. So President Trump yesterday cut half the staff at the Department of Education. That's great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And here he was explaining that the goal is to move all of that power back to the states, which is precisely what he should be doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Yes, that is correct. That is good. If every president's agenda is tied to kind of the low point of the agenda, this is true for every president, whatever is the worst thing in the agenda tends to define the entire agenda. Then what you want to do is avoid the boo-boo. This is a good thing. It's a necessary thing. Cuts to the DOE are undoubtedly an excellent thing.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Not only that, other good things are happening too. Yesterday, according to Breitbart, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he would move to clear the hundreds of backlogged cases to clean air, saying the Biden administration focused on ideological pursuits rather than the agency's core mission.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The agency said it would commit to working with states and tribes to resolve hundreds of backlogged state implementation plans and tribal implementation plans the Biden-Harris administration could not or would not resolve.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The EPA administrator wrote, quote, with more than 140 million Americans living in non-attainment areas around the country, cooperative federalism and clearing out the state implementation plan backlog will make significant strides to improving the air we breathe. Now, again, one of the goals here is to also free up industry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review and approve all of the so-called SIPs that meet the requirements of the law. But many states have raised concerns about being punished for emissions outside the control of their state and air quality monitors not being placed in the most logistical areas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The EPA says that it's going to make sure that air quality is protected, but also they're going to generate more economic growth by getting rid of stupid regulations and stupid regulatory overreach. Zeldin said the EPA is going to aggressively pursue an agenda powering the great American comeback. That is our agenda we wanted to announce with you.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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So if you're a Democrat at this point, you're looking at the state of the economy, which is somewhat dicey. It appears to be, again, volatile. You can't predict the future there. And that is really the only tool you have to attack President Trump. And what you don't want to do is get into the business of owning the economy if you're the Democrats. Why would you want to own that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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EPA wants to help power the great American comeback. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be focused on. Like, let's focus on those things. Meanwhile, it's funny. If you go back to that CNN poll, what you will see is that when it comes to handling the federal budget, President Trump's highest approval ratings are in that particular area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He's got immigration at 51%, handling the federal budget at something like 48%. And that's due to Elon Musk. Elon Musk is out there doing Doge. And the media are still fulminating over all of this, complaining about Elon Musk. The reality is that President Trump has handled this whole situation with aplomb. He's handled it quite brilliantly, actually.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Allowing Elon Musk to be the face of Doge means that Elon takes all the incoming. Elon is not an elected official. Elon is the richest person in the world. Elon owns X. So Elon can take it. It's not just an Elon condition. Elon can take it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Meanwhile, President Trump can sit over here and just reap the benefits of having a very, very famous person be the focus of the ire of his opposition while the good effects are actually accruing to his administration. Meanwhile, the media don't know how to handle it. Dana Bash on CNN had maybe the funniest line yesterday. She was talking about big balls again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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This would be one of the young Elon Musk staffers who's going through the federal government. And she started talking about apparently how Elon Musk likes when she says balls on TV. I don't even know what's happening now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Yeah, boy. Okay. Great, great things happening over at CNN. And the complaints by people like Rashida Tlaib about how Elon Musk is being funded by the government, they just don't ring true. So Rashida Tlaib was out there screaming yesterday about how billionaires are being funded and Medicaid is being cut. Medicaid is not being cut. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Oh, man. These are the best the Democrats have to offer. Again, credit to John Fetterman for being the only sane person in the building. He was on MSNBC. And MSNBC was suggesting once again that the Republicans were in league with the oligarchs. And Fetterman's like, come on, man, really?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Again, leave it to the man with brain damage to be the only intelligent person inside the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, other important things being done by the Trump administration. Yes, we should be deporting Hamas next. I don't even know why this is controversial. If you are a supporter of Hamas here on a visa, here on a green card, you should go. We don't need more of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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If Republicans had followed down on the job and been unable to pass a continuing resolution, you could have blamed Republicans for the shutdown. This was the Democratic plan in the House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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I'm confused as to why this is even an issue. Again, we're not talking about American citizens who are participating in speech we don't like. We are talking about people who are here as guests of the United States or trying to earn their way into citizenship.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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This notion that they magically ought to be treated exactly the same as natural born American citizens or people who have already earned their citizenship is like, if that's the case, then why do we even have immigration standards at all? Maybe we just shouldn't. Maybe being a terrorist supporter should just not be on your immigration application. This is all absurd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Marco Rubio had the best response to this yesterday. Secretary of State Rubio has invoked his power as the Secretary of State to say that this guy is a foreign policy threat. He's a member of a group that actively called for armed uprising against Western civilization. Here is Secretary of State Rubio yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It's the reason why, for example, Hakeem Jeffries instructed Democrats not to vote in favor of the so-called clean CR, the clean continuing resolution, which is just a maintenance of funding at current levels all the way through September. So Democrats, except for one, did not participate in the CR.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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This seems inarguable, and yet Democrats are somehow finding a way to argue with all of this. The lawyer for Mahmoud Khalil read a letter from Mahmoud Khalil's wife yesterday suggesting he had been kidnapped. Oh, the irony.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Oh, the irony of a man who cheers for actual kidnappings by a terrorist group claiming he has been kidnapped because the legal process is now kicking him out of the country for being a supporter of that terror group.

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I'm sorry. The family of Idan Alexander, the American citizen being held in Gaza by Hamas, would like to have a word. I've yet to see the Democrats tweeting out free Idan Alexander, an actual American citizen being held by an actual honest to God terror group, kidnapped into Gaza. And yet here we have this lawyer for the wife reading a letter in which she claims that he was kidnapped. Nope.

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That's called the legal process taking place. Right now, Khalil is being held in Louisiana pending deportation. The U.S. District Court judge, a guy named Jesse Furman, who is heavily associated, shall we say, with family members of the left, his family members worked for the Obama administration, set a schedule on Wednesday for the lawyers to present written arguments later this week.

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But now the Democrats seem to want to actively kill the CR and push America into a government shutdown that they clearly will own. That's the part that makes no sense politically speaking.

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He said his order to keep Khalil in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana Those do not to the merits of any arguments, but to provide time to address the important issues his case raises. It's unclear where the case is going to be held. We have heard he has a green card. It is not totally clear whether that is true or not. We'll assume that he does for the sake of argument.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Again, the real question in all this is how this guy got in the country in the first place. Who is actually analyzing the student visas? Who decided that America desperately needs someone who worked for the UNRWA? in the United States to study at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, where apparently his only job was to agitate on behalf of Hamas. Amazing stuff.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Meanwhile, Democrats embracing him full scale. A person who may, in fact, become the next mayor of New York. This person apparently is running second in polls to Andrew Cuomo right now. A person named Zoran Kwame Mamdani went to a... An event yesterday at which Borders are Tom Homan was. And he started trying to yell at Tom Homan. So first of all, I do like the hold me back element of this.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Hold me back. If he got within an arm's length of Tom Homan, Tom Homan would eviscerate him. Tom Homan is one of the scariest people I've ever been in a room with. We were in a room with him last week. And he is simultaneously one of the nicest people and one of the scariest people you will ever meet.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Here is Zoran confronting the Trump Borders are over his immigration policy, including the policy surrounding Mahmoud Khalil. Yeah, hold them back. Hold them back. Okay, if Democrats want to do this, I guess they can do this all day long. Meanwhile, negotiations continue over the possibility of Ukraine-Russia ceasefire.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threw a wrench into a Republican plan to avert a government shutdown this weekend, saying there was not enough Democratic support to advance the measure funding federal agencies through September 30th. Now, you're saying to yourself, hold up, don't Republicans actually have a majority in the Senate? Yes, they do.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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As noted yesterday, the Ukrainians have embraced the idea of a 30-day ceasefire without preconditions at this point. They're hoping to negotiate for the return of their children, their actual kidnapped children. Kids have been kidnapped from Donbass and Crimea and sent back into Russia and placed with families who are not their own. Actually, I mean, it's horrific.

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Caroline Leavitt at the White House said, we hope that the Russians will accept this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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and all the other Daily Wire hosts during our weekly exclusive all-access live events, debate with our writers, connect with the community that actually thinks for itself. Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Okay, so you thought Democrats couldn't possibly get any dumber, and yet somehow they have managed to achieve this signal feat.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying the same intelligence sharing has continued with the Ukrainians. It should, because one of the things that's happening right now is that the Russians are pushing very aggressively back against Ukrainian gains in Kursk, which is a Russian area. The reason the Ukrainians are trying to hold that is for purposes of negotiation.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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They want to say you withdraw from here and we'll withdraw from there. The Russians are taking this time to really up the ante. Here's Secretary of State Rubio saying, listen, the Ukrainians are at the table. We await Russia's response.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, so the question now is whether Russia is going to take the United States up on this offer. It appears the answer for now is not even remotely. According to the Financial Times, quote, Russia does not want a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine and is pushing for a long-term peace settlement that will take into account its interests and concerns, according to a senior aide to Vladimir Putin.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Yuri Ushakov, the president's foreign policy advisor in Russia, told state television on Thursday the 30-day ceasefire proposed after talks between the U.S. and Ukraine this week, quote, was nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian troops. Nobody needs steps that imitate peaceful actions in this situation, said Ushakov, adding Moscow hopes the U.S.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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knows our position and wants to believe they will take it into account as we work together going forward. That is Putin taking an extremely hard line prior to the arrival of Steve Witkoff, the president's envoy, who's arriving today in Moscow. The demands that are being made right now are crazy from the Russians. I mean, they're just not doable.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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But in order to overcome a filibuster, in order to invoke cloture, you need 60 votes. Now, Democrats could simply not filibuster. They could just say, fine, listen, you want to vote for the CR, vote for the CR. Instead, Democrats are now actively considering filibustering a clean continuing resolution. which, again, makes no sense. Most Americans are just saying, leave us alone.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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According to a document written in February by an influential Moscow-based think tank close to the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, which is sort of the modern KGB, lays out Russia's maximalist demands for any end to the conflict in Ukraine.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It dismisses any preliminary plans for a peace deal within 100 days as impossible to realize and says a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis cannot happen before 2026. That's them attempting to get Trump to pressure Ukraine. That's what they're doing. They're saying they know the midterms are coming up. They know Trump has pledged an end to the war.

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And so they feel that they have the negotiating leverage. The document rejects any plan for any peacekeepers to Ukraine. It insists on recognition of Russia's sovereignty over the Ukrainian territories. It is already seized.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It calls for a further carve-up through the creation of a buffer zone in Ukraine's northeast on the border with Russian regions such as Bryansk and Belgorod, as well as a demilitarized zone in southern Ukraine near Crimea. That latter would affect the Odessa region. So in other words, they actually want more territory than they have actually won on the battlefield.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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In addition, the document discusses the need for the complete dismantling of the current Ukrainian government. So this is a non-starter, obviously. This is a non-starter from the Russians. So if it's a non-starter from the Russians, the administration is going to have to bring the hammer. President Trump suggested that that is very much on the table yesterday. Here he was.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, well, whether we want to see peace or not, Russia may not want to see peace. And if that's not the case, then it's going to be very difficult to reach anything like a deal. Well, folks, as always, it's been a busy week at the White House. And our Daily Wire White House correspondent, Mary Margaret Olihan, is on point to cover all of it. Mary Margaret, welcome back to the show.

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So a lot going on this week at the White House. You were able to ask a question this week about the situation in Ukraine. What did you ask? What was the answer?

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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So Mary Margaret, obviously a lot of eyes on Russia and Ukraine. Russia today apparently suggested that they were not going to sign on to any temporary ceasefire, that instead they were going to seek some sort of permanent settlement. Of course, the terms of that permanent settlement are extraordinarily onerous on Ukraine. Very unlikely Ukraine accepts that.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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That's effectively what the CR does. It just kind of leaves things alone. If Democrats want to throw a wrench into that for no apparent reason, then they will own any government shutdown. And then if the economy turns south, then I guess they own it. They own a big chunk of that because a government shutdown is going to throw all sorts of scares into the market.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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So we'll have to see how all of that plays out. Meanwhile, the president of the United States hosted the president of Ireland in the Oval yesterday, and they got into a number of topics ranging from trade to his love for Conor McGregor. What was the mood in the room like?

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Mary Margaret, really appreciate your time. And she, again, is the person on the ground at the White House keeping an eye on things every single day. Mary Margaret, good to see you.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into controversy surrounding Meghan Markle. Yes, she's back. She won't leave. Can we deport her? And I understand she's an American citizen, but you know, maybe we can make a trade with the Brits or something. First, you have to be a member. Head on over to DW right now, and then you can access everything.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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You can get Morning Wire, Backstage Live, All Access, Am I Racist, What is a Woman, and all the rest. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Schumer said that Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to move the resolution. He indicated that his party was prepared to block it. And then he blamed Republicans saying they chose a partisan path. Well, I mean, it seems kind of partisan to use your 47 votes in the United States Senate to hold up 53 votes in the United States Senate simply because what?

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Your base is mad at you for not standing up to President Trump's agenda enough? So Schumer's alternative, believe it or not, is in fact a clean CR, but for a month. So instead of this clean continuing resolution that funds the government through September, instead he's proposing a 30-day clean continuing resolution, and then we can redo all of this in a month.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He, of course, is hoping the Republican coalition will fall apart in the meantime and that the economy will fall apart in the meantime during that month. If they got what they wanted, there'd be a month of continuing resolution. He's hoping the stock market crashes in that interim month, and then he won't be blamed no matter what happens. But what he's doing right now makes no political sense.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He is injecting Democrats into the middle of the most dicey proposition for the Trump administration. It's bizarre. It really is strange. As an analyst of politics, I don't understand any of the logic here. The first rule of politics is do not get in the way of your opponent making a mistake. Do not interrupt your enemy when your enemy is making a mistake.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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If the idea from the Democrats is the Republicans own every aspect of the economy, you then have to let the Republicans own the economy. If you inject yourself into that process in order to shut down the government, you now own what comes next. By the way, Republicans know this, which is why House Speaker Mike Johnson says the ball is in Schumer's court.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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On Fox News, he said that the New York Democrat court has a big decision to make. Is he going to cast a vote to keep the government open or is he going to be blamed for shutting it down? Republicans cast Schumer's remarks, according to the Wall Street Journal, as risky posturing.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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A Senate GOP aide said there was only one legislative vehicle available to the Senate that will keep the government open beyond Friday night, the House passed bill, and Democrats know that. Schumer's comments came apparently after Senate Democrats huddled for nearly two hours Wednesday behind closed doors. Apparently, many Democrats emerged grim-faced and laconic. Most did not want to talk.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The reason I say this is because right now, President Trump is having some trouble when it comes to the economy, obviously. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off significantly since he took office. There's a lot of concern about the possibility of recession in the near future in the United States, despite some pretty strong economic fundamentals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Some, including Senators Mark Warner and Mark Kelly, both senators from somewhat purple states. Warner is from Virginia. Kelly, of course, is from Arizona. So they wanted to vote on a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open for 30 days. Kelly said such a move would enable Congress to work on passing this year's appropriations bills on a bipartisan basis, right?

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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They're hoping that, again, only funding the CR for a short term would force the Republicans to basically negotiate with Democrats. But that is not what's going to happen here. The GOP is fully willing to allow Democrats to own a government shutdown because Schumer is going to have to own it. If you invoke a filibuster in order to own a government shutdown, you are a moron.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And what Chuck Schumer is doing here is really stupid and really quite bad. Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado said, quote, if we shut the government down in a funny way, you're giving the president even more power. So whether he keeps this part of government open, closes that part, how that money gets spent, he has absolute control, you know, like a king, which is true.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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During a government shutdown, the executive branch then gets to decide who is an essential worker. So they're playing right into Trump's hands. It's almost best case scenario for President Trump. Let's say that Chuck Schumer does the filibuster and the government shutdown occurs because Chuck Schumer did the filibuster.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Well, now President Trump has the unique capacity to determine who exactly is an essential worker under federal law, at which point, let Elon Musk in there with a chainsaw, man. Senator John Fetterman, apparently the last non-moron in the Democratic caucus, said he would back the GOP bill. He said, I refuse to burn the village down to claim to save it.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He said, imagine what would happen if you shut the government down. For how long? Who knows? That is correct. It is amazing that the Democrat, who apparently has brain damage from a stroke, is the only rational one inside the Democratic Party at this point. They have completely lost their minds. And this is partially due to a complete lack of leadership in the Democratic Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The Barack Obama-led Democratic Party is dead. Donald Trump killed it off. And there's no one there to replace it. And so now it's a battle between the Wokies, led by AOC and Jasmine Crockett. Some of the progressives, led by Bernie Sanders and maybe Pramila Jayapal, who cross paths with the Wokies all the time. And then the pseudo-moderates.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And I say pseudo-moderates because you have Gavin Newsom out wandering the landscape, having on Michael Savage in an attempt to pretend that he is, in fact, some sort of moderate himself. One of the pseudo-moderates is Pete Buttigieg. So this is kind of a hilarious story. Pete Buttigieg, you'll recall Pete Buttigieg. He was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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a place with a population of approximately 150,000. And then he was elevated into a presidential candidate because he likes dudes. That's really his only qualification. He ran for president on the basis of not being able to fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana. And then he lost, he overperformed, but he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And then he was elevated to secretary of transportation where he presided over Parts falling off of Boeing planes and trains derailing in East Palestine, Ohio. He was elevated to that position, not because he knew anything about transportation, but because in his own words, he liked trains. He had a romance for trains. He liked choo-choo trains.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And in the polling data, President Trump is actually moving the wrong way on the economy. According to a brand new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, the question is, how have Donald Trump's policies affected U.S. economic conditions? 51% say worsened conditions. 28% say improved conditions. 21% said have no effect. So that is not a great number for President Trump. 51%, again, say worsened conditions.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Well, now a man who was so useless that he left on paternity leave. Remember, paternity leave is usually because you are attempting to help your physically recovering wife. as recognized, Pete Buttigieg, is married to a man, which means that his non-physically ailing husband, he stayed home with for two months and no one even noticed because he was so useless.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Now he wants to run not for Senate, but for president. Now you say to yourself, wait a second, how do you run for Senate? Isn't he from Indiana? You just said he was the mayor of South Bend. Ah, yes, but you forget. He moved with husband Chasen Buttigieg to Michigan in 2022, and he has spent approximately 22 seconds in Michigan. Therefore, he was considering a Michigan Senate run.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Well, he announced today that he is not going to be running for Senate in Michigan, which, I mean, hell, I'm not running for Senate from New York. I mean, I have the same connections to New York that Pete Buttigieg has to Michigan. So he's not going to run for Michigan's open Senate seat. Instead, he is going to run a campaign for president in 2028. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Of course, of course he is. Why the hell not? Why not? Well, Pete Buttigieg is a bad bet, and so is debt, folks. Are you struggling with credit card bills, personal loans, or medical debt? It can feel like your money is working harder for your lenders than it is for you. It doesn't have to stay that way with PDS Debt. PDS Debt doesn't just manage your debt. They help you take back control.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Getting started is easy. Go to pdsdebt.com slash Ben. Complete your free debt assessment. See what options are available to you. Every day you wait, it's costing you money. Get started with your free debt analysis in just 30 seconds at pdsdebt.com. That's pdsdebt.com. Take back control today by visiting pdsdebt.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Also, even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it is coming. Fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you are saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, and Suno AII.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move on over to OCI for new U.S. customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for the special offer at oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's oracle.com slash Shapiro. Again, I've been using AI consistently all the time. My company is using AI, which is why we rely on Oracle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Go check them out right now, oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's oracle.com slash Shapiro. David Axelrod said, quote, Pete was an A-list recruit who would have been a formidable candidate for the Senate had he chosen to run, but had he won in 26, would almost certainly have taken him out of the conversation for 28. This certainly keeps that option open. Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah. Okay, fine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Pete Buttigieg, that's the one you choose? Or maybe Politico is pushing Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, who did such a spectacular job that Chicago is now one of the most sought-after places to live in America. That'd also be the guy who was chief of staff to Barack Obama, famous for leaving dead fish. I'm not kidding. That's when he was in Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He'd leave dead fish, apparently, and near his congressional colleagues to threaten them to vote in particular ways, like the Godfather. So now Rahm Emanuel is traipsing across the political landscape, seeking to gain support for a presidential run. According to Politico, Name the political podcast. Emanuel has likely been on it or will be shortly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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21% say have no effect. Well, if things start to get worse, that 21% is going to cave into the 51%. You're going to end up with three quarters of Americans who are going to blame President Trump if the economy goes south in all likelihood. Only 44% of Americans currently approve of how President Trump is handling the economy, inflation. In terms of helping the middle class, 43% approve.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He immediately snagged a CNN contract in a regular Washington Post column. No small accomplishment for a formal official at a moment of retrenchment for news organizations. He's also hitting the lecture circuit. Just as striking is to talk to anybody in high-level Democratic politics who knows Emanuel and hear how matter-of-fact they are about the inevitability of his candidacy.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Apparently, he's already road-testing the first outlines of a stump speech, or at least an issue, that he can make his own. He said, I'm done with the discussion of locker rooms. I'm done with the discussion of bathrooms. We better start having a conversation about the classroom.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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He said, we can lead a discussion and force the topic onto the agenda of this country that's worthy of having a debate about. So, okay, good luck. Good luck to Rahm Emanuel. So you're traipsing out, again, a guy who was last relevant in like 2010, maybe, Rahm Emanuel. and a guy who's mostly famous for being an absolutely horrible secretary of transportation, but is also gay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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You guys, you're doing great. You're absolutely doing great. Well, meanwhile, President Trump is having fun. Yesterday, he had in the awful president of Ireland, and he proceeded to have some fun with this. Here he was ripping Rosie O'Donnell for moving to Ireland. Rosie O'Donnell announced that she was moving to Ireland, which, you know, good luck to Ireland.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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It was hard for me to think that Ireland could get any worse in its politics, but Rosie O'Donnell will certainly help.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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Okay, so first of all, I think President Trump... This is like one of his longest standing feuds is Rosie O'Donnell. You remember Rosie O'Donnell from like the 2015 debates in which Megyn Kelly asked him about women bleeding from there wherever. And he said, I was only talking about Rosie O'Donnell. So, yeah, this is a very long standing feud that he has with Rosie O'Donnell.

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

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And I think it's fair to say that Trump won this feud. He's the president twice and Rosie O'Donnell is moving to Ireland. Meanwhile, Trump was also raving about the tattoos of Conor McGregor. So, listen, President Trump is living his best life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

Well, President Trump promised that when he entered office, he was going to look at the Russia-Ukraine situation and try to facilitate an actual end to the war. People have been watching this war very closely understand that Russia's original goal, which was to take Kyiv to completely ingest and then digest,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Okay, so again, one of the reasons not to cover Ukraine under Article 5 is presumably, let's say that Ukraine gets into another shooting conflict over Donbass or Crimea. That would now obligate all Article 5 members of NATO to actually get directly involved in the war. But he's saying we're still going to make the security guarantees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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There may even in fact be European troops on the ground to guarantee the peace. This always was the pragmatic solution. Always, always. And Trump's position had to be caricatured by the media as some sort of surrender to Putin. But... Again, common sense is the watchword. It is the byword. And Trump, by the way, his successes are happening on a daily basis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the intelligence chief, which is an amazing switch in the nature of the Directorate of National Intelligence. Remember, Tulsi Gabbard was actually put on a no-fly list at one point. She was targeted by the intelligence community because of her past contacts with Bashar Assad in Syria and her supposed past contacts with the Russians.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Gabbard, according to the Wall Street Journal, a combat veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, was confirmed by a vote of 52-48 in the GOP-controlled Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell, the former GOP leader, broke with his party to side with Democrats in voting no.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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McConnell, again, is continuing to make a sort of traditionally conservative case that anybody who is heterodox should not be confirmed. However, that is not going to cut a lot of ice because, again, Trump is the one who's in charge of his administration. The truth is most Republicans probably feel

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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the same way that Bill Cassidy, the senator, feels, which is Trump wants Gabbard, Trump gets Gabbard. I mean, that seems to be the going methodology in the Senate. And frankly, that seems right if you're talking about many of the top-level cabinet secretaries who are answerable directly to the president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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I'm not sure that that is directly right about many of the people who are being nominated for, say, undersecretary positions. There, the Senate is going to be able to kind of flex its muscle a little bit more in terms of a check and balance on the direction of those departments from underneath.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The reality was that barring some sort of massive war effort, much larger than anything that Ukraine was actually given, those areas were not going to be retaken by Ukraine. And so this conflict had settled into a stalemate for almost three years at this point because the original invasion took place at the end of February 2022.

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President Trump, in an Oval Office swearing in, called Gabbard, quote, an American of extraordinary courage and exceptional patriotism. He said she would have the responsibility of overseeing urgently needed reforms in the intelligence community. Again, the DNI is sort of a paper position. It's a position that sits on top of the CIA and the FBI and coordinates the two agencies.

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It was originally put into law as a way of breaking down the Chinese firewall that separates intelligence from CIA and FBI. That firewall had led to 9-11 because the CIA had information about the hijackers and it wasn't passing it along to the FBI because they were afraid that that would have compromised the FBI's domestic terrorism investigations and prevented prosecutions.

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The DNI was supposed to sit above both of those agencies and help coordinate the intelligence from both. That's essentially what Gabbard will be doing. But one of the things Gabbard presumably will be doing is also looking into and investigating many of the malfeasances by the FBI and the CIA over the course of the last 10, 15, 20 years.

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McConnell, in explaining his vote to the nation, should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the president receives are tainted by a director of national intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.

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But again, I seriously doubt that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be sitting there and just blacklining, redlining and blacking out portions of reports that don't meet with her political priors. That doesn't seem correct. Okay, so Gabbard has been confirmed. Meanwhile, over at Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy looks like he is ready to be confirmed.

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The Senate voted 53-47 to end debate on RFK Jr. 's nomination following public statements of support from some GOP senators who'd been on the fence about Trump's pick in the betting markets. It's like 99% that RFK Jr. ends up being confirmed. Kash Patel will also end up being confirmed as head of the FBI. So President Trump's selections for his cabinet, he's going to get his cabinet.

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Again, there are some other members of the cabinet who frankly, I think, are so far outside of what even what Trump would like to do that it is worthwhile talking about shooting them down. That would include Representative Lori Chavez de Remmer, former representative of Oregon, who has been extraordinarily anti-free markets, extraordinarily pro-unions.

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Putting her at the head of the Labor Department would be kind of a disaster. So I could see Republicans opposing her. But and they weren't going to, I think, waste their fire on Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel or on RFK Jr. And I think they are right not to do so. Now, the fact is, this administration is letting me sleep more comfortably at night.

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But it's not just, you know, the fact that Trump got elected and we now have a government worthy of its name. It's also that I have a better mattress. You know, I used to have this old mattress, the one that I got from the mattress store, and it would sag in the middle. And you're like, oh man, it's probably just as good as everything else. Wrong. Helix is better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You know that feeling when you wake up and your back is already complaining? Well, that was me more often than not. Don't get me started on how my old mattress turned into a heat trap at night. I mean, just terrible. Since switching over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on my busiest days and the craziest headlines. Here's what makes Helix different.

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They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match for you. And again, I've got that firm mattress that breathes at night, means I'm sleeping better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And for a very long time, the Biden administration had a conflicting strategy, a mutually exclusive strategy. On the one hand, the Biden administration suggested that they would continue to provide endless aid until, quote unquote, victory was achieved.

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Right now, Helix is offering an incredible President's Day sale. This exclusive offer for my listeners is better than you will find if you were just to visit their main website. Visit helixsleep.com slash men. Get 27% off site wide plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase and free bedding bundle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's two dream pillows, sheet set, and mattress protector with any lux or elite mattress order. That's helixsleep.com slash men for 27% off site wide plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase and free bedding bundle. Two dream pillows, sheet set, mattress protector with any lux or elite mattress order. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash men for this exclusive offer. Also,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You know what's really frustrating? Spending hours searching for the best car insurance rates. It's a waste of time. Some people will spend their entire weekend comparing quotes only to end up more confused than when they started. That's why you will be thrilled to discover Insurify, the insurance comparison site that revolutionizes how we shop for coverage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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They have dozens of top insurers competing for your business, and that means better rates for you. The best part? Everything happens online. No phone calls, no fees, absolutely no spam. In just 10 minutes, you can secure coverage from trusted insurance providers across the country. Your privacy matters at Insurify. They never sell your information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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With their decade of experience and excellent Trustpilot rating, you know you're in good hands. Get to Insurify.com, compare car insurance quotes in real time, and start saving today. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y.com, Insurify.com. Average potential savings based on initial quotes received by 183,234 customers seeking insurance through Insurify.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Actual savings may vary depending on state of residence, individual circumstances, coverage selections, and insurance provider. Savings results are not guaranteed. Go check them out right now, insurify.com. That's insurify.com. Meanwhile, controversy continues over the cuts that are being made to the federal government under the Trump-Musk revolution in government spending.

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What's amazing about this is, again, how many people on the left seem to think it's a winning argument to argue in favor of waste, fraud, and abuse. Poll data show that Americans do not like waste in government. The latest polling that I saw from Gallup about these broad issues shows 56% of Americans believe that a huge percentage of government spending is in fact waste and abuse.

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But they refused to either provide the necessary aid to achieve full scale victory or to define victory as something other than full scale victory. These were mutually exclusive tactics. If they were defining victory as Ukraine takes back Donbass and takes back Crimea, then you have to give Ukraine the weaponry necessary in order to accomplish that.

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In fact, according to the Gallup poll from this November, just after the election, 55% of Americans believe the government is doing too much. Only 41% believe the government needs to do more. When it comes to the waste of inherent in government, most Americans, in fact, the vast majority of Americans, want government made more efficient.

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Americans' views of the federal government, 26% positive, 58% negative, are second from the bottom of all 25 industries tested. The only industry that is less popular than the federal government is the pharmaceutical industry. A Pew Research poll in April showed that 56% of U.S. adults, this would be April 2024, agreed the government is almost always wasteful and inefficient.

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58% of Americans were dissatisfied with the size and power of the federal government. And so what Trump is doing here, and it's quite smart, is he's singling out bad, wasteful, abusive projects, and he's making those the tip of the spear in a broader attack on the size and scope of the federal government. And what's amazing is the Democrats are falling right into it.

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They're claiming there is no waste, fraud or abuse. So, for example, yesterday, a Democratic witness named Dylan Hitler Gaudet testified before Congress suggesting that he could not see widespread abuse or fraud in the government. He's the director of government affairs, an NGO called the Project on Government Oversight.

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which, again, is another one of these ridiculous left wing front groups funded by George Soros project on government oversight. But they don't do any government oversight. And apparently the government's doing an amazing job, according to Mr. Hedler Gaudet.

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Well, I mean, it's not a matter of bad people doing bad things with bad intent. Whether you intend to waste our money or whether you're just wasting our money is irrelevant to the taxpayer whose money is wasted. President Trump, for his part, again, this is going to be a popular case with the American people. He said, of course there's lots of fraud.

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Have you seen the size of our federal government?

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Anything less than that is going to lead to stalemate and loss. Or theoretically, you redefine victory to survival, meaning Russia already controlled Donbass and Crimea before the 2022 invasion.

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Now, what is different about what Trump is doing than what Republicans have historically done is that by unleashing Elon Musk, who's an outsider, and aiming at the technological systems that actually generate the payments by aiming at the actual machinery of government rather than sort of overall policy. And those are two separate things.

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When it comes to the bureaucracy, there's the overall policy, very, very difficult to shape the overall policy without touching the machinery. The machinery is the thing that keeps printing the money and sending the money, and it keeps going no matter what.

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And you can question the policy, but if you don't actually change the machinery underneath the hood of the car, you're just changing the paint of the car. And the machine continues to move in the same direction. The engine continues to churn. Trump, by unleashing Musk, was a systems guy, is looking into the technological systems of distribution. He's looking into the employment systems.

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He's actually looking under the hood of the car of the federal government. And it's ugly what he is finding. Joe Lonsdale, who's an expert at this, he's the founding partner of 8VC, which is a major venture capital firm, one of the founding partners of Palantir. He talked on CNBC about what is different that Elon is doing from historically what Republicans have done.

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all of Ukraine, turn it into a functioning part of the new Russian empire, that that failed. And that failed very early on in the war. But very quickly, the war then transmuted into something else.

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And so Russia's goal had already been defeated, at which point victory could have been achieved by any sort of rational stretch of the imagination simply by fending off further Russian territorial aggression.

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I mean, this is the point. And this is why everybody in Democrat land is so panicked. Because nobody's actually taken a look at the systems before. Republicans have pledged they're going to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. But Trump is just unleashing people into departments that he is the head of, right? He's the president. They all work under him.

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And he is saying, I want you to go and screw with the systems. If you have to break the system, break it. And then we'll fix the parts that we need to fix. But put sand in the gear, stop the machine, stop the machine dead. And that is what Elon has been doing. And it's now pervading throughout every branch of government.

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Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, who was a guest on our program just last week, he said, listen, I've been trying to identify waste, fraud and abuse with the help of Doge and we're finding it.

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And by that measure, the war should have come to an end a couple of years ago because basically the battle lines in Ukraine have been fairly solidified for two years, two and a half years at this point. Henry Kissinger, the late Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, among other titles, he had proposed that this off-ramp essentially be offered way back in May of 2022.

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Again, is this stuff going to be unpopular with Americans? I'm hard pressed to see precisely how. Mike Lalo, representative from New York, he was talking about USAID, which of course has had its funding dramatically slashed by Musk and by Doge. And he says, you want to talk about a waste of money. And here's an example of a waste of money by USAID.

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Well, again, he is right about all this. It's not going to be hard to find examples of bad spending. And that is a great way of approaching these issues. From a public relations perspective, it's a great way of approaching these issues because it puts Americans in mind of how much money is being wasted. Now, Democrats are trying to do the opposite.

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They're trying to find examples of things being cut that are just so devastating. That's every day in The New York Times. Somebody who's been deprived of their government paycheck. And oh, how sad. Somebody who's in Thailand who's been deprived of a medical appointment. because USAID is no longer paying for it. Oh, how sad.

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But the truth is, in a time when Americans feel that America has been overstretched, that our economy is basically stretched beyond its capacity, that we are paying too much money for everything, there's not a lot of sympathy for the Democrat position that we need endless largesse and waste of taxpayer money in order so that one government employee can get her retirement salary at a level that she wishes.

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That is not going to be a popular position. At the same time, And the Trump government is being very careful and meticulous, actually, in how they are presenting this publicly. One of the things that they are saying is when it comes to things that are really important government benefits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, we're not touching those things. Again, that's not something that I want.

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I, as a fiscal conservative, would love to see a restructuring of many of these gigantic entitlement programs, which are, in fact, the systemic drivers of our debt. However, when it comes to those programs, Trump is being very clear we're not touching those. Again, he's just going to say waste, fraud, and abuse. We're not going to touch the third rails.

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Here was the VA Secretary Doug Collins saying, you know, you're hearing that veterans benefits are being cut. That's not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, and this is all very smart PR. Kristi Noem, who's the head of the Department of Homeland Security, yesterday she announced that she was clawing back payments that FEMA had given to a migrant hotel, the Roosevelt Hotel. She wrote, quote, I've clawed back the full payment FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to New York City migrant hotels.

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FEMA was funding the Roosevelt Hotel that serves as a Tren de Aragua base of operations and was used to house Lake and Riley's killer. Mark my words, there will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people. And the entire government is being brought to bear behind the idea that they're going to cut the size and scope of the government.

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All this talk about Musk being a fascist, Trump being a fascist, they're all Nazis. When was the last time you saw a fascist movement that was cutting the size and scope of government? Please name it. Seriously, name it. Attorney General Pam Bondi, fresh off of her confirmation, she says we will use every aspect of law to back what Elon Musk is doing.

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And frankly, I thought that that was the correct approach. Because there was no actual end goal that was achievable. And the Biden administration was openly admitting this. They were saying, we are going to provide weaponry up until victory is achieved. How is victory defined? They said, we don't know. Well, you cannot win a war if you refuse to define victory.

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I mean, again, this is a very aggressive approach and it's going to be very popular. Americans are going to like this. Democrats are going to cry chaos. We'll get to democratic reaction in just a minute.

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But what they are saying when they say that the judges are being overridden and all the rest of this, Americans are not in the business of listening to district court judges who say we have to keep spending wasteful dollars because they say so. There's another point that Pam Bondi was making yesterday.

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She is right about all of that. By the way, a judge yesterday did, in fact, lift the ban on Trump's buyout offer to federal employees.

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According to the Washington Post, a judge on Wednesday lifted his pause on the federal government's deferred resignation program, prompting the Trump administration to swiftly declare victory as it closed the offer to any more workers who might still have been mulling it.

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That program had been halted since last Thursday, but now the judge said that the union's lawsuit could not succeed because they lacked standing to sue him because his court lacked jurisdiction. Well, good. So, I mean, I thought that it was evil for Trump to do so. I mean, Trump didn't even like continue doing the thing. But again, all these things are going to go to the Supreme Court.

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And what's amazing is that the left keeps taking legal positions that are pretty much unsustainable on executive power. If Trump were designing in a laboratory some methodology for legally giving the go ahead and giving the imprimatur of Supreme Court legitimacy to his actions, he's basically doing it. He's doing things that are pretty uncontroversial, actually, under the Constitution.

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He's being sued. District court judges are ruling against him with these nationwide temporary restraining orders. All that's going to get elevated to the Supreme Court. And in all likelihood, Trump's actions are going to get upheld. That is where we currently stand. In just a second, we'll get to the leftist resistance. They are searching for a methodology of resistance.

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Singing is one of those methodologies. I'm not even joking with you. First, the best reason to become a Daily Wire Plus member, you're directly supporting the fight. Every dollar goes right back into building a real alternative to the mainstream. More shows, more movies, more investigative journalism. This is how we continue to reshape the culture. But here's another reason.

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If you like this show... There's more of it waiting for you. Only Daily Wire Plus members get exclusive content at the end of every episode. The show after the show, plus live chats and more. Don't just listen, be a part of it. Download the Daily Wire Plus app or go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and become a member today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, Democrats are looking for a way to resist the ongoing Trump train. It's not going amazing. Their tip of the spear in terms of personalities is, believe it or not, Bernie Sanders, who's 100,000 years old. Bernie Sanders was a colleague of Eugene V. Debs.

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And again, either victory is going to be the taking back of all Ukrainian territory, which would have required the Biden administration to send F-16s to Ukraine, among other things. Or victory had to be defined in some other way, in which case an off-ramp should have been sought. Trump is taking a much more concerted view at reality. And so he has now opened negotiations with the Russian regime.

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Bernie Sanders may in fact have marched with the original Karl Marx, and yet he is being trotted out as the ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party because always and forever, the Democrats continue to double down on stupid. Instead of moderating and moving more toward common sense, they have decided that all of the juice is with the far left. And listen, it could work out for them.

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You could see a world where, for some exogenous reason, the economy goes through a really rough patch and suddenly the entire country swivels and the pendulum swings the other way and suddenly you got AOC as president. You could see that because, again, politics is unpredictable, but... Is it a smart move to put Bernie Sanders at the head of your ideological party? I don't see how.

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It hasn't really borne tremendous fruit for them, but they continue to do it. According to Politico, Bernie Sanders, the two-time presidential candidate, is barnstorming Iowa and Nebraska to rally voters against what he calls the oligarchy, the kind of high-profile offensive that typically signals a potential run for the White House.

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In Sanders' case, he's more likely paving the way for someone to follow in his footsteps. Well, is he, though? Is he? I mean, so Bernie Sanders right now is 83 years old. Could he run for president in two years at 85? I mean, be good. Why not? I mean, seriously, he's probably looking at Joe Biden and thinking, I'm a spring chicken next to that guy, and that guy was president.

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Sanders is supposedly not interested in mounting a third presidential campaign, but he's trying to figure out who would carry the torch in 2028. Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's fame, The ice cream shop, the socialist ice cream shop that is not, in fact, socialist. He says, I have no doubt that weighs heavily on his mind.

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I have no doubt that's a focus of his, as it would be with anyone who's passionate about a campaign, who's passionate about particular issues and is reaching, according to the actuarial tables, the end of their lives. Sanders is hoping to use his megaphone to invigorate a demoralized liberal base to fight back against President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk as they slash the federal government.

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Meanwhile, Roseanne Tamora, longtime friend of Sanders and former labor leader said, quote, I think he's trying to inspire a very strong resistance to the oligarchy. And it is hilarious to me that the oligarchy is being called Elon Musk when Elon Musk is cutting the size and scope of government.

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How do you make the case that an oligarchy is running the country on its own behalf when they are literally cutting the amount of funding available to other people and to themselves, by the way? Elon is a contractor with the federal government. All of his contracts are put under federal scrutiny. He's going to get more scrutiny now than he would have if he never involved himself in politics.

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For sure. By far. Not close. Sanders apparently has a more immediate target in mind. He's looking to influence the budget fight ruling Congress by traveling to battleground districts as part of his upcoming tour. It'll be fascinating to see who he attempts to tap as a sort of heir apparent.

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There's been a lot of talk about AOC, which again, we live in a very stupid timeline, so that is quite possible. Meanwhile, speaking of a stupid timeline, Democrats yesterday came up with their piece de resistance. And it was, in fact, a song, a beautiful, beautiful song sung by members of Congress. Somehow, somehow, this is worse than sexy red.

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Wow, that's beautiful. That's just beautiful. Apparently they were activists at a save the civil service rally because there's nothing that unifies Americans like save the civil service, save the government employees, save the people you are paying so they can do trash DEI jobs or file retirement paperwork in salt mines or something. That is a classic protest song.

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By the way, which side are you on? But it was adapted to be about Doge and Elon Musk. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Is this what you guys got? Really? And they're trotting out all the most popular faces. They got Bernie and then they've got Randy Weingarten, the super corrupt head of the American Federation of Teachers.

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They're trotting her out to say that she's going to sue everybody in sight because there's nothing Americans love more than career bureaucrats and union leaders who have miseducated our children, trying to sue everyone into stopping the train for which they voted.

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He has put forward a proposal that he meet with Vladimir Putin directly. He revealed on Wednesday, according to the New York Post, that he and Russian President Putin had agreed to start talks immediately to end Moscow's war on Ukraine. He said he wanted to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Ukraine-Russia.

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Invasion of privacy. The American Federation of Teachers, which wants to remove your children from you and trans them. They are very deeply concerned about the invasion of privacy of Elon Musk might know your social security number while he's looking to possible cuts. Well, they do have another strategy, which is to just call Elon Musk over and over and over.

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That's Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, who did that yesterday. Again, Democrats are a little frustrated.

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Well, wow. Wow. Notice what Democrats are trying to do, and it's not going to work. They just keep saying President Elon Musk over and over and over, hoping that that will somehow see discontent between Trump and Musk. That is not the way this is going. But here's MSNBC trying to do the same thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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They're so desperate to stop Musk that they're trying to basically get Trump to fire Musk out of some sort of misplaced egotism. It's not going to happen, guys. That's not how this works.

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He said that this war would not have happened if I were president, but it did happen, so it must end. No more lives should be lost. He said that he and his Russian counterpart expressed openness to visiting each other's nations. While letting slip to reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday, we expect that he'll come here and I'll go there, and we're also probably going to meet in Saudi Arabia.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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This is not going to work. Carolyn Leavitt, the White House press secretary, here she was yesterday saying, you know, you guys are being ridiculous with your Musk has the power. He works for the president. This is somewhat like saying that my producer is the co-host of the Men Shapiro show. I love my producers, but I'm the host and they're the producer and they work for the show.

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That's how that works. I mean, I understand that Democrats have never worked in the private sector, and so they don't actually understand, presumably, how this actually operates, but here we go.

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Yes. Again, if this is the best you guys got, it's going to be a long time in the wilderness for all y'all. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to move forward. This administration is moving at the speed of light. I mean, they're moving so fast. Yesterday, President Trump vowed to shut down the Department of Education.

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Again, that has been a promise that has been made since the Reagan administration. As long as I'm alive and Trump is actually going to do it, he's going to outsource all of the functions of the Department of Education to other departments. And if he doesn't fully shut down the Department of Education because he requires congressional approval to do it, he'll just gut it.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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And that was a Ukrainian attempt, backed by Europe, backed by the Biden administration, to take back portions of the country that had essentially been conquered by Russia in 2014 after the Euromaidan revolution.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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That's precisely what he should do. The Department of Education is a giant subsidy machine for left-wing causes. That's what it is. Here is President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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By the way, one of the things that Trump – it's so funny. Democrats continue to claim that Trump is some sort of idiot. I'd like some evidence of this proposition, please. Really? He goes out there and talks to the press every single day. He has a fairly solid level of fluency with the issues about which he is speaking. He's not afraid to take the questions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Trump added on Truth Social, the negotiation process will begin by calling President Zelensky of Ukraine to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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He's not hiding behind his old age the same way that Joe Biden did. You guys are getting run over and you deserve it. All right, coming up, speaking of getting run over, Pam Bondi is now suing, the attorney general is now suing the state of New York over illegal immigration. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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And then he revealed that any American delegation to the peace talks would be led by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Mike Walz, and Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Zelensky then confirmed in a Facebook statement that he and Donald Trump had a meaningful conversation about opportunities to achieve peace and discussed our readiness to work together at a team level and Ukraine's technological capabilities, including drones and other advanced industries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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In other words, he was making an argument to Trump that the United States should provide Ukraine with enough weaponry to fend off any future Russian attack. Now, in reality, Zelensky is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the deal, at least publicly. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Well, because let's assume you're a Ukrainian citizen and you've watched your brothers and sisters get murdered by the Russians, which is what has happened over the course of this war. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, if you combine both sides, dead and wounded.

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So let's say you're a Ukrainian citizen and you've been told by Zelensky that you're going to not just win the war, you're going to push the Russians off of every inch of Ukrainian land. And now you're going to get less than that. Zelensky is going to have to take the political hit unless the United States is willing to take the political hit. Biden never was. Biden always...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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was cowardly, pusillanimous when it came to the idea that he would take the hit for anything less than a full Ukrainian victory. He did not want to be blamed for Ukraine not being able to push Russia off that land. So instead, he decided to let the war percolate and simmer on. And he was willing to allow his poll numbers to be boosted by Russian and Ukrainian debt. Why?

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Because he was unwilling to do the thing that actually had to be done, which was in public. Biden would need to have negotiated a deal with Putin over Zelensky's head and then crammed down the deal on Zelensky. And that would have made him a bad guy in the eyes of many members of the left in the United States. who for some odd reason decided that the Ukrainian flag was gonna go in their profile.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Now, again, that's fine with me. You wanna put the Ukrainian flag in your Twitter profile or whatever, but the reality is, That if that's the only flag in your profile, it's kind of strange. And not only that, putting the Ukrainian flag in your profile seems less like objection to Russian intervention.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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The attempt to take the Donbass and Crimea back from Russian forces, that was largely doomed to failure because the only way to do that would have been to arm up the Ukrainians to the extent that it might have prompted a larger Russian intervention using perhaps things like tactical nuclear weapons. That is the only way that could have been done.

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I don't remember a Georgian flag in any of these people's profile or even a Ukrainian flag back in 2014 in their profile. I just remember it in 2022. And that was largely because it was tied to the idea that Russia was a pro-Trump force. There's a lot of domestic politics tied up in all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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But if Joe Biden had been a brave and capable leader, what he would have done is he would have negotiated the off ramp that everyone saw coming. The off ramp looks something like this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Ukraine does not become a part of NATO because, again, one of the reasons that Russia says that invaded Ukraine is because it didn't want to be bordered by NATO nations, even though it already has a bunch of borders with NATO nations.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Instead, there would have been effectively a mutual defense guarantee between the United States and Europe and Ukraine to prevent a further act of Russian aggression that was not exactly NATO. There wouldn't have been an entry by Ukraine into the EU, which has always been a sort of hot button issue in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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In fact, Vladimir Zelensky, when he was first elected, was not somebody who is considered supremely pro-entering the EU, believe it or not. It's only after the Russian invasion that he seemed to turn wildly in that direction. And what the deal looks like is Ukraine is armed up to prevent a further Russian invasion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Russia gets to claim sovereignty over these areas, which, by the way, it already has in its own Duma. They've already voted to claim sovereignty over Donbass and Crimea. The international community probably half accepts it. They don't say, yeah, this is now sovereign Russian territory, but they say that we are not going to foment war over the retaking of that territory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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And then everybody sort of goes weapons down for the moment. That doesn't end the conflict. It's more like the Korean War. There's an armistice line. There was never any peace agreement signed at the end of the Korean War. It just ended up that there was a North Korea and a South Korea, and that armistice line has been holding since 1953.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Probably the best case scenario is something like that in this particular situation. Well, President Trump said that. And by the way, President Trump is not willing to allow Vladimir Putin to sort of slow play this. to wait for Trump to withdraw aid and then invade the rest of Ukraine. I said this all during the campaign.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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There was all of this talk, loose talk by both isolationists on the right and nutjobs on the left that Trump was going to walk into office, immediately pull all aid from Ukraine and allow Vladimir Putin to stroll down the streets of Kiev. I said that was not something that Trump was willing to do. Why? Because Trump doesn't want the bad headline.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Trump does not want a headline in which he surrenders Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. If there's one thing that President Trump cares about on a personal level, it is not being made to look weak and feckless. And so he was always going to provide continued aid to the point where some sort of off-ramp could be reached. He said that yesterday in a presser.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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President Trump is a strong president, and he wishes to actually give off the image of a strong president, which is why he's not going to cut off the aid. See, here's the thing. President Trump is deeply American, and this country was founded on strength and on freedom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Freedom from a country that forced us to buy overpriced tea and then tried to blockade us when we dumped their tea into the ocean, which is why Britain no longer rules us. Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network. Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You can make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right. Again,

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Or to allow the Ukrainians to attack inside Russia in such a way that could have provoked a larger war. Now, it may be that those concerns over a larger war were exaggerated. However, the risk-reward relationship there was out of balance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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That's puretalk.com to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Visit puretalk.com for details. Again, that's puretalk.com and get the best wireless for the best price. Also... You can choose to handle the measurements and installation yourself or have their local pros take care of everything. There's no showroom markup.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Installation is just one low cost, regardless of how many windows you're covering. I'm a big movie guy, and when I'm watching a movie on the TV and I've got the light shining in through the windows and it's reflecting, it just ruins everything. I need my perfect movie-watching environment, which is why I trusted Blinds.com. I don't worry about this anymore.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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It's no wonder they're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings with over 40,000 five-star reviews. Every purchase is backed by their perfect fit and 100% satisfaction guarantee, giving you complete peace of mind. With hundreds of styles and colors available, you're sure to find the perfect match for your home. Shop Blinds.com right now. Save up to 45%.

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Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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Get up to 45% off for a limited time at Blinds.com. When you check out online, don't forget to tell them you heard about Blinds.com from the Ben Shapiro Show. Rules and restrictions may apply. Again, Donald Trump speaks to the press every single day. Here he was in the Oval yesterday talking about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL

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This is a pragmatic utilitarian approach to the situation. It has been the correct approach for several years. Joe Biden just was unwilling to do it because Trump will be seen by many people on the left, particularly as a bad guy for having sold out Ukraine. But the reality is Ukraine was never going to be able to retake this territory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And this is something the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said yesterday. He said, listen, Trying to go back to the pre-2014 borders, namely Donbass and Crimea becoming an integral part of Ukraine again, that is not realistic at this time. And trying to pretend that it is, is foolishness that leads to death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The reality was that the West had very little interest in Ukraine fighting a large scale war to take back Donbass and Crimea, areas that are predominantly by virtually all polling data, even before the fake Russian Democratic takeover. Those areas were very pro-Russian historically.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He is correct about this. Again, this has always been the correct position. I've been advocating for this position since a couple of months into the war. So Trump had a conversation with Zelensky, and then he put out a statement, quote, he, like President Putin, wants to make peace.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We discussed a variety of topics having to do with the war, but mostly the meeting that is being set up on Friday in Munich, where Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the delegation. I am hopeful that the result of that meeting will be positive. It is time to stop this ridiculous war where there has been massive and totally unnecessary death and destruction.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine. And again, Trump is trying to warm relations with Russia, given the fact that the cold relationship with Russia has not been particularly productive at this point in time. Does that mean that he trusts the right? Absolutely not. Trump is not a fool. He's not going to trust Vladimir Putin, who's a deeply untrustworthy evil dictator. That's what he is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He throws people off third stories of buildings if they happen to cross his regime. But Trump understands power politics is something he innately understands in his bones. The president goes on, quote, we both reflected on the great history of our nations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's talking about his discussion with Putin and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people and we likewise lost so many. We each talked about the strengths of our respective nations and the great benefit we will someday have in working together. President Putin even used my very strong campaign motto of common sense.

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We both believe very strongly in it. And now, again, Trump likes to use warm words as sort of the carrot, but then the stick still exists. As he said, the aid is going to continue flowing to Ukraine sufficient to deter the Russians from continuing this invasion. In fact, Trump actually said in the Oval Office, he thinks that some of the pre-2014 territory will, in fact, end up in Ukrainian hands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That presumably is because Ukraine, basically ignoring Joe Biden, made territorial incursions directly into Russia, and now they're looking for land swaps, Russian territory for Ukrainian territory.

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And so Russia taking over those areas, while it is devastating to the economy of Ukraine, much of the oil-rich area of Ukraine is in its east in the Donbass region. Crimea, of course, is on the Black Sea. And so much of the warm water ports available to the Ukrainians were via Crimea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, so again, does this sound like Donald Trump is surrendering to Vladimir Putin? If so, you are reading him completely wrong. Now, Hegseth is, again, being practical about this. He says this is not the moment for Ukraine to join NATO because that presumably would be provocative. But we can make many of the same security guarantees without actually them formally joining NATO.

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Here was Pete Hegseth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, folks, President Trump lives in the world of reality, as I've been saying for a very long time. When the headlines change, so does the president's opinion on things. We'll get to that in a moment. First, at Daily Wire Plus, as you know, we lead with facts. We deliver the truth from the most trusted voices in conservative media.

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OK, and then the president went on to say the bond markets were getting queasy. So in other words, the people who are getting yippee and queasy shaped what exactly was happening with his opinion. And if everybody else had stayed strong, then presumably he would have gone forward with the plan.

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So if you're happy that he reversed the plan, which apparently Trump fans are today, as they should be, then what caused it? This is a question because it does relate to who is trustworthy in the public space when you're talking about these issues.

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The people who would be just as happy if he left the tariffs on or the people who are happy that he took the tariffs off and always thought he should take the tariffs off except for on China. And again, President Trump just says the quiet part out loud. I mean, he just he says it again. The people who are positing that this was all part of the of the magical Ocean's Eleven plan.

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All those people keep getting undercut by the fact that the president of the United States is telling them openly that that's not what happened. Here is the president yesterday. He said the stock market is doing great. But wait, I thought five seconds ago that Wall Street and Main Street were in complete opposition. We should pay no attention to the stock markets.

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They were just filled with a bunch of dullards and and queasy hipsters.

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Okay, so whether you think we had to go through the operation or we didn't have to go through the operation, bottom line is we ended up in a spot that is a much better spot than we were in three days ago. And again, all of the reporting suggests precisely the theory that the president changed where he was on this because of the reaction. Again, that is a praise of the president, not a rip on him.

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If the president changes his opinion for utilitarian reasons in order to achieve a better end goal, that's him being smart. It would be stupid to continue running full speed into a wall in the name of Peter Navarro's benighted idiocy with regard to trade. You don't need Ron Vera guiding you on trade, Mr. President.

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Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan appeared on Fox Business specifically to message to the president because the president watches Fox News. Jamie Dimon has essentially admitted as much. Here he was Wednesday morning explaining that a tariff war would bring a almost certain recession.

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If you want to see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today if he wants to see an actual bull market run. Charlie Gasparino at Fox News, he was reporting from the White House. He said, yeah, pretty clearly this was sparked by the bond market sell-off.

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I mean, historically speaking, this is correct. He, of course, is exactly right. When you're talking about bond yields dramatically spiking, very often that presages serious economic turmoil, downturns, and all the rest of signals an underlying real problem. In fact, I asked my sponsor, Perplexity. About this, I asked, quote, can you please provide historical examples of situations in which U.S.

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bond yields spiked dramatically? How often did they presage serious economic turmoil? Perplexity says, historically, spikes in U.S. bond yields have often signaled economic stress or shifts in fiscal and monetary policy. In some cases, they have preceded serious economic turmoil. And then it gives a bunch of examples, including the 1980-81 inflation and Paul Volcker's rate hikes.

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So bond yields surged because investors anticipated aggressive action by Paul Volcker to combat inflation. And you got a recession, 1993-94. The yields on 10-year treasuries rose from around 5% to 8% as bond traders reacted to increased government spending. And what ended up happening? Clinton ended up reversing. He's got absolutely clocked in midterm elections in 1994.

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Republicans won Congress for the first time in like 50 years. And then he reversed his policy. 2009, 2010, following the 2008 financial crisis, bond yields rose amid concerns over inflation and unsustainable debt levels. And then the Federal Reserve had to step in. 2013, yields spiked after Ben Bernanke hinted at reducing quantitative easing. 2020, 21, pandemic, it happened.

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And then of course it just happened the other day. So as Perplexity.ai points out, while not all yield spikes lead directly to economic crises, they frequently signal underlying vulnerabilities in fiscal or monetary policy that may contribute to turmoil if left unaddressed. In other words, bond yields don't spike for no reason at all.

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There is a reason the bond yield spiked and there's a reason why President Trump saw that and went, you know, maybe I should do a U-turn here. Fox News also reported that even staffers in the White House were taken by surprise by President Trump's about face. So the idea, again, that this was like a well thought out plan with everybody involved, clearly not for the staffers of the White House.

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The Wall Street Journal itself has a long report today on exactly why President Trump changed his opinion. And he did. Let's be clear. He changed his approach here. Why did that happen? Because he responds to reality. He's a president who lives in reality. And I don't know why this is so offensive to people who are big Trump fans. That's a good thing.

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And yet it's also offensive to people on the left who think that President Trump lives in fantasy land. Clearly, he does not. He puts forward a proposal. If the proposal breaks all the rules and the rules were stupid, he maintains the proposal. If it breaks all the rules and it turns out that things are going to crater, then he changes where he was. And that's precisely what he did here.

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OK, between him saying that and also the bond market completely wrecking itself on Wednesday morning, the president of the United States saw the reality and he reversed himself. The bond market sell-off that was initiated by President Trump's statements about tariffs, meaning that people started selling their bonds in the market.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, President Trump finally blinked. It took a week for the plunge in the stock and bond markets, along with the sustained campaign by executives, lawmakers, lobbyists, and foreign leaders to prompt Trump to roll back for 90 days a major element of his sweeping tariff plan. The president said the reaction to the tariffs was getting a bit yippy.

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like a nervous athlete unable to perform. And he relied on his instincts to change course as he watched the bond market tank and listened to business leaders, including Jamie Dimon, express fears of recession. The episode was classic Trump. He took a drastic action, closely tracked the reaction, kept advisors and allies guessing, and then changed course.

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In this case, the extraordinary reversal was announced via Trump's social media platform just hours after so-called reciprocal tariffs officially went into effect. He tapped out the post in the Oval Office as he sat with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Trump also significantly raised tariffs on China. So what exactly happened? Quote,

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He decided on a Wednesday morning. It's all part of the plan, but he decided. Besson said more than 75 countries have reached out seeking a deal to ease tariffs with Japan at the front of the queue. One key to the change, Trump's decision to give Besson more authority within his team of trade advisors, people close to the discussion said, along with the talks on Sunday.

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Besson flew down Sunday to Florida. I reported on this yesterday. Politico had reported on this. Besson flew down Sunday to Florida and afterward was authorized to make comments publicly about deals, which heartened many people close to Trump who believe the Treasury Secretary could find an exit ramp.

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And indeed, on Wednesday morning, as Scott Besant went out there and retailed deal after deal after deal, the markets were kind of roiling, but they had not yet dumped. And I tweeted shortly before President Trump actually U-turned. I tweeted that Besant was single-handedly holding the markets up because that was absolutely true.

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If you were an investor and we were watching Howard Lutnick, you were selling. And if you were watching Scott Besant, you were not selling. And it was pretty much that simple because Besant represented the off-ramps. When the two men returned to Washington together on Air Force One, Besant encouraged Trump to focus on negotiations according to a person familiar with the conversation.

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Another factor that made Trump more willing to relent on tariffs was that so many countries are in negotiations with the administration. Trump was also swayed by the stock market and the parade of business leaders expressing concerns about the tariffs.

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People who say what you can, who fight where you can't, and who won't back down. Members get this show ad-free and unfiltered with live chat, investigative journalism that takes you inside the story, and premium entertainment that actually reflects your values. Now is the time to become a member. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

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So in other words, all the people who he labeled panic hands who were in his ear telling him this was a bad idea, he listened to them as he should have. Over the past few days, executives and lobbyists had flooded White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' phone according to a person close to her. A White House aide noted it was standard for the president's chief of staff to feel calls on his behalf.

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The message delivered to Trump and his top advisors by chief executives was that they needed to find an off-ramp. He privately acknowledged his trade policy, Trump did, could trigger a recession, but said he wanted to be sure it didn't cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump was also in listening mode.

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Over the past few days, he has been asking friends and advisors about the markets, and he was indicating he was closely watching them. Again, this is all the Wall Street Journal. This is being reported.

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They were so disquieted by what was happening that they realized they couldn't be in stocks. The stock market was about to tank. And they realized they couldn't shift their money over to bonds because inflation was going to kick in, which meant that the bonds would be worthless as inflation increased. So bonds were not a safe haven. And so people started selling their bonds off.

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At the White House on Wednesday, he had lunch with financier and investor Charles Schwab and with Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had warned Michigan was already feeling the impact of the tariffs throughout its automotive industry. On Tuesday evening, Trump said he absorbed the bad news about the plummeting bond market. I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.

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He then watched Diamond's interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo. That's when we played a few minutes ago. During the interview, Diamond said a recession was a likely outcome. Diamond has not had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, apparently, but his appearance on Fox Business had been in place for some time, and Diamond knew Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox.

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Trump told reporters he'd been thinking about pausing tariffs over the last few days, adding, quote, it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning. We wrote it up from our hearts, Trump said. We don't want to hurt countries that don't need to be hurt and they all want to negotiate.

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So again, this idea that this was sort of like brilliantly negotiated all the way back a week ago or a month ago, it's not true, but that doesn't matter. That's good. It means he is listening to outside advice. It means he's listening to the markets. It means he watches the realities of the world and these are all good things. President Trump listened because he is not a stupid man.

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Granted, no one actually likes speed dating, but people do like hiring qualified candidates quickly. Wouldn't it be nice if there were an efficient format that allows you to connect with several pre-screened, interested applicants all at once, streamlining your recruitment process? Well, there's good news. There is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter.

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You can post your job today, start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow. Right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Zip Intro transforms your hiring process with our streamlined approach to candidate assessment. Just select a convenient time slot. They handle everything else, finding qualified candidates, managing all the scheduling logistics on your behalf.

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You maintain complete control over which applicants you'd like to meet. The best part, you could be connecting with promising talent as early as tomorrow through their efficient back-to-back video call format. It's hiring made remarkably simple. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro. Only from Zip Recruiter, rated number one hiring site based on G2.

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Try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire again. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire Zip Intro. Post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Also, over 41,000 businesses have found a way to future-proof their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP.

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Imagine having your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR all seamlessly integrated into one fluid platform. That's NetSuite. With this unified business management suite, you're not just juggling numbers, you're wielding a powerful tool that gives you the visibility and control to make quick, informed decisions. It's like having a map in a maze of market uncertainties.

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Real-time insights and forecasting? Check. It's like peering into the future with actionable data at your fingertips. And here's a game changer. You'll be closing your books in days, not weeks. That means less time drowning in paperwork, more time focusing on what truly matters, steering your business toward success.

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The bond yields spiked yesterday morning. All the way up to the 30-year bond yield spiked all the way up to 5%, meaning that no one was buying bonds. Everybody was selling bonds at a particular time. And so the president of the United States did what he was supposed to do. And he saw reality and he changed his mind. That is the thing that actually happened. And naturally, the stocks rallied.

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At The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they are leading the way in future-proofing operations for businesses around the world. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite adapts to your needs, helping you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

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Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. You can't afford to be without them. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. And so now the off-ramp is becoming available.

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Canada's Mark Carney, the prime minister who replaced Justin Trudeau, he says that this is a welcome reprieve. He put out a tweet, quote, this pause on reciprocal tariffs announced by President Trump is a welcome reprieve for the global economy.

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As President Trump and I have agreed, the US president and Canadian prime minister will commence negotiations on a new economic and security relationship immediately following the federal election. As part of today's announcement, the president has signaled that the US will engage in bilateral negotiations with a number of other countries.

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This will likely result in a fundamental restructuring of the global trading system. In that context, Canada must also continue to deepen its relationships with trading partners that share our values, including the free and open exchange of goods, services, and ideas.

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This election is importantly about who can best fight for Canadian families, workers, and businessmen at the negotiating tables with the United States and other potential partner countries. So that is Canada looking for an off-ramp. The tariffs on China remain, and that is going to be the big sort of push down on the economy in the near future.

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Now, that may be pain that is worthy of going through. I've been an advocate of tariffing the living hell out of China for as long as I can remember. I've said for years, I'm not even sure it was good policy in the 1970s for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to open China.

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Maybe we should have just let them collapse from within instead of ushering them into the global trading system with the bizarre hope that this was somehow going to moderate their politics. Instead, they've retained all of their authoritarianism, but they've also gained enormous amounts of global economic power.

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With that said, the shock and awe of the tariffs that President Trump is putting on, those will have ramifications. There's no question.

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The pre-markets were down fairly significantly because the reality is that 10% across the board tariffs are staying, which will in fact lead to some level of inflation, not remotely the kind of thing that was going to happen if President Trump had been putting 40 or 50% tariffs on a wide variety of inputs and goods from other countries, but it will lead to a global economic slowdown of some effect.

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Meanwhile, the markets are trying to price in what it means that we are slamming the door on China's fingers really, really, really hard. So Scott Pesant, he's going after China hard. Again, I'm all in on this. I think this is good. I think we should be going after China hard. The question is going to be the sort of approach that is being taken. Is this a negotiating tactic?

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What is the off-ramp with China if there is one? Because there are risks that attend on upping the ante with China in this sort of dramatic, non-escalatory fashion, just kind of like ramping up to zero to 60 in 2.6 seconds. Here's Scott Pesant going after China yesterday.

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So again, for all the people who believe that the stock market didn't matter five seconds ago, when the stock market was declining, we were told the stock market didn't matter. And then when the stock market spiked after President Trump did this, we were told that the stock market now mattered an awful lot.

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So Besant, again, is basically saying choose China or choose us. And then he says we will keep slapping China. This is yesterday after the U-turn and reversal by President Trump.

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OK, then he continued along these lines, says, listen, China can hurt us, but we're going to hurt them more in a trade war, which is true, actually.

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Okay, so he's pointing out here that, again, we do an enormous amount of trade with Europe. We do an enormous amount of trade with the global south. Now, there are countries that trade much more with China than they trade with us. Japan is one of those countries, for example. Kind of approximately the same percentage of Japan's export market goes to the United States as goes to China.

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They import significantly more from China, Japan does, than they import from the United States, for example. However, there is, in fact, bipartisan consensus that China cheats. And they do. They steal intellectual property. They make it impossible to do actual, solid, honest business in their country.

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If you contravene their belief system, they will shut down your business and in some cases just steal your property. Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, no ally of the president. She was out there stumping against China yesterday on CNN.

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One of the same people who a moment ago were saying a giant global tariff war would actually be salutary and good for the United States, who then reversed themselves and said, actually, it was all part of the plan. A tariff war would have been super bad, and we're glad the president actually planned it out this way.

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And so, again, there's bipartisan consensus for this. So what actually is going to happen next? And this is one of the big questions. And this, again, is why the market is roiled. Because China does have tools it can use against the United States.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the escalating trade conflict between the United States and China has reignited fears that Beijing could use financial markets to hit back at Washington. China is one of the largest overseas owners of U.S. government debt. There have long been fears that China could dump U.S. treasuries that make up a large chunk of its foreign exchange reserves.

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China owned about $1.2 trillion in U.S. treasury securities in January, but they might be able to actually own more because they have third parties that are buying them and all the rest. U.S. government data showed China owned about $761 billion of treasuries as of January, trailing only Japan. That data covers treasuries held by both the government and private investors.

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Some have speculated about whether China was behind this week's treasury sell-off. Goldman Sachs said that they were skeptical of that, but China could also use its currency. They could devalue the yuan to help offset the impact of tariffs. The yuan's value is tightly controlled by the central bank. Investors have watched the daily fix. They could be subsidizing their domestic industries.

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There's a bunch of stuff that China could try to do. All of it would hurt China. The real question is, Is there an off ramp here for China that forces them to, for example, abide by IP regulations? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Why don't we just get your position at the outset, and then we can tell whether you are fibbing or not in order to achieve a particular political end. Okay, President Trump made that announcement and naturally the market spiked.

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Of course, because everyone in the investment community, everybody who understands how basic economics 101 works understood that when the president backed off of the most severe tariff regime in modern history, that that would spike the markets. That was perfectly obvious.

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I was at the gym yesterday working out when this went down, and I was watching the stock tickers, and suddenly the markets jumped 2,000 points.

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Thank you.

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And I turned and said to a friend, he must have paused the tariffs because that was obviously the only reason that the markets would spike, which suggests that, again, the investment community is not stupid when it comes to, you know, investment and economics.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, investors had spent nearly a week dumping everything American when seven minutes after markets opened on Wednesday, the president posted on social media it was time to buy. By the day's end, U.S. stocks staged a historic rally after another Trump post announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs and signaled a willingness to negotiate on trade.

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Wednesday's surge added a record $5.1 trillion in value to the market. So the president did what he was supposed to do. He prevented a global market sell-off, a complete tanking. President Trump then came out and he said, we will be making deals with every country that is not China. Again, this is the thing that he should be doing. This is it.

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So yesterday at one o'clock in the afternoon, the president of the United States made a U-turn on his tariff policy. He put out a statement on Truth Social that read, "'Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125% effective immediately.'"

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And the president then made clear that any military action would be led by Israel, not led by the United States. This is the right approach. And all the people out there, of course, suggesting that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities using, for example, American B-2s or B-21s, that that would somehow lead to an all out war with Iran. Yeah. What's Iran going to do? Attack Hawaii? Well, what?

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Kudos to the president for doing the right thing and you turning on the policy that he announced last week with that corkboard. Here he was.

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This president authorized the killing of Qasem Soleimani, and it resulted in zero repercussions from the Iranians, because it turns out Iran is a particularly weak state that does not have projective power against the United States. If they get a nuclear weapon, a lot of that changes. That's President Trump's whole point. And meanwhile, the president should be avoiding distractions.

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Again, I've been saying since he was elected, before he was elected, that if this administration does all the things President Trump wants it to do, that is only going to happen if distractions are avoided. And that means avoiding the sort of

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water torture that is drips and drops of action that are unpopular with the American people, because the way that relationships go bad is a bunch of smaller things, and then the floor goes out, and there isn't enough goodwill to hold up the relationship with the politician.

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Yesterday, the president announced that he was revoking the security clearances belonging to former CISA leader Chris Krabs, and also ex-DHS official Miles Taylor. Now, Miles Taylor is a bit of a different story, because Miles Taylor was writing anonymous op-eds from inside the Trump administration while the president was the president. Chris Krebs is a bit of a different story.

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So Chris Krebs is an appointee of President Trump, and he was leading the cybersecurity agency. It's not just that he decided that he was going to revoke security clearances, which of course he has the power to do. He also signed an executive order calling for the DOJ to investigate their activities as government employees.

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So again, Taylor was the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary during the first Trump administration. Then he started writing anonymous accounts, ripping into President Trump. He fired Krebs by tweet after Krebs fact-checked the president and said that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

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Trump called Krebs a wise guy, a fraud, and a disgrace during Wednesday's signing. I'm not sure that any of that is criminal. Here he was instructing the DOJ to investigate his own former cybersecurity head.

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Okay, so again, this sort of stuff is a distraction and it's a mistake by the president. He should not be sticking the DOJ on people who have a different opinion about the 2020 election. Again, including people who are inside his own administration. Even if you disagree with Chris Krebs' viewpoint on this, that doesn't make it criminal activity.

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And if it's bad when the Democrats do it to President Trump, you know, using the DOJ to simply go after political opponents is not good when President Trump does it either. All right, folks, now it's time for a segment that we are now initiating in which I break down a terrible argument of the week piece by piece. Today's featured takedown is John Oliver. from HBO.

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Somehow that dude still has a show. Not sure why, but he did an entire monologue this week about why men who want to play with ladies in sports should be allowed to do so. It is not a good argument, so let's go through it. This is The Takedown. The stupidest segment of the week. It comes courtesy of John Oliver, who should immediately have his citizenship revoked and he should be deported.

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Okay, so that's what everybody's talking about. That's what people want. I said this literally the day that he announced the tariff regime, that if it was a negotiating tactic to get everybody back to the table, then fine, but you actually have to say that, and then you have to give people time to negotiate those deals. I was not the only one saying this. Of course, Elon Musk was saying this.

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I understand. He's a citizen now. I don't know why we gave him citizenship, truly. I don't know what he added to the country, except for obnoxious smarminess and a British accent. He did one of the dumber monologues the other night I've ever seen.

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John Oliver is so trapped inside the left-wing echo chamber that he actually believes that it's necessary for him to defend the idea that men should punch women in a boxing ring, that quote-unquote trans athletes must be allowed to play with members of the opposite biological sex.

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And in order to make this claim, he somehow has to square the circle of pretending that men playing with women is not unfair to the women, which means he now has to pretend that actually men are not better at sports than women. Here we go.

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There are a bunch of... Okay, pause it there for a second. Okay, first of all, this is amazing. I love this. Okay, so he's like, you know, we can't look at studies that say that men are stronger than women because we're now talking about men who have had a bunch of hormone treatments. So we don't know. And so we have to look at the studies of men who have had hormones, but there are no studies.

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Therefore, men who have hormone treatments don't have any sort of accessibilities over women. Therefore, they should be allowed to play with women. This is a classic in the genre of absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. Okay? In other words, absence of evidence that men with hormone treatments have an advantage over women does not mean evidence of absence of that advantage.

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This is like a classic logical fallacy in which he is engaging right here. So he's like, we can't look at these studies that say that men are stronger than women. We have to look at the non-existent studies. But those studies don't exist. And therefore, men don't have an advantage over women. Okay, my dude, that is not how logic works.

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Okay, pause it there. This is hilarious. Again, this is hilarious. He's laying out a bunch of studies. that don't support his own position. But then he's dismissing the studies because the sample size is too small. So he has literally cited zero evidence for his proposition so far. And somehow he's going to magic that into the idea that men playing against women is somehow fair.

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Bill Ackman was saying this. A number of people were saying this. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, who essentially talked the president into the reversal. He lauded the negotiating strategy yesterday.

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Okay, pause it for a second. I just got to say that he has still provided no evidence to the proposition that it's fair for men to play with the ladies. We should point out that the expert he is citing is a former man, meaning a man, There's a person named Joanna Harper. Joanna Harper transitioned to female in 2004, 2005. Joanna Harper is in his 60s.

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And he cites his proudest athletic achievement as running a 223 marathon as a young man. And that's the person who's being cited as the unbiased source on trans athletes in opposite sex sports. And does this go anywhere? I mean, the answer is it goes nowhere. The answer is it goes nowhere.

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He just continues to argue based on no evidence that it's totally fair for men to play with the ladies because he says so, essentially.

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After having come up with zero evidence to the proposition that it's fair for men to play with the women, he then says it shouldn't be an issue anyway because no man is transitioning just to play with the women, which is weird because there actually are a bunch of men who are transitioning to play with the women.

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By this I mean, not that they would not do whatever they are doing, hormone treatments and surgery, in the absence of playing athletics, but they seem to want to play real bad with the ladies. They could continue to race with the men, but they would lose. And you don't see a lot of women who are transitioning into quote-unquote men who are desperate to play with the men, I noticed.

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It's kind of weird, isn't it? You don't see a lot of women who are like, you know what? I'm cutting off my breasts and I'm having a fake penis attached and now I want to box the men. It never happens. I wonder why. It's strange. So here's John Oliver moving away from his zero evidence to his proposition that the only reason you would care about... Why are you even noticing? Why do you even care?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Why? Like, sure, there are people doing this, but they're not doing it because they want to beat up on the women. What does that matter to the women? Why should the women care about the motivation for why a gigantic man like Leah Thomas is now racing against Riley Gaines? Why should Riley Gaines care what the motivation is?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She has to race against a dude who was a a low ranked male swimmer, but blows the other women out of the water because he's a dude.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Still, let's engage. Okay, pause it there. Who cares? Who cares? Who cares about the motivation of the person who wants to play with the ladies? I mean, by the way, you can have two different motivations. A motivation to, you know, add some fake boobs and cut off your penis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that might be a very different motivation than the motivation for wanting to play with the ladies now that you are bigger and stronger than all the ladies. It doesn't have to be the same motivation. That's silly. And reductive. But silly and reductive is, that should actually be the name of John Oliver's show. Silly and Reductive, starring John Oliver.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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No, the thing that gets implied is that if you are looking at the ends of the bell curve, which is where top athletic performance happens, the end of bell curve, not the average, the ends of the bell curve. If you have men who have transitioned into women at the end of the bell curve, they are almost always going to outcompete women because they're at the end of the bell curve by necessity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And by the way, you can make this dumb argument about anything. Why should we have age ranges in sports? Seriously, why not have a bunch of 12-year-old little leaguers play the major leaguers in baseball? Because, I mean, every so often you might have a 12-year-old who's huge, like a gigantic 12-year-old kid who can actually hit the ball.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, hey, if the bell curves overlap at all, then probably we should probably, you know, just get rid of the categories entirely. We should do this with everything. Makes perfect sense. Or maybe what you're saying is stupid. Because it is entirely stupid. Then, of course, he gets mad at Mike Johnson because Mike Johnson cited scripture to the effect that men and women exist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary who lost this argument, the Commerce Secretary Letnick, he was the one who was arguing for these tariffs to basically remain. He thought that was just good for the economy, period. Besant always saw them as a way of achieving reciprocal tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You don't have to cite scripture to the effect that men and women exist, but scripture does in fact say it. And scripture has a much better record than John Oliver and his stupid glasses.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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So making fun of the Bible, good times from John Oliver. You'll notice that he completely elides Speaker Johnson's statement and nature. So he's saying for those who believe in the Bible, the Bible says this. And for those who don't, there's the thing called nature, which is the thing John Oliver is ignoring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But then he does get to dunk on his peculiarly simplistic read on the Bible, which I'm sure has made him a very happy person. deliberately misinterpreting biblical scripture and religious belief. And good for you. That particular argument isn't played out at all. Just making fun of miracle stories in the Bible. No one's ever tried that before, John. Wow, unique, unique brand of humor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, John Oliver is clearly not the brightest bulb in the basket, but at least he somehow parlayed that into an American citizenship without having to pay President Trump $5 million. So I guess good for him on that score. Alrighty, folks, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. Remember, the only way to have your question answered or to see my answers is to become a member.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Head on over to Daily Wire. Plus, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Howard Letnick put out a statement, "'Scott Besant and I sat with the president while he wrote one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency. The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction.'"

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so the big argument that's now broken out online is whether this is all part of a 40 chess plan, an underwater, upside down, hungry, hungry hippos plan in order to somehow achieve a 5% drop in the markets, a 125% tariff on China, tremendous uncertainty with regard to investment futures and tariff deals with a bunch of countries that we could have called up on the phone. Why does this matter?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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The answer is it really doesn't. It doesn't matter in one sense. If the president gets to the right policy, I don't really care how he got to the policy, but he's getting to the right policy. And again, I think there are two going theories here of what President Trump did. Theory number one is the theory that I have posited.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The president lives in the world of reality, meaning if he puts out a proposal and that proposal does not work, he is not ideologically tied to his own proposal such that he is willing to undergo enormous pain in order to prove the veracity of his ideology.

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So if he puts out a tariff plan and it turns out the markets hate it and it turns out people are calling him up day and night telling him it's a bad plan. And it turns out the bond market experiences a mass sell-off that he reverses himself and then finds a better policy, which is one of the good things about it. That's not a criticism of President Trump. That is a praise of President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the United States and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 countries have called representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the U.S.

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That is good. You don't want a president who keeps just driving off the cliff once it is clear that this thing is headed for a cliff. You want him to change course. The president made a U-turn. That's a good thing. The U-turn is not a sign of weakness. The U-turn is a sign of strength.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Because making a U-turn in the middle of a bad policy shows that you are more interested in getting the right outcome than you are in your own perception of ego. The U-turn matters. It is a good thing. And I think there's this bizarre setup in politics where if a politician makes a mistake and then walks back the mistake, somehow this is a sign of cuckery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Somehow this is a sign of weakness by the politician. Or maybe it's a sign of strength because number one, you can get away with it. And number two, it shows that you actually care about the end outcome.

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The argument I've made about President Trump over and over and over to people who would not vote for President Trump in the last election cycle is even if you don't like what President Trump is selling, he is utilitarian enough that if the outcome is likely to be bad, he will change his policy. And that's exactly what you saw here. So that's opinion number one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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And then there's opinion number two, which was, again, that this was 5D chess existing in dimensions beyond time and space. that it was all planned out, every element of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Now, in order for you to believe that every element of this was in fact planned out, you would have to believe that the president a month ago at his State of the Union laid out a hardcore tariff regime in order to not do it within 13 hours after announcing that it was now in place a month later.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And that he couldn't have just achieved the actual goals that he achieved here without all this sort of manipulation. So he would have to lay out a giant Liberation Day plan at the State of the Union address. Then he would have to unleash gigantic tariffs based not on reciprocal tariff rates, but based on trade deficits that would include islands, including penguins.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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And then you would have to have the stock market. This is all necessary, right? This is all part of the plan. The stock market would have to tumble 10% and come to the precipice of complete nuclear meltdown. You would have to assume that President Trump then wanted his entire team to fight with each other publicly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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He would want Elon Musk calling Peter Navarro, Peter Retardo, and Peter Navarro calling President Trump, and Peter Navarro calling Elon Musk a car assembler as opposed to a car manufacturer, and Scott Besant and Howard Letnick retailing completely different messages. All of this was necessary to the plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Trade Representative, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to trade, trade barriers, tariffs, currency manipulation, and non-monetary tariffs,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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And then let the tariffs go into place to spark a bond market sell-off, a historic bond market sell-off, all to achieve a reversal of all of those things within 13 hours of implementing those things. That would have to be the plan. That would be the art of the deal sort of strategy here. Well, with all of this uncertainty, many things remain unclear.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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But one thing is still clear, and that is that big tech dominates our digital lives. Companies don't just serve ads, they potentially influence our political choices through controlled content delivery. The original internet promised personal freedom and control over your informational journey. There's a way to reclaim that control and freedom, ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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I can browse freely without surveillance. Now, I'm constantly using ExpressVPN because I'm on the road a lot, and that means when I'm using airport internet, for example, or if I'm at a hotel. I'm now public, except if I use ExpressVPN, which masks my IP address, the digital identifier companies use to track and manipulate my online experience. It's simple to use.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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and that these countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90-day pause and a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Just one click, ExpressVPN now works seamlessly across all your devices, laptops, phones, tablets, even smart TVs. Right now, you can get up to four months free if you head on over to expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben for an extra four months free. Also, you ever wonder what gives elite athletes, business moguls, high performers their edge?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Many have been turning to Armra Colostrum, This remarkable superfood is nature's original whole food supplement, contains over 400 bioactive nutrients that work at the cellular level. Armra helps build lean muscle, speeds up recovery time, enhances overall performance without relying on artificial stimulants or synthetic ingredients.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Whether you're running a company, pushing your limits in training, or simply looking for a natural advantage in your daily life, Armra Colostrum optimizes your body's systems for peak performance and sustained energy. Research has demonstrated that Colostrum does more than just strengthen performance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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It enhances your body's ability to absorb essential nutrients, supports the development of lean muscle mass, and improves endurance. At the same time, it works at the cellular level to accelerate repair and regeneration, helping you bounce back faster after intense physical exertion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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Plus, Armra Colostrum can also support your microbiome and balance and strengthen immune defenses throughout the body. Who doesn't want a stronger immune system? We've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 15% off your very first order. Go to tryarmra.com slash Shapiro or enter Shapiro to get 15% off your very first order. That's T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A dot com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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That's tryarmra.com slash Shapiro or enter Shapiro to get 15% off your first order. Now, again, I don't care whether it was the art of the deal, whether it was a plan or whether it was not a plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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The only reason that it makes any difference at all, whether it was quote unquote part of the plan or not part of the plan, is because the suggestion from people who say that it was all part of the plan is that if you criticize bad policy, somehow it undermines the plan. But here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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If it was all part of the plan, you need people to criticize the bad policy so as to push the president into doing the reversal. If it's all part of the plan, then so is the criticism. Again, this is part of the problem with these very sophisticated theories of it was all part of the plan. Okay, so it's all part of the plan except for what? The people who said that it was bad policy?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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So if those people had shut up, then he still would have done exactly the same thing. Or maybe, or maybe the president, because he is a smart, capable man who is able to read tea leaves and see headlines and adjust and stick and move, because he's able to do that, actually, it is quite important that honest commentators actually say the thing. That when a policy is bad, they say it's a bad policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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So that is, in fact, a U-turn for the president of the United States, who was suggesting just a couple of days earlier that there would be no postponement. That was suggested by pretty much everybody in the president's cabinet, who said over and over and over again, this is the right thing to do. The president did the right thing here. He reversed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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And when a policy is good, they say it is a good policy. Because otherwise you can't tell what the hell they think. And you can't tell what is good policy and what is bad policy. And so again, both of these lines are sort of being retailed. And then the president, it turns out, just basically said, one of the things I love about President Trump, he's totally transparent. He really is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's very, very transparent about the reasons he does, the things that he does. So there were, again, multiple lines being retailed yesterday after the reversal. One was that it was all part of the plan. So Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary, he said, no, no, no, it wasn't the bond markets or the stock. None of that made the president change his mind.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, so apparently, according to Commerce Secretary Lutnick, the markets, the bond markets, nothing of this had any impact on Trump. This is all part of the 40 hungry, hungry hippos upside down underwater chess plan. And then Caroline Lovett. I understand all these people work for the Trump administration. And so they have an interest in suggesting, of course, that this is all part of the plan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I get it. I get it because they think that they have to project strength and that if you say that was all part of the plan as opposed to the reality, which is that the president is utilitarian enough and smart enough to react to circumstance, that somehow that undercuts him. Again, I disagree, but I understand why they're doing it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Here is Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, saying, you know, this is all the art of the deal. Again, you'd have to assume that all of this was designed in order to achieve what? That couldn't have been achieved by picking up the phone or just doing the tariffs on China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, we'll get to that in a minute, because what China is going to do next, what every other country is going to do next still remains sort of an open question. Yes, they want to negotiate an off ramp with the United States to avoid these tariffs. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are not also going to triangulate with China. However, then there is the other theory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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what was going to be a meltdown moment for the global markets. And the question is why? What made him reverse everything? And the answer is pretty obvious. Basically, the entire global economic system was shouting at him that he needed to reverse this tariff system that he was about to put into place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, the theory that I have retailed, which is that the president changed his mind because the circumstances changed, that he put in place a tariff regime that was unsustainable for the global economy. And the markets reacted as they do when they take in new information. And then he saw the markets react and he didn't like it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2177 - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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And as exhibit A in the explanation for his activity, that market activity, bond sell-offs, market sell-offs, criticism changed the president's opinion. I present to you Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, saying exactly that yesterday. So here is the president saying it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

Well, folks, as always, tons of news, a firehose of news. But you need a reliable source for your news. You need a conservative source for your news. The legacy media, they think that you are too dumb to see through their lies. They like to twist the narrative or manipulate the headlines or bury the truth. We don't do that at The Daily Wire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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So David Hogg, the insipid and ridiculous vice chair of the DNC, he was made the vice chair after launching a failed pillow company, attending Harvard University with very, very low SAT scores because he had been a student at Parkland during the shooting. Well, now he's the vice chair, and he's been saying he wants to primary a bunch of moderate Democrats in Purple District.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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And James Carville had criticized him. Well, now he's backing off, quote, just called David Hogg. He reminded me of the story of after the Battle of Shiloh, Henry Halleck urged President Lincoln to fire Ulysses Grant. Lincoln said, I can fire him. This man fights. David Hogg fights. The DNC needs him. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So you're telling me that David Hogg, this ridiculous...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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broomstick of a human is is Ulysses S. Grant to James Carville. He doesn't believe that at all. But the Democrats are trying to hold together the crazy wing and the somewhat less crazy wing. Well, speaking of the crazy wing, Kamala Harris made her grand reappearance yesterday. Just what Democrats need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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In a moment where President Trump is actually creating a series of targets for them to hit, they're trotting out the wildly unpopular Kamala Harris. By the way, brand new poll out today, I believe it's from Emerson, showing if there was another national election held today between Harris and Trump, who would win? The answer was Trump by one. In any case, Kamala Harris is back out there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Speaking in San Francisco at the annual gala for Emerge, a group that recruits and trains women to run for office. Did you miss Kamala? Did you miss her? The answer, of course, is no one has missed Kamala. We barely even recognize she existed while she was running for president, given the fact that she was essentially a...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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random person who was thrust into the limelight because Joe Biden died in the middle of the campaign. Well, anyway, here was Kamala Harris. I know you missed the winding sentences, the sentences that run like a free-ranging river over the rocks of volubility. Here was Kamala Harris talking about the abandonment of American ideals.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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economy contracted in the first three months of 2025 as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of the Trump administration's tariffs and consumer spending slowed. The Commerce Department said U.S. GDP fell at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 0.3% annualized rate in the first quarter. That was the first contraction since the first quarter of 2022. Consumer spending did increase at 1.8%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Wow. It's that sort of articulate, meticulous speech. That's why she's president of the United States today. Oh, wait. Here she was slamming the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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You guys are going to need someone better than that. What about Tim Walz? Remember, they trotted him out as a possibility for 2028 after his awful run for vice president. Well, yesterday he was talking about why he was nominated for vice president by Kamala Harris at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. It didn't go great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Well, I guess that the code talking didn't work. By the way, first hint that a candidate for the Democratic Party is not going to be able to talk to the bros, he uses terms like code talk. That would be the first indicator. Okay, so who else are the possibilities? Well, Democrats are positing that maybe Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan would be a possibility, the governor of Michigan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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And she has been making some interesting moves. She's been appearing on stage with President Trump, trying to prop up his economic plans in the Midwest, particularly with regards to sort of factory jobs. Here she was appearing with President Trump and they hugged.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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So the fact that she is now essentially appearing repeatedly with President Trump, that's a smart move because it makes her appear moderate. Or the alternative is AOC. Whitmer versus AOC is very likely to be the 2028 face down for the Democratic Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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So AOC continues to play coy about 2028, even as she runs around the country with Bernie Sanders abandoning her district and speaking in front of tens of thousands of cheering socialists. Here she was yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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That is the smallest increase since mid-2023. Spending by the federal government fell, but the main driver of the first quarter contraction was... Wait for it. The tariff war. Of course, of course. It turns out everyone has been on the edge of their seats. It's a roller coaster, this tariff war, at best. Investors have pulled their money out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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That's an avoidance of the question. That is not a no, you'll notice. So that is going to be the battle inside the Democratic Party. Again, the Democratic Party is not in a strong position. All the polls show that the American people do not like them, which is why it is very, very important to take the football and run with it and not allow the economy to sink into recession.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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bowl and branches 100 organic cotton sheets were pivotal in my sleep quality from the very first night i could feel the difference these aren't just any sheets they really do have this incredible softness that puts you in instant relaxation mode what really impressed me is how they get softer with every single wash i didn't think that was possible but after a few months it felt even more luxurious than when i first got them believe me i've tried other premium sheets before nothing comes close to the breathable comfort of bowl and branch that's why we got rid of all of our other sheets in the shapiro household the best part

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make with Bull & Branch. Get 15% off, plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bullandbranch.com. That's bullandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com to save 15%. Exclusions apply. See site for details. Also, Made in America means something to our country's private equity investors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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When you invest $700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you are investing in the success of Main Street. Over the last eight years alone, America's private equity investors have contributed $5 trillion to the U.S. economy. That is money powering growth in manufacturing, tech, energy, and innovation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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From strengthening supply chains to helping America lead in artificial intelligence, that kind of investment shapes our future. and it starts with private equity backing American ambition. Because investing in our people, our businesses, and our communities isn't just good for the economy, it's good for the country.

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Learn more about how private equity keeps American small businesses growing and thriving at investmentcouncil.org, paid for by the American Investment Council. And meanwhile, some good news out of Ukraine, says Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary. He announced yesterday that there would be a Ukraine minerals deal.

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You remember, this was supposed to be what was going to happen when Vladimir Zelensky visited the United States back in February. And there was that pretty awful showdown between Zelensky and President Trump and the Vice President, J.D. Vance. He was supposed to sign some sort of rare earth minerals deal.

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And the sort of tacit promise of that deal was basically that if there was an economic relationship that was valuable to the United States and Ukraine, obviously the United States would have a stake in Ukraine not becoming Russian. Well, Secretary Besson made that absolutely clear yesterday in announcing the deal. Here he was.

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We are going to bring you the facts with no filter or no spin. And then you get to get in on the conversation. Join the live chat during our daily shows, 100% uncensored, ad-free, packed with fans who actually think for themselves. Get the news the way it should be, honest, fearless, without an agenda. Your voice matters. Be a part of it. Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

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If in fact they are spending, they are attempting to beat the tariffs to the table. They're essentially buying things, stocking up on imports before the tariffs hit. Net exports, the difference between what the United States imports and exports, subtracted nearly five percentage points from headline GDP. This was the biggest quarterly drag from net exports on record, dating back to 1947.

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Okay, so that is the important part is what he says there is that this is a sign that the United States would like Ukraine to retain its independence. Okay, if that's true, which I assume that it is, that will have to mean additional military support to Ukraine if Putin does not come to the table. Now, the goal, of course, is to get Putin to the table and then the Europeans can sort of take over.

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But in the meantime, you can't let Ukraine collapse or the rare earth minerals deal means pretty much nothing. So that is a welcome shift from the Trump administration and a good thing for Ukraine to have signed. Meanwhile- And the media continue to beclown themselves in a wide variety of ways. So the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia continues to be a major talking point for Democrats.

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He's a bad guy, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. We now have reports of a second protective order that his wife filed against him in 2020, in which she accused him of physical abuse, threatening her. And she said that she even had a recording where he said, even if he killed her, quote, nobody can do anything to him.

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So it sounds like just a fabulous person, just a really, really good, solid American, you know, a father, a Maryland father, as the media would put it. Well, President Trump was interviewed about this particular topic, and he pointed out to ABC's Terry Moran that he had MS-13 tattoos.

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Now, the reason this has become a hot story today is because there was, in fact, a graphic that was put out by members of the Trump administration that showed that he had a series of tattoos on his knuckles. Okay, those tattoos were a variety of symbols. Those symbols were interpreted by sources, judges, everybody else in the Trump administration as MS-13 associated symbols.

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And so somebody basically took that fist and put above the knuckles MS-13 on the knuckles. And President Trump points out that these are MS-13 tattoos. Terry Moran seems to think that President Trump thinks that the letters MS and the numbers 13 are actually printed on the knuckles. And that's not what President Trump is saying. So they get into a weird fight over it.

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So basically, imports actually radically increased because everybody was trying to get in under the wire before all the tariffs kicked in. Imports subtract from the Commerce Department's calculation of GDP because they represent the spending on foreign-made goods and services. So does this mean the economy is weak? It doesn't. The economy is not, in fact, weak.

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OK, so, again, it seems to me that they're talking past one another. The media is interpreting that as Trump saying over and over that the actual letters MS-13 are tattooed on his knuckles, regardless of whether that is true or not. And he does not, in fact, have the numbers and letters MS-13. on his knuckles.

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He has a bunch of other really ugly tattoos that are probably associated with MS-13 on his knuckles. The point is, defending the guy himself as though he is some sort of great shakes is a huge Democratic mistake. Now, what is also a mistake for President Trump on this is to admit in interviews, that he could theoretically get Abrego Garcia back, but he won't.

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Because again, there's court orders in place that suggest that he is supposed to use best efforts to work with the Salvadoran government to allow this truly trash human being to get to process. And you can believe both things. You can believe that Kilmer Abrego Garcia appears to be an absolute trash human being, probably MS-13, and also... that he should go through whatever due processes do.

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And that doesn't mean a full trial. It does mean that he should go through whatever minor processes do and then he gets expelled from the country again. Here's President Trump.

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So, I mean, that is going to be a problem in court. Again, like the economy, even if you like some of the ideas, the implementation matters. I like the idea of deporting everybody who is like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, possible gang members, people with criminal records who beat their wives, like all those people, if they're not American citizens, should be pushed out of the country forthwith.

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Also, you should actually abide by due process. I don't know why that's really particularly controversial at this point in time. Meanwhile, in some pretty terrible news, David Horowitz, Died at the age of 86. I knew David really, really well. Obviously, I used to work at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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Truth Revolt, which was sort of a precursor to Daily Wire, began at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. But I knew David for more than a decade before that. Truly a formative person in the modern conservative movement, a person who spoke truth no matter the cost. David started off as a radical communist.

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The economy, in the absence of the trade war, remains fairly robust at this point. Not like 5% GDP robust, but ready to grow. Deregulation and tax cuts without the trade war, and you'd have a booming economy right now, which is why I've been saying Peter Navarro needs to be fired. Just let Scott Besant run this ship. That's all. Just let it happen.

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He wrote a book in 1998 titled Radical Son, A Generational Odyssey that talked about how he was what he called a red diaper baby, that his parents were communists. And he started off as a far leftist writing for Ramparts Magazine. He turned to the right when... his friend was killed by the Black Panthers, allegedly. And he moved to the right.

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Basically, all of his old friends disowned him, decided that he was untouchable. And David turned into one of the most effective conservative activists of his generation. He used to call the David Horowitz Freedom Center a battle tank rather than a think tank. Pretty much everybody who's anybody in modern conservatism had some initial connection with David Horowitz.

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I remember I met Charlie Kirk, for example, at a David Horowitz Freedom Center event. This was back when Charlie was maybe 18 or 19 years old and he was first getting started with TPUSA. And that's true for a huge number of people who got their start in the conservative movement in the 90s and 2000s. David will very much be missed. You should read his books. He's really an amazing writer.

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a terrific speaker, a strong voice. There are many videos of him online that are totally worth watching. Here is just one.

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Because of lack of faith in the American economy, de-dollarization continues. This is foreign economies moving away from investment in the American dollar. According to Axios, the U.S. dollar index in Trump's first 100 days fell 9.5% compared to a 2.1% drop in the first 100 days of his term.

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David was extremely clear in his approach to the world. He understood the morality of many of our foreign adversaries. He was an advocate for Americanism and American strength and security, and he will very much be missed. Okay, meanwhile, we are actually over in Jerusalem because no surprise, no secret, I'm a big supporter of Israel, obviously. I'm a Zionist. I'm Jewish.

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And so I'm here for Yom Ha'atzmaut, which is Israeli Independence Day. I was invited to light a torch, actually, to lead off Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. And I thought it was an amazing opportunity to sit down with the brand new Trump administration ambassador to the state of Israel, Mike Huckabee. We sat down yesterday. It was a fantastic conversation. Here's what it sounded like.

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Ambassador Huckabee, thank you so much for offering us the use of this office that we could actually film this.

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So let's talk about your history with Israel, why you wanted to be ambassador to Israel in the first place.

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The value of the greenback increased by 4.5% in George W. Bush's first 100 days when the country was headed into recession and rose slightly for both Obama and Biden. So as recession fears rise, investors are actually moving away from the dollar. There's just less need for it if the feeling is that trade is going to decline.

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So let's talk about that for a moment. Obviously, support for Israel has become significantly more fraught in the United States, particularly since October 7th. The left obviously has moved very strongly against Israel. There are breaks in the right with regard to support for Israel. The implication has been made that only Jews are interested in supporting Israel. Obviously, you're not Jewish.

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We're both American, obviously. But why should Americans and particularly non-Jewish Americans care about Israel?

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Why exactly would you invest in American dollars if you can't use those American dollars to buy American goods? or if American companies are gonna be hurt by their lack of export markets. So when we're talking about the value of the American dollar and what actually has happened under President Trump, de-dollarization is a really dangerous thing.

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So there are a number of issues where the United States' policy in the Middle East affects Israel, and Israel's policy obviously affects the interests of the United States. The most out-of-the-box one is President Trump's proposal with regard to the Gaza Strip, which I love.

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I think that it's fascinating because I think that it's the first reflection of actual reality to maybe have entered the conversation in decades, the recognition that this strip of land, which has been taken over by Hamas and whose people largely, unfortunately, support Hamas and support at least the destruction of the state of Israel. That is an intransigent problem.

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And President Trump has acknowledged that. And then he has suggested that basically there needs to be a transformation of the Gaza Strip. What do you make of President Trump's proposal? How practical is it? How does it get done?

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To articulate that, I asked our friend sponsors over at Perplexity, what would the impact be on American economics of de-dollarization? And perplexity says, de-dollarization reverts to the process by which countries reduce their reliance on the US dollar for international trade, financial transactions, and as a reserve currency.

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Meanwhile, one of the other issues that the Trump administration is taking on is the Iranian nuclear program. This, of course, has been a burgeoning threat against Israel and against the entire region, the Saudis, UAE, and all the various other countries of the region for a couple of decades at this point. President Trump famously called President Obama's deal on this the worst deal in history.

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He called that repeatedly the JCPOA. There's a lot of negotiations that are currently happening between the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and members of the Iranian government. Some of these negotiations have been happening in Qatar. Apparently, there's now European involvement in these negotiations.

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There's been some sort of different messages coming out about what the goal of the negotiations is, whether it's total denuclearization of Iran, meaning no civilian nuclear program, no nothing, or whether there will be enrichment allowed to a particular level. What should the United States' end goal be in the negotiations so as to not essentially duplicate the Obama deal?

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And the key economic impacts include higher borrowing costs and reduced financial flexibility, depreciation of the dollar and inflationary pressures. U.S. financial assets like equities and bonds could underperform relative to global markets as international investors reallocate away from dollar denominated assets.

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So one of the other issues that obviously comes up a lot and has been a hot issue since the creation of the modern state of Israel has been the so-called West Bank Judea and Samaria. I say so-called West Bank because that is a new name for an area that is extremely old. It's the West Bank of the Jordan River, but it was Judea and Samaria for several thousand years.

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If they're not using dollars, there's no reason for them to buy American products, for example, or American financial assets. A loss of geopolitical and economic leverage. Remember, President Trump likes using sanctions. Well, sanctions are only effective if you have something to actually take away from the bad guys. And there would be uncertain effects on economic growth. The effect of U.S.

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So Judea and Samaria, obviously there are multiple million Palestinian Arabs who live in these areas. There are also hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in these areas. A Palestinian state is off the table so far as the Israelis are concerned because after October 7th, which was effectively the death knell of Oslo, which again, I believe was always a foolish move.

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The death knell of Oslo means a Palestinian state is not in the cards in the so-called West Bank. What should the United States do regarding the sovereignty of Judea and Samaria?

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economic growth is ambiguous. A weaker dollar could enhance export competitiveness, make it easier for us to quote unquote cheaply produce goods. But those benefits might be offset by reduced foreign investment. So again, all this is not a particularly great indicator. Now, President Trump continues to tout his tariff war in Michigan. He did that the other night. Here he was.

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All right, so yesterday, the U.S. economic report came in. Q1, GDP is down. The biggest danger to the Trump administration and their agenda is very clearly an economic downturn. By far, it's not particularly close. I've been saying this now for months.

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I think that is such an important point, especially because there's so many myths out there about places like, for example, Bethlehem. You've been to Bethlehem. I've never been to Bethlehem because if I were to drive into Bethlehem, I would almost certainly be murdered. But Bethlehem itself.

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I'm not very popular there, but you, you're going to be in trouble. I mean, what people don't understand is, and if you've ever been here, obviously, you know that there are giant red signs outside of Bethlehem that basically say that if you are an Israeli citizen and you make a wrong turn here, the Israeli government cannot be held responsible for

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For your safety. There is no similar sign for Arabs who drive into, from these areas, Israel. If you get past a roadblock and you go into Israel, you have a normal day and then you go back home. And so maybe you can talk a little bit about how Bethlehem has changed in the 50 years you've been visiting it.

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Well, the Trump administration, obviously, is a big advocate for President Trump's election for many reasons. One of them is that he's the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States. By far, we're very grateful that you're the ambassador to Israel, doing an amazing job. Thank you so much for taking the time.

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Well, while Israel is celebrating Yom Ha'atzmuth, there are wildfires all around Jerusalem. I know because I'm in Jerusalem and basically everything was shut down last night because of these wildfires. I can see the smoke from the wildfires. I actually saw many of those fires even a few days ago when we were driving into Jerusalem.

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Okay, well, that's not exactly right. The reason that's not exactly right is because GM reported its actual financials yesterday. Apparently, GM has now reduced its profits 6.6% in Q1, and they adjusted their 2025 outlook as well. Their prior full-year guidance had suggested pretty significant growth. Now they say that while U.S. sales rose,

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Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Arabs are suspected of setting many of those fires because there were very, very high winds over the past couple of days in order to thwart Yom Ha'atzmuth festivities. Essentially, they were all shut down the night of Israeli Independence Day, required all the firefighters in the country to be activated.

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I mean, these are these are huge wildfires burning all around Jerusalem. Obviously, people who love the land so much that they are literally willing to set it on fire. So those are the enemies that Israel faces even on its independence day.

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All right, you guys, coming up in the most bizarre judicial story of the day, a judge has now ordered the release of a suspect who attempted to firebomb a Tesla store. You won't believe the reason why. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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they are having a significant problem with the tariff war. In fact, the chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, told reporters on a call, GM will not comment on the cost incurred from tariffs. Why? Because they're afraid of taking off President Trump, presumably. President Trump has already blown holes in his tariffs by announcing that there would be some exceptions for American car companies.

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GM said in January, it expected net profits in the range of $11.2 billion to $12.5 billion for full year 2025 and pre-tax profits of $13.7 billion to $15.7 billion. But they're now revising all of those statistics significantly down based on the tariff war. So President Trump has been trying to adjust to that by essentially cutting holes in his own tariff regime.

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Meanwhile, Black & Decker, again, this is an industrial company, Black & Decker is raising prices this year and retooling their entire supply chain in an attempt to blunt the impact of the global trade war, according to executives on Wednesday to The Wall Street Journal.

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They say that President Trump's tariff war is expected to dent their full year earnings per share by about 75 cents as it takes action to mitigate new costs. So this stuff is damaging. What's even more damaging is some of the rhetoric that is now surrounding this stuff. So President Trump put out a post yesterday in which he claimed that this is Joe Biden's stock market, not his own stock market.

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This brings a strong contrast to 2024 when the stock market started to increase. He said it was his stock market because the markets were expecting him to be president of the United States. Now he's been president for four months and he is claiming that it is not his stock market. That is a dog that is not going to hunt just in terms of PR. Quote, this is Biden's stock market, not Trump's.

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If there were to be an economic downturn under President Trump, the rest of the very important agenda items that he is pursuing, everything from illegal immigration to wiping DEI out of the federal government, everything from rebuilding the United States military to Doge, all of it goes out the window if the economy falls because the way the American people think about politics is quite simple.

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I didn't take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in and our companies are starting to move into the U.S. in record numbers. Our country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden overhang. This will take a while. It has nothing to do with tariffs, only that he left us with bad numbers. But when the boom begins, it will be like no other. Be patient.

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Okay, well, markets yesterday upon this news were not particularly patient. They've not dropped precipitously again because of the hope that President Trump is going to, in the end, back off of this tariff war. But I will say that politically speaking, President Trump is not setting himself up for success when he says what he said yesterday.

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So yesterday, President Trump suggested that this is not a big deal, that if there are problems with these supply chains and things just don't arrive on the shelves, you know, no biggie.

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Okay, that is not a dog that is going to hunt in any sort of future election for Republicans. Maybe they won't have $30, your kids. Maybe they will have two. And maybe they'll cost more. No biggie. That is a let them eat cake approach to politics. It would be bad if a Democrat said it. It'd be bad if a Republican said it.

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The reality is that when Americans feel that their choices in the market are constrained, when they have to pay more for their kids' toys, when they are told that it's not a big deal if their kid has to have fewer toys because of inflation, they are not going to feel the same way that President Trump just articulated. That is a tremendous commercial for Democrats.

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President Trump should be avoiding language like that, obviously. We'll get to more on that in just a moment. First, Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is helping you save money on your cell phone bill. That's right. Pure Talk says, I don't think so. It's $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead...

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Chat with my producers during our live stream. And as always, your free leftist here is Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's US customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to get the fat from your wireless bill. What you need is my friends over at Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. And again, get that year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Also...

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Grand Canyon University is a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, and they believe that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, you know, the American things. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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when it comes to presidents and the economy. If the economy is good, the president gets the credit. If the economy is bad, the president gets the blame. It is really that simple. Well, yesterday, the GDP report came in and it showed negative GDP growth. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is typically termed a recession. in sort of technical terms.

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for years to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others, that's yours.

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu. Go check them out today. Don't go to some university that's going to indoctrinate you in trash. Instead, head on over to gcu.edu. President Trump, meanwhile, continues to bang on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman.

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He told his supporters in Michigan on Tuesday, quote, I have a Fed person who is not really doing a good job. I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed. So continuing to rip on the Fed, he's apparently not going to fire Jerome Powell, which would be a mistake to fire Jerome Powell. But he's going to continue to rip on Jerome Powell. What are the markets supposed to take away from that?

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Well, as somebody who invests, I will say that my takeaway is that doesn't seem like he's going to swerve away from his tariff agenda anytime soon.

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If he is still hoping that Jerome Powell is going to save him from the consequences of his own tariff war by lowering those interest rates, that suggests that he's going to continue with the very measures that have gotten him into this situation in the first place. And all of this has serious political ramifications. It's not just fun and games.

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Not only because it affects the American people, their pocketbooks, their kitchen table, but but also because if the economy does continue to experience an economic downturn, if Americans continue to be very unhappy with the trajectory of the economy by every poll they are, Republicans will lose the House. And if Republicans lose the House, the investigations are coming.

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This is a point that Speaker Mike Johnson was making yesterday. He said, listen, if we lose the House of Representatives, they will impeach Donald Trump day one.

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So President Trump and team should keep that in mind. If Republicans lose the House, last two years of the Trump administration are basically done. Nothing gets done. And everybody sort of knows this at this point. So how does President Trump turn this thing around? The answer is actually quite simple.

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End the trade war, recalibrate, make a better policy toward China that actually does start boxing them into all the things we've been talking about on the show for weeks now. Deregulate and cut taxes. Those are the things. It's not hard. Many of those things are things the Trump administration is already doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Now, obviously, Americans are feeling very skittish about the economy in general right now. And feelings, unfortunately, don't care about your facts when it comes to the economy very often. Sometimes people feel worse about the economy than it actually is. Sometimes they feel better about the economy than it actually is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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But the markets keep kind of hoping against hope that a bunch of trade deals are coming. And that is not an evidence at this point. According to Politico, White House officials have boasted that more than a dozen countries have put offers on the table to avoid the biting tariffs scheduled to kick in in just over two months, a sign President Trump's risky trade gambit is paying off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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But the documents other countries have submitted to the White House are far from final offers, according to a dozen foreign diplomats and three officials granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive conversations. They're preliminary outlines of what their governments are willing to discuss in trade talks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Some trade partners are balking at proposing even an outline of their terms before they get some more guidance from the United States on what President Trump even wants from the talks. One industry official said they're hesitant to negotiate against themselves.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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If countries are setting the parameters for what the negotiations are and not the administration with concrete asks, it's a little bit like they're setting themselves up. So what is coming down the line? Are these trade deals coming down the line? Because the tariffs are beginning to bite. Now, there's another danger, too. China is experiencing an economic slowdown, as you would imagine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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It turns out that cutting the Chinese off from the American markets, they do have an impact on China as well. And that would be a purely good thing if we actually had plans in place to contain the effects of that. So China's economy, according to the journal, showed its first big signs of damage from the trade war as steep U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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tariffs pummeled export orders and production at the country's factories. The sharp pullback shows that President Trump's eye-watering tariffs on Chinese imports are starting to squeeze the engine room of China's economy, piling pressure on Beijing to boost its own stimulus efforts to shore up growth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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Now, China doesn't want to cut a deal with the United States because they feel that this is actually hurting the United States and President Trump worse than it is hurting them. That is despite the fact that it really is hurting China. But here's part of the problem. If China felt that it was hurting China badly enough, this tariff war, China does have a get out of jail free card.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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And that get out of jail free card is a blockade of Taiwan. If China really felt threatened enough that their economy was going to go under or the CCP was in real danger, they would simply put a blockade around Taiwan, possibly destroy TSMC, which is the manufacturer of the semiconductors that power the globe. And most of the secondary semiconductors are made in China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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This is why it is not enough to have a good policy direction. You have to have a meticulous implementation of that policy. Now, look, the good news, as always, for the Trump administration is that its enemies are absolutely incompetent and quite terrible at this. Truly garbage at this. So the Democrats continue to futz around in search of a leader.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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But all of those feelings tend to make themselves actually heard in the economic statistics eventually because people are buying and selling and doing all of these things based on what they feel their own personal financial status is. According to the Wall Street Journal, The U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2190 - The Biggest Danger To The Trump Administration

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It is funny to watch them kind of flail around like a fish out of water. James Carville, who was still sort of the voice of reason on the Democratic side for a while there, he's now caving to the Democratic National Committee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

Folks, so we're here to talk about what just happened. Bashar al-Assad, the Assad regime in Syria, is gone. And chaos is about to break loose. We're going to talk about the upsides and the downsides. In this, Ben reacts first. Your reminder that this is the final day of our 50% off sale over at Daily Wire. Daily Wire Plus, 50% off, but it ends today. It's our best deal of the year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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on the one hand, against Sunni Islamic militants, terrorists, many associated with ISIS or Al-Qaeda, and then some other sort of hodgepodge rebel groups who are Sunni in origin, some Kurds as well, who are involved in this rebellion against the Assad regime. And those were backed predominantly by Turkey, not the Kurds.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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The Kurds, as we'll see, are actually the rivals of Turkey, and Turkey has been using the Hassan Syria in order to launch its own incursions into the border regions of Syria in order to ethnically cleanse and move away the Kurds. So as we say, this entire state is a basket case. It's been a basket case for a long time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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But because Bashar Assad's regime was held up chiefly by Iran and by Russia, because it was used as a thoroughfare by Iran to smuggle arms into Lebanon, to Hezbollah, what that meant is that as Iran weakened and as Russia weakened, so too did the Assad regime. That's the real story of what's happening today and what's happened over the past few weeks. What changed?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Because the civil war has been raging at a fairly high level for the last decade and a half, over 300,000 people dead, over 12 million refugees. You remember, of course, the very famous pictures of toddlers watching up on the beaches of the Mediterranean who are trying to escape from Syria to get to Europe, for example. So what exactly happened that changed everything?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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The answer is that Israel completely shellacked Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the Iranian-controlled proxy group in Lebanon. As we mentioned, think of the geography. Lebanon is to the north of Israel and it is to the west of Syria. And so Iran, via Iraq, had this entire Shia crescent that it was controlling territorially that extended from Iran through Iraq, through Syria, into Lebanon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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When it's gone, it is gone for good. With Daily Wire Plus, you stay on top of breaking news. You get the truth behind the headlines, the facts others refuse to cover. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now. Do not wait. This deal ends today. All right, so here's your actual update. On the ground right now, Bashar Assad is out. He apparently is already in Russia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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And then the kind of tip of the crescent went all the way down into the Gaza Strip. And of course, there are other Iran-connected forces in places like Yemen with the Houthis. Okay, but the predominant territorially integrous, the sort of unified area that was controlled by Shia, went from Iran all the way to the Mediterranean into Lebanon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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So when Israel decided it was gonna take out Hezbollah, because Hezbollah had fired some eight to 10,000 rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas over the course of the last year, when Israel completely destroyed Hezbollah, and that's really what happened here. Israel destroyed Hezbollah's capacity to make war. They destroyed their long range weaponry. They destroyed their short range weaponry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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They destroyed their capacity to even ship things into the south of Lebanon. They didn't just do that. They were also interdicting all sorts of material that was being sent from Iran through Syria and into Lebanon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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That meant that Israel's air force was actually doing some pretty heavy lifting inside Syria as well, bombing particular targets in order to stop the Iranians from shipping material via Syria into Lebanon. Well, when Hezbollah got completely destroyed by Israel, Hezbollah was a major force that was upholding the Assad regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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And when Hezbollah disappeared, there went one leg that was the support for the Assad regime. Then there was another leg, and that was the Russians. So you'll recall back during the Obama administration, there was a lot of talk on what was going to happen with regard to the Syrian situation. You remember that Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, and

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Barack Obama, in all of his great wisdom, suggested that we had a red line. The West had a red line with regard to the use of such chemical weapons. And then it turns out that the violation of the red line didn't actually mean anything to Barack Obama. And so he basically handed over control to the Russians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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The Russians came in and said, don't worry, we'll take care of the chemical weapons problems. We'll take care of everything. And so that became a preserve of the Russians. So much so that when Israel was flying sorties over Syria in order to prevent material from reaching Lebanon and Hezbollah in Lebanon,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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They actually had to get Russian permission so they didn't come into direct conflict with the Russians. Okay, so there's a problem. The Russians have been a little busy lately. You may have noticed that they are bogged down in an interminable war in Ukraine, in which they themselves have lost hundreds of thousands of troops. And so what does that mean?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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It means the other support leg for the Assad regime was basically gone. And that meant that the Assad regime itself was basically gone. And that's why you've seen this lightning offensive from these Sunni... terrorist groups. I mean, that is essentially what they are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Anybody who's trying to soft-pedal exactly the people who are now in charge of Syria, I think is whistling past the graveyard, to say the very least. The leader of the Sunni Islamist rebels is a guy named Abu Muhammad al-Jalani. How much of a terrorist is this guy? The U.S. State Department has a $10 million reward on his head.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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He is, according to Jerome Dravan, a senior analyst of jihad and modern conflict at the International Crisis Group, the most important player on the ground in Syria. Originally, he was a member of both al-Qaeda and at one point ISIS. He's kind of bouncing between the two of them. And then he launched his own terror group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. And he took over some areas of Syria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Bashar Assad has been the ruler with an iron fist of Syria for the last 24 years. He, of course, follows in the footsteps of his father, Hafez al-Assad. And the Assad family has been in charge of Syria for the last 50 years or so. Now, Syria was always a sort of bizarre creation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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And he attempted to play himself off as less of a terrorist, more of a moderate. He was apparently only going to focus in on situationally improving the lives of the people in his area. This, by the way, did involve significant human rights abuses against, for example, Christians. Again, there are no good guys here. Bashar al-Assad, really bad guy. Jelani, really bad guy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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All these other terrorist groups, really bad. There are some people on the ground who presumably aren't as bad. That'd be, you would imagine the Druze, the Kurds, but those are not the main forces that we're talking about right now. So according to the New York Times, al-Jilani is now attempting to position himself as a sort of moderate. He was running a place called Idlib,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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which is in sort of the northwest of Syria. And then he kind of swept down across the rest of Syria and took over Damascus yesterday and today. In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has espoused a government guided by conservative and at times hardline Sunni Islamist ideology. So basically similar to the Taliban, sort of.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Since the rebel offensive began, however, al-Jilani has sought to reassure minority communities from other sects and religions. These are the kinds of words that were being said, as you recall, by the Taliban before the United States pulled out of Afghanistan in the first place. So is this going to be a perfect situation? Of course not. There are no perfect situations here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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There are no perfect situations. What does it mean? I'll tell you what it means in one second for kind of all the players involved because there's, as always in the Middle East, some uptides with Assad being gone and some significant downsides with Assad being gone. There are not a lot of wonderful players in the Middle East. Get to that in a moment. First, no one wants to think about debt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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The cold, hard truth of it is many of us will get deeper in debt during the holidays. My friends at PDS Debt can help with a personalized solution just for you. If you're making payments every month on your debt, your balances aren't going down, PDS does have solutions for you. Everyone with $10,000 or more in eligible debt qualifies. No minimum credit score required. Bad and fair credit accepted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Start planning today. Get a free debt analysis right now at pdsdebt.com. It only takes 30 seconds. That's PDS. D-E-B-T dot com slash react. P-D-S debt dot com slash react. Okay, so that is the situation on the ground right now. So what does that mean? Okay, well, what it means for Christians is a much more fraught existence. It was already pretty fraught in Syria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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All this pretend that Bashar al-Assad was wonderful to Christians, that is not true. Okay, there were significant human right predations against Christians on the ground, not only in the areas controlled by Sunni terrorists, but also in the areas that were controlled by Shia terrorists. Syria is about 10% Christian. Okay, so is it about to get worse?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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It definitely could, which would, of course, be a terrible thing. And then you have the question of what Bashar al-Assad was doing to the country, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people, using everything up to and including chemical weapons. Well, he's gone now, and Israel has been striking a lot of the chemical weapons depots to prevent them from falling into the hands of the...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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of the Sykes-Picot arrangement that emerged from the West, from France and Britain particularly, after World War I. And it's always been a bit of a mess. It has been particularly a mess given the number of different ethnic and religious groups inside Syria. So Syria has within it a large area that is controlled by the Kurds. It has a large area that is controlled by Shia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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new rebel alliance over here. Okay, so Again, is any of this wonderful? It isn't. But the one thing that is an upside is that the Iranian crescent is dead. The Shia crescent that, again, stretched all the way from Iran all the way across to Lebanon, that is now dead. What does that mean? It means that the Iranian regime is actually in quite real trouble here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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All of their biggest proxies are gone. Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Assad, gone. That means the Shia influence game is beginning to wane. It's beginning to end. The Houthis are basically isolated down there in Yemen. The Shia... regime in Iran still has impact in Iraq, but internally they are much, much, much weaker right now. So the border countries, what are they doing?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Turkey is doing incursions into northern Syria. They were probably behind much of what's going on right now. They're attempting to grab territory in northern Syria. They're creating their own buffer zone. They're attempting to encroach on Kurdish territory, again, in the northeast of the country. Meanwhile, Israel in the south has the Golan Heights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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And anybody, by the way, who thought that it was a good idea for Israel to give up the Golan Heights, yeah, you're an idiot. It's a good thing Israel has the Golan Heights. Otherwise, you'd have Sunni terrorists sitting up top over the Lake Tiberias and firing down into the valley in Israel. So Israel controls that area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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They've been moving up into their own buffer zone over at Mount Hermon, which is in Syria. It's kind of the strategic height of the region. And meanwhile, again, you have the Syrian government, which has now abdicated. They are turning over control to this rebel alliance. Unclear exactly what's going to result.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Because again, you still have all of these players on the ground who are fighting one another. They may be united against Assad, but now Assad is gone. So Assad's family is out. The rebels, again, arrived in Damascus. Meanwhile, you have the Kurds who are still controlling a large swath of territory. What does it really mean? It means that Russia is weak. Iran is weak. These were paper tigers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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And their attempts to invade Ukraine and invade Israel, respectively, those went really poorly for them. What you are watching is the complete collapse of the Russian-Iranian alliance in Syria, and it is indicative of the interior weakness of these countries, which is something to remember going forward.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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President Biden said this is the first time ever either Russia nor Iran or Hezbollah could defend a foreign regime in Syria. This is the direct result of the blows Ukraine and Israel delivered. This is what he said in a statement. No thanks to Joe Biden, by the way, who's continuing to slow walk weapons to both Ukraine and also to Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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So if it had been up to Joe Biden, presumably those allies never would have been properly armed. It is a very good thing and indicative, again, of the weakness of Russia and Iran, what has happened in Syria. Now, net-net, I think it'll probably be a good thing, but there are no great things in the Middle East. It just doesn't exist. A lot of bad people in a lot of areas in the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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So it'll be fascinating to see what happens next. And it's going to be very difficult to sort of see and foresee what happens from here on in. Because there's too many competitive groups. Many of them are terrorists on all sides of the aisle. And so everybody's sort of happy talking this thing. Oh, it's a day of liberty and freedom. Just hold your horses.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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It has a large area that is controlled by Sunni. It has Druze. It has Christians. It has all sorts of people who are living in this gigantic area. Geographically, Syria is located to the west of Iraq. It is located to the east of Lebanon and to the northeast of Israel. And Turkey is to its north.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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It's certainly not a day of liberty and freedom for many of the Christians who are living in Syria, unfortunately. It is not a day of liberty and freedom, I think, for pretty much anybody who's living in Syria. But it wasn't in the first place. It turns out, as always in the Middle East, a lot of bad answers to a lot of very difficult questions. We'll see you here tomorrow. I'll recap all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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I'll bring maps. I'll show you the whole thing. We'll see you tomorrow.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: The End of Assad in Syria

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Okay, so if you can sort of imagine all of that, that means that pretty much all of those forces are having some impact inside Syria. Now, Syria's civil war has been ongoing since 2011. And it has essentially pitted the Assad regime, which is backed by Iran and Russia,

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

1032.921

So you mentioned earlier your story that you come from Haifa in Israel, that your mom is a Holocaust survivor. You have an amazing American story. Can you tell me about how you ended up being a child growing up in Israel to being one of the great rock stars in the United States of all time? That's a pretty great story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

117.769

Wow, I didn't think that was even possible. Since, as everyone knows, I'm just like a godlike specimen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Okay, so I want to begin with sort of your recent foray into anti-woke politics. You've been speaking out pretty openly about the evils of wokeism and the extreme left. You sort of consider yourself a political centrist, is that right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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So you're growing up now in New York. You're a kid. How do you get into music from there?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans. Taxes. The October 15th deadline has passed. Are you prepared for what's coming next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Miss the deadline to file for an extension?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they're not playing around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. But here's the good news. There's still hope. Tax Network USA has been in this game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So how do you go from being a teenager just like, you know, a million other teenagers across the United States? You want to be in a band. You start playing. It's still a pretty long journey from there to, you know, the top of the heap in terms of rock music. So how does the band come together?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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What did the fox say? Yep. Of course you know it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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I've never listened to such tripe. No. Of course not. Yeah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Yeah, and I was going to ask, you know, so obviously you come up with this characteristic look. How do you come up with the face paint and the sticking out of the tongue and all this? I mean, obviously you're somebody who is thinking in advance of how do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? How do you come up with that form of differentiation?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

2531.343

Get to more on this in a moment. First, did you know you spend a third of your life sleeping? That's around 25 years of your life in bed. It's a lot of time. With numbers like that, your mattress isn't just furniture, it's an investment in your own well-being. This is where Helix Sleep comes in. I never thought a mattress could make a big difference until I tried Helix. What sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Glad you asked. Unlike those one-size-fits-all brands, Helix offers 20 different mattress options because they understand everyone's sleep needs are unique. It all starts with their sleep quiz, a game changer for finding your perfect match. When I mentioned my struggle with lower back pain on softer mattresses, they recommended their medium-firm option. The result? I've never slept better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Looking for a cloud-like feeling? Try that, Lux. mattress. Want the ultimate sleep experience? Go for the Elite. Need extra support? The Helix Plus has you covered. Forget those awkward mattress store visits. Helix delivers right to your door. Helix is so confident in their product, they give you 100 nights to try it out. That's over three months to test your mattress in the real world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Plus, every mattress comes with a 10 to 15-year warranty. So, if you want to sleep as soundly as I do, head on over to helixsleep.com. Take that sleep quiz. Plus, Helix is offering up to 20% off site-wide and two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. That's correct. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben with Helix. Better sleep starts right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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When you talk about doing all of this, and obviously so much of this is transgressive and designed to gain attention, but there's also the music. And the fact is that a lot of people now consider rock music to basically be a dead genre. It is. So why do you think that happened? Why did rock die?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Well, yeah, I have to say I did my musical education wrong. I'm the normal Jewish kid who took violin lessons from the age of five till the time I was maybe 17 years old and it got pretty good. And then I realized that there ain't no money in classical music.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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And I learned it at school talent shows that the guy who could play three chords was definitely going to do better with the girls than the guy who was playing Fritz Kreisler and Beethoven. So just lessons that you learn along the way for sure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Wow. Yeah. I wasted a lot of time. And then it turns out actually that my greatest musical accomplishment was having a number one charting rap single that literally was me talking, as you mentioned. So that was the thing that we did last year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Oh. Let's see, my riff was, I've got the facts, I've got the stats, my money like glue so my pockets are fat. That was a little bit of sample there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Those of us... Oh, yeah, when I get to the disclaimers at the end of the commercials, that's when I go into my mode. Yeah, exactly. No, when I'm reading NMLS numbers and stuff and giving the warnings at the end of the drug commercials, that's where it's at. I mean, I missed my calling.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

3065.111

Well, that's a thing. I'm planting seeds. And then a year later, people realize what I'm saying and realize that I was right all along. I wish I could slow it down, but that's the bane of my career. Literally my entire career, people have been saying I speak too fast because it's true. And I've been trying it to slow it down. And, you know, hopefully as my brain ages, then it'll gradually.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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How old are you? I'm 40 at this point. And maybe I'm a little slower than I was when I was 30. I don't know. 75, bitch. I want to ask you about... I have to ask you about the women, obviously, because... There are some. I've noticed. But now you're a proponent of monogamy. You dated your wife for 28 years before you got married. That is a long time to date your wife.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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I barely dated my wife for 28 days before we got engaged. It was literally about three and a half months, and then we got engaged and married for... See, 16 years. And and so that's a long delay between meeting somebody and marrying them. You don't hear a lot of 30 year engagements.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Well, Gene, it's, it's been great. I really appreciate you taking the time. I learned, I definitely learned some things that I didn't know. And so for that, I appreciate the education and, and really thanks for stopping by. I appreciate the time. The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Jessica Kranz and Matt Kemp. Associate producers are Jake Pollack and John Crick.

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Editing is by Olivia Stewart. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Cristina. Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo. Production intern is Sarah Steele. Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho. Executive in charge of production is David Wormis. Executive producer, Justin Siegel. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

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The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Yeah, I do. But why don't you give me the explication?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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Gene Simmons is a rock and roll legend, best known as the charismatic bassist and frontman of Kiss. With a larger-than-life persona, theatrical concert style, and signature face paint, Simmons and Kiss revolutionized rock in the 1970s and 80s with hits like I Was Made for Lovin' You and Rock and Roll All Night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

425.489

Yep. Well, I mean, whenever I'm called to the Torah, that is the way that you're described, right? I'm Benjamin Aharon ben David Yaakov, right? Meaning the Benjamin Aaron, the son of David Jacob.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

444.599

My wife's Moroccan. That's why I got it. I started integrating all of her habits into my Hebrew pronunciations. Yeah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

464.308

So I want to talk to you a little bit about the sort of heterodox politics that you describe, because it used to be in the United States that that was sort of considered the norm, is that you could hold a wide variety of views, sometimes in conflict with one another, that the heterodoxy was sort of the way of the world. That is the way that you approach political issues.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

481.076

It wasn't straight line partisan. You could hold by one party. You could hold by the other party. You could have a mix of the two. And now it seems as though all the heterodoxy seems to have moved to one side of the aisle. That's one of the bizarre things. things that sort of happening in American politics today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

494.103

If you look at the left side of the aisle, there's not a lot of ideological diversity. If you look to, for example, the Trump coalition, you have people who disagree on pretty much every issue that it's possible to disagree on. You have pro-choicers and pro-lifers inside the Trump coalition. You have people who are pro-big government and pro-small government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

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You have people who are interventionist and isolationist. all inside sort of the same coalition. And I wonder how much of that has to do, you think, with, say, Donald Trump, and how much do you think that has to do with the sort of increasingly censorious nature of the left?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

53.325

Born in Haifa, Israel, Simmons immigrated to New York City with his mother as a young boy and was inspired to become a performer after seeing The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. With a knack for marketing and a love of music, Simmons created his demon persona to make Kiss a massive success. 44 albums later and at 100 million records sold, the band just finished their farewell tour in 2023.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

71.209

Beyond his musical career, Gene Simmons has leveraged his stage personality into a career as an entrepreneur, appearing on reality television and launching a successful merchandising empire. In today's episode, Gene tells the story of his family's persecution and immigration to the United States, how his upbringing shaped his personal philosophy, and his journey to becoming an iconic rock star.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

859.19

Folks, we'll get to more of this in a moment. First, let's talk about dressing sharp without sacrificing comfort. If you're tired of choosing between looking professional and feeling relaxed, I have good news for you. Collars & Co. is revolutionizing menswear with their famous dress collar polo. Imagine this, the comfort of a polo combined with the sharp look of a dress shirt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

874.377

It's the best of both worlds. It gives you that professional edge without the stuffiness. Gone are those days of floppy collars that make you look like you just rolled out of bed. These polos feature a firm collar that stands straight all day long. The four-way stretch fabric means you can freely and comfortably move throughout your day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

88.377

He also shares the reason for his deep American patriotism, as well as a few hard-learned lessons about love. Simmons' impact on American music and culture is undeniable. Don't miss the legendary Gene Simmons on this episode of the Sunday Special. Gene Simmons, thanks so much for stopping by. I appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

887.643

It's office-approved, so you can look professional without feeling like you're trapped in a suit. And get this, it actually travels well, so whether you're commuting to work or jutting off for a business trip, you'll arrive looking crisp and feeling great. But Collars & Co. isn't just about polos. They've expanded their line impressively.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

899.168

They've got the merino sweaters, the quarter zips, stretch chinos, Even a performance blazer they call the Maverick. It's versatility at its finest. These pieces look great by themselves under a sweater or with a blazer. So, for example, I am wearing one of their shirts right now. And look at me. I'm a magnificent beast, as they say.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

912.836

So, if you want to look sharp, feel comfortable, and support a fast-growing American company, head on over to collarsandco.com. Use code BEN for 20% off your first order. That's collarsandco.com, code BEN, collarsandco, because you shouldn't have to choose between looking good and feeling good. So, as you mentioned there, you know President Trump. You were on The Apprentice with President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Evolution of a Rockstar | Gene Simmons

929.706

What was that experience like?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

101.338

Yeah, so let's talk about, for those who don't know your story, how you got into Israel activism. This is not your bag. This is not how you started. So how did you get to where you are right now doing what you're doing?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1045.691

We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, folks, did you know you spend a third of your life sleeping? If you're not doing it right, you're literally wasting years of your life. And about you, I cannot afford to do that. That's why I want to tell you about Helix Sleep. Helix has genuinely transformed my sleep quality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1058.625

They have 20 different mattress options because unlike the one size fits all crowd, Helix understands that different people need different solutions. Here's how it works. You take their sleep quiz. I did it myself. They match you with your perfect mattress. When I took it, they recommended a medium-firm mattress because I mentioned my back pain issues with softer mattresses.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1073.059

They got it exactly right. Whether you need the cloud-like comfort of their Lux, the premium experience of the Elite, or the extra support of the Helix Plus, they've got you covered. And the best part? They ship it directly to your door. No mattress-door interactions necessary. Helix is so confident in their product, they give you 100 nights to try it out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1088.053

That's more than three months to decide if it's right for you. Plus, they back every mattress with a 10 to 15 year warranty, which is what I call standing behind your product. So if you'd like to sleep as soundly as I do, head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben, take that sleep quiz. Plus, Helix is offering up to 25% off site wide and two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1104.084

Even better, Helix is offering a free bedding bundle, which is two dream pillows, a sheet set mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order. That's correct. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben. With Helix, better sleep starts right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1116.633

Yeah, I think one of the things that October 7th has made clear in the period since, including what happened in Amsterdam, and for those who missed it, what happened in Amsterdam is that there was a soccer match between the Dutch national team and Maccabi Tel Aviv, which is a team that's based, obviously, in Israel. And a bunch of Israeli fans were there for the soccer match.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Some of them in the lead up were sort of getting into shouting matches with Palestinian protesters who had shown up with Palestinian flags, got a little bit rowdy before the game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And then after the soccer match, there were organized bands who were chasing those Jews down and other Jews who were in the city and beating them, trying to run them over with cars, forcing them to jump into the canals, trying to break into hotels where people were actually just staying. It was essentially an excuse to break into a violent riot or a violent pogrom against Jews.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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The reality of the necessity for the state of Israel is obviously clear, particularly for people in Europe. There is this great and ridiculous irony where in the aftermath of October 7th, you'll see people who hate Israel say that the Jews should go back where they came from.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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The implication being, of course, that the Jews are European, which ignores, number one, the history, which is that the Jews are innate to the region, that they are, in fact, indigenous to the region.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Number two, that probably half of Jews, maybe more than half at this point, who live in Israel and Mizrahi, meaning that they're Sephardi, meaning they're from the actual Arab countries that surround that area. My in-laws are Moroccan, and my wife is Moroccan. So she's not European in any way, shape, or form.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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So the irony of go back to Europe, and then in Europe, Jews are having the shit kicked out of them. On the streets, or they're being attacked in France for being Jewish. You know, there have been significant attacks on Jews in France, including murder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And Jews are realizing this now, moving to Israel and then being told, no, no, no, you have to go back where, quote unquote, you came from, which would be the places where, you know, they committed a genocide like 80 years ago. An actual genocide. An actual, honest to God, murder every Jew genocide. And places where pogroms are still existing today, thanks to many of the expats from...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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the middle East, right? I mean, it's many of the people who are committing, I would say most of the people who are committing the anti-Jewish violence in Europe right now are not natives of Europe. They're, they're people who are coming from the middle East and Northern Africa. They're Muslim and they're going in there and radical Muslim. And they're going in there. They're hurting Jews in Europe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Like the, It's hard to even square the argument, but it's not a good faith argument in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I think that this is one of the big points, is that what's happening right now is not indicative just of hatred of Jews. It is indicative of a hatred of the West that has been imbibed throughout Western civilization, particularly in young people. It's not everybody who's young, obviously. It's us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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minority, plurality, depending on where you are, of young people who now believe this anti-Western claptrap, that basically the West is guilty for exploitation and evil, and anybody who is successful is an oppressor, and anybody who is unsuccessful is the oppressed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And when that matrix is then applied to the Middle East, where Israel is wildly successful, being a country of 7.5 million Jews, a couple million Muslim Arabs, some Christians as well. The total population of Israel is about 10 and a half million.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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A country of 10 and a half million is the militarily dominant force in the region, the economically dominant force in the region without any natural resources. Israel is not a country that has oil. I mean, now they have oil in Leviathan oil fields offshore. That was found like five, 10 years ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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It's not as though Israel built its capital off the back of just drilling the way that virtually every other country in the region did. Israel has a Western-style government with Western-style property rights, Western-style GDP, Western-style living standards. And it's specifically because of that that people hate Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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That's the real reason that people in the West, who are on the left particularly, hate Israel is because the idea is that Israel is too successful. The reason they're successful is because they're exploitive colonizers. And anti-colonization has to happen not just in Israel, Yep.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I think the backlash is here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I think the backlash is here. I think that, I mean, you see it in the Netherlands where Gert Wilders has been saying, like, this needs to stop for years. And he went from being... a supposed fringe voice to being the largest party in his parliament. You're seeing it across Europe, whether the European parties wish to acknowledge it or not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Everybody is moving to the right, whether it's Maloney in Italy, whether it's Millet in Argentina, like across the world, there's a backlash that's coming. for what I've termed sort of the scavenger mentality. I've suggested that the world is now divided, unfortunately, between lions and scavengers. Lions are people who want to create.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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They're people who want to go to work, have a job, innovate, build, have communities, have families, and live within a system of property rights and free speech and duties and values.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And then you have scavengers who just want to tear all that stuff down because they think that all that stuff is a system of exploitative colonialism and that has to be torn down and that anytime somebody fails, it's not because they've made bad decisions. It's because the system has victimized them. And I think we are I think Western civilization is tired of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Honestly, I think I think Western civilization is looking at this or saying, no, I think it's manifesting in all sorts of ways that have nothing to do with Israel. I think that you're seeing this with with young people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Frankly, I think there's going to be a backlash among young people who are tired of being told that they are the representatives of a civilization that is evil and bad and the only way that they can expiate their guilt. is to be failures and side with failures. And I think that there are a lot of people who are like, no, you know what? I'm not interested in that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I think you saw that in the election in the United States. I think that you're going to see that in elections around Europe. I think the rising power of right-wing parties in Europe, which you're starting to see people trying desperately to hold back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I don't think they're going to be able to contain it because it turns out that things like open borders where you ship in people who hate your values, people don't like those things. It turns out that people don't like being told that the best they can hope for from their life is... sort of this gradual decline into irrelevance and that you should feel guilty over the success of your civilization.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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It's a not hopeful message. I think people are rejecting it. So I think the backlash is coming. And I think that, again, because everything happens in the Middle East first, because that's where the borders are the closest. I think that you're seeing that in Israel. Israel is a great example of this. I mean, just the Israeli body politics is an amazing example of this. If you go back just...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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A year and a half ago, the Israeli body politic was tearing itself apart over things like judicial reform. There was an internal issue over how much power should be delegated to the judiciary versus how much power should be delegated to the parliament in the state of Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And you had massive, huge, open protests, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, open talk about civil war in Israel, which was wildly exaggerated and absurd. And people who are spending all of their time worrying about how do we allocate resources within our own – But then ourselves, is it fair? And then it turns out there's an existential threat at your doorstep.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And when the existential threat at your doorstep materializes, it turns out that all the people who are protesting in the streets and all the people they were protesting against are in the same unit in the army.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And you see a bunch of people who are secular in Israel and a bunch of people who are Dati, meaning religious in Israel, who five minutes ago were sort of over at each other's throats over things like judicial reform. So they're like, guys, we have bigger priorities right now. It turns out that there's something that is much, much worse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And so you've seen a transformation of the body politic in Israel. But, I mean, first of all, the far left in Israel no longer exists as a functioning political entity. It just doesn't. It's not. Like, there was a time when I was growing up, the Labor Party in Israel was the actual governing party in Israel in half of elections.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Before Menachem Begin, the Labor Party was the only party in Israel that had ever governed. And now... If you were to allocate sort of on the political spectrum in Israel where things stand, of the 120 seats in Knesset, a minimum of 80 of them would have to be characterized as center to right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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There is no functioning left in Israel anymore because the left that had been sort of flagellating itself over the evils of Israel being Israel, like, well, it turns out no matter what we do, people still want to murder us. Mm-hmm. I mean, one of the things that happened on October 7th was that the attack happened in the Gaza envelope.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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The Gaza envelope, for people who don't know Israel and don't know the geography, it's like they attacked San Francisco. That area is the most left-wing area in the state of Israel. It is not an area that's in territorial dispute. It was not won in the Six-Day War. It is not in the West Bank. It is not a settlement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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The areas that were attacked have been an integral part of the state of Israel since 1947, 1948, and long before that. And when those areas were attacked, those areas voted like 80% for merits, which is the most left-wing party in Israel. Many of the people who were murdered were peace activists. who are attempting to bring people from Gaza to work in Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And the people who they brought in were giving sometimes information to Hamas as to which houses were being populated by whom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Yes, they saw they had on the bodies of the Hamas terrorists who were killed coming in. They actually had plans house to house with lists of members of families, in some cases, who are living in those houses that can only be gathered by people who obviously were on the ground right there. And so for Israelis...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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who many of whom had been saying, well, you know, really, this is about the treatment of the Palestinians or what can we do to facilitate better treatment for the Palestinians? The people who were murdered were exactly the people who were asking those questions. And so the reaction of Israelis left, right and center was it turns out that maybe this is not about a territorial dispute.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Maybe this is about something much deeper and much more malevolent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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So you spent a lot of time with victims of October 7th. What's that been like for you?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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So let's talk about how you got to 14 million followers because this is a pre-existing following. Before you started doing the Israel activism, you're by profession a dancer. So what was it like training for that? How do you build up a following that big?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1888.37

We'll get to more on this in just one moment. First, folks, let's talk about dressing sharp without sacrificing comfort. If you're tired of choosing between looking professional and feeling relaxed, I have excellent news. Collars & Co. is revolutionizing menswear with their famous dress collar polo. Imagine this, the comfort of a polo combined with the sharp look of a dress shirt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1903.441

It's the best of both worlds, giving you that professional edge without the stuffiness. Gone are those days of floppy collars that make you look like you just rolled out of bed. These polos feature a firm collar that stands straight all day long. The four-way stretch fabric means you can move freely and comfortably throughout your day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1916.986

It's office approved, so you can look professional without feeling like you're trapped in a suit. And get this, it also travels well, so whether you're commuting to work or jetting off for a business trip, you will arrive looking crisp and feeling great. But Collars & Co. isn't just about polos. They've expanded their line impressively.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1929.35

They've got merino sweaters, quarter zips, stretch chinos, even a performance blazer they call the Maverick. It's versatility at its finest. These pieces look great by themselves under a sweater or with a blazer. I mean, check out this shirt. Look at this magnificent jacket. I mean, I look unbelievable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1942.854

So, if you want to look sharp, feel comfortable, and support a fast-growing American company, head on over to CollarsAndCo.com. Use code BEN for 20% off your first order. That's CollarsAndCo.com, code BEN. Collars & Co. Because you shouldn't have to choose between looking good and feeling good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1956.091

So, you know, I think one of the things that's happened in the media is they've attempted a sort of moral equivalence, obviously, between October 7th and then the response by Israel to October 7th. So it's a specious argument. It's ridiculous on its face. Israel has been desperately attempting to protect civilian populations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1971.815

If they'd wanted to eviscerate the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, they certainly have the military wherewithal to do so. They have not. There have actually been more births in Gaza since the beginning of the war than there have been deaths in warfare in Gaza on the Palestinian side since the beginning of the war. So it's an awfully

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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stupid way to go about doing a genocide if that's what you're seeking to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

1990.441

Right. They're sending 2,500 calories per person per day into the Gaza Strip, a lot of that's being hijacked by Hamas or stolen by the UNRWA before it was outlawed by Israel. But the reality on the ground is ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2002.788

I mean, the situation that you mentioned, where you have a child hiding under the body of a dead parent in order to survive, the reason that that would never be an issue in Gaza is because Israel is not attempting to kill children. Israel is attempting to preserve life and kill terrorists. It's not quite the same thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2049.005

So it's- I mean, I've seen the tapes from, if you ever go to, if ever our viewers have a chance to go to visit an Air Force base in Israel, they have footage and they will show you the footage of how they go about doing a drone strike on terrorists. And much of that footage is them deciding not to do a drone strike.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2063.622

They have to go through four layers of legal scrutiny before they green light a drone strike, which takes like an additional 45 seconds to a minute just to go through those clearances to actually perform the drone strike. That's how meticulous Israel is attempting to be legally. Now, it's a war. It doesn't mean that all rules are always followed. It doesn't mean that there aren't atrocities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Wars happen and wars are awful. Wars are terrible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I mean, Israel has the single best civilian to terrorist kill ratio in the history of urban warfare, and it isn't particularly close. The civilian to terrorist—Israel, for every civilian who's tragically killed, Israel kills about a terrorist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2104.448

It's almost a one-to-one ratio at this point by the data that's being provided by the IDF, and even by the data that Hamas is providing, it's like 1.6 to 1.0. Those sorts of ratios are unheard of in urban warfare.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2115.097

When the United States is engaged in urban warfare in the past, you're talking about kill ratios of four or five to one in terms of civilians and terrorists because terrorists legitimately hide among civilians in order to avoid Western powers killing them. And so if any Western power has to do that, I mean, you can see this in Black Hawk Down. You can see this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Like terrorists routinely hide behind civilians because they understand that the Western way of war is to try to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible since World War II. Meanwhile, they're going to exploit that as a vulnerability. So that's why the moral equivalence is just insane. I mean, last time I was in Israel, which was back during the summer,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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I was sitting at Mincha, which is the Jewish afternoon service. And the person sitting next to me was a young soldier, a 20-year-old guy who had been in Gaza. They were going house to house and trying to avoid civilian casualties. And his unit had been hit by an IED that was in a building. And the entire building came down on his unit. He was one of the few survivors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2172.431

He was in a coma for two months. He had lost both legs. He had lost one arm. And he lost a couple of fingers on his other hand. And he was a lawsuit. The reason that they were in there on the ground in the first place is to attempt to avoid civilian casualties. If this had been World War II, then total air power would have been the obvious response to 10-7.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And so the fact that, again, Israel's been performing – and the proof is in the pudding, meaning that – When Israel performs some of the most targeted operations in human history against terrorists, the level of criticism is precisely the same. So forget about what's going on in Gaza. When Israel does this unbelievable beeper operation in Lebanon, where they literally use the supply chain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2219.773

I mean, and the Lebanese people. I mean, the Lebanese people have been living in a hellscape since the PLO came into the country in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and proceeded to help destroy the country. And then Hezbollah with Iran came in as well. And that country's been a sectarian hellhole for the last couple of decades, minimum, more like since the late 1970s, early 1980s.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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And because of what Israel is doing right now, it's possible that there may be an actual – possibility of a real government being established in Lebanon, you would hope, for the first time in decades.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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But when Israel did the Beeper operation, again, the single greatest anti-terror operation in the history of humanity, where they used the actual supply chain of Hezbollah in order to target Hezbollah terrorists, they literally used only devices that Hezbollah was handing out to its fellow terrorists to get explosives in the Beepers, and then they blew up the Beepers, and they hit

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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One civilian, I believe there was one child who was killed because it was a kid of a terrorist who was carrying the beeper when it went off. And the level of response by the people who hate Israel was exactly the same as if Israel had deliberately bombed civilians. Because it's not about the killing of civilians or the harming of civilians for people who hate Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Anytime Israel flexes muscle, anytime Israel continues to not die, that would be the problem they seem to have.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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So given the fact that you are a dancer, which means that, you know, that actually takes practice and you have to keep doing it and all that. Have you been able to keep up your lifestyle during this year?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2454.563

I think one of the big differences, obviously, also between now and the pre-Holocaust era is that there are so many people in the West who really, really side with Israel and who really, really understand the nature of the conflict. That's particularly true in the United States. There are certainly a lot of people in Europe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Obviously, we're friends with many of them, people like Douglas Murray, who totally understand it. But in the United States, the United States is a wildly philo-Semitic country. This country is just fantastic. It is a fantastic country. I mean, there are pockets of terrible people on college campuses, particularly, which incentivize this behavior.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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But the number of people in this country who truly love Jews, who truly also love Israel, and who see the civilizational conflict that's at play here, It's an amazing, amazing thing. I was, you know, during this last election cycle, I went around with a bunch of different Senate candidates and I campaigned with them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2500.66

One of the people who I went with was Bernie Moreno, who is the new Senator, thank God, from Ohio. He's going to be an excellent Senator. So Senator Moreno and I were up in Northern Ohio in a town of maybe 2,000 people, very small town, very Republican town, very red town. And this town had no Jews, none, because you're in Northern Ohio.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2517.232

I mean, for those who don't know much about Judaism, if you have any sort of practice of Judaism that you'll find, you know, Jews individually in every walk of life, just like you would any other ethnicity. But if you're talking about people who are observant Jews, observant Jews to a certain level require an infrastructure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2533.358

You have to have Jewish schools and Jewish restaurants and kosher restaurants and a shul and a synagogue and all this kind of stuff. So up in Northern Ohio, nothing like that. So it's this little town, 2,000 people, and we do a big dinner event. And 1,000 of the 2,000 people show up. And so I give a speech. I'm about to leave. I have to make a plane.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2551.703

And one of the people from the town gets up and says, we have a present for you. So this person takes out a giant Israeli flag and says, after October 7th, one of the members of our town was so upset and disturbed and thought it was so necessary that he went out and he bought this giant Israeli flag.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2569.76

He stuck it on the back of his Ford F-150 and he was just driving around this all non-Jewish town with this giant Israeli flag with Ford F-150. And everybody in the town was so moved by that and in such solidarity with Israel and the Jews that we all wanted to sign this. So we spent the last year signing this flag.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2583.109

Here is a flag signed by hundreds of Christians in Northern Ohio who love Jews, love Israel, and understand the civilizational battle that we're in right now. That's this country. This country is unbelievable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

259.818

So did you spend a lot of time in Israel before October 7th?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2660.899

So you have your new project that is coming out in which you interview all of these kids from October 7th, that's coming out in December. And then obviously you also have a docuseries on the Holocaust that you've talked about how to never forget. And we can dance again, which of course was this, this very widely seen, uh, dance film with Nova Festival Survivor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2679.926

So what's next in terms of what you're producing next? What kind of content are you hoping to put out there?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

281.293

So where were you when October 7th happened?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

2847.609

Well, Montana, thanks for what you've been doing over the course of the past year. Thanks for stopping by. It's wonderful to see you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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The Ben Shapiro Sunday special is produced by Savannah Morris and Matt Kemp. Associate producers are Jake Pollack and John Crick. Editing is by Olivia Stewart. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Christina. Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo. Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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Executive in charge of production is David Wormis. Executive producer, Justin Siegel. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

36.656

Montana Tucker is a multi-talented influencer and activist whose social media following of over 14 million on platforms like TikTok and Instagram has made a tremendous impact on how young Americans absorb information about Israel and antisemitism online.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

369.475

For me and for my family, obviously, they're sort of a double whammy. So one was we'd gotten back to America from Israel. We'd been there for the Jewish holidays. So we'd gotten back October 6th. And so my in-laws were still in Jerusalem at the time. So we had a lot of friends and family, obviously, over there. And so I think there were really kind of three major

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

392.219

issues that came up for Jews in America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

394.781

One was, many of us know people in Israel, many of us have friends and family in Israel, and so you know, it's such a small country and it's such a small community that you obviously know people who are directly impacted by everything that's going on, and if you don't, you're one degree removed from somebody who's either been killed, kidnapped, or had to fight in the army over there in order to stop this sort of stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

411.632

So that was number one. Number two was the shaking of a feeling of security that Jews around the world had had prior to October 7th. So

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

420.337

If you weren't living in France, where you're under some sort of constant sort of assault, low-level assault, if you aren't living in Denmark, where, as it turns out, there's some real problems, but you're living in America, which has been the friendliest country in the history of the world to Jews, if you're living in the United States, this is not an issue that you really had to deal with, like widespread anti-Semitism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

438.625

Even people like me, where I got hit with a huge wave of anti-Semitism in 2015, 2016, for example, It didn't really impact my daily life in any serious way other than I needed a little bit of extra security. But the idea that my world was shaped by anti-Semitism in some serious way, it never really occurred to me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

453.958

And I think that was true for virtually every Jew, including Jews, many Jews in Israel, who had come to sort of just... understand that they live in the world's roughest neighborhood. And that was just kind of the norm. But there was a powerful army. There was a powerful state that was going to protect them from this sort of stuff. And then it didn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

471.42

And when that happened, I think that the feelings of vulnerability obviously skyrocketed for Jews, not just in Israel, but around the world. And then there was the, what I say was sort of the triple whammy here, which was the antisemitic response to October 7th, which was the thing that truly astonished me. I wasn't shaken by anything except the evils of October 7th, about October 7th, because...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

489.929

It turns out there are people who want to murder Jews in that region of the world, and they're quite plentiful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

49.819

Montana's viral content ranges from dancing on Hollywood Boulevard to man-on-the-street interviews that gauge the public's perceptions about Zionism and the war in Gaza.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

494.353

The part that was shocking to me was the immediate response by hundreds of thousands of people across the West, including in the United States, before Israel had even responded to October 7th, to essentially side with Hamas and take the side of the people who are doing the murdering, the raping, the pillaging, the kidnapping. That was an amazing shock to the system.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

565.186

How much of that do you think is social media? You spent an enormous amount of time and effort, obviously, on social media. You built your career on social media. So if we here at Daily Wire, obviously, whether you're talking Facebook or YouTube, you're talking TikTok, any of those social media sites have been a boon for independent content creators.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

57.441

This December, Montana will share her latest documentary, The Children of October 7, where she interviews the child survivors of the kibbutz attacks as they survey their damaged homes and pay homage to the family members they've lost.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

579.759

But there's no question that the algorithms, particularly at TikTok, have been virulent in generating extraordinary anti-Semitism and broadcasting that anti-Semitism to an ever larger crowd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

658.473

I mean, there's no question that the CCP, which effectively runs TikTok, it's a Chinese app, that the material they have promulgated to the West on TikTok, number one, is very different from the stuff they allow in China. In China, they legitimately shut down an enormous amount of material to prevent any sort of criticism of the regime or westernization of the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

67.729

In today's episode, Montana discusses her experiences touring college campuses, the most common misconceptions she hears about Israel, and her takeaways from personally meeting with the victims of the October 7th attacks. Using the power of dance and storytelling, Montana has inspired so many to utilize their creative platforms for good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

677.917

But they've been openly promulgating anti-Semitic content in the hope that it will split the West. I mean, I don't think there's any question that it's an actual strategy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

730.805

So obviously, spending the last year doing this, what have been the most frequently asked questions to you? Because you've been going around to college campuses and talking with people. What are the most common questions that you've been getting and how do you answer those?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

82.76

Stay tuned for this wonderful conversation with Montana Tucker on the latest episode of the Sunday Special. Montana Tucker, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

852.259

So it's been a very long time since you've had mandatory military service in the United States. Mandatory military service is the way that it is done in the state of Israel. If you hit 18, you're going to the military. And now they're starting to end exemptions even for the Haredim, for the ultra-Orthodox. It really means pretty much everybody except for actually Arabs who are not drafted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

870.154

is bound to do either army service or military service or national service, rather. And if you're a parent, do you want your kids in Gaza? If you're a parent, are you desperate to have your kids up in Lebanon? If you're a parent, your kids hit 18. And I know all these parents. I mean, they're my age. And they're looking around and they're saying, my kid's hitting 18.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

891.292

The last thing I want is that, but that's what it takes to survive in this rough neighborhood. We would love a point where that doesn't have to happen in this rough neighborhood. Nobody wants to be doing this stuff. These people all have jobs. The number of people who were called up to the military after October 7th, it's like hundreds of thousands of people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

908.708

I mean, it literally cleaned out nearly every business in the country. You had people who were working in the banking sector in Tel Aviv were getting called up. You had small business owners who owned a pizza shop were getting called up. People who had six, seven, eight kids were getting called up. I mean, they mobilized pretty much everyone in the country after October 7th.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

924.738

And many of the Israelis who are getting wounded and killed in combat are people with small kids or people who have their own business. And because, again, in the United States, there is no war front in the United States that is immediate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

936.625

The closest thing you can come to it is probably the southern border, but the southern border is still not nearly as violent, obviously, as southern Lebanon is right now or the Gaza Strip is right now or even places like Jenina or Nablus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

947.371

Like the immediacy of the geography is something that I think a lot of people don't understand because especially if you live in America, this is an enormous, amazing country. I mean, we have, you know, it spans 3,000 miles in terms of its width. And the state of Israel at its closest point, if you're talking about ignoring the West Bank, is nine miles wide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

965.784

I mean, it's the distance from where we're sitting to like the Atlantic Ocean right now. It's tiny. And so when people talk about, well, why does Israel need to be so militaristic? Why do they need such a big army? Why do they need all this kind of stuff? It's because you're talking about a state that's half the size of New Jersey. That's why they need that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1066.506

Meanwhile, nature abhors a vacuum and the Iranian vacuum is being filled by a couple of forces. Hopefully it'll be filled by the Kurds. The Israelis are defending their own security, as you mentioned, by taking the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria, although they're basically attempting to delimit the border to prevent al-Qaeda and ISIS-associated forces from invading the Golan Heights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1085.004

It's a defensive action, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. One of the things that's arising from this, because of the rise of HDS, is the threat of HDS to Jordan and Saudi, who are also American allies. The Jordanians are deeply afraid of extremism moving across the border of Syria. They've already closed all the border crossings. Jordan, of course, is a very tenuous regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1103.412

It's a Hashemite dynasty sitting on top of 70% Palestinian population.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

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So I, yeah. Exactly. And so Jordan is deeply afraid, obviously, of Islamic extremism taking over that country. Saudi is deeply concerned with Islamic extremism extending into its sphere as well. Some of the rebels were seen on tape talking about how they want to take Mecca. You know, the Saudi regime, one of the priorities for the Trump administration had been in term number one. Mm-hmm.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1133.433

finishing off the Abraham Accords by getting Saudi into the Abraham Accords. Now that Israel has defenestrated so many of its enemies, that could be seen as an opportunity for the Saudis to take with President Trump coming into office.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1144.621

What do you think the prospects are of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords, given that so many of their allied states, UAE, Bahrain, are already members of the Abraham Accords?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

122.369

I mean, you had that whole role, and now you're moving into the NSA role. And it turns out that, I was joking with you a moment ago, that this is like that meme of the dog looking around, everything's on fire. The world's on fire pretty much everywhere. So what does your day look like?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1336.886

I mean, that's exactly right. And the world has gotten really small. I mean, the fact is that, for example, Iran losing its financial capability, that's going to have a heavy impact on what happens in places like Ukraine, because actually it's Iranian drones that are being used by the Russians in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1351.154

And Russia, of course, was involved in the Middle East and Russia is involved in Europe and Russia has a burgeoning relationship with China. All of these issues are interconnected and trying to sort of separate off regions of the world. There are some regions of the world that don't have major impacts on the rest of the world. I mean, frankly, large portions of Africa.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1366.004

But the reality is that if you're looking at the Middle East, which, again, has many thoroughfares for shipping or is the supply of oil for many of America's adversaries or is the supply of tech. And allies. Or is this a source of a lot of military tech? I mean, a lot of the military tech that America uses is actually developed in Israel as add-ons to, for example, ISIS-8s.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1430.522

So let's talk about Russia, because Russia, obviously, that was the other pillar that Assad was standing on that got destroyed largely because of the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine continues to fight on. The Biden administration's approach to the war in Ukraine has been at best ambivalent. It's been bizarrely vague.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1449.617

From the very beginning of the war, when Joe Biden's first response was, can we get you a plane for Zelensky to get out of Ukraine, to you are going to be able to fight as long as you want for whatever ends you want, but we're not going to define the ends, but also we're not going to give you the weaponry to actually allow you to achieve the end.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1467.225

Like,

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1473.111

For sure. And not only that, even if you're going to do that, if you're going to say to Zelensky, however you want it to end, that's how it should end. And then he says, OK, then I need these resources. Well, if A, then B, if he wants the end to be liberating the Donbass and Crimea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1487.068

Then you have to give them the weaponry to do that or just admit that that's actually not in the United States' interest to provide that weaponry. And that's not what the end of the war is going to look like. And the Biden administration refused sort of both sides of that bargain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1593.439

We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans. Taxes. That October 15th deadline? Long gone. Are you prepared for what's coming next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1606.406

Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. And let me tell you, the IRS does not play around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. There's still good news. There's hope. The Tax Network USA folks have been in the game for years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1621.193

They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law. They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt and have filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burdens. So don't let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1637.759

Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1656.148

Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. One of the things that's been fascinating about President Trump's approach to this is that he actually has not taken these sort of more isolationist position that all funding will definitely go away no matter what. The one thing that President Trump is very clear about is that he doesn't like losing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1672.519

And one definition of losing would be Russian tanks rolling through Kiev. And so what he's doing, as he's stated openly with regard to NATO, for example, is he's getting everybody else to pay their freight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1682.908

He says, OK, well, if you want to make sure that NATO actually does its job, then all you other nations have to increase your defense spending and you have to be contributing more to the fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile, He understands that if all leverage disappears against Putin, he's going to get a bad deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1695.517

This is one thing that President Trump understands probably better than anyone in American politics. Instinctively, more than anybody I've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, he understands leverage. And he understands that if the leverage were to go away against Putin, then he's not going to get a good deal. So he needs enough leverage to get Putin to the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1706.202

But also, obviously, the United States has tremendous leverage on Zelensky and Ukraine to also come to the table. And so it seems to me that this has been the case for a long time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1820.266

Now, one of the things that's happened, obviously, is a result of the war in Ukraine, which Russia thought was going to be very easy and turns out to be unbelievably hard for them. is, as we've mentioned, the impoverishment of Russia, the military breakdown of Russia, having to draw people from prisons in order to send them in, having to draw from North Korea troops, basically emptying out Syria.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

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All of this has had a pretty negative impact on Russia. It has also led to a closer relationship that was already burgeoning between Russia and China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1876.805

So once that happens, and I think President Trump obviously is going to make that happen. As you say, the world's already shaping to what President Trump wants to happen there. With that as part of the calculus, the growing relationship between Russia and China is disturbing to an enormous number of people, as it should be. China has basically turned Russia in many ways into its client state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1897.543

Basically, Russia is being sponsored by China in a lot of ways. Russia is providing cheap oil to China. As you mentioned, China in return has been providing some military materiel. The real threat that lurks behind so many of these other issues, the Middle East, Russia, even South America, which we'll get to in a minute, is China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1915.061

China is a geopolitical... This is one thing that President Trump in his first term totally shifted American politics on its head about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1923.367

Left and right. I mean, it's amazing. You can talk to Democrats who now will agree that China is a geopolitical threat. That was something no one was talking about before President Trump took office. There was this bizarre idea that China had moderated because they'd adopted free market mechanisms in some ways state-sponsored. moderate politically if we just engage enough economically.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1941.397

Right, exactly. And that had been sort of the going wisdom. And of course, it turned out not to be true at all. It turns out that they could engage very comfortably in corporate fascism, that they could simply subsidize certain aspects of their economy. They could just absorb our IP, absorb all the evil ways. Yeah, steal everything. Steal everything. Exactly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1955.61

And they would be a much more powerful version of the USSR for engaging in more market-based activity while subsidizing the increase of their surveillance state and Xi Jinping's dictatorship. So China is lurking in the background of all of this. What should be the approach to China?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1969.317

Because it's manifesting in a variety of symptoms, the alliance with Russia, the alliance with Iran, the attempts to cudgel Taiwan, which is truly a threat to the entire world economy. I mean, if they were to blockade or take Taiwan, that would destroy half the world economy overnight because of the microchips and superconductors over there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

1991.084

Yes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2168.948

It's definitely a worrisome moment because as China is facing all sorts of Tremendous headwinds. We mentioned the demographic headwinds. There are no children in China. The nation is going to be, I believe, 30% above the age of 60 within a decade.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2180.573

They have a totally upside-down economic structure that is rooted in debt and overspending in a wide variety of areas, including, for example, real estate, which is totally bankrupt over there. The suggestion by Matt Pottinger, who was a member of the administration the first time around, is that essentially the Taiwan Strait needs to be turned into what's been called the boiling moat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2199.338

That it has to be so armed up that it becomes clear to China that if you, in desperation, grab for Taiwan, exactly, that it's going to be a problem. Because I think what people like me are less afraid, I'm not afraid that China is going to go for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, but you could easily see them attempting a blockade and then daring the United States to do something about it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2217.487

Now, I think that actually that's the biggest danger in the next three weeks. Frankly, I think that under President Trump, they may be much more deterred because President Trump has been much more stalwart and is obviously much more willing to threaten credibly the use of force.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2229.755

He doesn't his foreign policy isn't just saying no into a camera and then that being violated over and over and over by the rest of the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2239.221

Yeah, exactly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

233.86

One of the fascinating things that's happened here is that, I mean, internationally, President Trump is already being treated as the president. I mean, just the way that the world is reacting to the incoming administration, it is very clear that they are looking to January 20th, understanding that a change is coming in terms of America's approach to the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2415.148

Get some more on this in a moment. First, did you know you spend a third of your life sleeping? That's around 25 years of your life in bed. It's a lot of time. With numbers like that, your mattress isn't just furniture, it's an investment in your own well-being. This is where Helix Sleep comes in. I never thought a mattress could make a big difference until I tried Helix. What sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2429.769

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The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2445.461

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The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2447.503

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The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2464.139

If you want to sleep as soundly as I do, head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben. Take that sleep quiz. Plus, Helix is offering up to 20% off site-wide and two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. That's correct. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben. With Helix, better sleep starts right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2480.484

So meanwhile, one of the other areas that China has actually become quite involved is in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, South America. They're very involved in Venezuela. They become increasingly involved in places like Chile. The sort of Chinese involvement in South America is something that's been largely overlooked. South America has its own issues, a wide variety of issues, obviously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

250.351

You saw that when President Trump went to Notre Dame, and basically he was being treated as already the president of the United States in a lot of ways. This transition process has moved lightning fast. to day level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2500.172

There are some real green shoots in South America. Obviously, the administration of Javier Mele. I'm a huge Mele fan in Argentina. He's doing amazing things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2510.415

Emilio is tremendous. He and President Trump obviously see eye to eye in a wide variety of ways, including personally. Or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who's been doing great work cleaning up the gang problems in El Salvador, while also doing real well on that Bitcoin bet, actually. He did very well on that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2525.402

And when you look at South America and you look at the fact that that does have impact on particularly the immigration systems and driving immigrants up north toward the Mexican border, what should policy look like in terms of outreach to some of these countries?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2740.416

That does leave the main question with regard to the United States southern border being Mexico. Mexico is a basket case. It's been a basket case for decades at this point. The new administration in Mexico seems to be just a continuation of the AMLO regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2752.264

Obviously, significant corruption issues, massive economic problems, and working closely with China to actually take the precursor ship from China to make fentanyl into Mexico and then smuggle those across the border via the drug cartels, which essentially do control huge swaths of America's southern border.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2767.254

I went down there last year, and you can actually see the drug cartels flying drones over American territory. It's an unbelievable thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

2849.941

So I want to turn to the personal side of this for a moment because you have this great book, Hard Truths, all about your time as a Green Beret. So walk me through sort of how you got to be the NSA nominee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3134.269

You know, final question for you. The big thing that I think a lot of people who voted for President Trump or fans president who donated to campaign with President Trump are worried about is, of course, the blob. You mentioned the blob. You mentioned what he called the deep state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3146.762

The career employees were within every one of these agencies who during his first term spent inordinate amounts of time. thwarting his agenda.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3155.289

Obviously, President Trump is appointing disruptors to this administration with the explicit purpose of attempting to clear out a lot of the deadwood and to make this administration what it ought to be, which is a unitary executive that actually answers to his call when it comes time to make policy. What does that look like?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3364.285

Well, Congressman Mike Waltz, the book, by the way, Hard Truths, again, it's terrific. And the NSA nominee, soon to be the NSA himself, with the help of God and the United States Senate, which we'll confirm you, really appreciate the time. It's been wonderful. Thanks. The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Jessica Kranz and Matt Kemp. Associate producers are Jake Pollack and John Crick.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3389.422

Editing is by Olivia Stewart. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Cristina. Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo. Production intern is Sarah Steele. Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho. Executive in charge of production is David Wormis. Executive producer, Justin Siegel. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

3410.956

The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

37.262

This week on the Sunday special, Representative Mike Waltz of Florida joins us to discuss America's first foreign policy as President Trump's designation for the National Security Advisor in the new administration. While Waltz is in the throes of planning for the transition, he shares his foreign policy priorities and proposes a vision for the revival of American strength abroad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

372.853

One of the things that's been fascinating with President Trump, and this has been true since he was running in 2015, 2016, is all the attempts to sort of define what a Trump doctrine would look like. And the truth is that it seems to me from the outside that the Trump doctrine has always been, certainly was in his first term, and I think continuing on to his second term, fairly simple.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

388.484

I mean, he has suggested that it's peace through strength, and it is also that if you screw with America, you're going to F around and find out. It's going to be costs. Yeah, exactly. And he is perfectly willing to use leverage. He is perfectly willing to use threats and imprecations. And he's perfectly willing to build up the military such that those threats of force are credible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

405.574

And he's willing to use other methods as well, ranging from tariffs to economic sanctions in order to achieve America's interests. I'm always sort of puzzled by folks who find his foreign policy mysterious. It's actually the most transparent foreign policy I think I've ever seen in my life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

536.799

Folks, let's talk about dressing sharp without sacrificing comfort. If you're tired of choosing between looking professional and feeling relaxed, we've got great news for you. Collars & Co. is revolutionizing menswear with their famous dress collar polo. Imagine this, the comfort of a polo combined with the sharp look of a dress shirt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

54.177

Mike Waltz is a Green Beret who served as an army officer in some of the most volatile regions of the world, deploying multiple times to the Middle East and Africa and earning himself four Bronze Stars for his exceptional achievements.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

550.548

It's the best of both worlds, giving you that professional edge without the stuffiness. Gone are the days of floppy collars that make you look like you just rolled out of bed. These polos feature a firm collar that stands up straight all day long. The four-way stretch fabric means you can move freely and comfortably throughout your day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

563.219

It's office approved, so you can look professional without feeling like you're trapped in a suit. And get this, it also travels well. So, whether you're commuting to work or jetting off for a business trip, you'll arrive looking crisp and feeling great. But Collars & Co. isn't just about polos. They've expanded their line impressively.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

575.77

They've got merino sweaters, quarter zips, stretch chinos, even a performance blazer they call the Maverick. It's versatility at its finest. These pieces look great by themselves under a sweater or with a blazer. Check out this shirt right now. You see this? Magnificent. Of course, I'm also unbelievably good looking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

589.662

But if you want to look sharp and feel comfortable and support a fast-growing American company, head on over to collarsandco.com. Use code BEN for 20% off your first order. That's collarsandco.com. Code BEN. Collars and Co. Because you shouldn't have to choose between looking good and feeling good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

603.314

So I want to kind of do a world tour with you because, as I say, you're stepping into just a world that is on fire in a wide variety of spheres. So why don't we start at the Middle East, since obviously that is sort of first and foremost in everybody's mind, giving the Assad regime following.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

616.724

That appears to be the sort of side effect of Israel having completely destroyed so many of Iran's proxies in the region, which were basically holding up Assad's regime. Hezbollah in Syria was holding up Assad's regime. Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon. They interdicted enormous amounts. And the Russians too. The Russians as well. With Assad uniquely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

636.014

And I want to kind of save that part of the conversation for the Ukraine part, because that is the other part of it for sure. Assad was being held up by, on the one hand, the Iranians. On the other side, the Russians. Israel destroys the Iranian axis, moving all the way from Iranian territory all the way to the Mediterranean Sea via Lebanon, then curving around

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

64.025

He then continued to serve the public after his military career, becoming the first Green Beret elected to Congress in 2018, where he quickly became known for his deep understanding of national defense issues. In today's episode, Mike Walz shares his perspective on the fate of NATO, why domestic American energy is an essential component of American foreign policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

650.859

into the Hamas areas and all the way down to Yemen with the Houthis. The situation in Syria now is devolving into what will probably be some sort of prolonged civil war partition. That's what it appears to be. What do you think is the future in Syria? And also, why should Americans care? Should Americans care?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

668.269

What exactly should America's role be in a place like Syria that's been a mess forever and will likely continue to be a mess going forward?

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

747.42

Destroyed the Air Force. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

80.996

He also discusses what Middle East diplomacy might look like after the Abraham Accords and how outer space and cybersecurity are part of his policy calculus as well. Representative Mike Walsh's profound experience and commitment to the defense of American interests abroad will be critical to the success of the next administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

840.629

And you mentioned Iran. The future of what happens in Iran is very unclear at this point. Obviously, they had this sort of octopus like terror network that was all over the Middle East. All of those arms have now been chopped off, essentially, with the possible exception of the Houthis, who I think will be finished by probably the Saudis in the future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

857.9

You know, with all of that being the case and with the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

863.743

They definitely are. And, you know, the Biden administration handled that in a particularly egregious way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

897.248

Yeah, exactly. It's insane. I mean, they're still holding up shipping in the Red Sea. I mean, enormous amounts of shipping are now going around the heart of Africa.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

912.225

Exactly. I mean, so hopefully the maximum pressure campaign that President Trump has already talked about exerting economically with regard to Iran is going to starve the Houthis of funds, for example. And there's the question of the Iranian regime itself. The United States, President Trump has made clear we have no interest in war in Iran.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

926.958

We're not interested in getting into a shooting battle with Iran. With that said, the reality is that that regime looks like a paper tiger in the same way the Assad regime looks like a paper tiger and falls apart pretty quickly. And so, you know, Israel obviously has a very strong interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

94.752

Don't miss this important conversation on this latest episode of The Sunday Special. Congressman, thanks so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. Yeah, sure. Great to be with you. A lot going on. Yeah, just a little. So tell me about what your day looks like now. So obviously you're still presiding over what you had in Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

943.807

And the Iranians, it looks like, are going to have a choice, which is they can try to rush forward toward a nuclear weapon and turn themselves into North Korea, which is a pariah state with a nuclear weapon just maintaining its rule through sheer terrorism against its population. Or, theoretically, they could sign a deal or they can get hit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

959.571

I mean, and if they choose the former path, seeking nuclear weapons, I think there's very little doubt that Israel is going to be on the preemptive side of this ledger after October 7th.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

109.415

So tell me about your perplexion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1326.471

It's spellbinding and absurd. It's surreal. Folks, you know what the radical left will never understand? The profound and unshakable bond between Christians and Jews in the United States. While the secular left pushes their anti-religious agenda, religious Christians and Jews have stood together, defending our shared values and religious liberties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1344.063

That's why I'm proud to partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. For over 40 years, they've been doing something remarkable, building bridges between our communities through faith, shared values, and mutual respect. And the fellowship doesn't just talk, they act.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1355.791

Right now, they're on the ground providing real help to vulnerable Jewish families and elderly around the globe. We're talking about food, medical care, emergency assistance, and security to those who need it most. Look, as someone who spent years talking about Judeo-Christian values, I can tell you, this organization represents exactly what makes our alliance so powerful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1370.963

It's about religious Christians and Jews coming together to do what our faiths command, helping people in need. If you want to be part of this incredible mission, visit benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. There are people suffering on the ground right now in the Holy Land. The fellowship is doing amazing work helping them out. Now you can help out as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1387.558

Head on over to benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org, doing amazing work in the Holy Land and all over the world. God bless and thank you. Jordan, obviously, you wrote Maps of Meeting. You've talked before about how Maps of Meeting was a very difficult book to write. I've read Maps of Meeting. It's a very dense book. It's not the easiest book to read.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1406.399

You've also written, obviously, huge bestsellers like 12 Rules for Life. Where does this one stack up in terms of the writing process?

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1577.497

So let's talk about that. I mean, those debates were really fascinating because, again, what you hear from sort of the new atheist crowd is that when you talk about truth or when you talk about symbolism, that that's an attempt to avoid the questions that they're asking about the quote-unquote hard science. But that's not really the case that you're making.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

1596.908

So why don't you explain for people who missed it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2100.93

Yeah, I think that's right. And you're seeing competing stories, as you say, being told in the political sphere that really are just happening at the top of the iceberg. There's a much bigger story that's happening much deeper.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2110.232

Jordan, one of the questions that you get asked a lot is about your own personal view of God, because you've talked about what you think of religion in terms of sort of useful truth or utilitarian truth or various types of truth. And once again, you know, the accusation is, well, you're avoiding the question of like factual truth. You factually believe that God exists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2130.14

Are you trying to end around that question? Obviously, we've seen a number of high profile conversions in the recent pastor wife became a recent convert to the Catholic Church. What do you make of that question? And how do you answer it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2318.473

We'll get to more with Jordan in just a moment. First, folks, let's talk about dressing sharp without sacrificing comfort. If you're tired of choosing between looking professional and feeling relaxed, I've got great news for you. Collars & Co. is revolutionizing menswear with their famous dress collar polo. Imagine this, the comfort of a polo combined with the sharp look of a dress shirt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2334.724

It's the best of both worlds, giving you that professional edge without the stuffiness. Gone are the days of floppy collars that make you look like you just rolled out of bed. These polos feature a firm collar that stands up straight all day long. The four-way stretch fabric means you can move freely and comfortably throughout the day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2347.372

It's office approved, so you can look professional without feeling like you're trapped in a suit. And it does travel well, so whether you're commuting to work or jetting off for a business trip, you'll arrive looking crisp and feeling great. Collars & Co. isn't just about polos. They've expanded their line impressively. They've got merino sweaters, quarter zips like this one. Look at this. Nice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2362.482

Stretch chinos. Even this performance blazer. They call this the Maverick. And it's awesome. Look at me. I am just an incredible piece of masculine virility in this menswear. It's versatility at its finest. These pieces look great by themselves under a sweater or with a blazer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2377.031

So if you want to look sharp, feel comfortable, and support a fast-growing American company, head on over to collarsandco.com. Use code BEN for 20% off your first order. That's collarsandco.com, code BEN. Collars and Co. Because you shouldn't have to choose between looking good and feeling good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2389.459

One of the things that I always say to these questions is really that when it comes to how people actually act in the world, that is the best, as you're saying, that is the best adjudication of what they actually believe. This is true in everything from psychology to survey data. That revealed preference is significantly more important than what you think of yourself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2409.913

And so people spend an awful lot of time thinking like, what do I think? What do I believe? But the truth is that the vast majority, and this is a point that's made by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, the vast majority of what we do in the world has very little to do with a conscious belief system that directs us toward doing the thing. Much of it is inherited.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2426.067

Much of it is taught to us by our family. Much of it is so deeply embedded that it becomes near instinctive. But the thing that you do in the world, the choices that you make in the world are the best characterization of the thing that you believe. This is why whenever people will say, like, do you believe in God? That's a weird proposition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2442.382

The idea that I believe in God the same way that I believe in a proposition like 2 plus 2 equals 4. Well, I mean, 2 plus 2 equals 4 doesn't actually demand anything of me. It doesn't demand any sort of action on my part. The belief in God demands action on my part, and that action is either taking place in the world or it's not taking place in the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2462.195

And if it's not taking place in the world, of what use is the belief system? It's completely anodyne. It's an idea that exists in the realm of uselessness.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2613.184

That's clear. I mean, it's clearly in the Hebrew text. I mean, the text, you know, the name of God, which in Hebrew, you know, as a religious Jew, I'm not actually supposed to even spell it. The letters would be Yod and then Hay and then Bav and then Hay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2626.151

Um, but the, what, what that, what that encompasses in the Hebrew is meaning that in Hebrew, that means what was, what is, and what will be right or united in the name of God. Right. And then when the description that God gives to Moses at the burning bush is, Hey, yeah, I share. Hey, yeah. Right. I will be what I will be. Right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2644.147

Like that's the best description that God can give to a human being is like, I am what I am basically. And I will be what I will be. And you know, you're just going to have to deal with that, which is the answer at the end of the book of Job as well, which is, You can't understand me because we're of a completely different kind.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2659.964

And that insistence by God is also then baffled by the biblical text in which God takes an active role in history, is talking to people. Yeah. God is too mysterious for any of these categories that are attempted for God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2674.76

It's why I think that some of the Neoplatonic arguments, they do some solid work in terms of establishing a logical predicate for believing in God, but they don't do all the work in the sense that a Christian or a Jew would want them to do, or even a Muslim, that God is active in the world, that God has perspectives, that God does things, that a sort of Neoplatonic God that floats above everything and doesn't have any intervening impact

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

2696.046

That God is barren and doesn't have a lot to say about what humanity constitutes. And that's not the God that, according to the scriptures, built the world and maintains it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3048.074

The best practical long-term strategy is virtue. Jordan, one of the things that you mentioned earlier with regard to sort of the various layers of reality, I think that's the argument that's being made at the beginning of Genesis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3059.464

So one of the weird things in the original sort of eating the apple story is that when you read just the text of it, one of the things that you see is that the snake actually doesn't lie. At no point does the snake lie. He actually tells a series of truths. He says, if you eat from this apple, then you'll be like God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3075.779

You'll be able to distinguish good from evil, which is something that God later repeats. He says, if they've eaten from it, now we have to banish them from the tree of life because they'll be like us, distinguishing good from evil. He says, you surely won't die. They've been told they'll die. And the snake says, you won't die, which is true. God doesn't immediately just kill Adam and Eve.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3092.614

Instead, he allows them to live. So the real question is, what's the sin of the snake? So This leads to my favorite pun in probably all of the Bible in Hebrew. So there's a dual pun that's used to describe the snake and then Adam and Eve. So the word in Hebrew is arum. So the word arum means in Hebrew both cleverness and nakedness. So it says that Adam and Eve are in the garden, and they're naked.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3113.769

Everything's hunky-dory, right? Then the next thing that happens says, and then there was the snake, and the snake is naked. Arum is the most Arum of all creatures, right? He's the most clever of all creatures. So why isn't, what's the connection between nakedness and cleverness?

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3125.895

So the argument the snake is actually making is you can discern from your own wants, needs, and desires what is appropriate for you. And because you can discern that, even if you have the explicit order of God, he's clearly lying to you. God is clearly not telling you the truth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3140.64

If God says don't eat of that tree, but God's created a desire within you to eat from the tree, then clearly he wants you to follow your desire. He created you that way. You can sort of make the Dawkins argument that looking inside your own soul, that you know better than God does, even if God explicitly gives you the rule not to eat from this thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3157.025

So in your own nakedness, in your own sort of material physical being, lies the root of cleverness. And cleverness is bad. And so the first thing that happens, obviously, is they discover that they're naked, but not naked in the way that they thought they were, as in like all-powerful and that material reality can overcome what God wants of them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3173.829

Naked in the sense that they're actually vulnerable, which is why the first thing that God does after he has this big conversation with them is he sews them a skin, right? He sews them a coat that is designed specifically to shield them from the elements. So the story I think of the beginning is really about good parenting because God lets them suffer the natural consequences of their decisions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3192.242

He says, you've made yourself vulnerable and naked. I'm going to help shield you from that by giving you a coat. But the reality of being vulnerable and naked in the world is that the environment is no longer your friend. If you thought that you could simply manipulate, that your desire for what is good magically manifests, that's not true. You now work in a world in which the ground resists you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3212.737

Where you work the ground and the ground resists you. You work in a world where childbirth does not come easily to you. You want to live in the animal world, you now live in the animal world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3221.283

And because you'd ignored the word of God and you instead decided that you were akin to God, now you have to live the animal part of your existence in a very real way, which is why you have to be banished from the Garden of Eden. You're now subject to all the rules of the animal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3642.224

Folks, the book is amazing. I mean, you should go check it out right now. Jordan poured his heart and his soul into it. You can see that directly in the book. And it's We Who Wrestle With God. It's available right now. It's soaring up the bestseller list, as all of Jordan's books always do. Go check it out. It's going to open your mind.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3656.092

And you're certainly going to experience something new while you read it. Jordan, really appreciate the time. Can't wait to talk to you soon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3669.411

The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Savannah Morris and Matt Kemp. Associate producers are Jake Pollack and John Crick. Editing is by Austin Davenport. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Cristina. Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo. Production intern is Sarah Steele. Production coordinator is Jessica Kranz.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

3690.956

Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho. Executive in charge of production is David Wormis. Executive producer, Justin Siegel. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

42.569

This week on the Sunday special, I'm excited to welcome back Dr. Jordan B. Peterson to discuss his latest book, We Who Wrestle With God. Jordan has lectured on biblical symbolism for years, including with us here at The Daily Wire in his groundbreaking seminars on Exodus and the Gospels. After the success of his previous bestsellers, Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life, and Beyond Order,

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

535.848

We'll see.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

536.308

I mean, the book certainly opens a bunch of these conversations, and certainly what you're talking about in terms of sacrifice and the story that we tell about our lives, that's true, because the place where you most obviously make your first sacrifice is in marriage, where you sacrifice your interest to the interest of something larger, and then the place where you make your second sacrifice is when you start to have children, and a society that refuses to recognize that it's not a giant surprise, that a society that refuses to

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

562.253

to see the story of humanity as a story of sacrifice refuses the sacrifice to themselves, so it makes a lot of sense that people aren't getting together, people aren't actually getting married, people aren't having babies, because the minute you start to live that sacrifice, it becomes impossible to unsee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

60.174

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Well, Jordan, it's great to see you. Great to see you, Ben. Thanks for the invitation. Yes, let's talk about your brand new book. Obviously, it's burning up the bestseller charts already. Yeah, that's the one. That'd be the big one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

870.612

Yeah, I mean, that's all of what you're saying. And as you say in the book, a lot of these are encapsulated in biblical stories. I mean, that's sort of the story of the Tower of Babel versus the story of the society before Noah versus the family-centered society that God chooses with Noah. You basically have three competing stories.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

886.136

You have sort of the hedonistic individualism of the society of all against all, in which you know, sexual impropriety and robbery are common. And God decides to blot that out. And then he decides to uplift Noah. Or you have the Tower of Babel, which is power consolidated top down to build the great big thing. And God says, this is actually evil. This is wrong. It needs to be stopped.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

907.017

And so the only alternatives that has always been and will always be family structure, which as we discussed at the very beginning, what you were saying, that's the most sacrificial thing that you do is the stuff that you do for your family. It's where you make the biggest sacrifices. It's the place where you subsume your own personal interests in favor of other people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

We Who Wrestle With God | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

923.523

And God understands that, which is why the story of Genesis really is a family story more than any other type of story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

all righty folks so the daniel penny verdict is in he has been acquitted thank god thank god the jury did the right thing i'll bring all the details in just one second first this is your reminder that dw plus gift memberships are 40 off that is truth premium entertainment investigative journalism all in one year a year of daily wire plus truly the perfect gift for the holidays even if it's for yourself head over to dailywire.com right now all right so

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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According to the New York Post, the panelists acquitted Penny of criminal negligent homicide, which could have put him behind bars for up to four years. Manslaughter was tossed on Friday after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on that particular matter. Jurors did side with the defense attorneys.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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They'd argue that the Marine veteran was justified in rushing to protect fellow subway strangers when he subdued the erratic homeless man. The lawyers had questioned whether there was sufficient evidence that the chokehold actually caused the death as opposed to, you know, him being high as a kite, as opposed to his prior health issues and all of the rest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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People testified in the trial who were on the train suggested that they were in fear for their lives because of what Jordan Neely was ranting. He was ranting about being quote-unquote willing to die and to go to jail. One of the strangers testified that she was scared bleepless to hear Neely rant and then thanked Penny for stepping in to restrain Neely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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He was literally ranting on the subway, quote, someone is going to die today. Another woman on the train told jurors she feared for her life after hearing Jordan Neely's, quote, quote, satanic rant. And a mother who was taking her five-year-old son to a doctor's appointment testified that she was so scared she barricaded her son behind his stroller.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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So the evidence showed that Neely wasn't carrying a weapon, but that isn't the question. If you have a mentally ill person on a subway train and he's abusing people, saying he's going to kill somebody, obviously you don't require a weapon in order to kill somebody. Prosecutors argued that his activity, Daniel Penney's, went too far because he kept Neely in a hold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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But he kept him in a hold until law enforcement arrived. Jurors ended up watching all the footage from the six-minute video. Penny kept holding Neely despite witnesses saying to let him go, but it was unclear, again, because Penny was behind him, whether or not he had any sort of submission in place. Bottom line is this never should have reached trial.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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It's ridiculous that it was on trial in the first place. The lawyer in this particular case, the prosecutor, is a far-left Soros prosecutor. who has in the past attempted to let criminals off the hook based on their sad sack life stories. And in fact, the judge did his best in this particular case to ensure that Penny would be convicted. So the jury deadlocked on the manslaughter count.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Daniel Penny has now been found not guilty by the jury in Manhattan in the so-called chokehold death of Jordan Neely. So you remember the video. This is where the drug-addled, mentally ill, homeless person is abusing people on the subway, threatening them physically. And Daniel Penny, who's a veteran, comes up behind him and puts him in a submission hold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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So what did the judge do? Instead of dismissing all counts on that basis, the judge then dismissed the manslaughter count in order so that the jury could consider the lower possible charge. That was a violation of the original verdict sheet that was handed out by the judge. The original crime charge, manslaughter in the second degree, said, quote,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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If you find the defendant guilty of count one, manslaughter in the second degree, do not consider and do not render a verdict on count two, criminally negligent homicide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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If you find the defendant not guilty on count one, manslaughter in the second degree for the reason that the people have failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant was not justified, you must not consider count two, criminally negligent homicide. You must also find the defendant not guilty of that count.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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If you find the defendant not guilty of count one manslaughter in the second degree for some reason other than lack of justification, then proceed to consider and render a verdict on count two criminally negligent homicide. So what did the judge do? Instead of the judge saying, listen, go back in there and get me an acquittal or get me a conviction on count one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Instead of the judge doing that, the judge dismissed count one in order to allow the jury to consider count two, the criminally negligent homicide. And the standard for criminally negligent homicide is carelessness. It has to be such that the seriousness would be apparent to anyone who shares the community's general sense of right and wrong. That is obviously not present in this particular case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Again, the reality of the situation is that Neely had synthetic marijuana, K2, in his system at the time of the confrontation. He had diagnosed schizophrenia. It is amazing to me. They had the family members, Jordan Neely, who basically abandoned him. He was living on the street as a mentally ill drug addict.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Suddenly they've emerged from the woodwork to now suggest that they need a payment from the city. They need a payment from Daniel Penny. That is some really, really gross stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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The defense medical expert is a person named Dr. Satish Chundru and claimed that Neely died not from the chokehold, but, quote, from the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana. Penny said, quote, I just put him out when the cops arrived on the train platform.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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And he said that he was trying to de-escalate the situation and didn't mean to hurt Neely. He said, I'm just trying to keep him from hurting anybody else. Now, again, the very basis of the trial was the unspoken assumption that it had something to do with race. That was the very basis of the trial in the first place, just like with Derek Chauvin and George Floyd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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It was an unstated assumption, and it was untrue. There is no evidence whatsoever that Daniel Penny behaved the way he did because Jordan Ely was black. The same thing was true with Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. We had an entire racial reckoning based on George Floyd, despite the fact that not a single iota of evidence was ever presented in that case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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that Derek Chauvin acted the way he did because George Floyd was black. What does this mean? Well, it means a few things. One, the people of New York, at least this jury, but I think the people of New York generally, are sick and tired of a lawless city in which your identity allows for you to commit criminal acts without any sort of intervention by either the police or the public at large.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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I think that is a broad rejection, by the way, of the Black Lives Matter movement, which suggests that the police are the bad guys, that bystanders who intervene are the bad guys, that criminality is somehow justified by racial status or by status of poverty. That is over. The American people are done with that. And I think that this is one element of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Again, the goal of the submission hold is to make him submit. It is to either push him to submit or to push him into unconsciousness. It was not to kill him. There's all sorts of evidence that was presented, particularly by the defense, showing that it was not, in fact, the quote-unquote chokehold that killed him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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I think that when it comes to these prosecutors, they need to be tossed out on their asses. This never should have come to trial. It never should have come to trial. Everyone knows it never should have come to trial. It is a sad and pathetic thing that this thing ever came to trial in the first place. So thanks to the jury. Thank God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Very, very happy today that Daniel Penny was acquitted in this trial. Where does he go to get his life back? Well, listen, I think that I hope that he'll have life opportunities on the table because we need more people like Daniel Penny who step in when bad things happen. Who has the courage to step up? Who has the courage to do the thing? The cops have been told they can't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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Bystanders have been told that they will now go to jail if they step in and try to stop the sorts of violent action that Jordan Neely was threatening. So who's going to step up? The entire system of thinking about this has to change. I'm hopeful that this is the beginning of that. We'll have a lot more on this on tomorrow's show. Your reminder, DW Plus gift memberships 40% off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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That is a deal right now for the holidays. Head on over to dailywire.com right now. Get your membership for updates like this one as soon as they are available. And again, we'll see you here tomorrow for a lot more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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There was no deprivation of air to his lungs, for example, so he didn't die because there was damage to the trachea, for example. And obviously, this entire situation occurred because Daniel Penny was trying to defend all of the other members of the public on the subway from the predations of Jordan Neely. And the...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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basic presumption, I suppose, in the city of New York is that if you are a person who tries to defend your fellow citizens from criminals, then you must be prosecuted if you are of one color and the person who ends up dead is of another color. If you are white and the person who ends up dead is black, then you will be prosecuted. If you're both white, probably not. If you're

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Daniel Penny Verdict

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That is the way that this particular case was prosecuted from the very beginning. And it was deeply corrupt. This was ever prosecuted in the first place. It was all caught on tape. There are other members of the public who are trying to help out Daniel Penny to force Jordan Neely to stop his aggressive activity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

Well, folks, the Assad regime in Syria is gone. We'll bring you all the details, how it happened, what it means. First, I have some major news to share with you today. Starting in January, Jeremy's Razors will become an official partner of UFC. That's right. The Daily Wire is stepping into the octagon with the world's premier mixed martial arts organization.

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These areas are now held by Kurdish forces and the Turks who came into Syria and created their own very, very large buffer zone that they now occupy because again, they hate the Kurds. So 2015, 2016, 2017, you see ISIS shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. By 2018, they basically have like a couple of areas they hold in Eastern Syria. Okay, so ISIS shrinks down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Okay, and then finally you have Kurdish forces and Turkish forces. So look at Kurdish forces. Here's a map of the Kurdish forces. What you see is that the Kurds controlled some border areas near Turkey in 2014. That grows in 2017, grows in 2019.

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Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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By 2024, a large swath of northeastern Syria is controlled by the Kurds, who again are friendlier to the West, friendlier to the United States, friendlier to Israel. So the Kurds, if there are good guys in Syria, the Kurds are the closest thing to the good guys in Syria and maybe some of the Druze in the south of Syria. And finally, Turkish forces who've had a major outsized impact.

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Okay, so the Turks controlled a relatively small area. Actually, it's not that small. An area of sort of northwestern Syria in 2017. They increased that to large swaths of the border by 2020. Those are controlled by Turkish military operations. Okay, so what exactly happened? What exactly changed? Okay, fast forward to 2024. So the Assad regime basically has no money.

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Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Okay, the Assad regime, because again, it is a Ba'athist dictatorship, with nothing to trade and has been engaged in a civil war for 13 years, their currency is effectively worthless. Like right now, if you take a look at the actual currency of Syria versus the American dollar, right now, $1 goes for 16,000 Syrian pounds or 16,000 Syrian lira, as the case may be.

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Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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And it's been dropping fast because, again, nothing gets produced over there. So massive inflation rates. The Assad regime is paying all of its troops with this. And so Assad is basically being propped up by outside forces. Remember, again, back to that map. Remember the map of the Middle East. So remember, who has an interest in Assad being upheld? Not Turkey. Turkey doesn't like Assad very much.

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Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Turkey would prefer that its own ambitions extend into Syria. Israel is sort of indifferent about Assad because Israel sees that Assad is still upholding mostly kind of the buffer area in the Golan Heights, which extends to Mount Hermon, which again goes into Syria. It's kind of the high point regionally in terms of geography. You can see from the top of Mount Hermon down into Damascus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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But we'll start with the actual region, because in order to understand what's going on in Syria, you have to understand that there are a lot of hands in Syria, a lot of different countries, a lot of different interests who had their hands in Syria. So let's look at the regional map of the Middle East. So you understand where Syria is placed on the map.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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So Israel is sort of divided on Assad. On the one hand, they don't like Assad because he is used as a tool and a proxy by Iran. On the other hand, they understand that if Assad goes, a Sunni Muslim dictatorship is likely to follow. like a terrorist dictatorship. So Israel is kind of, you know, on both. They don't know what to do about Syria, particularly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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It's the one quiet front in the latest war. Iran, meanwhile, is using Assad as their cutout. So they're smuggling weapons via Hezbollah, who is a force on behalf of Assad in Syria. And they're doing that all the way into Lebanon. So that is that's Iran. And Russia has an interest in upholding Assad because Assad has a deal with them where Russia gives them weaponry. Russia gives them forces.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Russia gives them all sorts of resources. And in return, they have access to some coastal bases in Syria. So what happened in 2023? You'll remember at the very end of 2023, something kind of big happened. October 7th, Iran decided to activate all of its terror groups at once. So it activated Hamas. Yahya Sinwar launches October 7th. 1,200 Jews are killed in Israel.

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250 are pulled into Gaza and are still being held in the terror tunnels. And then Hezbollah in Israel's north, Lebanon, right? They start firing thousands of missiles over the course of a year into northern Israel. Eight to 10,000 rockets and missiles into northern Israel, clearing out Israel's north.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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So over the course of the subsequent year, Israel proceeds to take out Yahya Sinwar and virtually all of Hamas's military resources. Beginning in October of this year, Israel totally devastates Hezbollah, totally devastates it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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They launched the beeper attacks, followed by the radio attacks, followed by a full-scale air campaign against all of Hezbollah's weaponry, followed by a ground invasion of Lebanon in order to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. They kill the leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah, who is the chief leader, not only a charismatic figure, but a leader in operations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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And they're also doing operations in Syria to prevent Syria from being used as a thoroughfare for Hezbollah resources. OK, so Iran is getting absolutely shellacked, absolutely shellacked. Meanwhile, Russia is being absolutely shellacked. Russia is bogged down in this war that it declared in Ukraine in February 2022. They're losing hundreds of thousands of people over there.

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Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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There's an enormous amount of material. They simply don't have the money or the capacity to uphold the Assad regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So as a byproduct of both the Ukraine war, so Russia can't come to Assad's aid, but mostly as a result of Israel chopping off the arms of the Iranian octopus in places like Syria, in places like Lebanon, in places like Hamasistan, because of that, Iran cannot uphold the Assad regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the regional map of the Middle East, you will see that Syria is located alongside the Mediterranean Sea. It stretches all the way from Iraq in its east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. The sort of southwestern border of Syria is Israel. The very tip of the southwest part of Syria borders Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so after Israel's October offensive against Hezbollah, which again was a governing party in Lebanon and has now been pretty much devastated and was also a force on behalf of Assad, Assad had no allies to call upon. The legs of the stool upon which his regime was standing got kicked out from underneath him. And as a result, the stool fell.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Well, it turned out that Assad is some sort of a powerhouse of the region. That was all a lie. You know what else is a lie? The big ads from the big wireless carriers offering you the latest iPhone for free. If you look a little deeper, you will realize what that really means. To qualify, you need to trade in your phone. Not just any phone, one valued at a thousand bucks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Then you're required to sign up for their $100 a month unlimited plan and get that sneaky $35 activation fee on top of all of that. It's a lot of money for something they call free. Don't fall for the marketing tricks. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, has a much better option. Get a brand new iPhone 14. It comes with all the bells and whistles you actually need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Plus, get unlimited talk, text, generous 15 gigs of high-speed data, and mobile hotspot capability, all for just 50 bucks a month. How about that? You're paying half the price of what the big guys normally charge. You still get a new iPhone, powered by America's most dependable 5G network. We'll be right back. Did you know you spend a third of your life sleeping?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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That's around 25 years of your life in bed. With numbers like that, your mattress isn't just like normal furniture. It's an investment in your own well-being. And this is where Helix Sleep comes in. I never thought a mattress could make such a big difference until I tried Helix. So what sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Well, unlike those one-size-fits-all brands, Helix offers 20 different mattress options because they understand everyone's sleep needs are unique. It all starts with their Sleep Quiz, a game changer for finding your perfect match. When I mentioned my struggle with lower back pain on softer mattresses, they recommended their medium-firm option. The result? I've never slept better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Looking for that cloud-like feeling? Try their locks. Want the ultimate sleep experience? Go for the Elite. Need extra support? That Helix Plus has got you covered. And forget those mattress store visits. Helix delivers directly to your door. Helix is so confident in their product, they'll give you 100 nights to try it out. It's over three months to test your mattress in the real world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Every mattress comes with a 10 to 15-year warranty. So, I mean, we're not talking about a risk here. If you want to sleep as soundly as I do, head on over to HelixSleep.com slash Ben. Take that sleep quiz. Plus, Helix is offering up to 20% off site-wide and two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. That's correct. Just go to HelixSleep.com slash Ben for 20% off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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That's HelixSleep.com slash Ben with Helix. Better sleep starts right now. So this was not that the Sunni Muslim terrorist groups suddenly became good at war. Again, remember those maps. They were at a low ebb at the beginning of 2024. That's not what happened here. What happened here is that Assad was basically an eggshell skull. They tapped him. He fell. There was no one to come to his support.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Russia couldn't come with its historic levels of support because they were weakened in Ukraine. Iran has been totally hamstrung. Iran's air defenses are gone. Iran is totally vulnerable. Its own regime is tottering. And so the rebels took advantage and they toppled the regime. That's effectively the story here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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So any story about how it's like the innate charisma of the HTS leaders, Abu Muhammad al-Jalani, that's not true. That's not what happened here. What happened here is that Turkey, backing HTS, backing many of these Sunni Muslim terrorist groups, hating the Assad regime and wishing to expand its own sphere of influence into Syria, backed HTS in taking advantage of the chaos

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Because Syria had repeatedly invaded Israel in 1967, Israel won its war against Syria and ended up taking the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights have been annexed to Israel as recognized by the United States specifically because they're being used as basically a vantage point from which to shoot into Israel. So that is one border of Syria. Another border of Syria is Lebanon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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caused by Iran's withdrawal and Russia's withdrawal. And HDS then took over large swaths of Syria. Okay, so who are sort of the big winners and who are sort of the big losers here? Well, it depends on what emerges. The biggest losers, pretty obviously, Russia is a big loser. Russia loses a lot of impact because, again, Russia had backed the Assad regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Now, Russia is attempting to broker something with regards to the new regime because they always do. But Russia is a big loser. The biggest loser by far is Iran. Iran has lost its entire crescent of Islamic Shia terror. Like it's gone. It just doesn't exist anymore. Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Assad, gone. These are all massive blows to the Iranian regime, all caused by Iran. Iran started it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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This is one of the ultimate F around and find out in human history. Iran launches a seven front war on Israel and they end with three of their proxies off the map completely. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad, gone. That's what happens when you F around with a first world country. If you F around with the United States on September 11th, we destroy your forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Regardless of what comes after, that's what happens. And if Iran decides they're going to launch a multi-front terror war against Israel, Israel will hit back and hit back hard. And the Iranian regime is in serious trouble right now. They have failed on every possible front.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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And with the Trump administration coming in and presumably increasing sanctions on the Iranian regime, the Iranian regime is going to have one of two choices. Either they are going to have to cut some sort of deal with the West in which they abandon their nuclear efforts and presumably move towards some form of non-tyranny, or they're going to be forced to collapse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Because I can promise you that the state of Israel is not going to sit around waiting to see what Iran does next with its nuclear weapons, not after Israel already took out their air defenses. So who's the big winner in Syria? The big winner in Syria is Turkey, mostly. Turkey took an enormous amount of territory. HTS, obviously a very big winner in all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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The Kurds, it's unclear what happened. The Kurds had basically cleared an enormous amount of territory in, again, northeastern Syria. Well, now they're going to be at war directly with the Turks. The Turks are going to be pouring forces into that region and resources into that region. So the Kurds could get really hurt. As for the Israelis, the Israelis, again,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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They can be happy that the Iranian regime has lost power to use Syria as its tool, but the people replacing that regime are Al-Qaeda jihadists and ISIS jihadists. In fact, here is some video of some of the rebel fighters talking about what comes next. They're saying that they're thanking Allah by his exalted power, the one who has helped us, neither by our strength. Here is the home of Islam.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Here is the Levant. Here is Omar ibn Abdulaziz. Here is the land of Islam. Here is Damascus. Here is the land of Muslims. From here, O Jerusalem. From here, O Jerusalem, they will come. Be patient, O people of Gaza. Be patient. Again, the people who just took over in Syria are allies of Hamas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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More details coming up later in the show. Very cool stuff. Alrighty, so... A tectonic shift in the Middle East just happened over the weekend. On Sunday morning, Syrian rebels finally took Damascus. They took Bashar al-Assad's palace. The Assad regime is no more. Assad has fled to Moscow where he is being granted some sort of asylum because the Russians, of course, backed the Assad regime.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Syria has had a longstanding fraught relationship with Lebanon. Syria helped destroy Lebanon as a functioning Christian state in the Middle East. Back in the 1980s, Syria effectively just occupied Lebanon and stayed there all the way from the 1980s through 2005 and helped wreck the system in coordination with Hezbollah. Syria, the Assad regime, has been working in conjunction with Iran.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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The Iranians had created an alliance with Hamas, but many of the people who just invaded Damascus are big fans of Hamas. They also have talked about toppling the Saudi regime. Because again, they're al-Qaeda affiliates. They're ISIS affiliates. Now, the leader of this particular terrorist group is a person, as I've mentioned, whose name is al-Jolani. And again, many things can be true at once.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Assad was an absolute butcher. Assad is responsible for the death of probably half a million Syrians on the other side, including huge scores of civilians. He actually set up in one of his jails. an actual crematorium, apparently. I mean, like truly a brutal dictator, truly a brutal person. Also, not a lot of good solutions as it turns out in the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Because, for example, the Assad regime, much friendlier to Christians in Syria than presumably this new Sunni Islamic terror group will be. Now, again, it's possible that the Druze will be sort of a repository of pro-Christian feeling in the south of Syria, about 10% of the population of Syria is Christian.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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It's possible the Kurds, the Kurds are kind of widely known as the most pro-Christian faction in Syria, but they're being attacked by the Turks. So it's a complete mess over there. So who exactly is al-Jalani?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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So his name is Abu Mohammed al-Jalani, and he apparently boarded a bus in Damascus in March 2003, heading across the desert to Baghdad with fellow volunteers eager to repel the looming American invasion of Iraq. This is according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When he returned home in 2011 after a five-year stint in an American-run prison camp in Iraq, it was as an emissary of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He arrived in Syria with bags full of cash and a mission to take the extremist movement global.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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Last week, 42-year-old Jelani triumphantly entered Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, as the leading commander of the Turkish-backed rebel force dominated by his group, HTS. Unexpected and swift, his victory marks one of the most dramatic moments in the Middle East that had no shortage of drama. So he is currently doing things to try and appear moderate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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He's issued edicts to his men, ordering the protection of Christians and Shias, demanding that his men not exact retribution. He said in the future, Syria, we believe diversity is our strength, not a weakness. He's obviously playing for American aid and for the EU audience. Guys, don't give money to people who are members of Al Qaeda and ISIS. It's a bad idea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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The Taliban said the exact same things when they took over in Afghanistan. And now it's back to being a Taliban hellhole. So a Christian woman in Aleppo said, quote, the day they took over Aleppo before seeing them, I felt like the Titanic was sinking. But then she said, everyone was shocked because they were treating us nicely. They look scary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2100 - SYRIA FALLS

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They look exactly the way you imagine when someone says a terrorist, long beards and crazy hair, but they're nice. We'll find out for how long they are nice, obviously. So this guy was born Ahmed Hussein Alshara. He adopted the Namda Ger Jalani, a reference to his family's roots in the Golan Heights. He says that his family was from the Golan Heights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then in 67, when Syria attacked Israel and they lost the Golan Heights, then his family lost what land they had in the Golan Heights. One of the big questions for Israel is going to be whether Jelani tries to, again, direct these rebel fighters against Israel. If that happens, Israel will unleash its military power on those rebel fighters.

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One of the things that's been happening here is that the gap that's been left by the Iranian power in the region is now being filled by the Turkish power in the region. And again, Turkey is allied with Hamas. Turkey, again, it's unbelievable they're a NATO member. And there should be significant ramifications for Turkey's abject siding with terrorists across the region.

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Turkey is a nefarious power in the region now. And they are very heavily militarized. They have an excellent military. In any case, al-Jalani broke with ISIS in 2012, and then he broke with al-Qaeda in 2016. And this guy's got a hell of a CV. He's got a hell of a resume. And then he's fought both organizations.

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And according to the Wall Street Journal, he steered the HTS away from the transnational jihadist movement that is more interested in waging war on America and the West and sees national borders in the Muslim world as an artificial construct imposed by infidel colonialists. Aaron Zelen, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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As you can see on the map, Syria to its east is bordered by Iraq and beyond that, Iran. And so Iran had a large influential swath of land, basically a Shia crescent of radicalism that stretched all the way from Iran across northern Iraq through Syria and to Lebanon. this giant chain of Islamic terror pushed by the Shia regime. To the south of Syria is Jordan. Jordan is a Sunni Arab state.

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So we'll see, you know, not a great credential. He says him and his group's break with Islamic State and Al Qaeda is very genuine. They haven't been part of these entities longer than they were with them. It's now been essentially eight and a half years. They've forsworn global jihad. Instead, they're focusing in squarely on Syria.

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But even according to the Wall Street Journal, they are a blend of Islamism and nationalism that is closer to the Afghanistan's Taliban and Palestinian Hamas, which sounds kind of bad. And so as it turns out, there are no good answers in the Middle East. So what exactly is going to come next year?

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Well, if the Biden administration is idiotic, then they certainly won't do what they are talking about. So the Biden administration apparently is now discussing the possibility of taking HTS off the terror list. There's a $10 million bounty, by the way, on Al-Jalani's head from the U.S. State Department because he is a terrorist.

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And it turns out releasing terrorists from Gitmo, he was actually in Gitmo, turns out to bad strategy as a general rule. A senior administration official said, quote, it's kind of a broad kaleidoscope of groups. I think we have to be smart and also very mindful and pragmatic about the realities on the ground. He said, HTS is saying the right things. So far, they're doing the right thing.

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They're not the only group. There's a series of opposition groups that came that reached Damascus from the south and they are very different. Some of those are Druze, for example. So as always, it is a giant cluster F. Again, welcome to the Middle East where there are no good answers. And it's worth pointing out that again, the fate of a lot of people in Syria remains very much in doubt.

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And there are a bunch of different groups that are now competing for leadership in Syria. They range from, for example,

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the Syrian interim government and Syrian National Army, who are essentially Turkish interests in Syria, controlled by the Turkish armed forces, to the Syrian Salvation Government and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who are the radical Islamists who just took control of Damascus, the Syrian Free Army, which is an American-backed force that originally operated on the Syrian-Jordanian border.

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They don't hold a ton of territory at this point. There's also the Kurds, right? That'd be the Rojava SDF. That's the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. And they are by far the most pro-Western group in the region. And finally, the Southern Operations Room, who again is a coalition of Sunni and Druze groups in South Syria, they too are sort of pro-Western. So it's a giant mess.

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In a moment, we'll get into what comes next. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking American, taxes. That October 15th deadline has passed. Are you prepared for what comes next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Miss that deadline to file for an extension?

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Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they don't play around. It could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. There's good news. There's still hope. Tax Network USA has been in the game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law.

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They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burden. So do not let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

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Our team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, Call today, 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you.

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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. Also... Here at The Daily Wire, we don't just win cultural battles. We dominate them. Today, we are announcing something that demonstrates this in no uncertain terms. Jeremy's Razors, led by my friend and co-CEO Jeremy Boring, is joining forces with the ultimate fighting championship UFC, most dominant mixed martial arts organization on planet Earth.

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Starting in January, Jeremy's Razors becomes an official partner of UFC. That means Jeremy's Razors will be showcased in the octagon on Dana White's Contender Series and throughout the Ultimate Fighter right where it belongs. Here's what makes this particularly meaningful. Dana White, who the left has tried and failed to cancel countless times, was among Jeremy's Razors' first customers.

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Well, now we're standing with UFC to celebrate courage, strength, and unapologetic excellence in kickassery. This partnership isn't just a business deal. It's the next big step in our fight. I promise you it's only the beginning. Celebrate with us today. Head on over to jeremysrazors.com right now and get your Jeremy's Razors. Alrighty, so what comes next over here?

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Well, again, the people in the Middle East who have absolutely demonstrated their strength over the course of the last year, the Israeli government, obviously the IDF, and the Turks. Right now, again, when it comes to Israel, Israel only wants to guard its border.

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And so they've extended that border outward to the other side of the Hermon Mountain, which was sort of the Syrian side of the border zone. And they're doing that in order to prevent Syrian rebels, these radical Sunni Islamist groups who are allied with Hamas, from moving up on the Israeli border. Meanwhile, the Turks are encroaching heavily into the territory of Syria.

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It is governed by the Hashemite dynasty. It has always been a fragile state because, again, it is a monarchy in a region where its population does not share the same ethnicity as the actual kingdom. And 60, 70 percent of the population of Jordan is Sunni Arab Palestinian and quite radicalized. And so, again, the entire Middle East is a basket case.

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So those are sort of the big developments. On its part, Benjamin Netanyahu put out a statement suggesting correctly that it was Israel that kicked out one leg of the support for the Assad regime by taking out the Iranian proxies throughout the region.

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Now, again, it is worth noting, this is a very small piece of territory that Israel is currently moving into in order to defend its own border, as opposed to, say, the Turkish territory, which constitutes an 8,835 square kilometer buffer zone in the north of Syria. Again, the Turks are the ones who are really benefiting from all of this.

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Also because they're attempting to provide a strategic Islamic counterweight to the Saudis. The Saudis are very nervous about all of this because whenever you have a radical Sunni Muslim group that rises in the Middle East, the threat is to try and radicalize the Saudi population. So the Saudis have said that they don't want outside interference here.

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They put out a statement saying the kingdom affirms its support for the brotherly Syrian people and their choice. but also appealed for concerted efforts to preserve the unity of Syria and the cohesion of its people so as to prevent it from falling into chaos and division.

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Jordan, for its part, again, is threatened because Jordan has a very long border with Syria as they close their border crossing into Syria as well. A Syrian army source told Reuters armed groups have been firing at Syria's Nassib border crossing into Jordan. So Jordan is worried about this as well. So what is likely to happen next? The answer, as usual in the Middle East, is probable chaos.

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So Simon Sebag Montefiore, who's a historian of the region, writing at the Free Press, he says, one way to see events is with a longer timeframe. The continuing disorder emerging from the fall of the Ottoman Empire that ruled the Arab world from its conquest by Sultan Selim the Great in 1517 and that ended in 1918 with the division of the region between the victors, France and Britain.

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Russia, which had been promised a share of the Ottoman Near East, had fallen under Bolshevik rule. They left Britain and France under the ambitious liberal imperial pioneers David Lloyd George and George Clemenceau, who called their new provinces mandates as confirmed by the League of Nations. Britain was given a new entity called Iraq and another named Palestine.

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And if you look to the north of Syria, what you see is Turkey, which has a major hand in what just happened over the weekend. Turkey, of course. is run by Erdogan, who is a neo-Ottoman dictator.

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Today, that would be Israel, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the Kingdom of Jordan. France received greater Syria. That would be Syria and Lebanon. Initially, Paris planned to divide its mandate into smaller states. For the Maronite Christians, that would become Lebanon, the Druze, the Alawites, and the Sunnis in Damascus.

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The Kurds were promised their own state that was prevented by Turkey in 1922-23. In the end, the French decided against creating several smaller states and instead created Lebanon to be ruled by their Maronite Christian allies in partnership with Sunnis and Druze and also Syria. And both these states are completely unworkable.

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In fact, the only states that were created by the British and French mandates that still exist as actual states are Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan. And the Kingdom of Jordan is basically being held up by allies at this point.

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It turns out that all of the various ethnic groups, all of the various rivalries between them have torn apart virtually every other state that was artificial lines drawn in the sand by the British and the French in the aftermath of World War I. As Montefiore says, the failure of all these states, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, are just part of a wider instability created by the failure of many of the post-imperial, post-colonial states formed by the great powers after 1945 in the Middle East and Africa in the 1960s.

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Many of the latter will either degrade into chaotic war lands and exurgencies ruled not by states but by militias become protectorates of new colonial powers like China or survive as federalized states made up of autonomous entities. It's already true in Africa. It might be true for the Middle East.

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He says Syria may emerge as a single state tolerant of its many ethnic minorities, but that is very unlikely. Or it may be further federalized into autonomous entities ruled by the Kurds, the Alawites and a central sector under Sunni rule, hopefully not of repressive Islamists. Each will be protected by or dominated by outside powers. This may just be the start of another round of civil war.

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Turkey already has its army and its Turkish occupied zone, plus its own Syrian proxy militia in Syria. And of course, it's friendly with HDS. Israel may develop its own relationship with the Kurds and the Druze. Russia will probably depart, but it will probably try and retain its enclave along the Mediterranean coast.

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Al-Jalani will either try to remake himself as a Syrian leader for all sects or stay true to the diehard Islamism of his career with disastrous results for all Syrians. As far as the United States, and it's very far away from the United States, the United States' interests are generally gonna be relegated to very small interests. Like for example, preventing the rise of ISIS again.

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He turned Turkey from a functioning democracy and a member of NATO into a sort of radicalized Islamic state, not in the same mold as, say, the Taliban or in the mold of what's about to happen next in Syria, but in his own methodology, it is a militant Islamist state that supports Hamas. and that was supportive of many of the rebel groups that just drove their way through Syria.

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which would mean, as the United States has been doing, bombing ISIS bases or preventing jailbreaks from ISIS jails in the Kurdish areas of Syria. The United States does not have large scale interests at stake in Syria. It means arming up allies to make sure that there's not another full scale invasion of Israel, for example, via the Golan Heights.

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The Trump administration is already going to do that. The Trump administration does not want to get involved. And I think that President Trump is totally right not to want to get heavily involved there because it's an absolute, as we say, cluster F. President Trump put out a statement saying Assad is gone. He has fled his country.

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His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started and could go on forever.

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Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They've ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin.

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Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted. Too many families destroyed. If it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is time to act. China can help. The world is waiting. As far as Trump's suggestion via Truth Social that the United States does not have large-scale interests in getting involved with Syria, that is true.

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The United States has small-scale interests that I think are going to be extremely limited and should be extremely limited to, for example, making sure that there is an incursion over Israel's borders or that Jordan doesn't fall, which would be quite bad, or that the Kurds don't get overwhelmed by the Turks.

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And a lot of the pressure on Turkey, which I think is going to be the main job of the Trump administration in the region because Turkey is getting incredibly aggressive, a lot of that is going to be done diplomatically and economically. So when President Trump says stay out, I think he means it and I think he should mean it. He put out a second statement, by the way, along these lines.

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This is a little bit earlier saying, quote, opposition fighters in Syria in an unprecedented move have totally taken over numerous cities in a highly coordinated offensive and are now on the outskirts of Damascus. Obviously, this is before Damascus.

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Russia, because they're so tied up in Ukraine with the loss of their 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they've protected for years. This is where former President Obama refused to honor his commitment of protecting the red line in the sand and all hell broke out with Russia stepping in.

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Now they are, like possibly Assad himself being forced out, it may actually be the best thing that can happen to them. There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia other than to make Obama look really stupid. In any event, Syria is a mess, but it's not our friend. The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.

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And again, generally speaking, that is true. And you can see the left-wing press already encouraging like heavy involvement over there. With whom? To whom? What the hell are you talking about? Like seriously, what level of involvement are you talking about? Like Washington Post has a piece up today titled, Why the U.S. Needs to Help Build a New Syria. Um, no. I mean, no, the answer is no.

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We should identify who our closest allies are in the region, say the Kurds and the Druze. We should provide them with arms to defend themselves. We should allow Israel the ability to defend its own border. We should prevent the Turks from killing the Kurds by arming the Kurds, not by getting directly involved in any of this stuff and by putting economic pressure on Turkey. And that's kind of it.

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That's kind of it. And we should instead allow the Iranian regime to live with the consequences of its own terrible decisions. The Washington Post says, quote, it might be tempting to assume anything is better than Mr. Assad. That would be a mistake. HTS is an al-Qaeda offshoot that once had links to ISIS.

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Okay, so that is where Syria is placed on the map. And because you can see it's juxtaposition to all these places, you can also see there are a lot of interests involved. So for example, the Russians, very, very interested in Syria because they wanted to secure ports on the Mediterranean Sea in Syria, which they actually did with the acquiescence of the Assad regime.

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Mr. Jalani has been trying to project a more moderate image and convince Syrians all ethnic groups would be welcome in a post-Assad Syria. In the Idlib region of northwestern Syria, HTS has provided protections for women and religious minorities, but has also been accused of human rights abuses and authoritarian rule. And the suggestion by the Washington Post,

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It's quote, the Middle East badly needs a success story. A pluralistic democratic Arab country committed to upholding human rights. Yeah, good luck. Good luck with that. The answer is no, we should not be. No, democracy creation in Syria is not on the slate for the Trump administration, nor should it be. That is not a reality. It never was a reality. It's stupid. It was stupid in Iraq.

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It's stupid here. It's really dumb. There are places in the Middle East where theoretically democracy could flourish. Actually, one of those, ironically, is Iran or the Persian population. And the population of Iran more generally is much more Western friendly and much more friendly to the ideas of democracy. That ain't true in Syria. That ain't true. Let the Kurds protect the Kurds.

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Let the Druze protect the Druze. Let the Jews protect the Jews and let the Turks stay out of all of it. I mean, that should basically be via soft mechanisms of power and simply allowing countries to do what they need to do. The American role here.

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But again, the addiction to getting involved in every hand in every pie, the left addictions, like they get involved and they don't stay involved long enough to actually see the thing through. It's always the worst available opportunity. sort of answer to all of these problems. Joe Biden stumbled out to a podium and barely was able to read off a teleprompter.

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Here's his statement on the Assad regime falling.

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Hilariously, this schmuck then got up and suggested that that was because of his action in Ukraine and allowing Israel to fight its terrorist enemies. He's been slow walking aid in both places, in both places while attempting to negotiate with the Iranians. Like the utter gall of Joe Biden and the Obama foreign policy team.

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Remember, it was in mid 2023, like just before October 7th, that Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, declared that Joe Biden had created a peaceful Middle East. Yeah, it's been great, Bob. Well done, everybody. So here is the bottom line. As always, it's a mixed bag. Assad, one of the most evil dictators in modern times, not only deserves to go, he deserves to die.

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I mean, for the amount of human suffering and carnage he has created, one of the worst people on earth, Bashar Assad. Also, the people replacing him suck and are probably Sunni Islamist terrorists, affiliates with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And anybody who's counting on them to become moderate democratic liberals or something, you're high on your own supply. Stop it.

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So among the foreign players who were involved in Syria, Iran, which was using it as a thoroughfare and propping up the Assad regime, Russia, which was using it as a base and propping up the Assad regime. Turkey, which did not like the Assad regime and also was attempting to make its own incursions into Syria because a lot of people in Syria are Kurds.

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And so it is likely that civil war will continue. It is likely the Turks will begin flexing their muscle. Erdogan is proving himself to be a formidably Machiavellian player in the Middle East. But the sort of big takeaway for next steps is actually outside of Syria. It's actually in Iran. The big untold story here has very little to do with Syria.

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It has to do with as Iranian power wanes, as Iran is driven out of Lebanon, as they're driven out of Syria, as they're driven out of Yemen, which they will be, as they are driven out of wide swaths of Iraq, as this happens,

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The Iranian regime is in serious trouble, and they're either going to have to figure out a way to move forward that does not involve the development of nuclear weapons, or they're going to find themselves on their last legs as well. And as far as Russia, Russia was proved weak here. Russia had a heavy stake in Syria. Russia was invested in Syria. Russia was providing weaponry to Syria.

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One further note. The forward deployment of Israeli forces in Syria to destroy, for example, chemical weapons depots, that's a good thing. You don't want chemical weapons falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates. Back in 2007, when George W. Bush was president, the Israeli military blew up a nuclear facility created by the North Koreans in Damascus or created by Damascus in Syria.

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Would it have been better if there were nuclear weapons there? Right now, nuclear proliferation in this area of the world tends to be a really, really bad thing. So that is the story from Syria. We'll see how it plays out. Don't let wishes be the father of stupidity in the Middle East. Should be sort of the moral of the story. Strong defense, strong allies.

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By the way, as far as the Abraham Accords, which is one of the chief foreign policy priorities for the Trump administration, this very much favors the Abraham Accords because the Saudis are very much afraid of this new Sunni Islamist terrorist regime that is likely arising in Syria.

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And so they're very likely to side with the Israelis, with Jordanians, with the Egyptians in trying to prevent the rise of a rival terror backing power in the Middle East. In just one second, we'll get to President Trump, who traveled over to France to take part in the reopening of Notre Dame, which was reconstructed after a giant fire. If you're not a member and become a member, use code Shapira.

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Folks, have you heard of the audience effect? It's a fascinating psychological phenomenon where people behave differently when they know they're being watched.

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You become more guarded, more self-conscious, and even without explicit supervision, the mere sense of being observed can fundamentally limit our freedom of expression. Well, here's something unsettling. When you're online, you are, in fact, being watched. Your internet service provider tracks every website you visit and how long you spend there.

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Even private browsing mode won't shield you from the surveillance. Think about that. Every search, every click, every late-night research session, all monitored and stored, which is why I rely on ExpressVPN. It reroutes all your online activity through secure encrypted servers, making it impossible for your ISP to monitor your internet usage.

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It also masks your IP address, a unique number that data brokers use to create detailed profiles they sell to marketers and other companies. Given recent security breaches that exposed billions of people's personal information, protecting your digital identity isn't just about privacy, it's about security. The best part? Remarkably simple.

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One click activates protection across all devices, phones, tablets, TVs, computers, up to eight devices simultaneously. Your whole family's digital privacy secured with a single subscription. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com slash ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben to get three extra months for free with my exclusive link, ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

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And the Turks don't like the Kurds in the same way they don't like the Armenians. And so they've been attempting to kill the Kurds. In fact, in the middle of all of this chaos in Syria, they've been launching airstrikes on civilian areas in Kurdish areas of Syria and the border of Israel.

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Israel wants to defend itself and make sure that it is not the victim of yet another land incursion from Syria. So Syria, as you can see, geopolitically is just a mess. Okay, that is not even getting into the internal politics. That's just where it is in the Middle East. Okay, now we get to the situation in Syria today.

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So the map of Syria today shows that it is split into a bunch of different territories. So as you can see from this particular map, and this one comes courtesy of the New York Times, a fine map, this map shows a series of separate territories. So you have certain opposition groups, that are in the south of Syria, bordering the Golan Heights and bordering Jordan.

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Some of those are radical Sunni Islamists. Some of those are Druze. Druze are a different group who are, again, Sunni, they're Sunni Muslims, but they tend to be significantly less radical than many of the other Sunni Muslims in the area. Meanwhile, you have the main rebel coalition, which is located in the northwest of Syria. That main rebel coalition is run by a person named al-Jolani.

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There's a lightning campaign that basically came from nowhere. I want to show you a couple of maps so you understand exactly what's going on. Because when we talk about what's happening in Syria, what we have to understand is that Syria is an artificial creation post-World War I by the West, by the French, by the British.

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As we'll get to in a moment, al-Jolani is in fact a radical and probably an Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliated terrorist. He certainly was in his past. He probably still is. That is the main rebel coalition. He was backed by the Turks because again, he is up in the north. He was backed by the Turks. Meanwhile, if you look to the northeast of

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You'll see that the Kurds are in control of a large swath of that area that didn't used to be under the control of the Kurds. That used to be under the control of ISIS. ISIS was very much located in that area. There are prisons holding tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners in those Kurdish areas.

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So after the Assad regime fell, the United States has been launching airstrikes in these ISIS kind of hotbeds in the Kurdish area of Syria in order to prevent ISIS from reconstituting itself. As said, it's a complete mess. Turkey, as you can see from this map, also has taken over huge swaths of the north of Syria. So that is the map of Syria as it currently stands.

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So now I want to go through what has happened over time with these various forces. So if you look at the governmental forces and their allies, for example, the governmental forces and their allies in 2014. So the civil war broke out in 2011. We'll go through a brief timeline of the civil war in Syria and how it ended.

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And then we're going to talk about what happened with each of these various groups over the course of the war. So in 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria. That was one of the spillover effects of the so-called Arab Spring. Bashar Assad cracked down on the protesters. He labeled them all Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates. Some of them certainly were Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates, not all of them.

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He began using harsher and harsher tactics. The United States, the EU, the Arab League soon introduced sanctions targeting senior members of the Assad regime. Meanwhile, on the other side of that, Iran and Russia decided that they were going to continue to support and indeed increase their support

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Before Bashar Assad, by September 2011, organized militias on the one side, backed by the EU, the US, the Arab League, are at total war with the Assad regime. And remember, there's a big debate in the United States at the time over what level of support to grant to these rebels. Because, again, many of these rebels were al-Qaeda affiliates. And not all these groups are the same.

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By 2012, Syrian rebels were gaining control of some segments of Syria, including the second biggest city in Syria after Damascus called Aleppo. You'll remember Aleppo. It's talked a lot about in 2012. Assad was fighting back. Now again, Assad was the enemy of many in the West, but also of Turkey, of Saudi, of Qatar as well.

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Qatar played sort of a weird role here because Qatar was supporting many of the rebels, but at the same time, Qatar is sort of a cat's paw of Iran. As usual, Qatar is on all sides of every issue.

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And because of that, like many other states in the Middle East, it is unworkable and has been unworkable for a very long time. You have a large number of groups of various religious belief systems, many of them unbelievably radical, many of them terrorists, all fighting one another. And the Assad regime was a secularist, Ba'athist regime, like Saddam Hussein, with a wild,

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In August of 2012, Barack Obama, then president of the United States, famously suggested that if Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, meaning Syrians, that would be a red line that would result in U.S. backing, heavier U.S. backing for the Syrian rebels. Well, then in 2013, Syria did use chemical weapons.

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Assad used chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus, killing hundreds of people on August 21st, 2013. The West backed down, U.S., France and the U.K. That red line was totally false. And basically, Barack Obama ended up handing control of Syria to the Russians. The Russians said they would get rid of the chemical weapons there, which obviously didn't happen.

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Even this weekend, Israeli Air Force operations were bombing chemical weapons factories in Syria to prevent them from falling into the hands of al-Qaeda, ISIS, radical Sunni Islamist terrorists. Well, by the end of 2013, Sunni terrorists are totally in lead of the opposition. So whatever sort of moderate elements there were to the anti-Assad rebellion were basically gone.

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This was the same year that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, founded ISIS, which was the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, right? So again, look at that map. What you will see is that Iraq and Syria are right next door to one another. So large swath of eastern Syria, part of Western Iraq ends up under the auspices of ISIS.

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So after ISIS began beheading Americans, the United States and our allies launched an air campaign to limit ISIS's gains, but ISIS seemed to be a fairly durable presence in Eastern Syria and also in Western Iraq. Folks, we'll get to more of this timeline in a moment, but first let's talk about something happening here in the United States, interest rates. Yes, the Fed has cut rates recently.

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If you're waiting for them to drop back down to like 3%, You might be leaving money on the table right now. Every month you wait is another month of potentially higher payments. Here's a smart play. Consider refinancing with Churchill Mortgage while rates are down. If rates drop further, no problem. Your team at Churchill Mortgage will be there to help you refinance again.

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That's how you stay ahead of the game. Whether you're looking to make your monthly budget work better or just being strategic about using your home's equity, a refi could be your solution. Ask yourself, are you carrying high-interest credit card debt? A cash-out refinance could help you consolidate that debt at a lower rate. Have you been putting off home improvements?

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A cash-out refi could fund those needed updates. Plus, here's something timely. When you refinance, you skip a mortgage payment. Perfect timing for the holiday season. And if you're in the market to buy, here's an insider tip. December is statistically one of the best times to negotiate on your dream home. I recently sat down with Matt Clark. He's the president of Churchill Mortgage.

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What struck me most was his genuine passion for helping families build generational wealth through homeownership. This is a priority to him on a personal level. The experts at Churchill Mortgage are ready to have a real conversation about your options. No robots, just experienced professionals who understand your unique situation. Head over to churchillmortgage.com slash Shapiro.

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Tell your loan officer I sent you. You will be in good hands. churchillmortgage.com slash Shapiro. NMLS ID 1591 and equal housing lender. Also, I have to tell you about these close friends of mine who started a family business during COVID. It is very cool what they have done. Their stores include licorice.com, pretzels.com, caramels.com, cookies.com.

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If you watch Fox News, you've for sure seen their commercials. More than a million people have purchased their delicious products. If you're one of them, you know how addictive they are and how perfectly packaged everything is. You got a big box in the studio. Everybody here is going wild over it because it's amazing, amazing stuff. So let me slowly share their stores with you one more time.

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Licorice.com. Don't think Twizzlers. Imagine 60 flavors from all over the world. How about pretzels.com? If you're a big pretzel fan, this is the thing for you. Crazy varieties of seasoned, fresh-baked soft pretzels and my favorite, chocolate-covered pretzels. Caramels.com. So, I love caramel. This is the thing. You've never had caramels this soft and tasty. They have 50-plus flavors.

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And finally, cookies.com. Delivered fast and fresh. These cookies... are awesome. They are magically delicious. So now you know where to buy all your holiday gifts. If I were you, I'd start ordering right now before they sell out. By the way, you can order today and schedule any delivery date you want so gifts will arrive directly on time.

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Plus, if you use my special code BEN at checkout, you'll even get free shipping. Check out any of the stores mentioned to get great holiday gifts today. Meanwhile, 2015, Russia starts becoming more and more active in Syria, launching strikes on behalf of the Assad regime. Russia and Assad essentially level Aleppo. You remember in 2015, terrible pictures from Aleppo.

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left-wing view of economics. Essentially, it was just a fascist dictatorship engaged in mass human rights abuses at scale. Over the course of the Assad regime, some 12 million Syrians were displaced. Many of them ended up in Turkey. Many of them ended up in Jordan. Many of them ended up in Europe.

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2016, 2017.

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the combined effect of U.S. assaults on ISIS under Donald Trump by 2017 by Kurdish forces in the north of Syria and by Bashar Assad start to have a severe impact on ISIS. So ISIS's ideological rivals, including one called the Nusra Front, decided to merge into a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which will henceforth be known as HTS. HDS becomes pretty important to the story.

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The leader of HDS is this al-Jolani character, who, as we say, was a member of both al-Qaeda and ISIS, and then broke off and formed HDS and started fighting ISIS. So they captured territory that was held by ISIS in the area of Idlib. Idlib is in sort of the northwest of the country.

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And when we fast forward, you'll see that that was the base from which these rebels then just took over the rest of the country or at least the population centers of the country over the course of the last week. So 2017, 2018, the U.S. and our allies began actually striking Syrian government weapons depots after the use of chemical weapons. The rebels were pushed back into Idlib.

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Russia and Turkey established a buffer zone between the Idlib rebels and the Assad forces. But that rebel territory ended up being controlled by the Turkey-backed HTS. So HTS, again, is this offshoot, this breakaway group from ISIS and from al-Qaeda. And they end up being backed by Turkey. They are Sunni Muslim terrorists. They are radical.

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All the pretend that you're hearing in the media today that the people who just took over Syria, actually, they might be moderate. Actually, they might be. No, no, no. OK, so again, in the welcome to the Middle East, where there are no good solutions, there are only problems. It's a rough region of the world. And there are a lot of bad people fighting a lot of other bad people as a general rule.

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Now, after that comes to a bit of a close, Assad is then ushered back into the Arab League. Assad is seen as somewhat legitimate again. And things seem to sort of shift into low-grade civil war mode. And here is where we can take a look at the maps again.

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So if you look at the government forces just before all of this happened, what you'll see is in 2014, the government forces controlled large swaths of eastern Syria, including places like Aleppo and Hama and Homs and Damascus. 2017, they controlled very similar area. 2019, they controlled even more area. And by 2024...

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The Syrian refugee crisis had massive ramifications for European politics, and that was driven by the civil war that happened in Syria between 2011 and just ended over the weekend in Although, as we'll see, I think the civil war is likely to continue for a long time to come because this is an unworkable patchwork of various groups in various areas of the country.

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They controlled an enormous amount of area, like more area than they had controlled back in 2014, including incursions into Idlib, which was, again, a heavily Sunni terror, Al-Qaeda offshoot, ISIS, Turkey-backed group. Okay, so Syria seemed to be, the Assad regime seemed to be in pretty good position at the beginning of 2024. Okay, now take a look at the opposition forces.

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Okay, so what you can see is the opposition forces here. Their territory had been shrinking. In 2014, they controlled Idlib. They controlled parts of Aleppo. They controlled outskirts of Damascus. 2017 shrinks. 2020 really, really shrinks. They're basically stuck in Idlib. And that was the case all the way up until 2024. Its opposition forces have shrunk all the way down to Idlib.

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And now take a look at ISIS. So ISIS, as we say, was in eastern Syria. And then it was basically shrunk over the course of the American-led war against ISIS. But there was also Kurdish... work with the Americans in that. And the Assad regime was also pushing against ISIS. So ISIS once held up to a third of Syria. In 2015, they held large swaths of the North.

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Well, folks, the news is breaking hot and heavy because it is always breaking hot and heavy in Trump 2.0. But to be part of our conversation, generally, you do have to be a Daily Wire Plus member. You get all sorts of magical privileges. First of all, Daily Wire Plus members get everything. All of our content, ad-free, including daily shows, hit movies, documentaries, and more.

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The tariffs are coming. No negotiation. The tariffs are coming. To which the markets say, price is right horn. Boo, boo, boo, boo. It turns out the markets do not like that because the tariff regime as it currently stands is the single greatest increase in taxes, because tariffs are a tax, in modern American history.

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And they are the single greatest increase in trade war since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1932. I mean, you're going back almost 100 years to get to the kind of tariff rates that you're talking about right now. Again, Lutnick keeps saying this. He keeps saying over and over, there's no postponing. We're not postponing it. It's going forward. Here's Lutnick again saying the same thing.

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All the companies are going to come and build there. There's significant problems with this, as we'll explore in a moment, including the fact that when you build a factory, you need to have, wait for it, parts from other parts of the globe. Because what are you going to make? A factory with all the stuff that's made here? The problem is it's not made here right now.

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So how's that going to work, precisely? There are all sorts of holes in this logic. Again, the very idea that a trade deficit means another country is screwing you is wrong on its face. It's not true. If you have a trade deficit with another country, it's possible that country is screwing you.

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It is certainly not sufficient to say you have a trade deficit, therefore the other country is screwing you. It's not true. In fact, there are several countries, many countries that have a trade deficit with the United States. Is that because we're screwing them? I again use the case of Ethiopia, the $12 billion trade deficit with the Ethiopians.

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either because those countries are our enemies and we want to do harm to them, or because we wish to get other countries to lower their own tariffs. And the end goal is a lower tariff regime. And then there's the third possibility. And this is the possibility that is retailed by President Trump and many other members of the administration. And...

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Is that because they're screwing us or is it because no place in America really grows good coffee? Hawaiian coffee ain't going to cut it, not for the entire country. And meanwhile, Scott Besant, who I believe the Treasury Secretary is significantly less, shall we say, committed to the tariff regime than the Commerce Secretary, but he's the one out retailing it.

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Here he was trying to walk this back a little bit, at least give President Trump the possibility of an offer. I'm saying it could be permanent, could be a negotiating tactic. Who knows? Mystery meet here on a here on a Monday.

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Okay, so there's that quote that Kristen Walker was then citing back to Lutnick. Okay, but at least, at least Besant is providing an off-ramp there. He is saying, okay, well, these are bad actors. We're going to negotiate bilateral deals with them. We'll go down to zero. They'll go down to zero. They'll stop with their currency manipulation. Okay, fine. That's an actual off-ramp.

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That sounds like maybe a plan. But Letnick seems to be saying, I don't want there to be a plan. No negotiations. Just go all the way to the wall. The entire purpose of this is to basically reshore manufacturing. It's autarky time here in the United States. Now, the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson was asked how long we're supposed to hang tough.

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You heard President Trump's tweet that we're going to hang tough. And he's asked, how long are we supposed to hang tough? And Besson is not going to commit to any timeline here.

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Yeah, I mean, there's only one problem. The difference is that Donald Trump inherited an economy where the inflation was too high. Typically, if the inflation is too high, that means you have to increase the interest rates, which is the actual thing that Paul Volcker did as the head of the Federal Reserve under Ronald Reagan.

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In order to break inflation, he had to increase the interest rates, which increased the unemployment rates. Then the interest rates went, then the interest, the inflation went red down, the interest rates could drop, and then employment went up. That's the way the Reagan administration works. That is nothing like what we are talking about here.

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To be perfectly honest, all of these various rationales for the tariffs have been put forward. The third one is the one that's really problematic and the one that the economy is currently reading, that the markets are currently seeing. And that is the idea that tariffs are good. Trade wars are good and easy to win. Tariffs themselves are good and make us rich.

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President Trump is actually pushing policies that create more price inflation in the markets and calling on the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates so as to inject more money into the economy. So that is an apples to oranges comparison.

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Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, who's the head of the National Council of Economic Advisors, he's trying to rebut something that President Trump put out on Truth Social. So President Trump put out on Truth Social a video saying that he was purposely crashing the market. And again, President Trump on Truth Social, he kind of posts stuff, like kind of whatever he's feeling like that day.

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If you see something that's pro him, he posts it. It's not necessarily an indicator of his actual policy. Kevin Hassett says, no, no, no, he's not purposefully crashing the market.

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Again, remember, that was an actual going theory, that he was purposefully crashing the market in order to push everybody from stocks into bonds, thereby lowering the yield rate, increasing the demand for bonds generally, and allowing for the lowering of interest rates on the repayment of our debt, right? That was the kind of sophisticated 4D chess theory.

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Kevin Hassett's like, no, that's not what's happening.

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Okay, then Kevin Hassett says, don't worry, none of this is going to have any big effect on consumers. I would like a detailed explanation. Why? You can't just say that. Why? How? Okay, here we go.

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Oh, boy. Okay, and then Hassett says the job numbers will go up. If the tariff regime stays in place, the job numbers will go up. Okay.

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Well, Howard Lutnick, in what had to be the funniest moment of the weekend, in what appears to be a rather dismal economic cycle, Howard Lutnick was asked about the herd of McDonald Islands. You'll remember that that chart that President Trump held up contained the herd and McDonald Islands, which are islands that have no people on them.

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That somehow the simple fact of taxing product as it comes in, which is a tax on consumers, because again, people aren't going to ship us product if nobody's buying it on the other end. They'll just stop shipping us product. So it is a tax on American consumers. The idea that this is inherently good, it makes the American economy strong, is wrongheaded. It is untrue.

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We are apparently putting 10% tariffs on the penguins that live in the herd of McDonald Islands. Lutnick was asked about this. I will say that this particular excuse, I am skeptical about.

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And then he was asked, you mean, so your theory is that China is going to use the penguin land as a cutout, like the penguin land near Antarctica. That's your theory. We had to tariff the penguin land because otherwise people will escape the tariffs by building factories in penguin land, again, near Antarctica in the middle of nowhere. Okay, well, there is some good news.

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You know that at least they're not gonna outsource, you know, like all the agriculture to herd and McDonald's islands. But the reality is that actually a lot of ag is taken from abroad. And if you actually care where your food comes from, you should make the switch to goodranchers.com. When you choose Good Ranchers, you know exactly what you're getting, meat, you know, like just meat.

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No hidden additives, no antibiotics, no hormones, no seed oils, no misleading country of origin, just the meat. And it's all raised and harvested right here in the United States. Plus, Good Ranchers now has Gulf of America shrimp.

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It's 100% wild caught from the Gulf of America by local fishermen, flash frozen on the boat to lock in freshness, then vacuum sealed by Good Ranchers and delivered straight to your door. I cannot eat it. However, you can. Producer Savvy, for example, she just got the shrimp. Her son absolutely loves it.

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And as part of their spring into action special right away, when you subscribe to any Good Ranchers box, you'll get free bacon, ground beef, chicken nuggets, or salmon in every box for a year, plus 40 bucks off with my code Ben. Once again, visit goodranchers.com for food you can trust. Because when it comes to what's on your plate, you deserve transparency.

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Good Ranchers is American meat delivered. I know that Savvy's kid, he's a monster, that kid. He's a tiny little man, but he is huge. That is because he's being fed well with good ranchers. American meat delivered.

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Plus, exclusive investigative journalism that gives you the whole story, not just the part that fits a narrative. Become a member today at dailywire.com slash subscribe or download the Daily Wire Plus app in the App Store right now. Well... it was a bit of a fraught weekend. The stock futures dumped all over the place.

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Also, Grand Canyon University, private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we're all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and creates a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

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The idea that it is going to result in massive reshoring of manufacturing is also untrue, as we'll talk about in a little while. And this is why Bill Ackman, investor extraordinaire and ally to President Trump, put out a statement over the weekend saying, quote, the country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country.

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others? That's yours.

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Goodness knows that there are enough terrible universities out there indoctrinating kids in all manner of stupidity. Not the case at Grand Canyon University. Go check them out right now. That's Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. That's gcu.edu.

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So the most obvious manifestation of debate inside the administration is coming courtesy of Elon Musk. Elon happens to be 100% right about this. So Elon Musk is ripping into trade advisor Peter Navarro. Navarro is a big tariff advocate. He's been a big tariff advocate for years. And the Tesla CEO ripped Peter Navarro as someone who ain't built bleep.

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And then when asked about his Harvard PhD in economics, he said, that's a bad thing, not a good thing. And then he posted a quote from economist Thomas Sowell that said, in every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.

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He then suggested that Navarro had an excess of self-confidence, writing, quote, results in the ego brains greater than one problem. Meanwhile, Musk himself suggested that he wants a zero tariff situation, which again, this is the good explanation for why you would do the tariff game. I urge the president to do precisely what Musk is saying here. Go to zero with all these countries. Go to zero.

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That's a win. Take the win. Move on. That'd be good for the economy. Good for you. You'd have flexed your muscle. You'd have flexed American muscle. That'd be good. Here's Elon Musk.

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Navarro, for his part, started fighting back. Here was Peter Navarro on Fox News trying to push back against Musk.

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Okay, so open battle between Elon and Navarro. Navarro is wrong. Elon is right. It's that simple. The reality is that Navarro's trade prescriptions, which is this giant trade war where he believes the tariffs are in and of themselves good, not to get to zero. They in and of themselves are good. That is a bad economic policy. We'll get to that in a moment.

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but business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust. President Trump has elevated the tariff issue to the most important geopolitical issue in the world and he's gotten everyone's attention so far so good. And yes, other nations have taken advantage of the US by protecting their home industries at the expense of millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country.

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The biggest problem here is who's going to tell President Trump the bad news? Who in that inner circle is going to be the person who delivers that news to President Trump? President Trump has a feedback loop. That feedback loop, I've said before, I trust that President Trump can see reality. He's very good at seeing reality.

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He's able to wipe away the BS of prior assumptions on a variety of issues and cut straight to the heart of the matter. But that's only if someone is providing him the data. It's only if somebody is telling him the truth about what exactly is happening.

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And right now, because President Trump is such an outsized man on the national and international stage, that's creating a climate of fear right around him, which means that the feedback loop may in fact be closed.

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As Politico reports, Capitol Hill Republicans, corporate America, and White House allies are terrified about what's next in President Trump's escalating trade war, but they fear Trump's wrath even more. Republican lawmakers are signaling they're willing to tolerate the pain for now despite the economic fallout back home. Lobbyists are quietly prodding the same lawmakers to defend their interests.

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Don't want to have a target on their back or their clients. Even some Trump world confidants, alarmed about the terrorist impact, are hoping someone else intervenes. An official in the energy industry said, quote, hearing angst and frustration from all quarters, but no one wants to be first out of the box saying anything negative about Trump's decision making. Okay, well...

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A good leader, and President Trump is a good leader, a good leader listens to reality, recognizes the reality of the situation, and then makes the best possible informed decision. I trust that President Trump is going to do that. That's literally his job. Because here is, now we get to the reality. Here is the reality.

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The reason that futures are dumping is because the recession risk is now quite real. According to the Wall Street Journal, the world changed on Wednesday, which Trump dubbed Liberation Day. JP Morgan's head of economic research, Bruce Kassman, raised the probability of a global recession from 40% to 60%. The bank now expects U.S.

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gross domestic product to contract 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025 from one year earlier. It previously expected 1.3% growth. That is a delta of 1.6%. Unemployment, says JP Morgan, will reach 5.3% next year. Kasman says, the size and disruptive impact of U.S. trade policies, if sustained, would be sufficient to tip a still healthy U.S. and global expansion into recession.

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The tariff shock will likely be magnified by its effects on sentiment and through potential disruptions to global supply chains. Now, again, that is the worry that everyone is currently fearing, that recession is on its way, because if economic activity slows, if investors pull their money out of the markets, if there's less investment, fewer IPOs, less innovation,

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By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike, and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we're in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, as a market to invest capital.

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If all that happens because everybody is afraid of what comes next, then you will get an economic slowdown and it will affect everyone. It will affect everyone. As Bloomberg points out, there's a major problem with the possibility of debt default. Quote, Donald Trump's global trade war is already priming financial markets for the next wave of corporate defaults.

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A Bloomberg News measure of distressed debt worldwide swelled the most in at least 15 months this week, sending more than $43 billion of bonds and loans to levels that make it challenging to refinance. Few expected Washington to go after so many of its key trading partners with such high duties. So corporate debt is being called in.

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The pile of distressed debt in the America's region has now surpassed that in Asia Pacific for the first time since August. Robert Schwartz, portfolio manager at Alliance Bernstein said, quote, retailers are getting smacked. If you're a retailer, you tried to diversify into Vietnam or the Philippines. Those tariffs were not priced in until this week.

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Michaels, for example, the arts and crafts chain, have been working with its suppliers on pricing and sourcing in preparation for the announcement. This week, its bonds due 2029 tumbled almost 10 cents on the dollar. It's now trading at 44 cents on the dollar. What does that mean? It means people don't expect these companies to survive and be able to pay back their debt.

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They expect them to go bankrupt. Other companies that are now in serious trouble, Wayfair, Nordstrom, Klairs, PetSafe, The owner of luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue is one of the biggest additions to the distressed universe.

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According to Bloomberg, a $2.2 billion bond that it issued less than four months ago to finance the acquisition of Neiman Marcus is now trading at 73.5 cents on the dollar and yielding 16 percentage points more than Treasury's.

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So people are buying up the corporate debt because what they realize is that perhaps that corporate debt, maybe these companies come back, but people are freaking out because most companies have to operate on the basis of rotating debt. Most companies, again, do not have a Scrooge McDuck giant vat of cash in the back that they dive into every night. Most of them are operating off credit.

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The president, and here's where Ackman is basically saying to Trump, take a timeout, figure out what it is that you want to do here. He says, the president has an opportunity to call a 90-day timeout, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals and induce trillions of dollars to invest in our country. If on the other hand, on April 9th,

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to get to payroll. Because the way that the cash flow works in pretty much every company, you use debt to pay the payroll, and then, kind of like your credit card, and then all the money comes in, you use it to pay back the debt. That's how the cycle works. What happens when, for tariff reasons, this cash stops coming in? Now the debt starts to get really, really dicey.

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This is just another reason that margin calls are getting steep. So margin calls, hedge funds, are now being hit with the worst margin calls since 2020, since the COVID crisis. This according to the Financial Times.

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Wall Street banks have asked their hedge fund clients to stump up more money as security for their loans because the value of their holdings had tumbled, according to three people familiar with the matter. Several big banks have now issued the largest margin calls to their clients since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.

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For those who don't know what a margin call is, here's the simple explanation. Let's say that you want to buy $10,000 worth of stock. So what you do is you drop $5,000 in cash, you buy $5,000 with cash, and you borrow $5,000 worth of stock from the broker. You get a loan, $5,000 worth of stock from the broker. And because the broker's lending you the stock, you have to have some collateral.

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So what's the collateral? The margin of 30%, which is the actual equity against the loan. So then the stock drops to $8,000. So now your margin is 30% because $8,000 is the value of the stock minus the $5,000 loan, which means $3,000, which is 30% of, again, the original purchase. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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We launch economic nuclear war in every country in the world. Business investment will grind to a halt. Consumers will close their wallets and pocketbooks. We'll severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war? I don't know of one who will do so. Again, this is Bill Ackman, who is a Trump supporter. When markets crash, new investment stops. Consumers stop spending money. Businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers.

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It's not just big companies that suffer. Small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs will experience much greater pain. Almost no business can pass through an overnight massive increase in cost to their customers. That's true even if they have no debt. And unfortunately, there's a massive amount of leverage in the system. Business is a confidence game.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe, the consequences for our country, and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president in particular. Low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for, says Bill Ackman.

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The president has an opportunity on Monday to call a timeout and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are headed for a self-induced economic nuclear winter and we should all start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.

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Okay, that is a flashing red light that Ackman is aiming at the president of the United States saying, stop for the love of God, stop, or at the very least, take the off ramp. And so today is going to be a very big day for the president. not just because of what the markets do, but because of what he could say. So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is visiting.

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Okay, well, again, don't make these kinds of mistakes. And I understand that on the right, we don't care about this sort of stuff. I get it. I get that we are constantly saying nothing matters. President Trump is Teflon. And to this point, he has been. Recession stops everything. Economic downturn stops everything. You can do whatever you want so long as things are chugging along.

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When that number is going up into the right, everybody's pretty happy. Rising tide lifts all ships and covers for a myriad of political sins. It doesn't when people are feeling insecure, when people are feeling bad. That is just the reality of politics. The rules of gravity still apply. They do. And there's no way really around that.

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Now, it is quite possible that these tariffs end up basically knocked down by the courts. That is a real possibility. According to the Wall Street Journal, a stationary company in Florida on Thursday challenged the president's earlier 20% tariffs on China through legal, but its legal arguments also apply to the Liberation Day tariffs.

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As I mentioned before, President Trump is using national emergency authority to declare this massive tariff war. I don't understand how it is possibly covered under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That sanctions law gives the president authority to address what is called an unusual and extraordinary threat.

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Well, with regard to Canada and Mexico, he tried to declare that it was fentanyl. I think you can make the fentanyl case with Mexico. Hard to make that case in Canada when last year we seized a grand total of 43 pounds, which is a backpack of fentanyl at the Canadian border. When you say that the national emergency is trade deficits, I don't know how you can do that.

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I honestly don't know how that is upheld by a court. It seems difficult to suggest that you should be able to declare a national emergency based on trade deficits that amount to wiping $6 trillion from the books in the first two days in terms of stock value. So we'll see how that holds up over time. Meanwhile, economic policy has bleed over into the real world.

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It turns out that trade policy does have intersection with foreign policy, more generally military policy as well. Obviously, China, for example, growing its influence has some significant military ramifications. It is also true in Ukraine. So that giant cork board that President Trump held up, the poster board, it did not have Russia listed on it.

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It listed dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. It did not list Russia. Kevin Hassett tried to explain why Russia was not actually listed.

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The market was set to open as of Monday morning down, pretty much across the board. Markets prepared for a bloodbath, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the United States, contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 led the declines down more than 5%.

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Well, it is pretty obvious at this point that all of the niceties toward Russia are bearing very little fruit with regard to Russia actually caving and changing its position. Over the weekend, according to the U.S. Sun, NATO had to scramble fighter jets as Vladimir Putin unleashed a barrage of nuclear-capable bombers and ballistic missiles on Ukraine.

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The reason this is important is not just because of all the security-related concerns in Gaza and Iran, but more specifically with regard to the tariff war that's dominating the news. Netanyahu has already offered to go to zero. Zero tariff rates with the United States.

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Russia struck Central Kiev and other locations in brutal new strikes involving ballistics, cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, and aerial bombs. That came one day after a Russian missile strike on Vladimir Zelensky's hometown of Kerviri, killing at least 19 people, including nine children.

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The latest attack involved at least four 295 MS strategic bombers, with Putin's forces unleashing deadly KH-101 missiles from over the Caspian Sea. So again, this is all in the middle of Zelensky saying that he is perfectly willing to sign a ceasefire like today. And Russia continues to push forward. And meanwhile, the administration continues to say we're not going to tariff you.

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Everybody else on earth gets tariffed, not you. At some point, reality has to set in and Vladimir Putin has to be brought to the table. If the idea is, push Zelensky to get to the table. I'm all for it. I've been calling for it since 2022. I've been doing this for three years, calling for this. But Zelensky's now at the table. That ain't the problem anymore. Putin is not at the table.

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That is very clear. And again, more niceties on trade are not fixing the problem, pretty obviously. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is actually doing a bunch of good things. And this is the thing that's killing me about this trade war that is, again, being poorly run out. Get to the off-ramp. The off-ramp should be zero tariffs. Get to that off-ramp.

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If President Trump uses leverage to get there, great. He did it. He did the thing. Awesome. Get there because there's too much other important stuff that is happening. So, for example, the Trump administration is absolutely kneecapping higher education.

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The Trump administration escalated its campaign against American universities, according to the Wall Street Journal, by preparing to pull $510 million in federal grants from Brown University while also laying out demands Harvard must meet to avoid losing billions in government dollars.

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The administration is freezing National Institutes of Health grants to Brown while it investigates the Ivy League school's handling of anti-Semitism and DEI. Additionally, new developments emerged regarding Harvard after the government opened a review of nearly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts earlier this week. This is great. This is necessary. This should be done.

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Now, to be fair, Israel already had zero tariffs on 98% of all product coming into the United States and has had a free trade agreement with the United States for 40 years. This, again, is why it was rather frustrating when the Trump administration put out a ridiculous chart last week.

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The administration is also looking into wastes of money, like, for example, an initiative called the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Brent Schur reports this exclusively for Daily Wire. More than three decades ago in 1990, Congress mandated an initiative called the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

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Now it spends billions of dollars a year empowering liberal climate radicals to spread climate change doom. The government group says its role is to provide the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the U.S. on climate change. What that has amounted to is the production of five national climate assessment reports, the crown jewel of climate research.

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The report appears to be just about the only thing that the group actually does. While the U.S. Global Change Research Program states on its website it has a budget of nearly $5 billion in 2025, it only lists two full-time employees.

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Mostly, the National Climate Assessment outsources its work to a group called the ICF, a massive government contractor that has an active contract to work on the report. The Daily Wire identified at least one active contract from NASA for ICF to support the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

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It's set to be paid millions of dollars during the Trump administration to, quote, assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change. That contract was first announced in June 2021 and described as a $34 million five-year contract to help with national climate assessments.

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So basically, it is a giant SOP to a left-leaning organization. And now, Russ Vought, who runs the powerful Office of Management and Budget, is taking a look at this sort of stuff, which we should be doing. And this is the sort of stuff that has to be done. Doge is doing this sort of stuff. I was on the All In podcast last week.

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And one of the former members of the all-in kind of team, Antonio, he is part of Doge. He's going through everything at Social Security, and they are coming up with giant lists of people who have been imported to the United States and given Social Security cards. And the vast uptake in the people who are being given those social security cards cannot be explained by simple legal immigration.

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And it was a ridiculous chart suggesting that, for example, Israel had a 33% tariff and non-tariff rate on the United States. That's not true by any possible measure. That is a measure of trade deficit. It is not a measure of the actual tariff rates. But put that aside. President Trump can take the off ramp here and get to zero with Israel. He should do the same exact thing with Vietnam.

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It is because Joe Biden was importing people across the border. Doge is doing really important work, really important work. If that's getting obscured by a tariff war, the rationale for which is utterly unclear and the endpoint of which is utterly unclear, and all of that is resulting in significant losses across the economy, This is not what the Trump administration should be focused on.

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There are things that are really important to do. And if this is really important, then let's hear it. Let's explain. What is the end goal? What does the future America look like at the end of the pain that President Trump is pitching here? All right, coming up, we'll be jumping into the latest from The Atlantic. We now know how that reporter from The Atlantic got into that secret signal group.

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Plus, we'll jump into the mailbag. But remember, to have your question answered in the mailbag and to actually listen to any of it, you have to become a member. Head on over to Daily Wire. Plus, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Vietnam also has a free trade agreement with the United States. That free trade agreement means that the effective tariff rate that Vietnam has on American goods is actually quite low. if you were to look at the very elevated version of the Vietnamese tariff rate on American goods, including for example, their value added tax, which is like a 10% value added tax.

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The reality is that the tariff rate on American goods would be like 9.4%. Again, that's like a very high end estimate. That chart had Vietnam at a 90% tariff rate with the United States, which of course is not true. So I asked our friends at Perplexity, our search partners and sponsors, what is the effect of Vietnamese tariff rate on American goods?

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Not the tariff rate President Trump listed, including their value-added tax. As long as we're going to put in non-tariff additions, the value-added tax is where essentially they tax their consumers for buying any goods, kind of a sales tax. And what is their tariff rate on American goods under our free trade agreement with them?

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And perplexity says, Vietnam's effective tariff rate on American goods, including the value-added tax, is significantly lower than the figures cited by President Trump. According to the 2025 National Trade Estimate Report, Vietnam's average most favored nation applied tariff rate was 9.4% in 2023, with agricultural products facing an average of 17.1% and non-agricultural products 8.1%.

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Now, realistically, we're not sending all that many agricultural products to Vietnam, I believe. When factoring in VAT, which is typically 10%, the total effective tax burden on American goods averages around 19.4% for agricultural products and 18.1% for non-agricultural products.

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Under the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement and subsequent frameworks, Vietnam has made commitments to reduce tariffs on certain American goods. Recent negotiations suggest Vietnam is willing to lower tariffs to 0% on American imports as part of a potential bilateral agreement with the U.S., although that deal has yet to be finalized. And that's the thing that President Trump should do.

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In Japan, the Nikkei 225 dropped nearly 8% shortly after open actually hit the circuit breakers, meaning they had to shut down trading for a little while. Bitcoin and oil prices fell sharply as well. And remember, Thursday and Friday were terrible days on the stock market. U.S.

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Vietnam is saying, let's go to zero. President Trump should say, cool, let's go to zero. That's the off-ramp here. And then President Trump can fairly say that he has leveraged all these countries in bilateral trade agreements to go to zero. More free trade. That's better.

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However, that would require the president to believe not the sort of tariffs are good for America on their own version of what tariffs are good for, but the other two. The tariffs are there to actually protect Industries that are important to America and also to get other countries to lower their own tariffs. And that is it is absolutely unclear what President Trump is thinking at this point.

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And herein lies the problem. You have a vast combination of radical uncertainty. And policy that is being spouted by members of the administration that is overtly bad. There's no one in the administration who's making the overtly good case. There are many people in the administration who are making bad to strained cases right now.

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In fact, the only person who seems to be making an overtly good case at this point is Elon Musk. So President Trump over the weekend, he put out a statement on Truth Social. It said, China, has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close. They and many other nations have treated us unsustainably badly. We have been the dumb and helpless whipping post, but not any longer.

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We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before already. More than $5 trillion of investment and rising fast. This is an economic revolution and we will win. Hang tough. It won't be easy, but the end result will be historic. We will make America great again. Okay, those words, this is an economic revolution, hang tough, that scares the living daylights out of the entire market. Why?

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Because hang tough sets up a lengthy period of tariffs, a lengthy, significant period of tariffs. If that is to happen, we'll get into all the consequences. Basically, it melts down the markets. It melts them down. As Bill Ackman says, nuclear winter.

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If you're talking about these tariff rates on countries maintained as they currently stand, if they are implemented, as President Trump and team are saying they will be just a few days from now. If that happens, you are talking about an economic catastrophe, like a serious, serious economic problem.

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And even if on the other end, there is a brand new world, we still have not heard what exactly that brand new world looks like. Is that a brand new world where what? We are reshoring manual labor from Vietnam to make t-shirts? This is the confusion. No one knows what the hell is actually going on.

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There are people who are hopeful, like Bill Ackman, that what this all is is a sort of 4D chess game in order to leverage other countries to open up their tariffs. Fine. If that's the case, sounds great. Cool. I think the rollout sucked, but that's fine. We can get there. If the final policy is good and I don't like the rollout, you know, I can be wrong. That's cool. That's fine with me.

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stocks lost $6.6 trillion in value during that two-day washout after President Trump announced that giant tariff regime that he called Liberation Day. And it appears that many traders are betting that things are going to continue to be really, really chaotic in the world of tariffs.

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I would much rather have a booming economy and be wrong about the original implementation of the policy than the opposite. OK, but President Trump keeps saying over and over there will be pain. So here is President Trump on Sunday night saying this. There will be pain.

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Okay, now that sounds like he wants long-term tariffs. We've got hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country, and it's going to continue pouring into our country, and we've been screwed by the Canadians and the Mexicans, which, again, we have not. Okay, the President of the United States negotiated the USMCA in his first term. Our tariff rate with the Canadians is extraordinarily low.

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Except for oil, we have a tariff surplus with the Canadians. And when he says we've been screwed by China, that's true in terms of IP, and I'm very much in favor of the harsh penalties on China. But the problem is, if you tariff everyone, everyone, including China, you know what all the other countries do, as we'll talk about in a moment?

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They actually reorient toward China, because China is perfectly willing to do free trade deals with all these other countries, while the United States is shutting them out. Well, speaking of pain, you're feeling the pain every time you pay your cell phone bill. I know you are, because it's bloated. but not if you're using Pure Talk. Pure Talk is the cell phone company I use for business every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2174 - WHAT COMES NEXT?! Trump’s Tariff War Continues…

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They are cutting the fat from the wireless industry. Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to 100 bucks a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network and America's most sensible prices. Take a listen to this. Unlimited talk, text, 15 gigs of data, plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire+. Access the entire library of DailyWire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. And as always, your free leftist year's Tumblr. With Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2174 - WHAT COMES NEXT?! Trump’s Tariff War Continues…

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Instead, you just need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of DailyWire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is... Wireless by Americans for Americans. If you're looking for a great way to save these days, and I think everyone now is, head on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The biggest problem here is that the Trump administration has not made it clear what exactly they want to accomplish with these tariffs. This has been my point the entire time. There are times when tariffs can be useful. In fact, out of three times, tariffs could theoretically be useful. Two times could actually be useful. Okay, so theory number one as to tariffs.

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That is puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan Pure Talk. Wireless by Americans for Americans also. Well, there's good news. There is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter. You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow. Right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

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Ep. 2174 - WHAT COMES NEXT?! Trump’s Tariff War Continues…

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Ep. 2174 - WHAT COMES NEXT?! Trump’s Tariff War Continues…

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You could be connecting with promising talent as early as tomorrow through their efficient back-to-back video call format. It's hiring made remarkably simple. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro, only from Zip Recruiter, rated number one hiring site based on G2. Try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire again. That's ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire Zip Intro.

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Post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. And then President Trump doubles down on this. He says, it's not just that we need to get Europe to open its markets to us. We need them to pay us back. They need to actually pay us some sort of back taxes.

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Okay, so he wants them to what? Like just sign us checks? So it's not just he wants the trade barriers going. He wants them to sign a check. By the way, it is not true that they are not importing American cars. Tesla is one of the best selling cars in Europe. Why?

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Because they have all sorts of greenhouse gas emission rules in Europe that we don't have in the United States, which means Tesla is a hot seller in Europe. In some countries in Europe, it's actually a hotter seller than it is in the United States. As far as the idea that foreign car companies don't do business with the United States, that's not true.

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If you look at companies like Honda, a huge percentage of a Honda is made in the United States in American factories. Okay, so there's sort of a battle inside the administration over messaging. And this is, again, one of the things that is roiling the markets is who's standing up for the position that says, let's get to zero. Let's get to zero on the tariffs. Who's doing that?

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Again, we keep being told there's a 40 chess position. There are basically two 40 chess positions that are being presented. One 40 chess position is President Trump is using leverage in order to get everybody to go to zero. Okay, if that's the case, people should be making that case.

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The other 40 chess position is, this is all an engineered recession designed to jam down the yields on the bonds, thus to increase the bond market effectively so we can refinance our debt and take, what, a couple of hundred billion dollars off our national deficit? Again, I think the logic there does not stack up. I also don't think that's what President Trump is thinking.

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One, tariffs are important to protect important industries. Like for example, defense industries, because you need to produce that stuff here at home instead of producing it elsewhere. And so you actually protect and give effectively artificial subsidies to American defense industries. Totally understandable. Two, tariffs are designed in order to leverage other countries.

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So inside the administration, there are a bunch of voices who have now been deployed on behalf of this particular position. The one who is obviously most pro-tariff is Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary. Secretary Letnick, a big fan of tariffs. And he is saying the tariffs are coming. And no matter what you want, no matter what you like, the tariffs are indeed coming. There will be no delay.

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There will be no postponement. They are coming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2110 - We’re BACK!

Well, folks, we are back. It is a brand new year. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a wonderful New Year's. And now it all begins. So this is going to be a very big year. President Trump is slated to be certified as the president of the United States today. The normal certification process will go through as planned in the Congress.

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And they should specifically because we have some real threats that are currently materializing. One of those threats is obviously the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. That threat was made clear on New Year's Day in a terror attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people. It was carried out by a radical Islamist, a recent convert to radical Islam.

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According to the New York Times, months before the man behind the New Orleans terror attack plowed a truck into a New Year's Day crowd, he rode through the area on a bicycle, recording videos of his target using eyeglasses with a built-in camera, investigators said on Sunday. He was back again a few weeks later, they said, probably to continue his plotting.

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Those details emerged as investigators revealed more about the driver and the extensive planning behind the attack, which killed 14 people, injured many others, and left New Orleans starting 2025 grappling with a cascade of anguish and alarm. This person was apparently... radicalized by ISIS, claimed alignment with the Islamic State terrorist group.

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He's a 42-year-old army veteran with a fairly lucrative job, apparently, but his life started to collapse, and it appears that by the time of his terror attack, he was living in a rather impoverished, heavily Islamic area nearby. Apparently, the attacker made trips to Egypt and Canada in 2023, which, again, traveling to Egypt in 2023...

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unless you're going there as a tourist just to see the pyramids, they're probably not an amazing reason to visit Egypt at this time. Our agents are getting answers as to where he went, who he met with, how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here in our city, according to Lionel Merthel, the special agent in charge for the FBI in New Orleans.

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Now, remember, the FBI immediately made the jump. This is why Cash Patel needs to be the head of the FBI. The FBI immediately, after the New Orleans attack, tried to deny that it was, in fact, being investigated as a terrorist attack, only to reverse themselves just a few hours later.

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The attack, of course, ended when the attacker was killed in a shootout with the police that left two of the members of the police wounded. The terrorist expressed allegiance to ISIS after a transformation that perplexed and troubled those who knew him. He had the group's flag on a rented Ford F-150 pickup truck he used in the attack.

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Well, he didn't, but everybody else did because President Trump signaled his support for Mike Johnson. And the reason that he did that is because Johnson is as good as it's going to get. Johnson is, in fact, a very conservative speaker of the House. He is faced with an extraordinarily slim majority.

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In a video recorded for his family, he said, quote, I want you to know I joined ISIS earlier this year. He was living in a heavily impoverished Islamic area that was apparently in Houston. Okay, well, this area was also near a mosque. The police have been reaching out, the FBI have been reaching out to members of the mosque and other nearby Islamic organizations.

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And the mosque immediately put out a statement urging members of the congregation not to actually respond to media inquiries. And if contacted by the FBI, not to talk to the FBI, but instead to call up the Council on American Islamic Relations. And herein lies the Trump 2.0 question. Will the Trump 2.0?

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Administration, part two, take seriously the threat of radical Islamist terror to the extent that they will actually investigate groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations, a longtime terror-connected organization.

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The Council on American Islamic Relations welcomed back into the White House by the Biden administration and the Obama administration, but which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trials of the 2000s and was founded by very deeply connected friends of Hamas, associates of Hamas.

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CARE has been treated as a sort of civil rights organization, civil liberties organization for a long time. But I don't think it's coincidence that the mosque put out a statement suggesting that its brothers and sisters, instead of working with the FBI, refer to CARE and the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.

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There are very serious problems with radical Islamic organizations inside the United States. By the way, that's not just according to the U.S. government. That is also according to the United Arab Emirates, which listed CARE as a terrorist group in 2014 over its alleged affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. There have been calls already to investigate CARE National.

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There should be such investigations. The reality is that there are 340 million people living in the United States. You can't keep track of everybody. What you can do is keep track of the organizations that seem to be at least somewhat friendly toward radical Islamic terror groups. Representative Mike Turner of Ohio, he was on with Margaret Brennan on Sunday.

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He says, listen, there are definitely people who are friendly to radical Islamic terror living in the United States.

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And there are always going to be people in Congress who have decided that the best thing that they can do is go on television and spout rather than actually, you know, doing the job of being in Congress. But the job of being in Congress, is very different from the job of saying what it is that you think about politics. The job of being in Congress, again, is to get as much of the pie as possible.

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Okay, this also means no more political correctness when it comes to counterintelligence, when it comes to things like investigating the possibility of terror connections inside the United States. No more political correctness. Well, it's time to stop blinding ourselves, unless you need to buy blinds. Now, here's the thing. If you need to buy blinds, you need to head on over to blinds.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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See what we did right there? If you're ready for a home upgrade without the hassle, give your home a fresh look in 2025 with new custom window treatments from blinds.com, where real design experts make the complex simple. You know, it's really amazing. Blinds.com has completely transformed how we shop for window treatments.

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I love that their design experts handle everything for you, from helping you pick the perfect style to getting it installed. Here's the best part. Got a tricky window situation? Their designers will set you up with a free professional measurement to make sure everything fits perfectly. You might be thinking, don't I need somebody to come to my house first? Well, actually, you don't.

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You can do this all from your own home on your own time. No pushy salespeople, no awkward negotiations. They'll even send you samples to touch and feel totally free and super fast. They've got everything you could want. Gorgeous Roman shades, natural woven woods, classic shutters, even cool motorized options. They've got a clear upfront quote. No surprises, no hidden fees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I've used Blinds.com myself. Let me tell you, it is so much easier than shopping in person. I love Blinds.com. They're trustworthy across the board. They have a wide selection. They have experts you can actually talk to, live installers who know what they're doing. Again, go check them out yourself. It really makes giving your home a fresh new look for the year simple and easy.

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Blinds.com has covered more than 25 million windows so far, and everything comes with that 100% satisfaction guarantee. Head on over to Blinds.com right now. Save up to 40% on Select Styles Plus. Get a free professional measure up to 40% off for a limited time at Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. Also, you know what's very frustrating? Hitting that wall in your workout routine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2110 - We’re BACK!

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You know, if you go to the gym, do the same exercises, wonder if you're really making progress. That happens all the time. That's when I discovered FitBod. It has completely changed my fitness game. Just last week, I opened up the app before heading to the gym within seconds. It created a personalized workout based on my goals and available equipment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The app notices when you've been favoring certain muscle groups and adjusts to focus on others. That's the kind of intelligent planning that you'd get from a personal trainer. But honestly? It's even better. Look, there are plenty of fitness influencers trying to sell you generic workout plans for huge prices, but FitBot is different.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's like having a personal trainer in your pocket minus the hefty price tag. The app adapts as you get stronger, ensuring every workout pushes you just enough to make progress without burning out. What I love most is how it tracks muscle recovery and suggests new exercises to keep things fresh. When I go to the gym, I kind of want to be told what to do. I don't want to have to think of it myself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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With over a thousand demonstration videos, I'm constantly learning proper form for new movements. Whether you're just starting out or trying to break through that plateau, FitBod creates a custom fitness plan that works for you. FitBod can also take into account your time and equipment restraints and tailor that solid workout plan even on the busiest days or when equipment is limited.

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And that changes pretty radically depending on whether you are in the minority or whether you are in the majority, whether there's a Democrat in the White House or whether there is a Republican in the White House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2110 - We’re BACK!

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Level up your workout. Join FitBod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app for free for seven days at FitBod.me slash Shapiro. That's F-I-T-B-O-D.me slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2110 - We’re BACK!

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The fact of the matter is that under Democrats, there has been an attempt to whitewash the problem of radical Islamic terror in the United States to focus instead on, quote, homegrown violent extremism, which is a category error. Yes, of course, you're going to have to worry about white supremacists shooting up churches. That's a thing that has happened in the United States.

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But if you are talking about ways to monitor preventable terrorism, it seems like a pretty easy way to monitor preventable terrorism would be to trace the funding mechanism for radical Islamic mosques inside the United States. Which, by the way, broadcast pretty clearly their intentions on a fairly regular basis.

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When Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, categorizes this as, quote, an increase in homegrown violence extremism. I mean, what kind of, they're not all the same. They're not all equally easy to trace either, by the way. Here's Alejandro Mayorkas, thank God, the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security.

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So somebody like a Thomas Massey, for example, might be a true asset to conservatives when the Republicans are in the minority, meaning that they're not in the White House or if they're in the minority in Congress. You want to obstruct Joe Biden's plans after all.

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Again, these sort of broad categories are not helpful. You know what would be really helpful? Keeping track of organizations that historically have had ties to terror groups. That would be a really good way of doing this sort of stuff. And it's exactly this sort of politically correct approach that is leading to the current breakdown in politics across the water over in the UK.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So over the course of the break, Elon Musk went hard on Keir Starmer, who is the new prime minister of Great Britain. Starmer, of course, is the leader of the Labour Party. He was also a member of law enforcement during the time where law enforcement was largely ignoring these massive grooming gang cases about radical Muslims in Britain who were legitimately raping en masse white girls.

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It has been very well covered by the media now. It wasn't at the time. And the reason it was not covered well at the time, and it's been going on for decades, the reason it was not covered at the time was very obvious.

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And it openly stated was because for years, for literally decades, there were these groups of Muslim men who had been imported into the UK under the guise of multiculturalism, who had then begun to groom and rape 13, 14, 15 year old girls. They'd set up these gangs, just pass these girls around. And the authorities full-on knew about it. So did the media. They also knew about it.

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But there was one problem. They weren't going to report on any of this. The reason they weren't going to report on any of this is because there were far-right extremists who might take advantage of the messaging.

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This is the way that the politically correct left has decided to approach the problems with its own ideology, ignore them, pretend they don't exist, or pretend that the real problem is the people doing the noticing. If you notice that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of girls who are being raped by Muslim men in the UK.

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And then there's the question of what you do when you have a president of the United States who's an elected Republican, Donald Trump, when you have an elected majority in the Senate, when you have an elected majority in the House. Then the question becomes, how much can you get?

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If you notice that, that this is somehow a brand of your extremism and we mustn't help. We mustn't help the extremists to gain political power in Great Britain. And this is not me saying this. This is the journalist who covered the story. So, for example, the BBC did a documentary in 2017 called The Betrayed Girls.

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And they interviewed one of the journalists who really covered this thing in full in 2010. But he knew about this as early as 2002, 2003. His name is Andrew Norfolk. And here he is admitting full scale that the reason he did not cover what was called the Rochdale scandal, is because he was afraid that it would lend credence to the British National Party or the English Defense League.

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Both considered, quote-unquote, far-right extremist organizations for the great crime of saying, perhaps we shouldn't be importing into the West members of radical Islamic civilization.

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of the United States, and he will also have his Speaker of the House. So President Trump had endorsed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for re-election. There were, as usual, a coterie of people who were very concerned about Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House. As I have been saying for... I don't know, years at this point. It turns out the Speaker of the House has a very hard job.

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And obviously you want conservatives who are going to push back against the excesses, but you also want people who are going to make pragmatic and practical decisions rather than just standing there and shouting no at everything in order to get, presumably, the love of the clickbaiters online. So, over the break, President Trump endorsed Speaker Johnson.

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Okay, that's an amazing admission by one of the journalists who actually ended up breaking the story. But it wasn't just the journalistic institutions in the UK that decided to ignore this because it might lend credence to quote-unquote right-wing narratives about mass migration from radical Muslim countries. It was members of authority.

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It was members of the police who not only looked the other way, they blamed the white girls themselves, suggesting that they had engaged in consensual activity, which is not even legal. They were like 13, 14, 15-year-old girls. And this carried on for literally decades. As Norfolk says, there were cases in which there were Muslim men who had raped white girls.

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Those white girls grew up and became moms. And later their own daughters would be raped by the children of the Muslim men. This is something that Andrew Norfolk says in this particular documentary. And the authorities ignored it for years. And it was only in 2013, 2014 that the authorities really started to take this very seriously.

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In 2014, there was a state commission report by a senior social worker named Alexis Jay, this is according to Politico, who found that some 1,400 vulnerable children were targeted and sexually abused in Rotherham alone between 1997 and 2013. That's not even in Rochdale, which is the story that was being covered in this particular BBC documentary.

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There are tons of towns all over Britain where this was happening. In Oldham, in Rochdale, in Rotherham, all over the place. And the politicians, the mainstream politicians, were absolutely complicit in all of this. They ignored it. They refused to take a look at it. In fact, even certain rare Labour MPs who actually attempted to cover this were shut down. So Elon Musk, over the weekend...

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He went after Keir Starmer. And the reason he went after Keir Starmer is because there was a request that there be a federal investigation in Britain into a national investigation into these grooming gangs, a national inquiry. And Starmer's Labour government rejected that, instead pointing to a series of existing inquiries on the issue and a 2022 report whose findings are still being implemented.

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And Musk immediately went after Starmer. And he suggested that Starmer was complicit because Starmer, of course, was involved in the Crown Prosecution Service at the time that a lot of this was going on. He called him despicable and said he was, quote, deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes. And again, this is a party.

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Johnson was indeed re-elected on the very first vote out the gate. According to the New York Times, Speaker Johnson on Friday won re-election to the top post in the House, salvaging his job in a dramatic last-minute turnabout by putting down a revolt from conservatives who initially voted to block his assent. Johnson won 218 to 215.

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This is, in fact, a party, the Labor Party, that has been complicit in the attempts, if not actually guilty of the attempts to cover up crimes related to the failures of multiculturalism in Britain. Remember, I mean, it's Sadiq Khan, who's the mayor of London, who's openly calling for the criminalization of quote-unquote Islamophobic speech. He's a member of the Labour government.

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Here he was this year.

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Okay, that is the most Orwellian crap I have ever heard. I mean, truly Orwellian in Great Britain. That's Keira Starmer, who is the current prime minister, talking to the mayor of London about criminalizing Islamophobia.

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What are the things you can do as a former prosecutor, says Sidi Khan, the mayor of London, to criminalize Islamophobia, which Keira Starmer says has risen dramatically in the aftermath of October 7th, which, as you will recall, was a mass Islamic terror attack on Jews. Hey, this is where the Labor Party is.

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You want to know why there's this massive right-wing backlash happening all over the globe, particularly with regard to immigration? This would be the reason, because mass migration has not been a boon to the West, not in the modern era.

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Mass migration is a massive problem because it has been combined not with assimilation, not with economic growth, but with economic stagnation and non-assimilation. And it has been biased toward countries that are exporting people who have no interest in assimilating to Western values, and in fact, many of whom despise Western values.

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And if you say that sort of stuff out loud in the UK, apparently you get arrested. There's a better shot you'll get arrested in the UK for saying something, quote unquote, Islamophobic. than apparently for raping white girls if you're a radical Muslim. That seems to be the logic over in the UK and has been for quite a while. Markir Starmer has yelled at Elon Musk.

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Now he's very angry because Elon Musk attacked him. And so he says that Elon Musk is now a member of the far right. Again, this is the labeling process. What really despicable. And by the way, where's the conservative party in the UK on all this? Because this wasn't just a labor problem. This is a Tory problem in the UK. Where are the people who are willing to stand up and say the truth?

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He mustered the majority with help from President-elect Donald Trump, who again, Trump is going to be absolutely utilitarian in his second term. He wants wins. He wants to chalk up wins on the board. That is the thing that he wants more than anything. He is not concerned with the sort of petty ideological squabbles that you are seeing inside the Republican caucus right now.

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There's been a lot of talk about Tommy Robinson, who's in jail. And he has said some very true things on this. And Tommy Robinson has his own sort of checkered history as to saying certain things that are not true. But he is right on this. And he has been right on this particular issue as a general matter. And that's the reason that he has been targeted by law enforcement.

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Also, this stuff has been ginned up. In any case, here is Keir Starmer responding to Elon Musk.

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Ah, it's only based on the true facts, says Keir Starmer. The facts that you're not allowed to acknowledge in Great Britain. In just one second, we'll get to the further consequence of the immigration debate. First, kick off 2025 with 25% off your new DailyWare Plus annual membership. This year will be one for the history books.

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In just 14 days, Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. The Daily Wire will be there bringing you live, uncensored coverage of every monumental moment. But while we celebrate victory's head, we can't forget the fight continues.

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2025 reminded us of that fight in its very first hours with terrorism striking New Orleans and a Cybertruck exploding outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. The bad guys don't rest, neither do we. The battle for truth, justice, and clarity is ongoing. We're on the front lines every single day to bring you the facts, but we can't do it without your help. Join us now.

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Get 25% off your new DailyWire Plus annual membership. Every dollar you spend fuels our mission. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Get 25% off your new DailyWire Plus annual membership today. Okay, meanwhile, the matter of mass migration, how it's affected the West, isn't, of course, relegated to the United States or to Great Britain. It is also true in Germany.

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Elon Musk has now endorsed the so-called Alternative for Germany Party, the Alternative for Deutschland, AFD. The AFD has been condemned as a quote-unquote neo-Nazi party, but the things that it's arguing for the AFD today is not a neo-Nazi party.

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The AFD is arguing in favor of immigration restriction in Germany in a way that the so-called conservative party in Germany has not been, which is why AFD is gaining so much ground. Again, if you won't say the truth, there will be people who will say it, and those people will reap the political benefit of having said the truth.

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Heather McDonald writes for City Journal today, the alternative for Germany is a leopard in German political life due to the party's opposition to Germany's lax immigration policies. Germany's federal office for protection of the constitution, a domestic intelligence agency, has granted itself authority to surveil the party, which it deems a threat to democracy.

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Germany's other political parties have pledged not to cooperate with the AFD. The AFD is denied committee chairmanships in the national parliament in Berlin. Its numbers would otherwise entitle it to. German courts have almost uniformly rejected the party's efforts to remove these legal and extra legal barriers to normal participation in political life. So why exactly is all this happening?

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It's because of the mass migration into Germany starting in 2015, when then Chancellor Angela Merkel famously announced, we can handle this in response to thousands of Syrians crossing into the country. 23% of the German population in 2021 were first or second generation immigrants, and that was before the Ukrainian migration.

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All he wants is victory for the country. He wants to leave a legacy in his second term, even more successful than his first term. Originally, there were three Republicans who opposed Johnson and six more who had abstained. And then Trump came in like a hammer in favor of Johnson.

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Over 17% of the German population are first generation immigrants, a higher percentage than in the United States, where less than 14% of the population were foreign born in 2022. And they have a higher crime rate and they have serious draws on social benefits and all the rest of it.

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So Elon Musk has already endorsed the AFD, mainly because the conservative party in Germany has decided that they are not going to actually take any of this on. CDU, which is the Christian Democratic Union, is a centrist party.

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The leader of that party, Frederick Merz, has pledged not to cooperate with what he calls a right-wing extremist party because that would, quote, require selling his party's soul. But the reality is that people are responding to this. People are responding to the lack of support for domestic political institutions on behalf of a multicultural view of the world.

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So Elon Musk is going to have a sit down with the leader of the AFD party, a woman named Alice Vidal, possibly on January 10th. There's a lot of consternation about Elon Musk's involvement in foreign politics right now because, of course, he's been speaking out against Keir Starmer in the UK. He's been speaking out against the current administration in Germany in favor of AFD.

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But he's simply voicing the reality for literally hundreds of millions of people in Europe who have been silenced by the political processes there and also in the United States. And this opens another question about immigration in the United States. So, Musk, Trump, the entire right in the United States, totally united on mass migration from countries that do not like the United States.

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Totally united on these particular issues. Totally united on illegal immigration, by the way. Nonetheless, over the break, a vast controversy broke out about H-1B visas. H-1B visas are usually designed for technology companies to import labor from, from people with college degrees who want to work in tech, right? People who come and they work in the tech industry.

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Usually it is a pathway toward a greeting card in the United States, these H-1B visas. And there is some controversy over H-1B visas and the over-application of them. And a lot of that is good faith political discussion. How can H-1B visas be changed so that they're not being exploited by tech companies simply to bring in lower wage workers who aren't going to assimilate, for example.

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However, this broke into the open And I think the dumbest possible way. So a person who I personally know, actually, his name is Sriram Krishnan. who has worked in the past for everybody from Elon to Marc Andreessen to a bunch of tech bros on the right, was named the AI senior advisor to David Sachs in the new Trump administration. It was a fairly mid-level position.

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It was sort of a senior advisory position inside the administration. It had nothing to do with immigration, nothing. It was about AI and the sort of lines that have to be drawn around AI. Well, this launched a thousand think pieces because there were certain members of the right some of them of the fringe, right, who decided that he was going to be deciding immigration policy.

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Johnson and Trump had both urged Republican lawmakers to elect him speaker so the House could start work on the president-elect's legislative priorities. And this was the thing. None of the people who were voting against Johnson posited an alternative to Johnson. None of them.

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And not only that, they decided that he was an open borders guy. Now, I know Suram. He's not, in fact, an open borders guy. He has argued in favor of H-1B visas and for importing foreign talent in the United States so we can brain drain other countries. And so this kind of notion that he's in favor of open borders is really silly.

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Well, the opposition to Sri Ram, this notion that this was a foreigner who was going to be causing the importation of vast swaths of foreign labor. First of all, again, there are about 85,000 H-1B visas issued every year. You can argue maybe you want it lower. All right. You maybe increase the income limit for people who want to get in on H-1Bs. That's fine too. We can have those conversations.

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That was not the conversation that was being had. In fact, the dumbest conversation was being had, as usual in our politics, The argument with regard to H-1Bs that was being made by people who are sort of exclusionary in their immigration viewpoints was we need to stop all immigration, not just mass migration, not just illegal immigration.

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We need to stop all migration totally because these are American jobs and we don't need foreigners here. No more foreigners. And that rests on a couple of suppositions. That rests on a couple of suppositions. One, that there is such a thing as an American job as opposed to a job that is located in America. And two, that no one can actually become a good American.

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And if you come in from abroad, if you're from, quote unquote, the wrong country, it's not possible for you to become a good American. Now, as I say, we should be pretty careful about who we admit to this country. It's in the interest of the American people to admit people who want to assimilate to Western values or who already hold Western values. Things like free speech and freedom of religion.

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People who actually want to work for a living and not be dependent on welfare, who want to form families, join churches, become part of the social fabric. I think we should all be able to agree on that sort of stuff. But there are basically two possible arguments as to why you want to close all the borders, even sort of the most qualified immigrants coming in.

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One is, again, this idea that people can't culturally assimilate, which I think is not true. Again, there are some people who cannot, but there are many who can. And two, that there are these things called American jobs and that these American jobs must be reserved for Americans. Now, I think that not only is this economically ignorant, it's counterproductive.

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So Steve Bannon has articulated this position, I think the best of anybody who's articulating it right now. He did an interview with the free press in which he sort of expressed his desire to close all immigration.

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None of them had somebody better in mind who's going to get the Republican caucus unified rather than Johnson, which means it was all it was all a sort of bizarre attention seeking move on the part of these particular Congress people. If you don't have a better alternative, then you are being obstructionist and useless within your own party. Well, here is Speaker Johnson taking the gavel.

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OK, again, so again, there's a notion of American jobs and you can see he's using this very bizarre formula where all these, quote unquote, American jobs also have to be representative of the American demographic, which actually is a DEI left wing argument. It's the argument that's made by people like Ibram X. Kendi.

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If 20 percent of the population is black and 20 percent of the jobs aren't black, that means some sort of racism is occurring. Okay, so there are a few problems with this. Number one, there is no such thing as an American job. There's just a job that is in America. And the question is twofold. One, who should fill that job? And two, how do you keep that job in America?

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Because it turns out that there is no job being a baseline level programmer for a million dollars a year in America. Because that job doesn't exist anywhere. And if you try to make that job exist in America, that job is going to disappear and it's going to go elsewhere where you can pay somebody $100,000 a year to be a programmer.

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This is particularly true in the mobile age of the internet, where location is not necessarily where you have to be located for the job anymore. Okay, then there's the stupid counter argument that's being made. So there are some people who made a dumb counter argument. So there's the dumb argument. The dumb argument was that there are just these American jobs.

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We protect the American jobs by shutting the borders. That's called economic autarky. And it is generally a failure because when you artificially limit the supply of labor, what you end up doing is pushing up the price of labor. And a few things happen. One, inflation. Two, prices go up to the point where they are not competitive with imports from other places.

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And so companies in America go out of business. This generally leads to either outsourcing or automation. This is true across industries in the United States. It's true across the world. This is how markets work.

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So if you want to make the case that we shouldn't be importing labor to marginally lower the labor costs for Silicon Valley, and instead we should be recruiting Americans, I agree with that. I totally agree with that. And I think we should be building programs that specifically go and recruit Americans to fill these jobs.

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Also, there are in fact jobs where immigrants who are coming to the United States, brain draining other countries, They're coming in and they can fill those jobs and they're maybe the best qualified person to fill those jobs. Now, again, if you want to increase the level of pay necessary for an H-1B visa, right now it's $100,000, you want to increase that higher, that's fine.

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We get to pick the cream of the crop. You only get to come in the country if you're a person capable of earning $300,000 a year. Now, you want to do that because you want to, quote-unquote, reserve the other jobs for Americans? That's fine.

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You have to recognize there are downstream effects to this, economically speaking, that that is, in fact, like all tariffs, a subsidy to certain groups of the population at the cost of the rest of the population, where prices go up and outsourcing takes place and all the rest. This is why, for example, Elon has defended H-1B visas. Elon says that he would like to brain drain other countries.

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He would like to bring in the best labor from other countries. He wants Americans to get as many American jobs, jobs in America, as possible. But you can't just magically determine what the pay level is for a job. That's not the way that markets work.

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And if you try to do that, that's going to have significant externalities that are quite bad for the American economy and for American competitiveness more broadly. And now there was a really stupid counter argument that started to be made by some. And that was that the reason we need to import labor is because American culture is somehow insufficient. Now, there are some Americans. who are lazy.

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There are some Americans who grow up in broken homes. There are some Americans who have poor educations. And we should fix all those things, obviously. And there are plenty of qualified Americans for a lot of these jobs. And we should go out of our way to try and recruit those Americans before we rely on foreign labor. And all of that is fair.

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But again, it all gets reduced to kind of the dumbest possible arguments. And this is the thing to which I object. And there are a bunch of things we should be able to agree on. One, illegal immigration is wrong. Two, mass migration is particularly problematic today. Now, the United States has historically always had a sort of fraught relationship with mass migration.

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That goes back to waves of people coming in from Ireland and from Italy and from Germany and from Sweden and from China and from Eastern Europe and Russia. All throughout American history, there's been great trepidation about mass migration. That is true.

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Also, it happens to be that in a system like the United States used to be, where you're expected to assimilate one and two, there were no substantial welfare systems. What you ended up doing is acting like a magnet to the iron filings of the people who are the most risk-taking, most entrepreneurial from other countries.

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It wasn't just they were coming to the United States because they were poor, although many of them were. It was because they were willing to give up what they had in their homeland to come to a place where if they failed, there was no backup system. This is one of the things about American immigration historically. And then the immigration bargain changed in the United States.

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That immigration bargain started to change with massive welfare systems that now immigrants could take advantage of. And now you had to balance who should get in and who should not get in. It used to be if somebody got in, And they failed economically. It wasn't like the state and the taxpayer had to pick them up. Now, once you establish welfare systems, that all changes.

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And then it massively changes again in 1965 when Democrats pass an immigration act that fundamentally shifts where immigrants are coming from. Used to be they mostly came from Europe. After 1965, they start to come mostly from Latin and South America. And that was an actual stated goal of people who sponsored it, like, for example, Senator Ted Kennedy.

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And this has changed the nature of mass migration. It's been a huge problem. Combine that with the left's insistence that multiculturalism means that you never have to assimilate. And now you've got a real problem. You've got a problem of ethnic enclaves who are not interested in assimilating to American values at all.

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However, those are all the things that we can agree on before we even get to high-skilled immigration. Again, when it comes to high skilled immigration, there are basically, again, two cases against high skilled immigration, the cultural and the economic. The cultural case is, well, people might come here, they might not assimilate or they go back to their, fine.

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So make it that they have to assimilate to get in and make it more restrictive to people who want to assimilate and want to gain citizenship. Fine. The second case is the economic case. This is the one that's really dicey. Again, there will be downstream effects to economic protectionism and autarky. Pretending not is simply blinding yourself to the realities of economics.

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We need more people like Elon Musk in the United States. Barring Elon Musk from the United States would not have been good for the United States. We need more people like Sergey Brin in the United States, founding giant companies in the United States. We need unicorn founders in the United States. Again, you want to raise the bar as two gets in, that's fine. But we do need those people.

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And if we don't gain them, other people will. Other countries will. And then we'll lose. And I like America winning, which is, by the way, why Donald Trump agrees with this. Donald Trump says that he supports immigration visas. He said, I have a lot of H-1Bs on my property. He said, I've always liked the visas. I've always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them.

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I've been a believer in H-1B. I've used it many times. It's a great program. And I think that there's going to be a lot of Nixon going to China in this administration for a lot of people who seem to believe that Donald Trump mirrors their more sort of nationalist predilections. Donald Trump is utilitarian. He wants wins for the United States. And that means a thriving economy

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That means Americans doing well across the board, not just in particular sectors. It'll be fascinating to see how it all plays out. And meanwhile, Joe Biden is going out with a whimper Not a bang. Goodness gracious. So he has decided that he's basically going to find every despicable person in the United States and then give those people a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why the hell not?

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And again, the thing that Republicans want more than anything is get the priorities that Trump wants done. Well, this has betokened some interesting conversations about the strategy going forward for House Republicans. So there are basically two strategies on the table. There are two big issues that are going to come up this year in the Congress of the United States.

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You know, got to leave it all on the field if you're Joe Biden. At this point, F it to life. You're done. So Joe Biden has decided, among others, that recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom ought to be Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, among others. which is pretty incredible.

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George Soros has single-handedly helped destroy the law enforcement mechanisms of the United States. He has funded left-wing prosecutors who have destroyed the ability to prosecute criminals across the urban areas of the United States. He has funded every far-left cause he can find in the United States, undermining basic American principles. George Soros is a disaster area.

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So, of course, Joe Biden is giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which, of course, is also designed to bribe his son, Alex Soros, who is actually the person who showed up to pick it up. Alex Soros is also kind of famous for tweeting out photos with prominent Democratic politicians standing high above the city of New York, where all of these politicians come to kiss his ring.

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Hillary Clinton also showed up to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presumably for lying about Benghazi, shredding all of her documents and all of the rest, as well as initiating Russiagate. That's what her campaign did.

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Other people included humanitarian and chef Jose Andres, who has lied repeatedly about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and allowed his world central kitchen to unfortunately be used as a prop by members of Hamas. Bill Nye, the science guy who's mostly famous for now becoming a left wing kook. And some others. So, so many deserving.

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Liz Cheney also, he awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 recipients, including members of the House January 6th Committee as a final slap at President Trump. Also over the break, by the way, he decided to commute the sentences of a bunch of death row prisoners. 37 out of 40 death row. Apparently, certain victims just don't count, according to President Biden.

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So President Biden granted clemency to 37 of the 40 federal inmates facing death sentences. The only three inmates who do not receive clemency are the convicted murderer in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the gunman in the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. That was the white supremacist shooting and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, the terrorist.

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But apparently everybody else who committed rape and murder, all those people are basically going to stay alive on death row now. Now, if Biden were truly principled about the death penalty, he'd commute it for everybody. So he's not. He just thinks that some crimes are worse than others.

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And apparently raping and murdering little girls is not on the same level as shooting up a synagogue in Pittsburgh, which is kind of an amazing statement. As a final slap, of course, Joe Biden is also going to be putting in place a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in vast areas ahead of the Trump term. Remember, Kamala Harris ran as somebody who is not going to fight fracking.

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So did Joe Biden, right? They were going to open America's energy exploration. Wrong. He's a liar. According to Reuters, Joe Biden will ban new offshore oil and gas development along most U.S. coastlines. A decision President-elect Donald Trump was vowed to boost domestic energy production may find it difficult to reverse.

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Basically, because Republicans do not actually have a supermajority in the Senate, that means they have to use a process that is called reconciliation. Reconciliation can only be used on budgetary bills, on budgetary matters. which means typically it can only be used once or possibly at the most twice inside of a year.

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So Biden's going to use his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect all federal waters off the east and west coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska. The ban affects 625 million acres of ocean. Absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely terrible.

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The problem is the Lands Act, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling, does not grant them legal authority to overturn prior bans. That order from a court came in 2019 as a response to Trump trying to reverse a Barack Obama ban on drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean. Another disgraceful move by a horrible president.

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Joe Biden is going to go down in history as probably our second worst president. I say probably because there is one other person on the list and that person died over the break. That'd be Jimmy Carter. We're going to get to Jimmy Carter's legacy in just a moment. First, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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The big question for Republicans in the House and in the Senate was whether they were going to separate out two separate bills and vote on them separately over the course of the year.

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One was going to be a border bill that's going to attempt to maintain border security, increase border security, complete the building of the wall, for example, change the law where necessary in order to make it easier to deport illegal immigrants. That was possibility of bill number one. Possibility of bill number two was the making permanent of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.

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You have to cobble together a coalition of people across various party lines, and then you have to somehow materialize a majority to do things. So the job of the Speaker of the House is not, in fact, to be, quote-unquote, an ideological thought leader. There are plenty of people whose job that is. It is the job of the Speaker of the House to actually get done what can be done.

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And there are basically two possible strategies here. Again, one strategy would be to separate those two bills. In some ways, that might be better. And in some ways, it might be worse. The other strategy was to wrap them up into one giant bill.

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The problem with wrapping them up into one giant bill is more compromises are going to get cut in that giant bill than might be cut if you separated them out into two separate bills. Why? Well, because if you pile everything into one bill and you give that giant one bill on border matters and tax matters an up or down vote, there will be more crap in the crap sandwich. There just will be.

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It's like an omnibus package that includes tax matters and border matters. And this is something that many conservatives are concerned about. For example, the House Freedom Caucus is upset about all of that because it will take additional spending on the border in order to secure the border. The Trump tax cuts may have short-term lowering of federal revenue into the tax coffers.

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So how are you going to offset that in terms of the spending? And meanwhile, Republicans also would like to increase the defense budget in the face of a vastly aggressive China.

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So all of those things getting wrapped into one bill, it means that if it all gets wrapped in one bill and Trump says to the American body politic and to the constituents of all these Republicans, listen, the bill has a lot of stuff I don't like, but it has a lot of stuff I do like. I'm yes on the bill. Everybody else should be yes on the bill.

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There's going to be heavy pressure on Republicans to go yes on the bill, even if there's more crap included in the crap sandwich. The alternative, which is to separate the two bills, the border bill and the tax bill, is that you may get neither.

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It may be an opportunity for people to signal their discontent on matters regarding Donald Trump's approach to the border if you're on the sort of left wing of the Republican Party. On tax matters, there's going to be some pretty serious battles inside the Republican Party with regard to the so-called SALT deductions, state and local tax deductions.

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So the 2017 tax cuts, one of the things that they did is they said that if you pay taxes in California or New York, that doesn't mean that you can deduct the taxes you paid on the state level against your federal taxable income. Because it's effectively a sort of affirmative action program on taxes for blue states. Okay, so that got removed.

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But there are a lot of people, Republicans from New York and California, who would like to restore the SALT deductions in the tax code. And that's going to be an open battle. So strategically speaking, the question is, do you go for two purer and smaller bills, or do you go for one less pure, bigger, beautiful bill?

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So for Johnson, because he's working with such a slim majority, he would love one big, beautiful bill. He would love it. Again, the reason being because he wants to get everything that Trump wants. And so if your choices are get less of what Trump wants and less bad stuff and get more of what Trump wants and more bad stuff, right? Those are the two choices.

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He prefers more of what Trump wants and probably a little bit more bad stuff, right? That's the nature of the bargain here. And there really is no third choice where you just get like all the great things that you want and none of the bad things that you don't want. That is not how it works with a majority this slim in the House and a pretty slim majority in the Senate as well.

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Here was Speaker Johnson explaining Trump is apparently on board with this particular strategy.

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It is to get as much of the pie as humanly possible. And the problem with many of the ideologues, particularly in Congress, but also in the commentariat, is that when they suggest that the Speaker of the House has the magical Nietzschean ability to simply impose his will on Congress and get everything that you could possibly want, they are lying. It is simply not true.

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Again, this is a matter of strategy. It's not really a matter of principle. Johnson is very conservative. So, for example, is House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, also a very conservative member of Congress. He's also calling for one big, beautiful bill. The idea would be get this thing rammed through by April. Do it fast. Do it quickly.

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Because as we all know, the midterms are going to come up in a couple of years. And so basically Trump has two years to get everything he can get done, done. And that really means he has year one to get it done. Because by the time you hit year two, everybody's already running for reelection and they've got their eyes on their next race. Well,

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folks, President Trump has a very short time period to get all of this done. But what you need is efficient government. It's also time for you to trim the fat from big wireless. If you are still on Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile, why? I personally use PeerTalk.

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I can tell you it gives me the exact same service on the exact same towers with better customer service because they're based right here in the United States, all for 50% of the cost. I know what you're thinking. There's simply no need to spend 85 bucks or 100 bucks per person on your wireless bill.

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Not when I can tell you firsthand you'll get unlimited talk text, 15 gigs of data with mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. I've seen it myself. The average family of four saves about $1,000 a year with pure talk while enjoying America's most dependable 5G network. So cut the fat out of your wireless bill. Switch to Pure Talk by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage with Pure Talk, America's wireless company. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. The coverage is excellent. If I trust it with my very important phone calls, you should too. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.

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Again, Pure Talk is wireless. America's wireless company, puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, it's a brand new year. We've got several exciting positions we need to fill as we continue expanding our team here in 2025 here at The Daily Wire. Well, finding the right talent is crucial. That's why I want to talk to you about ZipRecruiter.

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If you need to hire for your business and you want an easier way to find qualified candidates, head on over to ZipRecruiter right now. You can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. You know what impresses me most about ZipRecruiter? Their smart technology starts working immediately to match your job with qualified candidates.

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They're actually the hiring site employers prefer the most based on G2. Plus, their powerful matching technology works fast to find top talent, so you don't waste time or money. As a business owner, you can also invite top candidates for your job to apply sooner, helping them stand out from the crowd in any job market. Here's to a new year of hiring made easier with ZipRecruiter.

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Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address. Try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. Go check them out right now.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire and give them a try for free. So Jason Smith, for example, he wants one bill instead of two. He and his allies, according to Politico, are warning that separating the tax package into its own reconciliation bill risks them not passing a measure at all to extend the 2017 tax cuts set to expire at year's end.

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So this all came to fruition over the break. So on Friday, despite the attempts of people like Thomas Massey, the representative from Kentucky, to prevent Speaker Johnson from being reelected. Johnson was reelected. Here was Massey looking rather disillusioned, actually, in this particular clip, trying to make the case against Speaker Johnson in the most colorful possible terms.

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What he's basically saying is, let's get this bill out the gate because the closer you get to the deadline... the more leverage a few holdouts are going to have. Instead, wrap it all up in one big bow. Yes, there'll be more trash in there, but at least you will get all the things that Trump wants, along with some stuff that probably nobody likes all that much.

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As Smith says, my only focus is to deliver on all these priorities that the American people ask for. That's tax, that's border, that's energy. I've always thought the best process of doing that is through one. And he pointed out that literally zero parties have succeeded in passing two reconciliation bills in the same year in decades.

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Most recently, congressional Democrats fought amongst themselves for much of 2021 and 2022 to enact a second reconciliation package and then abandoned many of the policies that they envisioned under their Build Back Better plan that eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act. So it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out. The bottom line is Johnson is in fact a very good strategist.

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So is John Thune. John Thune is the Senate majority leader. John Thune says his priority is extending the 2017 tax cuts. Again, I think this is all going to be done in one big bill.

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Okay, again, I think all of this is going to get done, and there should be an expectation of your Congress people and your senators that it should get done. And all these sort of little niggling... small issues that people are upset about or issues that are totally insoluble. When you hear Republican Congress, people talk about, we're not solving our national debt with these bills.

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You're damn right we're not solving our national debt with these bills. And you better stop pretending that anything you're proposing is going to solve the national debt. The reality is the national debt ain't going to get solved until you touch precisely the entitlement programs that no one is going to touch ever.

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Until you touch Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, you are not going to be able to tackle the national debt. So what does that mean? You better get those tax cuts made permanent because otherwise Democrats are going to reverse those at the first available opportunity, thus destroying the possibility of economic growth that could help grow you out of things like the national debt.

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You better get that border bill done now because Democrats sure as hell ain't going to pass a good border bill if they were in charge or if they gain control of the House of Representatives, which is already very tightly split in 2026. Okay, meanwhile, other top priorities for the brand new Congress, giving Donald Trump his nominees.

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Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, he says, listen, we have some major national security threats on the horizon and making themselves present right now, give him his nominees.

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Okay, and he is right about all of that. The good news is it looks like the votes are in fact there for Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Again, if you're talking about the most controversial Trump nominees in order, they are probably at this point, Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, who again, I think is very likely to be confirmed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services.

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A little more dicey, but I think he probably will be confirmed. Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. It looks as though very good shot. He is confirmed in Kash Patel as head of the FBI. Again, I think there's a very good shot that all these people are confirmed.

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If there's one who's most on the chopping block, it is probably Tulsi Gabbard because there are some people in the Republican caucus who have some doubts about her. foreign policy ideas from several years ago. She's going to have to explain those ideas, presumably, to the senators. But the vast majority of Trump's nominees at this point are going to go through as well they should.

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Well, folks, a lot of news happening, a firehose of news. In fact, conflagrations racially at home, conflagrations in the Middle East, media conflagrations, tons of stuff going on. But here at Daily Wire Plus, we are not just watching, we are leading.

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Okay, I'm sorry. You guys do not get to do this routine. In the last election cycle, the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, literally did a video giving a Eucharistic Dorito to a female staffer kneeling on the floor. You are the party of on-demand abortion and transing the children. Nope.

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You do not get to sign into chats and now talk about how offended you are on behalf of Catholics everywhere. You are the party of Barack Obama suing the little sisters of the poor to make them involve themselves in abortion coverage. Nope. You have no ground to stand on right here. And obviously he is joking and no one takes this seriously at all, of course. And meanwhile...

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The true threat, as I've said over and over and over to the Trump administration, is not, in fact, the left. At this point, the left is basically prone. The true threat to the Trump administration is economic in nature. And again, there is a basic rule when it comes to the Trump administration. If you listen to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and you follow his policies, the economy will recover.

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And then the other side comes back and says, yeah, well, you just did something even worse. And so I'm going to do something even worse than that. The reality is that calling out double standards is a good thing if you wish to uphold a standard. Calling out double standards as an excuse for doing bad things is not in fact calling out a double standard. It is just justifying doing bad things.

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If you listen to Peter Navarro, who should be immediately and forthrightly fired, if you listen to trade advisor Peter Navarro, the economy will go down.

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Well, the big story in the economy over the weekend was that billionaire Warren Buffett shocked an arena full of shareholders, according to the Associated Press, by announcing he will retire at the end of the year, bringing down the curtain on a six-decade run, leading Berkshire Hathaway that made him the most influential investor in the world.

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He appointed to success him Greg Abel, who is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Again, he's 94 years old, I believe. So the idea that Warren Buffett was not going to step down anytime is really silly. But the reason that Warren Buffett has been a historically great investor is because he is not gambling when he invests.

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Warren Buffett follows the advice of Benjamin Graham, the inventor of a term called margin of safety, which is all about safe investment. There's this bizarre idea in the stock market that a lot of people who don't actually spend a lot of time investing have, that basically the stock market is a giant casino for day traders. That is not what the stock market really is.

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If you're a market maker, if you're a market mover, then you are doing deep research into both the geopolitical and economic conditions that undergird the economy and also the specific companies and how they are run and whether they are underpriced or overpriced. The market is an amazing way of aggregating all information about particular companies.

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It doesn't mean that markets are right in the moment. As Graham said, and he was the sort of philosophical mentor for Warren Buffett, as Graham said, in the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the long term, it's a weighing machine. So over the long term, the market tends to get it right in the short term.

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there's play in the numbers because you don't actually have all the information in the moment. However, when Warren Buffett, as he was stepping down, makes comments about the tariff regime that President Trump has been pushing, it is worth listening to because, again, he is the single most successful investor of our age.

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We are on the front lines with hard-hitting investigations, explosive exposés, daily shows and commentary from the most trusted voices in conservative media delivering the facts first. This is your moment. Join the fight at dailywireplus.com. All right, so...

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Okay, so the argument that he's making there is that free trade benefits all who engage in it. Now, there may be, again, national security reasons why you want to tariff countries, but declaring trade wars on the entire world is not, in fact, a good strategy, as Warren Buffett points out.

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The reason I'm bringing this up today is because one of the big stories that has now taken over the world of the social media is this story of one named Shiloh Hendricks. So Shiloh Hendricks is a woman, a white lady, who was caught on camera this week calling a five-year-old boy the N-word.

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And the administration is sending a lot of mixed signals right now, and the markets are not dropping because of the mixed signals. If there are all universal in the Peter Navarro direction, the bottom would have fallen out of the market already. As the Wall Street Journal points out, Wall Street's best forecasters have been warning that tariffs could spark a recession.

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Goldman Sachs puts the chances at 45% in the next 12 months. Apollo Global Management's top economists recently pegged it at 90%, but somebody forgot to tell stock traders the market is roaring ahead despite those gloomy predictions as investors put their faith in solid economic data, including Friday's jobs report and bank on a swift de-escalation of President Trump's global trade war.

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And again, President Trump is sending an enormous number of mixed signals. when it comes to the tariff regime. So stock traders seem to be optimistic that he's going to follow the advice of the Treasury Secretary and radically deescalate, particularly with non-China countries, and then find a more moderate off-ramp with China as well. President Trump seems to be giving some of those signals.

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So over the weekend, he had a signal that he might lower tariffs.

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Okay, so he is right that China is having severe economic trouble. The difference is that China's a dictatorship. So if things get really bad, they can just kill some people and oppress some people and they'll probably be fine. And if worse comes to worse, China can blockade Taiwan. So President Trump does look to be seeking an off-ramp, which is why the markets have not cratered.

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At the same time, he then makes comments that suggest maybe he's not so quick to look for an off-ramp. Now, maybe this is all a policy of strategic ambiguity. It has been suggested that President Trump is basically threatening tariffs in order to reduce the tariffs.

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Okay, if that's the policy, again, I've said from day one, if that's the policy that we are threatening action in order to get other countries to lower their tariffs and their non-tariff trade barriers, I'm okay with that. I don't think that's necessary. I think if you go to Vietnam and just say that, they will lower their trade barriers without the sort of open threats to every country on earth.

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With that said, President Trump, again, gives a lot of mixed signals here. So in the same interview with Meet the Press, he suggested that if, in fact, there are supply chain problems, kids don't need that many pencils.

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Okay, this is not going, as I said last week, President Trump should abandon this line immediately. This is an unsuccessful political line. Retailing the idea that kids need fewer pencils or dolls is one of the worst approaches to this issue on a public relations level that I can imagine. I mean, President Trump himself is a particularly conspicuous consumer of very, very expensive things.

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So allegedly, according to the New York Post, she allegedly caught this five-year-old boy rifling through her bag at a playground in Rochester, which is about 90 minutes south of Minneapolis. And she allegedly calls this five-year-old kid the N-word. And then a black man confronts her, films the incident, starts yelling at her.

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So the idea that kids have to go without dolls or pencils or that parents should willingly accept higher rates on those things because they don't need cheap junk from China, It's easy for President Trump to say, and a lot of other people are going to say that if the economy continues to play footsie with recession. We'll get to more on that in a moment.

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At The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they're leading the way in future-proofing operations for businesses around the world. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, NetSuite adapts to your needs, helps you respond to immediate challenges, and helps you seize your biggest opportunities.

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Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. Meanwhile, President Trump today put out an executive order suggesting that he was going to put a 100% tariff on foreign movies. Why? Just why? I'm sorry.

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If Hollywood is unable to lower its costs, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to go elsewhere and produce your movies. All movies and TV shows now, this has been going on for decades, are basically produced outside of Hollywood. Hollywood has emptied itself out

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And when she is asked if she called the kid, the N-word, she says, yeah. And she says, he took my son's stuff. Okay, so a few things are happening in this particular story, just from the very beginning. First of all, it's bad that a five-year-old kid is rifling your stuff. Second of all, five-year-old kids are five, like very little, and do bad things all the time. I have a five-year-old girl.

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And that has forced them to actually move their own businesses to places like Vancouver in Canada or go to other states like Georgia in order to film or go abroad to Romania or Hungary or wherever else in order to film. So President Trump thinks that by radically increasing the cost on movie production in a time when streaming is already eating out the profit margins,

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Of all of the movie making industry, that is a very badly calibrated executive order. President Trump put up a post on Truth Social. The movie industry in America is dying a very fast death. Other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood and many other areas within the United States are being devastated.

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This is a concerted effort by other nations and therefore a national security threat. So you're saying it's a national security threat. for Romania to offer a tax incentive to film in Romania. I'm sorry, that is not even remotely a national security threat. It may be a threat to Tom Cruise's next paycheck, but that is not a national security threat.

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If Matthew McConaughey makes less money because films are being made or a key grip in Hollywood has to travel in order to go film over in Budapest, that is not remotely a national security threat. We are emptying the term national security threat of pretty much all content.

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He says he was authorizing the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands. We want movies made in America again. Where is the demand for this? Seriously, it's just a stop to the Actors Union, right?

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It's a stop to the Writers Union and to SAG-AFTRA and to the rest of the big Hollywood unions. When he says, in addition to everything else, this creates messaging and propaganda, which is something that he says here. If you want to stop the messaging and propaganda, President Trump should go back to actually shutting down TikTok. You want to end the foreign propaganda?

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How about the weaponization of social media by TikTok in order to generate support for a bunch of anti-American policies? Because that is a thing that is very much happening. In fact, according...

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to a brand new report out of the Network Contagion Research Institute, TikTok's algorithm is currently suppressing content critical of the CCP, boosting pro-CCP content, and also actively weaponizing TikTok in order to undermine Trump's trade war.

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So if he's worried about propaganda and messaging, then he should probably stop postponing the implementation of the TikTok ban in the United States, forcing TikTok to sell. They are literally undermining his own trade agenda.

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According to NCRI, following President Trump's April 2025 tariffs on Chinese imports, this is realitieslaststand.com reporting, TikTok was suddenly flooded with well-produced videos telling Americans to cut out the middleman and buy straight from Chinese sellers. What they don't show is how this effort hides the product's true origin.

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Sellers use shady tricks like routing shipments through third countries and setting up shell companies to dodge tariffs. Many packages also are mislabeled to sneak through customs. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, this is all part of a coordinated CCP effort called the Shopping in China campaign. It is not just a marketing push.

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It is a full-blown psychological operation using TikTok's algorithm and state-backed influencers to evade tariffs by messing with how Americans think, shop, and spend. So, again, if the goal is to shut down propaganda outlets, TikTok would be like number one on that list. And yet yesterday, President Trump also suggested that he might give TikTok another extension.

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The sort of discombobulation policy is not well calibrated toward the success of the policies. President Trump told NBC's Meet the Press, quote, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok. And then he said he'd like to see a deal, but he'd be willing to give a reprieve despite not having made a deal. This is ridiculous.

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She's wonderful, and she's also extremely naughty and troublesome. And this sort of stuff with small kids, unfortunately, they do bad things all the time. Calling a little black kid the N-word, I think we can agree, is a bad thing to do. Now, if you have trouble with that statement, that calling a little black kid the N-word is a bad thing to do, I'm not sure why.

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First of all, it is bucking constitutional congressional authority. Congress should actually push its own preserve here. Congress passed a law. It passed through both houses of Congress. It was signed into law. President Trump was in favor of the TikTok ban until he suddenly reversed himself. And TikTok is, in fact, spreading foreign propaganda.

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Meanwhile, by the way, both Russia and China are moving aggressively to counter President Trump's agenda abroad. According to the UK Telegraph, Vladimir Putin and President Xi are now signing a series of agreements to work in coordination with each other. Those agreements are likely to span everything from economics to military agreements.

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One day ago, Xi Jinping said that he was entering into a mutual trust mission with Vladimir Putin in Russia in order to cement strategic ties in the face of new circumstances. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is threatening greater action in Ukraine. He gave a speech in Moscow in which he said that they have the quote strength and means to bring their war on Ukraine to a quote unquote logical conclusion.

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He said we have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires. He said there is no need to use nuclear weapons. And of course, he has basically made clear that he wants to take the rest of Ukraine.

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So far, Putin has offered zero concessions in order to get to the table right now, which is why, by the way, it is good that the United States is doing the thing that it should have been doing all along, which is pressuring Vladimir Putin with the... with the reality that the West is not simply going to allow him to walk into Kyiv.

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According to the New York Times, Ukraine is now getting more help in its war with Russia. A Patriot air defense system that was based in Israel will now be sent to Ukraine after it's refurbished. For a current and former U.S.

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official said in recent days, Western allies are discussing the logistics of Germany or Greece, giving another one, which of course would be necessary given the fact that Kyiv was hammered just a couple of weeks ago. We were in Kyiv to interview Vladimir Zelensky. I left the next day. There was a massive attack on Kyiv that ended up killing something like 12 people and injuring another 60.

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So the abandonment of Ukraine is a figment of the imagination. Ukraine is not, in fact, being abandoned, which is good. Meanwhile, in other foreign policy matters, the continued assault by Iranian proxies on Israel is quite real. So as you know, because we talked about it last week, I was recently in Israel. I was given an honor to celebrate on Yom Ha'atzmuth by lighting a torch.

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And I left on Sunday morning very early from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. And approximately four hours later, three and a half hours later, a Houthi missile actually hit right outside Ben-Gurion Airport. This apparently was due to a failure of the FAD and Arrow 3 anti-missile systems of Tel Here is some video, you can see it, of the missile hitting directly outside the airport.

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It's pretty scary stuff because it only missed by about 350 yards, like a direct hit on the center of the airport. Instead, it hit an unpopulated area. It blew up some of the ground near that. There's some slight injuries. Thank God the Houthis didn't actually hit the airport directly. This is just another aspect of the Iranian terror war on America and its allies.

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That seems totally uncontroversial to me. Whether you have broader concerns about racialized language in America, I don't see the necessity for having a debate over, for example, the use of the N-word in rap music, which is terrible, in order to say that it is bad for an adult white woman to call a five-year-old kid the N-word. That just seems bad on its face.

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And yes, is a war by Iranian proxies on American shipping, on the American Navy, in the Red Sea. It is a terror war against America's allies ranging from Israel to Saudi Arabia. One of the signal failures of the Biden administration was attempting to curb.

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Saudi Arabia's war on the Houthis by depriving them of the weaponry necessary to actually win in Yemen, leaving huge swaths of the country in control of the Houthis who now are firing long range missiles. Iran, by the way, has announced that it has developed a new long range missile that is capable of hitting Israel.

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Presumably, if they have a nuclear weapon, they will then put that nuclear weapon on top of the missile and fire it at Israel. Meanwhile. Several Iranians were just arrested in the UK in two anti-terrorism operations. In one operation, according to the AFP, five men, four of them Iranian, were taken into custody on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist attack.

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This is no surprise because the Iranians spread their terror tentacles all over the world, ranging from Latin America to Europe to the United States. Obviously, Iranian agents were planning to assassinate President Trump. President Trump, for his part, has been attempting to negotiate some sort of deal with Iran.

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The question inside the Trump administration has been whether they're attempting to negotiate a deal that will completely dismantle the Iranian nuclear facilities or whether they will allow them to continue a quote-unquote civilian program while opening up the sanctions, which would basically just be the Barack Obama program, but on steroids, because Iran is now significantly closer to a nuclear weapon than they were even when Barack Obama was president of the United States.

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That has been sort of an open debate inside the administration. It's also been an open debate as to whether the United States is willing to do anything if some sort of nuclear deal is not signed with the Iranians. President Trump, for his part, has been very consistent and clear on this. Yesterday on NBC News, he said that the goal was total dismantlement of the nuclear deal. regime in Tehran.

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The idea was get rid of the nuclear weapons and the nuclear facilities entirely, not the sort of special envoy Steve Witkoff proposal that was basically the Obama proposal, allow them nuclear development to 3.67%. President Trump is saying no, total dismantlement is the goal.

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Now, again, there is precedent for a peaceful civilian nuclear program. The United States signed an agreement in 2009 with the UAE on peaceful nuclear cooperation. But basically what that meant is that the UAE would forego all domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel, and they would have to be completely open to all sorts of inspections.

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That is the only kind of deal that will work here. Because remember, President Trump, as we said on the show over and over, called the JCPOA, the Obama-Iran deal, the worst deal in American history. Well, joining us on the line to discuss this, because this week is the anniversary of President Trump pulling out of the terrible, historically bad JCPOA, is Senator Tom Cotton.

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Now, the reason this has become a national issue is because this woman was videoed. And people basically started going after her on social media. The kid's parents said that the boy is autistic. The parents are from Somalia. They were apparently supervising three other kids on the playground at the time of the incident.

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He's the United States Senator from Arkansas. He's author of the New York Times' number one bestseller, Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Senator Cotton, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me on. So this week marks the anniversary of the JCPOA's end, President Trump killing the JCPOA.

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That, of course, was the terrible, historically bad Iran deal that President Obama cut with Iran and President Trump killed it. Why don't we start with, for people who don't actually know what the JCPOA was, why it was bad, what that was, and then we can talk about what President Trump is attempting to do or may be attempting to do with negotiations with Iran right now.

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So let's talk for a second about what threat does Iran actually pose to the United States, to Europe, to our neighbors in the Middle Eastern region?

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There's been a lot of talk recently about the idea that even if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon, it wouldn't have any impact on the United States because the idea that Iran is going to fire a missile some 8000 miles and hit the United States is far fetched or that they would attack Europe directly is far fetched. And that's true.

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I mean, the idea that Iran is going to directly launch a missile on the United States, for example, that's not something that's going to happen. But there are serious geopolitical threats that exist. with the nuclear Iran ranging from the region to the globe. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the threat of Iran. What are its ambitions? What is it attempting to do?

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So apparently Hendrix, this woman, apparently told the father and his wife that they shouldn't have more kids because they're a drain on the welfare system. So she seems like a delight. It just seems like a delightful person. And the reason this has become a big issue is because after this video went viral on the internet,

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We have now fallen into a bizarre and terrible cycle in the United States in which one side does something bad and the other side then does something similarly bad and then points to the fact that the first side did something bad as an excuse for doing it. This is a problem. We used to call this whataboutism.

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There's also the major issue of the nuclear weapon as a threat, and we've seen this in the Russia-Ukraine war, where the fact that Russia is a nuclear-armed nation means that the ability to push back against an invasion of eastern Ukraine or the Donbass region is limited by the fact that you're always worried about the possibility of this escalating to nuclear war.

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Imagine an Ayatollah-run regime with a nuclear weapon using that nuclear umbrella effectively.

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with capacity to threaten israel with terror attacks in judea and samaria or from the gaza strip or from its north or terror attacks on the saudi oil fields with the threat that if there's retaliation against iran then iran will fire a nuclear weapon into saudi arabia and maybe take out riyadh i mean these are all major geopolitical issues in which the united states obviously has an interest we have an interest in the red sea we have an interest in the flow of oil we have an interest in preventing the spread of terrorism around the region and in europe

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as well, and pretending that the world isn't interconnected in this way is simply ignoring reality, especially considering the fact that Iran, Russia, and China are all working together in tandem at this point in time.

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She claims that another person who has a history with law enforcement proceeded to record me and follow me to my car. This is what she said. He posted these videos online, which has caused my family and myself great turmoil. My social security number has been leaked. My address and phone number have been given out freely. My family members are being attacked.

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So there's been a lot of mixed signals sent by the administration, not from President Trump directly, who's been actually quite consistent on this, but from, for example, the negotiator Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the region, who suggested that maybe Iran should have a civilian nuclear program and then seemed to walk that back a little bit.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of course, has said they shouldn't be allowed any nuclear program at all.

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the nation of qatar which is trying to negotiate a lot of this obviously qatar has some dicey connections shall we say they're the number one funder of hamas they're essentially an iranian cut out in a lot of these negotiations how should we view qatar which sort of plays this bizarre middleman role with one foot as as sort of friendly to the united states and then the other foot as a very very friendly with iran and terrorist groups around the country around the region

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My eldest child may not be going back to school. Even where I exercise has been exposed. And she asked for the Internet to provide her with money so that she could move. And within days, she had raised over half a million dollars, like $525,000 had been raised. She herself has a troubled history with law enforcement, including DUI, disorderly conduct, and brawling.

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So there's been a lot of talk about what the United States involvement should be if the nuclear talks fail. The idea being, would the United States participate in some sort of strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities to destroy those facilities, push off their nuclear program by 10 or 20 years or maybe indefinitely?

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There have been some people suggesting that if the United States were to do that, it would launch a sort of all out regional war. I see zero evidence of that. The United States killed Qasem Soleimani under President Trump's first term. There was not an all out regional war.

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The fact is, Iran is massively weaker than it was during President Trump's first term, largely thanks to his maximum pressure campaign. but also thanks to Israel defenestrating Hamas, defenestrating Hezbollah, defenestrating an enormous number of Iranian proxy groups in the region, and then defenestrating Iran's air defense systems completely.

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The skies over Tehran are completely open at this point. So if this were to actually eventualize, if the United States were to participate in a strike, and maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't,

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I'd like to get your perspective on that, but I think the basic notion that there will be a regional all-out war if that were to happen, I see zero evidence that that is the case, and that seems like the same sort of false construct that Barack Obama was pushing during his presidency, this idea that if you didn't cut a bad deal with Iran, there would be all-out regional war.

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That false binary was sort of the guiding vision of the Obama foreign policy. You see that being reflected on a lot of the left today and even some parts of the right.

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Okay, so again, a few things happening here.

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If somebody calls you the N-word in public or anything else, running down the street with a camera and taping them and then putting that on the internet and then exposing every aspect of their life, their social security number, their address to public scrutiny, it is one thing to call people out for saying bad things, which is something that you should do.

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Well, Senator Tom Cotton, really appreciate your time and your insight. Go check out his number one New York Times bestseller, Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Senator Cotton, really appreciate the time. Thank you, Ben.

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Meanwhile, opposing President Trump's very consistent agenda with regard to Iran have been members of the administration itself, people inside the administration who've been pitching the idea that Qatar should broker a sort of nuclear deal with Iran.

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These are people on the right who will say that if the United States participates in a strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, that this will lead to a widespread global conflagration, which is a lie. That is not true. There is zero evidence of that. The United States, under President Trump, killed the Iranian terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani, and not only did not lead... to a regional war.

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It was part of crippling Iran's terror infrastructure. So it is just not true. It's obviously an agenda that is also being pushed by Qatar, which is half a cutout for the Iranian regime. America does have an airbase in Qatar. We could just as easily move it to Bahrain or UAE.

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I would recommend that actually the United States should do that because there is no reason why Qatar, which again does the work of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, should be a recipient of the largesse of the United States in that particular way. But there is a bizarre horseshoe theory that is formed between left and right.

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with regard to Iran, a sort of strange willingness to accept an Iranian nuclear regime. And again, I think there's an argument to be made over whether the United States needs to participate in a strike, even whether Israel should just do it itself.

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If the United States is unable to secure a deal with the Iranian regime in order to fully dismantle their nuclear capabilities, and also, by the way, to dismantle their ballistic missile capabilities, and also to get them to not use newly minted American money to pave their terror proxies all over the region, which is one of the big flaws of the JCPOA.

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It allowed Iran to open their economy, no restrictions on missile development, no restrictions on terror support, something that even the awful Secretary of State John Kerry admitted at the time. If you can do a deal that somehow achieves all those goals, well, congratulations. But if you cannot, it is a one-day sortie for American B-2s.

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But even if you don't want to use American B-2s, if Israel should hit the Iranian nuclear facilities, no, that's not going to lead to an all-out regional war. By the way, that all-out regional war, from Israel's perspective, already exists. They've been attacked on literally every border they have by Iranian proxies. They're being attacked from the south by the Houthis.

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They're being attacked from the southwest by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They were attacked from the north by Hezbollah. They were attacked from Syria. by Hezbollah agents. They've been attacked in Judea and Samaria by Iran-backed terror groups, ranging from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to the PFLP.

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So the idea that some sort of radical Iranian escalation is going to take place if Israel takes out the nuclear facilities is ridiculous. But this has now been promoted by people on the both left and the isolationist right. And it's sort of fascinating to see that horseshoe theory playing out in real time.

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So for example, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, he says that the best way for Israel to stand up against Iran is for Israel to basically surrender in the Gaza Strip to Hamas, which of course is ridiculous.

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If somebody you see in front of you uses the N-word, you should say, don't do that. That's awful. Why are you doing that? Going to the extent of exposing social security numbers, following people home, trying to destroy their life, that is, I think, uncalled for. With all that said, giving money in response to this, like raising half a million dollars, that is not a good thing to do.

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That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. So you're going to reconstitute an Iranian proxy state in Gaza and Judea and Samaria and somehow this will help the Abraham Accords and make the region safer? When people say there's a two-state solution or the Palestinians must have, who rules it? What does the territory look like?

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I think we know the answers to that because we've seen it actually happen since the Oslo Accords in the early 90s. And the answer has been terrorist states supported by Iran, which are a threat not just to Israel, but also to the Saudis, to the Jordanian monarchy, by the way, to the Egyptians. There's a reason that Jordan is not allowing people to flow in Palestinians.

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60% of Jordan is Palestinian. There's a reason that they are not letting more Palestinians come from Gaza Strip to Jordan or from Judea and Samaria to Jordan. There's a reason Egypt has rejected all refugees into its country from these areas. And it is not because they think that it's more humane to keep people in a war zone.

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It's because they don't want those people in their country because they believe that they support terror and they are correct about that as a generalized matter. So this is incredibly stupid, obviously, but it's also supported by some people on the right. So Jeffrey Sachs is a great example. So Jeffrey Sachs is a globalist.

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There is just no way to describe the word globalist without talking about Jeffrey Sachs. Jeffrey Sachs is, of course, a professor, an American economist, He has taught at Columbia University.

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He serves as the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and is a frequent guest with Tucker Carlson because he favors a isolationist foreign policy, but that isolationist foreign policy is connected to a globalist regime.

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What he actually wants is for the UN to rule the world, meaning a multipolar world ending American hegemony around the planet, curtailing American power and allowing America's enemies to have vast run over the globe. It is bizarre that Jeffrey Sachs and Tucker Carlson seem to be in alignment on this agenda. Again, there is no way to use the word globalist without talking about Jeffrey Sachs.

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Jeffrey Sachs is a textbook globalist. Globalist does not mean that America should be involved in the world. That is not globalist. Globalist means that America's priorities should be reduced to a precinct of UN rule or the World Bank or the IMF. That's globalist, and that's all stuff that Jeffrey Sachs believes in.

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He believes in a sort of global Green New Deal socialism that is bizarre in the extreme. Here he was over the weekend talking about global government. Remember, he's a frequent guest with some sort of isolationist types on the right.

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So you tell me why Jeffrey Sachs, who is, again, in the dictionary under the word globalist, there's a picture of Jeffrey Sachs, why he is on with people who declare themselves America first, spewing the same sort of nonsense.

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Now, why did this become such a scandal? Not just because people were giving this amount of money, but because the way people were justifying giving this amount of money is by referring to the case of Carmelo Anthony, which is a case that we talked about at length on the show. So Carmelo Anthony, you'll remember, is a 17-year-old black teenager from... Texas, and he allegedly stabbed to death.

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Okay, so the key there is not that there's a government of Cyprus. The key is a global government at the level of the UN. Jeffrey Sachs has been quite warm, by the way, toward China. And there's a reason for that as well. Well, the sort of isolationist wing inside the Trump administration is now leaking. I mean, let's be very clear about this. The leakers inside the administration...

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are not the people who are more in line with the Trump peace through strength agenda. All the leakers thus far have come from one wing of the Trump administration and is in fact a more isolationist wing of the Trump administration. The latest leak comes courtesy of the Washington Post.

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Quote, President Donald Trump's decision to oust his national security advisor, Michael Walz, was the product of a slow accumulation of frustration with a former Green Beret officer who is seen as far more eager to use military force than his boss in the Oval Office.

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He had been clashing with other top officials since early in the administration, including over whether to pursue military action against Iran. Senior officials and Trump advisors said Friday, so I have a question. If the Trump administration does not want people leaking, maybe they should be investigating the leaks.

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We already know that there were leakers inside the Defense Department, and they were allegedly fired over those leaks, and they were very much in line with the sort of isolationist wing of the of the Trump foreign policy regime.

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The article says that Walt supposedly upset President Trump after an Oval Office visit in early February by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the National Security Advisor appeared to share the Israeli leader's conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran. Two of the people said, who do you think is leaking that?

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Again, if you don't like leaks from the administration to the Washington Post, maybe you should actually look at who's leaking and why they are doing that leaking. And the attempt is to use the movement of Waltz from NSA to UN ambassador in order to suggest that the globalists have to be stopped.

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Well, it's again, it's very weird that the isolationists and the actual globalists like Jeffrey Sachs are very much in line. The Israeli prime minister, by the way, denied the idea that there was intensive and exclusive contact with Mike Waltz.

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The Office of the Prime Minister said, contrary to the Washington Post report, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not have intensive contact with Mike Waltz on Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu had a warm meeting with Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff at Blair House in February, prior to the Prime Minister's meeting with President Trump at the White House. Mike Waltz also joined VP J.D.

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Vance in a meeting with the PM before leaving Washington. Since then, the PM, the former National Security Advisor and Steve Witkoff had one phone conversation that did not deal with Iran. But again, the people who are leaking to the press from the Trump administration are people who are very much in the sort of isolationist wing of the Trump administration.

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They also seem to be allied with the special envoy, Steve Witkoff. And there are a lot of people in this sort of wing of the party who suddenly over the weekend started promoting the idea that a strike on Iran involving the United States would lead to a broad regional war or that there was not even a threat to the United States if Iran were to get a nuclear weapon.

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Again, there's this bizarre and peculiar and I think foolish idea in foreign policy that if something does not amount to an immediate threat, meaning like Cuba with a nuclear weapon pointed at American shores, that it's not a threat at all. And that's not how the world works.

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The entire business of foreign policy is attempting to game out what is the most likely and worst possibilities to occur from actions that are occurring across the world today. That's how you shape a foreign policy. By the way, it's how you make good decisions in your own life. You don't let your kids randomly wander into the street because you think, well, you know, our street's pretty calm.

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I mean, he admitted it, but he allegedly stabbed to death another young person whose name was Austin Metcalfe. And then he raised for his GoFundMe over half a million dollars for his defense fund. Some of the funds were supposed to be toward paying for a secure location for the family to live.

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The chances of a car actually hitting the kid pretty low. You keep your kid out of the street because you don't want your kid to get hit by a car. You make decisions like this all throughout your life based on the probabilities, based on the risk factors, based on the reward, based on that risk reward ratio.

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The idea that you do foreign policy based solely on the question of whether Iran is going to fire a nuclear weapon directly at the United States, ignoring the regional ramifications, nuclear proliferation,

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Control of the Red Sea, control of the Straits of Hormuz, control of the oil flow, the possibility of attacks on American allies, the possibility of widespread nuclear conflict in a region that then spreads outward. If you like India, Pakistan, man, how'd you like that in the Middle East?

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If the way you do foreign policy is basically, if it's not happening right now in my living room, I don't care about that. Let's just say that that is a short-sighted way to do American foreign policy. Alrighty, coming up. In Australia, the leftists win.

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We're going to ask the question as to whether President Trump's trade war is actually benefiting the United States or not benefiting the United States when it comes to getting our allies elected, meaning like right-wing allies elected in countries all over the world. First, you need to be a member. And we have all sorts of great content.

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We've got the Gospel series with Jordan Peterson and the Exodus series with Jordan Peterson. We've got All Access Live where you can hang out with me. We've got Run, Hide, Fight. We've got the Matt Walsh movies. All sorts of great stuff happening behind the paywall. But if you're not a member, you're missing out because Become a member right now.

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Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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So this has become sort of the go to give me money tactic is you end up on the wrong side of a social media mobbing. And you say at that point, I need to move. And so please, everybody, give me money. Now, none of this stuff justifies each other. None of these facts justify. Step. In order of priority of bad things in the world, because not all sins are created equal. Alleged murder is the worst.

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alleged murder, and then probably giving money to alleged murderers is probably second on that list. And then third on that list would be using the N-word. And then fourth on that list would be giving money to somebody who uses the N-word. But none of these things justify each other.

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Now, people have misapplied the term whataboutism over and over and over in the political context. It is not whataboutism to point out double standards.

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And this is part of the terrible slide into the bottomless pit of garbage that the United States seems to be embroiling itself in. The idea that you have to give money to Shiloh Hendricks because people gave money to Carmelo Anthony. You don't. The idea that you have to justify the use of the N-word for a five-year-old kid because a black kid killed a white kid in Texas, no.

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How about all of these things are bad? They're not all equivalently bad. Some of them are way worse. Murder is way worse than using the N-word.

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And I understand that some on social media are pointing out and going crazy about the fact that one woman, a white woman, using the N-word for a five-year-old kid, the news media will treat that in the same way they would an actual racial murder or an alleged racial murder. And I think there is truth to that. That's what I said before.

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Calling out the double standard in order to get the media to adhere to a better standard, that's not unjustifiable. That is calling on a person to do a more moral thing. But if you are calling on people to do less moral things with reference to other people doing immoral things, that's not doing anything productive. That is making the world a worse place one step at a time.

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Whataboutism is when you do something wrong, and instead of you saying, yes, I did the thing wrong, but a double standard is being applied, it's when you say, I didn't do anything wrong at all, and it doesn't matter if I did do something wrong because the other side did it.

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And there is no bottom to that pit. Because the next time somebody does something terrible, with the races reversed, then somebody will raise a million dollars. And this is how you end up with a body politic that has no level of trust in one another. It's how you destroy the social fabric. Because then I think you should be able to hold all these thoughts in your head at one time.

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I don't think you need to engage in the reactionary rush to defend bad behavior because somebody else did a bad behavior. I don't think that's childlike logic. It's the same thing that your children do where your kid breaks a rule and then your kid when caught says, yeah, but my sibling also broke the rule, so it's okay if I do it. That's kid logic, and there's no reason to use it.

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It is not moral. It does not make the world a better place. It does not make America stronger. You can call out all bad behavior when you see the bad behavior. And the fact that this has even come into question now is not only bizarre, it is somewhat terrifying.

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Because if you as a society cannot call out bad behavior, ranging from racialized murder to calling people the N-word, and again, those are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form in terms of the moral gravity of And we can call out the media for treating them as similar. They're not.

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But if you can't at least say that these are bad things, all of these things fall into the category of bad things people should not do, and you find yourself justifying the behavior on the basis of what the other side did, you're making the world a worse place. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, this July, there's a global summit of BRICS nations in Rio de Janeiro.

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The bloc of emerging superpowers, China, Russia, India, Iran, are meeting with the goal of displacing the U.S. dollar as the global currency. They are calling this the Rio Reset. De-dollarization is a thing that absolutely is happening. As BRICS nations push forward with their plans, Global demand for U.S. dollars continues to decrease, bringing down the value of the dollar in your savings.

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While this transition is not going to happen overnight, the real reset in July does mark a moment when BRICS's objectives move decisively from theoretical possibility toward inevitable reality. Figure out if diversifying your savings into gold the way that I have done is correct for you. Birch Gold Group can help you move your hard-earned savings into a tax-sheltered IRA and precious metals.

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Claim your free info kit on gold by texting my name, Ben, to 989898. With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, tens of thousands of happy customers, let Birch Gold arm you with a free no-obligation info kit on owning gold before July and the Rio reset. Text Ben to 989898 today.

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So, for example, if Hunter Biden is super duper duper corrupt and then somebody on the right side of the aisle does something super duper duper corrupt and then they're called on and they say, well, yeah, but Hunter Biden did something super corrupt. That's whataboutism because it's a non sequitur.

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Again, smart strategy when it comes to investment diversification and in an uncertain market with de-dollarization actually happening all over the world, particularly smart strategy. Ask my friends over at Birch Gold about it. Text them. at 989898. Today, text Ben to 989898. Also, according to a recent ZipRecruiter survey, 76% of employers plan to expand their headcount in 2025.

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That is a lot of time spent hiring. So, if you're the owner of a growing business, the way that we here are at The Daily Wire, it's essential to find a platform that provides an efficient format. allowing you to connect with several pre-screened, interested applicants all at once to streamline their recruitment process. Luckily, ZipRecruiter does just that.

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So if you're one of these employers who's ramping up hiring this year, don't miss out on this advice. Add ZipRecruiter's latest feature, ZipIntro, to your hiring plan. It lets you post jobs today and talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Best of all, it does most of the work for you, so you save time. Right now, you can try ZipIntro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

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ZipIntro gives you the power to quickly assess excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls, You simply pick a time. Zip intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. Then you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the very next day. Save time hiring for 2025 with new zip intro.

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Just go to zip recruiter.com slash dailyware right now to try zip intro for free. Again, that's zip recruiter.com slash dailyware zip intro. Post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Meanwhile, the media continue to be bamboozled and distracted by everything that President Trump does.

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It is truly amazing how after a full decade of President Trump, they still have no clue how to handle the comments that are clearly facetious or joking. And they treat them exactly the same as when he is making a substantive policy argument. So you'll recall that President Trump has spent the last few weeks joking about running in 2028. This is clearly a troll.

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The Constitution does not allow for this. And Steve Bannon notwithstanding, this was never a serious program. And I understand what Steve Bannon is trying to do. One way that you get in good with the Trump administration is by showing utter fealty to everything that Donald Trump says and taking it perfectly literally.

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If you do that and you're on the right, then you're likely to earn some plaudits from President Trump himself sometimes. If you legitimately start justifying and making the case that President Trump should serve a third term, yeah, you might get some winks and some nods and some laughter and some knowing understanding that you are the most loyal of the loyal. But let's be real about this.

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You can say there's a double standard being applied by the media that was willing to ignore and cover up Hunter Biden's activity for years. But now they're going after, say, Team Trump. They can say that the media have been disproportionate in their coverage of corruption. That is a fair point.

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Steve is too smart for that. He understands Trump is not serving a third term. That is not a thing that is happening. So the media tried to play this up because the media, of course, have an interest in in suggesting that President Trump is a threat to democracy, who is going to declare himself dictator of the United States and serve not only a third term, but a fourth, fifth, and sixth term.

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He will be the Vladimir Putin of the United States electoral system, ending democracy after the next election or something. Well, President Trump yesterday gave the lie to all of this because he was asked in a serious context about whether he was running again in 2028. And he said, well, give me a break. This is NBC's Meet the Press. Here's President Trump saying the obvious.

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So, yeah, again, this is President Trump actually putting to bed this stupid lie that he's going to run in 2028. He is not. It is fascinating that he's keeping the door open, which, by the way, is what he should do, because the American people have not sounded off on who should be his successor at this point. There's an open debate inside the administration on a wide variety of issues.

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The Republican Party, as we'll talk about shortly, is split on many issues, particularly with regard to foreign policy, but also with regard to domestic policy, the involvement of the federal government in the economy and all the rest. But the media spent weeks, remember, they cycled you up on the idea that President Trump was going to run again in 2028. He is not.

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Other stupid media tricks today. So over the weekend, same interview, the media decided to go nuts over President Trump talking about the constitutional obligations for due process for illegal immigrants. They suggested that he doesn't care about the Constitution. That is not what he is saying here.

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This is the headline over at Drudge, over the New York Times, everywhere else was the idea that Trump was basically dismissing the Constitution as a concern when it comes to due process for illegal immigrants. That is not what he says. Here we go.

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It is not a fair point to say that corruption on one side of the aisle is justified by corruption on the other side of the aisle. If you do that sort of stuff, then you end up in a bottomless spiral. That bottomless spiral gets worse and worse because everybody just reacts against the last bad thing that the other side did and justifies what they are doing now.

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So, again, that is, I think, him saying over and over and over that he actually will abide by his constitutional obligations. He says, I don't know what those obligations are. He's saying that you don't need a trial to remove every illegal immigrant in the United States, which, of course, is true. It is also illegal. again, a bit of a red herring.

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The reality is that nobody, as far as I'm aware, is calling for a full-scale criminal trial with juries and such in order to determine whether somebody ought to be deported or not. The question is, what are the due process considerations for illegal immigrants before they can be deported? But that is not Trump saying that he's going to ignore the Constitution.

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It's him saying, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, so I don't know what the obligations of due process actually are. And when the Supreme Court sounds off on it, then I will abide by the Supreme Court. But the media ran with the headline that he just doesn't like the Constitution. Again, In service of a narrative, which is that Trump is a dictator, they are just fibbing to you.

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And then, of course, they went nuts over the weekend because President Trump, again, trolling, trolling, he is always trolling. President Trump put out a picture via the White House. It was an AI picture of himself as a potential Pope candidate. And I have to admit... I laughed, but I'm not the only one who laughed. Matt Walsh laughed. He's a Catholic. Michael Mose laughed. He's a Catholic.

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In fact, most of the conservative Catholics that I know laughed at this because no one believes that Donald Trump actually wants to be Pope. First of all, that would come along with some obligations such as chastity that I don't think that the president of the United States would be very much in favor of. But the idea that the media went nuts over it. How dare he be so disrespectful to Catholics?

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Well, folks, America is on the comeback, but the fight for truth is far from over. While the left tries desperately to keep its grip on legacy media education in the courts, Daily Wire is leading the charge for fearless journalism and the values that made our country great. Now is the time to join us. Stream my show ad-free. Watch along with my producers in the chat.

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30% of people said the same. Today, only 23% of Americans say that Trump's policies are making them financially better off. 42% say worse off, which is a 33-point swing. And 35% say the same. When it comes to inflation, 38% of Americans say that Joe Biden's policies are still to blame the most for today's inflation rate. 34% say Trump's policies and 19% say both equally.

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Well, that means that 53% of Americans say that Trump bears some responsibility for the nation's inflationary policies. This is a problem in the middle of President Trump's threats that he is going to have a liberation day with regard to the global economy. And by that, he means that we are going to push extraordinarily broad and high tariffs.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is scrambling to determine the specifics of its new tariff agenda ahead of its self-imposed deadline of Wednesday, weighing options as the president has promised to remake the American economy with a swath of new levies. One key point of debate is whether to impose individualized tariff rates for U.S.

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trading partners, as President Trump has previewed in recent weeks, or to revert to his campaign pledge for an across-the-board tariff that would affect virtually every country doing business with the United States, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump spent most of last week playing down expectations for his so-called reciprocal tariff plan on April 2nd.

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It's the only thing the press wants to talk about because you have nothing else to talk about. It has been the greatest 100-day presidency in the history of our country. So again, this is President Trump ignoring the foolishness in favor of the actual policy, which is if the Houthis hit at American assets or American allies, then they get struck.

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But in recent days, Trump has pushed his team to be more aggressive, according to people familiar with his conversations, encouraging them to devise plans that apply higher rates of tariffs on a broad set of countries. Trump reinforced that narrative on Sunday night. He said he would target, quote, essentially all of U.S. trading partners with tariffs of some kind.

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Well, that would be an extraordinary move by President Trump. Frankly, I don't understand how he has the executive authority to do that. This really is in Congress's purview.

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And if the Republican Congress wishes not to lose a bunch of seats in the midterm elections, I would highly recommend that if President Trump pushes really high tariffs over the next couple of days, that Congress start thinking about taking back some of its constitutionally mandated authority over tariff policy.

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Regardless of what you think of President Trump's policies, no president, Democrat or Republican, should have the unilateral ability to simply increase the prices on goods across the board by 20% on all Americans. That is not a power delegated to any president under the Constitution of the United States.

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In recent days, advisers have considered imposing global tariffs of up to 20% that would hit virtually all U.S. trading partners. Trump and his team for months promoted such a plan on the campaign trail before the president publicly ditched it in favor of that so-called reciprocal tariff plan that is still possibly on the table.

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Whatever the final plan, the official said, the president wants the policy to be, quote, big and simple. which means the final action will be broader than earlier plans to prioritize levying tariffs on the U.S. 's biggest trading partners, about 15% of the world's nations, which Treasury Secretary Scott Besant had labeled in the media appearances as, quote, the dirty 15.

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Now, again, this is not good policy. It just isn't. Again, I want President Trump's policies to succeed. This is not a policy geared towards success. Now, the case to be made, if you're gonna steel man the argument in favor of a broad tariff regime, the steel man case is the effect of the tariffs over the long haul. Let's say that you believe that

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trade deficits are one of the biggest problems facing America. The idea that we buy more from other countries than other countries buy from us. I don't believe in this because again, you have a trade deficit with your grocery store. You have a trade deficit with your barber. You have a trade deficit with your local auto dealer. You have a trade deficit with everyone from whom you buy.

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That does not mean they ripped you off. It does not mean some great injustice has been done. That is not the way global economics works. And in fact, when we run a trade deficit with another country, they have to use those dollars for something. And typically they use it to buy up treasuries. Very often they are using that in international trade in order to finance our debt.

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So let's be clear that it is not just we spend money on Vietnamese T-shirts and that money disappears into the ether. That is not the way any of this works. And you may not like the fact that Vietnam makes T-shirts and the United States no longer does, but we also make the entire world software industry and Vietnam does not. There are good purposes to tariffs for national security reasons.

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I've said this a thousand times. When it comes to important national defense industries, obviously we have to maintain their production capacity in the United States because we don't want to be reliant on anyone else if it comes to a war, for sure. And for national security reasons, there may be reasons to tariff other countries as a punishment.

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And President Trump seems to be upping the ante all over the world with regards to this sort of stuff. So many people have been fearful that President Trump was simply going to cave to Vladimir Putin, that Vladimir Putin is sort of slow playing President Trump in Ukraine. Now, as you recall, Vladimir Zelensky came to the White House, got chewed out by both Trump and Vice President J.D.

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You want to do a tariff, as we mentioned earlier on, Russian oil, because you want to stop them from pursuing a particular policy. Or you want to tariff China because you want to stop them from stealing our IP. Totally in for that as well. But the idea that tariffs in and of themselves are going to be good for the economy, that's wrong.

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But to steel man the argument, the basic idea would be that the American dollar right now is very strong in international trade. And the reason the American dollar is very strong is there's a large demand for American treasuries and services and all of that because of the trade deficits that we run. If you end those trade deficits and you rebalance it, you weaken the American dollar.

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What is the good part about weakening the American dollar? Well, if you're President Trump, the good part about weakening the American dollar is that it leads to more domestic consumption because everything becomes more expensive imported from overseas to the United States. Your dollar doesn't go as far. It's not as strong. And two, it means that we get to pay off our debt in inflated currency.

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However, we're already in the middle of an inflationary spiral. It has not ended yet. And so the deliberate idea that we are going to essentially inflate the currency by weakening it against other currencies and making prices higher for Americans in the process, that's a lot of pain for what I think is not a lot of gain.

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The reality is we are not going to, at this rate, inflate our way out of our national debt without crushing the economy. The actual way that you are going to be able to get out of the national debt is by growing the economy by leaps and bounds. And that does not happen via tariff regimes. That is, tariff regimes do not lead to massive economic growth.

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There was something that was widely applied in Latin America, South America during the 1970s and 80s. It was called dependency theory. It was actually a Marxist theory. The basic idea was, that all of these countries in South America were being ripped off by the more sophisticated Western countries who were trading in sophisticated products.

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And then all of these countries in South America were trading out unsophisticated, unfinished materials, for example. And this was leading to, quote unquote, dependency. And so what these countries did is they raised tariffs on developed products from other countries that did not make their countries richer. Overall, it made their countries significantly poorer.

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It was very, very bad economic policy. So what does this look like? Well, President Trump already, this is not a great political pitch. It just isn't. He told NBC News on Saturday he does not care, for example, if foreign automakers raise their prices for U.S. consumers in response to new tariffs. Quote, I couldn't care less. Here's Christian Welker reporting on President Trump.

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I promise you, by the way, American consumers do care if their prices go up by leaps and bounds on the cars they want to buy for their families.

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Vance, and then expelled from the White House over his sort of brazen attempts to get Trump to commit to security. commitments in the room. And then Zelensky effectively apologized on the world stage, and then he said that he was going to agree to an immediate ceasefire. And in the meantime, Vladimir Putin has refused to agree to anything like a comprehensive ceasefire.

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OK, autarky is bad economic policy. It just is. It's been bad economic policy forever. The idea you can produce everything within America's borders for the same prices that you're currently getting is not true.

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I understand that politicians have a stake in pretending that magic can happen in the economy whereby you shut down global trade and you don't import anything and everything gets produced right here in America and it's the same price and your life doesn't change in any way. That is not true. Things are going to get more expensive.

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The product in the United States, by the way, gets worse because if you don't have competition with foreign competitors, there's no reason for you to make a product any better. This is basically the story of the American car industry during the 1950s and 60s. We dominated the planet in the 1950s. By the end of the 1960s, Toyota was eating our lunch. Why?

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Because we had massive tariffs on foreign automakers. We had huge subsidies to American automakers. Those subsidies were largely going to the UAW and other union members. And then when we finally lowered our trade barriers, better cars came in at a lower price and they completely swamped the American auto industry to the point that we had multiple bankruptcies in the 1970s.

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And tariff policy, protectionist trade policy is overall not good for, it can be good for certain sectors of an economy that are now receiving benefit at the hands of loss for the vast majority of American consumers. But let's not pretend that it is good economic policy for the vast majority of American consumers. It's just like any other subsidy.

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If you tax everybody a buck and then you pay somebody $300 million, great for the guy who gets $300 million, not great for everybody who has to pay a buck. And here we're talking about a lot more than a buck. Tariffs, as it turns out, are not amazing for the vast majority of Americans. But you know what's great for all Americans? Spring, it's here.

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And that means it's time to bring some life back to your home or yard with some new trees and plants. Did you know that Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the United States with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers? They have all the plants your yard needs, like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more.

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Whatever plants you're interested in, Fast-growing trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast-growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Order online, get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without ever leaving home. Their live and thrive guarantee also ensures your plants arrive happy and healthy.

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Whether you're like me and you want to add some privacy to your yard or you just want to enhance your curb appeal, fast-growing trees makes the whole process incredibly simple. Plus, you can get support from trained plant experts They're on call to help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants, learn how to care for them.

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This spring, they have the best deals for your yard, up to half off on select plants and other deals. Listeners to this show get 15% off their first purchase when they use code dailywire at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using code dailywire at checkout. fastgrowingtrees.com code dailywire. Now is the perfect time to plant. Use dailywire to save today.

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Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Also, If you're not able to watch old family videos anymore because, I mean, they're all on VHS and you haven't had a VCR for like 15 years and everything is recorded and stored on that outdated technology, well, you need Legacy Box. I've used Legacy Box myself for my family, for my in-laws.

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Spring cleaning might have you tossing everything out, but you don't want to toss out the family videos and the photos, right? You want to see that stuff, but you can't, except with Legacy Box. With Legacy Box's spring cleaning sale, you can check digitizing your memories off your to-do list and protect them forever for only $9 a tape. Legacy Box makes it incredibly simple.

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Plus, get exclusive content you're not going to find anywhere else. Access premium entertainment. Join a community of thinkers, not followers. Watch anytime, anywhere on desktop, mobile, and TV with the Daily Wire Plus app. Don't just watch the culture war happen around you. Be part of the movement. Subscribe right now at dailywire.com. slash subscribe.

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Just pack up your outdated tapes, films, and photos, mail them in, they handle the rest. Everything comes back digitized to the cloud so you can view and share your memories from any device anywhere. It's so effortless, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. Again, I've done this myself. I've done it for my parents. I've done it for my in-laws.

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He said maybe he'll have a ceasefire with regard to energy infrastructure, or maybe there'll be a ceasefire in the Black Sea. Well, in reality, Vladimir Putin is playing a game, and everybody can see that he's playing a game. On Friday, he called for a transitional administration to be put in place in Ukraine, and then vowed his army would, quote, finish off Ukrainian troops.

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There are all these old memories that are just out in the garage, and over time, they degrade, and then they disappear. There's no reason for that. Instead, check protecting your memories off your spring cleaning to-do list with Legacy Box. Visit LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro to shop their $9 tape sale. Get 90 days free access to Legacy Box Cloud.

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That's LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro to unlock this incredible offer. Again, LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro. The price of core goods, by the way, in the Consumer Price Index fell 1.7% between December 2011 and December 2019. Over the same period, prices of core services like housing, healthcare, and education rose 2.7% per year.

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That led to an inflation rate of 2% a year overall, according to the Wall Street Journal. Goods prices shot up during the pandemic. They peaked in summer 2023. But in September, core goods prices started rising again by an average of 0.1% a month, including 0.2% in February. So we already do have inflation. And that inflation continues.

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Now, the Trump administration, because of course they work for President Trump, they continue to push forward this vision of tariffs. Peter Navarro, who's a big fan of tariffs and one of the president's advisors on trade policy, he said that we are going to make $600 billion in tariff revenue. This is not true. It is not going to happen. Here's Peter Navarro.

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Okay, so last year, tariffs in the United States were responsible for about $80 billion in revenue. To get to $600 billion in tariff revenue, we would need to assume that people are going to continue consuming foreign products at the same rate. It's sort of mutually exclusive ideas. One is that we're going to continue to consume foreign products and thus the tariff revenue will increase.

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But also we're not going to consume foreign products and we're going to buy American. So one of those two things is not true.

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Either we're going to redirect our consumption toward American products, in which case the tariffs actually are not going to raise that much money, or we're going to continue to buy foreign products, in which case we're going to raise more money via the tariffs, but we're not going to buy American. Navarro and some of the team wants to have it both ways.

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By the way, even if we raise $600 billion through tariffs, you've heard from people that this is going to pay off our national debt. It is not going to pay off our national debt, not remotely, not close. We run a deficit every year in this country because we spend too much money. It is not because of lack of tax revenue. We pay an enormous amount of tax revenue in the United States.

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It rises pretty much every year. It just doesn't keep up with our spending. And then Navarro suggested that tariffs are tax cuts. They are not, in fact, tax cuts. That is silly. You can have tax cuts. You can have tariffs. Those are not the same thing. Tariffs are, in fact, an increase. They are a tax on the consumer. That is what they are.

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So while Putin is attempting to pretend that he actually wants to get to the end of the war, it is now pretty clear which side does not want to get to the end of the war. Zelensky has accepted the reality, which is that Ukraine is not going to, at least in this round of fighting, win back Donbass or Crimea.

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In the same way that Obamacare was a tax on consumers because it got passed along to the consumer every time you paid a bill, tariffs are a tax on American consumers.

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Okay. Well, I mean, you can try this sell. The bottom line is that if Americans feel it in their pocketbook, they're not going to care about the sell. Vice President J.D. Vance was on the campaign trail as well, and he was explaining why he was a fan of the tariffs while he was in Greenland.

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Okay, so that is not true. J.D. Vance is a very, very smart person, and what he's saying here is just economically false. When he says that our European friends have, in fact, taken money from us, he's correct on the defense side. That is absolutely true. They've been living off our largesse since World War II.

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It's one of the reasons why President Trump is absolutely 100% correct to demand that NATO countries pay a certain percentage of their GDP for defense. He's totally right about that. However, when he suggests that the Europeans have used us to, quote, absorb all of their excess economic production. That is not remotely capitalist language. What exactly is excess economic production?

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Please, like, I want to hear it. Do you think that there's a factory in Germany that churns out things at zero cost, basically, for no reason, and then just ship them here? And what, force us to buy them? Well, what exactly is, please define excess economic production. The laws of supply and demand do not work that way.

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If there is no demand for T-shirts, then no one is going to produce the T-shirts or they're an idiot. It bankrupts them. When he says that using America as a piggy bank to absorb all of their excess economic production, what does that mean? That we are buying their stuff? You know, like you buy a thing at the store? That's you absorbing their excess economic production?

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But Vladimir Putin does not want the war to end because he feels the momentum is on his side and that if he can sort of continue the push, that eventually the West will give in and stop funding Ukraine. And he will, in fact, end up sitting in the presidential palace in Kyiv. According to Yahoo News, a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow since Trump's return to office and the U.S.

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When he says that's meant manufacturing jobs declining and middle class wages going down. Middle class wages have, in fact, not gone down in the United States, adjusted for the benefits that are received from the federal government. In fact, much of the middle class in the United States over the course of the past 40 years has become upper middle class over the course of the last 40 years.

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And as far as the manufacturing decline in the United States, the truth is that manufacturing production has gone up in the United States. The number of jobs that it takes to make the manufacturing go up has gone down. That is because of technology in the main. It is not, in fact, because of outsourcing to China. Now, again, you can make the argument we shouldn't outsource that stuff to China.

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But to pretend that America was going to look in 2025 the way it looked in 1980 is not true. So again, you can make this case. It's just not going to be a particularly successful case. When this was pointed out, by the way, then J.D. Vance, who spends an awful lot of time on X sort of fighting his critics, he said, it is this brain-dead liberalism pretending to conservatism that saw the U.S.

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go from the world's manufacturing superpower to one in which the PRC makes nearly twice as much as we do. And where if the small island of Taiwan fell to an invasion, we'd be hurled into a Great Depression.

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Now, I'm confused at the idea that if the United States had divested itself of global trade, then magically all manufacturing of semiconductors would be done in the United States as opposed to, say, in other places in Southeast Asia or in other places in Europe.

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It turns out, actually, that the line of manufacture for, for example, superconductors for semiconductors goes through places in Europe as well. There are many firms that are involved in the production of this sort of stuff. He says this is not just about a few union workers. This is about a globalized economic system in which the United States absorbs much of the producer surplus of the world.

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Again, producer surplus is a term that does not appear in classical economics for a reason. What is a producer surplus that is absorbed? Who is sitting around just making extra stuff, hoping that people are going to, quote unquote, absorb it? He says a system whose brittle supply chains exposed our economic vulnerability after COVID.

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And speaking of those autoworkers, this guy has such contempt for, it was autoworkers of the 40s who allowed the United States to go from a peacetime economy to the best mass producer of aircraft the world has ever seen. Is anyone making the suggestion that GM and Ford are going to be making our airplanes now?

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Like the F-13, the F-47 that President Trump talks about is going to be manufactured by GM and Ford. It is true, actually, that the auto manufacturers turned to wartime production during World War II. And again, if you're doing tariffs in order to maintain our national security production, I'm with you. That's fine. But the idea that you need broad-based tariffs in order to protect What?

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Not even Stellantis to protect Tesla, I guess, because Tesla is then going to make our national security apparatus if there is a global war. And there's a lot of misdirects from the vice president. It just is. And I'm not saying this because I want the president to fail on this stuff. I'm saying this because I think that his economic plans here can harm him.

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The worst thing that could happen to the Trump administration, by the way, the vice president, Van Stu, who wants to run for president in 2028, the worst thing that could happen here is an economic downturn. That is the worst thing that could happen. As Axios points out, economic growth has flatlined so far this year. Inflation has picked up. Consumers expect both to get worse in the months ahead.

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leader's threats to stop supporting Kyiv have bolstered Putin's confidence more than three years into an offensive that has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides. The renewed call to essentially topple Zelensky was the latest demonstration of the Kremlin leader's longstanding desire to install a more Moscow-friendly regime in Kyiv.

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Stagflation is starting to be pretty openly discussed. The backward-looking data lately has been distinctly stagflationary. Consumer spending in the first two months of 2025 has been soft coming in, 0.6% below its December rate when adjusted for inflation. A real-time estimate of GDP published by the Atlanta Fed is now pointing to economic activity shrinking at a 0.5% rate in Q1.

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Meanwhile, the inflation measure favored by the Fed has risen at a 4.1% annual rate in the first two months of 2025, the highest in a year. I'll repeat again. If you like President Trump's agenda, he needs to avoid stepping on economic rigs. He needs to avoid it.

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The notion that you're going to rejigger all of global trade and that's going to have no effect on American consumers, on the American economy, on American businesses. Thank you. Thank you.

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Zelensky dismissed Putin's call for a U.N.-run administration as the Russian leader's latest ploy to delay a peace deal, which of course is true. Putin said that Russia could discuss with the United States, Europe and Moscow's allies, quote, under the auspices of the U.N., the possibility of establishing a transitional administration in Ukraine.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . .

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And then he said that that would organize a democratic presidential election that would result in the coming to power of a competent government. So basically, he wants to oust Zelensky by threat of force. And then he wants his own man put in place in Ukraine. Well, President Trump is now seeing through all of this.

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President Trump, in an interview with NBC News, said that he was, quote unquote, very angry and pissed off when President Putin criticized the credibility of Zelensky's leadership, adding the comments were not going in the right direction. And there's a phone conversation between President Trump and NBC News. Here is Kristen Walker reporting.

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And I think it's that part that is puzzling to people because they've been taught the miracle story. They've seen the movies about Nelson Mandela. They've seen the films and TV shows about the great moment when apartheid ended.

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And there's sort of been a ban publicly on talking about the problems that exist in South Africa post that because to mention that there are some fairly significant problems, as it turns out, in post-apartheid South Africa is seen as some sort of endorsement of apartheid itself, which is a false binary.

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So let's talk about the history of South Africa since the end of apartheid. Again, that's where most people's story ends, is end of apartheid, happily ever after. What has actually happened? What were the political transformations that took place in South Africa after the settlement of 94?

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Now, a secondary tariff means that it's not just that the United States will put a tariff on oil coming out of Russia. It's that he is going to essentially put tariffs on any country that takes Russian oil, which would devastate the Russian economy because Russia is basically a giant gas station with nuclear weapons.

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Well, President Trump continues to resist the calls from isolationists on the right and from insanely anti-American voices on the left to essentially make his foreign policy subject to the whims of other countries. He's just refusing to do that. So the Signalgate story, which ate up the headlines all of last week,

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President Trump said that would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can't do business in the United States. There'll be a 25 percent tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50 point tariff on all oil. Now, again, this is the correct response from President Trump. He has now pushed the Ukrainians as far as it is possible to push the Ukrainians. They're agreeing to rare earth minerals deals.

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So let's talk about the details of that. Because a few years ago, this started to pop up in the news. I remember we covered it on the show at the time. That's when you and I first got in contact, actually. And the... take from the media is that statistically speaking, it's not a big deal. People are being killed at kind of the normal rate that people are killed.

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There is a comparison between the rate of killing of farmers in rural South Africa to the rate of killing of people in Johannesburg, which is notorious for having significant violence problems. Talk a little bit about that. What's been happening with the killing of farmers?

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They're agreeing to immediate ceasefires. Zelensky gets the picture. The problem is that Vladimir Putin does not, in fact, get the picture. And so when President Trump is pissed off, he has every right to be pissed off because he understands that Vladimir Putin is, in fact, playing him.

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So when it comes to the politics here and the excuse that you hear in the world media is when you see videos of Malema saying kill the boar. Number one, you'll hear, well, he doesn't actually mean it. It's just it's just song. Who cares? Which is absurd on its face. But the other thing they'll say is, well, you know, he's part of a party that isn't actually the governing party.

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ANC is the governing party. So why are we focusing so much on Malema, for example? Isn't ANC just fine?

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And so for all the sort of tankies on both right and left who believe that Trump is going to simply cave into Vladimir Putin, that is not how Trump operates. The thing about President Trump is that all these people who sit around trying to figure out exactly what he is saying, what exactly he's doing, there is no massive backroom calculus that is happening here.

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One of the things that is fascinating about what's happening and horrifying is the connection of a sort of communist philosophy of economics with a Frantz Fanon decolonization. Violence is the solution and transforms people spiritually attitude that seems to have crept in South Africa.

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And it's part of a sort of third world ism that now spans not just South Africa, but wide parts of the Middle East, enormous parts of Asia. And it's part of a broader movement that we're seeing globally that basically suggests that the the. anyone who is failing is a victim of capitalist excesses predominantly by white people, and that all of that has to be overthrown.

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And you can see this manifesting domestically. You can also see it in terms of the foreign policy of South Africa. South Africa famously sponsored this ridiculous international court of justice assault on the Israeli government, suggesting that Israel is committing a genocide in in Gaza.

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He is not sitting in the backroom with one of those Charlie Day, it's always sunny in Philadelphia, boards with all of the strings connecting picture to picture. President Trump says exactly what he thinks, and he says it clearly and openly, which is why he's been president twice. The American people know what they are getting from President Trump.

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And there are deep connections between Hamas and the South African government, between Iran and the South African government. There's presumably money that's changing hands along those lines as well.

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So what are the answers in South Africa? Obviously, the Trump administration is now applying sanctions or talking about applying sanctions to South Africa based on the racial discrimination in the law, based on their threats to expropriate property from essentially white people. What would the actual solutions be domestically? What would a better governed South Africa look like?

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And everybody who keeps looking for some sort of secret motivation, there's no secret motivation. He just does the thing. This also happens to be true with regard to Iran. So President Trump. had sent a letter to the Iranian president saying, would you like to open negotiations over your nuclear program?

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I mean, the fact that that's even remotely controversial is sort of beyond me because that is the way that it has historically worked. It worked that way in the United States originally, where even the states, members of states had their own identities. And that's why we have a very weak central government.

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And that's why Virginia was governed different than Massachusetts, which is governed different. from New Hampshire. And the same thing is obviously true in Europe. I mean, much of the angst about the EC and then the EU has been specifically about the idea that a French identity is different from a British identity.

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And when you have people who don't share a philosophy or a history or a culture or an ideology or anything like that, what you end up with is one group having to dominate another group. And in one form that can take is apartheid. And a reverse form of that can be a racist regime that cracks down on white people. Yeah.

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And so the idea that – and what you're talking about here is not racial identitarianism. What you're talking about here is cultural affinity. And the fact that you have cultural affinities between people, that, of course, is totally real and inarguable. You're not suggesting that white is better than black. Black is better than white. Black can't live with white.

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What you're saying is that they're – There are cultures that are different. Those cultures should be able to self-govern. And the idea that those cultures have to be put into a system that is ruled top-down in tyrannical fashion by either one group grabbing the gun or the other group grabbing the gun is unworkable.

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And if you don't want to open negotiations over your nuclear program, bad stuff is going to happen. Well, on Sunday, Iran's president said that the Islamic Republic had rejected direct negotiations with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

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I mean, again, I think that one of the things that people are trying to tie this into is sort of white nationalism or white supremacy. And that's a category error. That's not actually what you're talking about.

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President Massoud Peshikian said that Iran's response delivered via the Sultanate of Oman left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington. But such talks have made no progress since Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

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It's basic Montesquieu, right? I mean, there's nothing new here. I mean, this is what all the American founders talked about, the idea of...

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Your local government is going to be the government that is best for you, that you do have to have decentralization, that you do have to have local rule, that most of the things you agree on with your neighbors are going to be things that you agree on with your actual neighbors, not people who live thousands of miles away and share a completely different culture and affinity for different philosophy.

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Again, the fact that this has become controversial is because – we live in a sort of bizarre world where you have to force yourself into these false choices again. It's either apartheid or it's racial rule by the ANC, and there's no in between. There's nothing else that can be done here. And that obviously is untrue.

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So is there any level of support inside South Africa for this sort of decentralization? How does that level of support feel?

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I mean, I think there's also a great example of how paper guarantees mean nothing if you don't have some level of cultural affinity and unity among the population.

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That, of course, was the so-called JCPOA, which was the ridiculous nuclear deal that was negotiated by Barack Obama that essentially gave Iran a clear pathway to a bomb. It said, you have to delay it for 10 years, but you can use all the money that we are giving you and now freeing up. to spread terrorism all over the Middle East.

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When the South African Constitution was written, Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously suggested it was a better constitution than the Constitution of the United States because it guaranteed things like a right to health care and a right to housing. A right to a good environment. Exactly. It's like a list of these rights that aren't actually rights. They're things that have to be provided to you by others.

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It's not like a right to free speech where essentially a right to free speech means you have a duty not to infringe on my free speech. A right to housing means you have a duty to provide me housing. And it turns out that none of that materialized. There's a lack of housing. It turns out that...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The right to health care doesn't mean that health care in South Africa magically materializes in amazing ways where the health care is just tremendous. All these sorts of paper ideas that were put forward at the expense of realism in the 1990s in places like South Africa have completely fallen. Exactly.

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For sure. And one of the things Burke warned about was the idea that these sort of free-floating rights were equally applicable at all times and all places without any roots in the actual soil of a culture. I mean, the idea of Western-based rights are based in a particular ideology of the West that is an outgrowth of thousands of years of history.

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And the idea that they sort of magically manifest anywhere you drop them is obviously untrue. You have to put in place institutions. You have to develop cultures around them. And if those things don't happen, then they don't mean anything. It's just a paper, right? So you're looking at what the Trump administration is doing.

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And we have seen the consequences of that over the past couple of years when the entire Middle East has gone up in flames, thanks in large part to the additional funding that was granted to Iran by the Obama administration and then the Biden administration. The relief that was given to them said they could then spread their terror all over the Middle East. Pajekian said, we don't avoid talks.

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Obviously, the State Department is now sounding off pretty openly about this under Secretary Rubio. What would you like to see the Trump administration do?

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And so for a normal American who's watching this, and I think that we've talked about this, the fact that what's happening in South Africa is a bleeding edge indicator of sort of trends that are growing rapidly. Across the world, also in the West. I mean, this is an internal battle in the West that is happening right now about what exactly the West means. What are the West's values?

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Do the West's values require that you essentially sacrifice all the values of the West on behalf of empty rhetoric about... about rights or about constitutional guarantees or about that sort of stuff. Like what, what does it mean to be a member of a culture? What does it mean to be a member of the West?

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What do you recommend that, you know, resources for, for Americans want to learn more about this. And also if Americans want to help, because this actually does have ramifications far beyond what's going on just in South.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, Dr. Ernst Roots, really appreciate you being here and thanks for what you're doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far. They must prove they can build trust, that we can build trust with you, who are using all the money that the Obama administration freed up, To pay for terrorist proxies all over the Middle East and ballistic missile development. That you can trust us? Excuse me. So the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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All right, you guys, coming up, Representative Jasmine Crockett, the hot new face of the Democratic Party. She just goes totally racist. Plus, we'll jump into the mailbag. Remember, you can only ask questions in the mailbag and hear my answers if you are a member over at Daily Wire+. If you're not, now's the moment. Become a member. Use code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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State Department responded, Again, this is not a complex calculus. President Trump himself. said that if they don't come to some sort of answer with regards to their nuclear program, the United States is going to come to an answer with regards to their nuclear program. And that answer might involve some bombs falling on their nuclear facilities.

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This idea that because there was a group chat involving the national security apparatus inside the Trump administration that also accidentally invited in Jeffrey Goldberg, the pseudo journalist editor of The Atlantic, that this was a rationale for him to blow up his entire national security infrastructure. That isn't true.

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Now, of course, it wouldn't be the United States predominantly that would do that. Presumably, that would be the Israelis doing that with armaments essentially lent them by the United States. However, President Trump's foreign policy is very clear. He is willing to make a deal at any time with anyone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But if you aren't willing to make a deal, the kind of deal the United States wants to enter into, he is going to clock you or he's going to allow America's allies to clock you. Again, this is called peace through strength. It is not particularly difficult to understand. It's actually quite easy to understand. Now, meanwhile, in sort of funnier foreign policy news, J.D.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Vance arrived in Greenland over the weekend. And I think he spoke for all Americans when he dropped this particular line. He arrived. He was talking to American troops. We do have American troops stationed in Greenland for national security purposes. We have a base there. And here is J.D. Vance summing up the feelings of all Americans with regard to Greenland.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so yes, it is indeed cold as bleep in Greenland. He said, nobody told me. JD is right about that. The vice president is correct about that. I will say that I think it's bizarre that we are extending the same sort of logic to many of our allies that we have extended to our enemies. So JD Vance slammed Denmark. Now again, Greenland has like 50,000 people. If

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The Greenlanders wish to join the United States. They could hold a referendum tomorrow and join the United States. They've made clear they don't actually wish to join the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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The United States does have serious national interest in Greenland because of the Arctic channels that flow around Greenland that are now being victimized and used as bases in some ways by the Russians and the Chinese. However, slamming Denmark, like this part I don't really understand, I'll be honest with you. Here's J.D. Vance slamming Denmark.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And President Trump said, we will get Greenland, yeah, 100%. And then added, there's a good possibility we could do it without military force, but I don't take anything off the table. So war for Greenland, apparently, is still on the table. Okay. Greenland Prime Minister Jens Fredrik Nielsen pushed back and said, President Trump says the United States is getting Greenland. Let me make this clear.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump addressed that over the weekend, according to a brief phone interview he did with NBC News over the weekend. He told the network, I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts. Here was NBC's Kristen Welker reporting.

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The United States is not getting that. We don't belong to anyone else. We decide our own future. Again, I don't think that's what President Trump is actually going for. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. It would be a... large use of political capital to go get Greenland. I suppose there are some reasons to get Greenland, but expending political capital in this way, it's a choice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'm not sure it's a choice most Americans are deeply invested in. So obviously the United States does actually have I have some pretty significant national security interests in Greenland. I asked our friends over at Perplexity to spell those out. Of course, Perplexity is a sponsor of the show. By the way, I should mention here, Perplexity is such a great tool.

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They're not even paying me for this particular bump. I'm just saying this. Producer Zach went to the car dealer over the weekend, and Producer Zach got like a $10,000 discount on his car by using information that he got from Perplexity about, for example, the VIN number of the car, how long it had been on the lot, how much it was costing them to keep the car on the lot.

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Every day, he'd been there for like 200 days, and he negotiated down his car price based on information he got from Perplexity. So good for Producer Zach, a smart use of Perplexity. Anyway, I asked Perplexity, what are the United States' national security interests in Greenland? What is the U.S. 's history of protecting and defending Greenland? And here's what Perplexity says.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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Greenland holds significant strategic importance for the United States due to its location in the Arctic and its role in global security. It's situated at a critical juncture between North America and Europe, making it vital for monitoring air and sea routes. The U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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operates Pitufik Space Base, formerly called Thule Air Base, which serves as a key installation for missile detection in Arctic operations. The 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement allows the United States to establish and maintain military facilities on the island, ensuring rapid response capabilities.

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As global rivalries intensify, particularly with Russia and China, Greenland is pivotal for maintaining U.S. influence in the Arctic region, which is becoming a contested area due to climate change and emerging trade routes because a lot of the ice up there is thawing, and that means that ships can now travel up there. The United States has a long history of protecting Greenland.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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During World War II, the U.S. actually established military bases there because Denmark, of course, had been occupied by the Nazis. The 1941 Defense of Greenland Agreement allowed American forces to protect the island from German influence during the Cold War. It was a strategic outpost for us to monitor the Soviets. The U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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has tried to buy Greenland a bunch of times, all the way from 1867 to 1946, basically. So nothing new in what President Trump is trying to do, whether we take it by military force or not. You know, I'm a little skeptical.

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Well, President Trump's polling remains solid because the government continues to do better things under Trump than it would otherwise, as Doge continues to surgically cut the fat from decades of bloated government spending and corruption. Pure Talk, the cell phone company I use for business every day. They're cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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PeerTalk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. The best part? Right now you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad-free daily shows. And as always, your free leftist here is Tumblr. With Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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Switch on over to Pure Talk right now at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. That's PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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Also, if you're the owner of a growing business the way I am, imagine a hiring approach similar to speed dating, but instead of meeting potential romantic partners, you'd meet multiple qualified job candidates in a single scheduled session. Granted, No one actually likes speed dating, but people do like hiring those qualified candidates quickly.

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Wouldn't it be nice if there were an efficient format that allowed you to connect with several pre-screened interested applicants all at once, streamlining that recruitment process? Well, there's good news. There is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter. You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

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Right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Zip Intro transforms your hiring process with our streamlined approach to candidate assessment. Just select a convenient time slot. We handle everything else, finding qualified candidates, managing all the scheduling logistics on your behalf. You maintain complete control over which applicants you'd like to meet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The best part, you could be connecting with promising talent as early as tomorrow through our efficient back-to-back video call format. It's hiring made super simple. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro. Only from Zip Recruiter rated number one hiring site based on G2. Try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Zip Intro. Post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. According to a brand new CBS poll, President Trump remains at a 50% approval rating, 50% approve, 50% disapprove. When it comes to immigration, He's at $53.47, which makes sense. On the economy, he's at $48.52. On inflation, he's at $44.56. And this is the big problem for President Trump that faces President Trump right now.

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Now, why did he say that? Because according to Trump, quote, we had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. Nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It's fake news. He says, I have no idea what signal is. I don't care what signal is. I can tell you it's a witch hunt.

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And this is the thing that President Trump has to focus in on. As I've been saying for weeks at this point, the only thing that can stop the Trump train here is a sinking economy. A sinking economy stops any train. It doesn't matter who the president is. If you're the president and you have a bad economy, it really stops you in your tracks.

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Well, right now, the polling data show that the American people are pretty skittish about some of the economic plans that President Trump is making, particularly with regard to tariffs. And again, there's plenty of great stuff happening on the economic front, everything from Doge to tax cuts.

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However, these swings with regard to the economy in public opinion polling are not good for President Trump right now. That same CBS News poll that showed him at 50%, which again is a very solid number for President Trump. The question of whether Trump's policies are making you financially better off, worse off, or the same In January, 42% of people said better off. 28% of people said worse off.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

Got a ton coming up for you on today's show. It is a mega show today. President Trump throws Vladimir Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine, out of the White House after a nuclear meltdown of a press conference. The rest of the world reacts, and we examine whether there is a new Trump doctrine or whether Zelensky simply blew it. We'll get to all that first tomorrow night.

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Okay, so what is he saying? Again, he's saying the same thing. When it comes to the economy, he's going to make the deal first, and that is going to be the lever that allows for security guarantees, right? That is what he is saying. Okay, this continues. This is clip five. So a reporter asks Zelensky if he feels like the United States is on the side of Ukraine at the moment.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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And President Trump's like, what are you even asking that for? I mean, clearly we are. I'm here with him. I'm signing a rare earth minerals agreement with him, like right now.

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Okay, so again, that's Zelensky pushing. So Trump says, of course, I'm going to decide what we're going to sign an agreement. All Trump wants from this meeting is to get out of there with the rare earth minerals deal that is going to provide the lever for a broader American commitment or tacit American commitment. to the security of Ukraine. That's what this is.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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And Zelensky keeps pushing because he feels like publicly he needs to push. I don't know if he thought that he was going to get Trump to cave in the room or something, or if this is all virtue signaling for the cameras, or if he feels he needs to say this for his own people at home, or if this was all a sort of design to blow up the meeting in order to get the Europeans to step in.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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I'm not sure what Zelensky's strategy here was. All I know, it's a very, very bad strategy. So President Trump, again, being very sober about all of this, And for all the talk about how Trump was the one who was combative in this, he really was not. For 40 minutes, he sat there while Zelensky effectively attempted to negotiate a deal in the room.

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And so my view when it comes to the war in Ukraine is whatever gets us to that durable off-ramp is good. And whatever gets in the way of that durable off-ramp is bad. That's all.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And here is President Trump talking about compromise.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Now, you can see a fundamental difference between Trump and Zelensky here. Zelensky thinks that the United States is full-fledged on the side of Ukraine in terms of this negotiation, meaning they should, like Biden, just pour in the aid without any sort of end, without any sort of designs to end the war. And Trump says, listen, I got to broker a deal. I want the deal. Now.

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We'll talk about the ramifications of the meeting and how actually one of the things that the Trump administration might think about doing and President Trump had said during that campaign pretty clearly is say to Vladimir Putin, listen, we want a deal. You know we want a deal. We've been very obvious about how we want a deal. I've been giving you all sorts of props in public.

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If you don't make a deal, then we're going to ratchet up support because we can't just let you win by default, right? But that's not actually the approach that Trump is taking and that's arguable. But again, in the meeting, So far, Trump is the person who's being mature, and Zelensky is the person, as I say over and over again, you can hear him being combative. This is for 40 minutes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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You know, one of these sort of hot moments happened when one of the reporters is a guy from One America News Network. I believe this reporter happens to be dating Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, and asks Zelensky about wearing a suit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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By the way, that also happens to be the policy of the Trump administration, which is seeking an off-ramp that would, in fact, not allow Vladimir Putin to waltz into Kiev, but also acknowledges that the likelihood of Ukraine winning back Donbass and Crimea is basically zero and has been since 2014. So that was the predicate to the big meeting that was supposed to happen on Friday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Thank you. Well, there was a sartorial spat inside the Oval Office and, you know, it's kind of fun to cover that sort of stuff. But there are other things I love about working in the news industry as well. Every day I get to connect with millions of listeners, share breaking stories and work with incredible talent who are just as passionate about politics as I am.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it the way that you do. And if you own your own business. You want to hire employees who love what they do to boost the overall success of your business, plus make it a pretty great place to work. But how do you find passionate employees who are a good fit for all your roles? ZipRecruiter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address and try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. Go check them out right now. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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There's a reason we've been using it here at DailyWire for years ourselves. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. Also, let me tell you something. I never realized how bad my old mattress was until I got the Helix mattress. You know the feeling where you wake up and your back is hurting? Well, that was me a lot. Don't even get me started on the old mattress turning into a heat trap at night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Since switching on over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on my busiest days and the craziest headlines. And here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one size fits all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or you share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match for you. There's tons of great options. My option, a firmer mattress, breathable. That's what I needed. I'm sleeping better. You can do the same. Right now, Helix is offering an incredible March Madness deal. Visit helixsleep.com and get 20% off site-wide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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That's helixsleep.com for 20% off site-wide. Again, just visit helixsleep.com for this exclusive offer. It's helixsleep.com. slash Ben, get 20% off, start sleeping better today. Stop going to those big mattress stores and just lying down on the mattress and then buying whatever you've lain on for five minutes. Instead, go to helixsleep.com slash Ben, get a mattress made just for you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Okay, now back to sort of the real issue of the day. President Trump is asked about security agreements. And again, he's saying the thing over and over. He's basically offering Zelensky an off-ramp. Like here's the rare earths mineral seal, let's sign it. We're on side. That is the way we get involved. Here he is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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So on Friday, President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, was supposed to arrive in the United States and go to the White House, and he was supposed to sign a minerals deal. Now, there was an immediate conflict between what both parties wanted from this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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OK, he's right there giving Zelensky what he wants is where Zelensky should say, OK, great, Mr. President, we'll talk about this behind closed doors. And he doesn't. Right. Trump said these words, quote, we haven't committed, but we could conceivably, you know, we have security in a different form. He's giving Zelensky what he wants. He's giving him the excuse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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But Zelensky can't take the W. He can't take the W. So Zelensky keeps pushing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Okay, so again, you can see Zelensky is saying that Putin can't be trusted. This is why we need security. And again, I don't think that Zelensky is wrong about this per se, but why is he negotiating all of this? He's not going to get what he wants in the room. Okay, so President Trump has asked about NATO.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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And again, I think one of the things that the people want to attribute to Trump is that he wants to rewrite all the bargains of the world. And there are people inside the Republican Party who clearly want to do this. But I'm not sure that that is what President Trump wants. There's been a lot of talk about Trump, for example, pulling out of NATO. Some loose talk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Elon Musk suggested that over the weekend. That would be, I think, a terrible move. There's been a lot of talk about President Trump basically ripping up the idea that America guarantees the freedom of the seas and sort of conceding the Far East to China and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And we'll get into that in a little bit. But here's President Trump projecting that outright.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump, he wanted the minerals deal because, number one, he believes that the United States ought to be repaid for its investment in other countries.

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He's asked about NATO. He's asked about Poland. He's asked about the Baltics. And here's what he says.

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Daily Wire Backstage returns live for President Donald Trump's address to Congress. We are covering it all. Do not miss the exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, followed by the full address completely uninterrupted. And when he's done, we're back with a breakdown of what it all means. Watch with us tomorrow night at Daily Wire Plus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so again, this is President Trump actually saying the peace through strength thing, right? We want to be in NATO. Everybody's got to pay their pay up, pay their fair share. Nothing here is radical. Nothing here is particularly polarizing in what President Trump is saying. OK, and then Zelensky, he continues to push. This is the theme.

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The theme is that for the first 40 minutes, Zelensky pushes and Trump is pretty passive. Trump does not push back too hard. Here's Zelensky talking about Russia's intentions on the Baltics, on Poland. And by the way, he's not wrong that Russia obviously is revanchist. That Russia would love to split apart NATO by invading, say, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, if NATO weren't there.

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This has been a longstanding belief of President Trump's that when we get involved in foreign policy, there ought to be sort of a clear return to the United States, whether we're talking about defending Kuwait from Saddam Hussein or whether we're talking about paying to defend Ukraine from Russia. There should be some sort of return to the American taxpayer.

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But Trump just committed to a continued NATO funding in those places. Here's Zelensky.

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You know, President Trump could fire back on him right there. You could say, well, that's not true. You know, why would American soldiers have to fight in the Baltics? He doesn't fight back on this because President Trump is actually not talking about surrendering all of Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin, like all of his critics claim that he is.

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And then Trump is asked about why he has not said mean words about Putin. And this is Trump's perspective. If I say mean words about Putin, does that get us to a deal or does it not get us to a deal? Here's President Trump.

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Again, Trump is just saying, I want to get to a deal, right? Okay, now the meeting could have ended any time in here. Here's where it started to go sideways, like really sideways. And again, it's very tense. You can see the tension. Zelensky's tense. He's leaning toward Trump almost aggressively throughout this meeting. Trump's kind of sitting back, kind of taking it like an adult.

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And the adult in the room was Trump in this meeting. It just, that is the reality. Okay, so J.D. Vance jumps in. So J.D. hasn't said anything this entire time. And the vice president of the United States is sitting there. Now, in my belief, the vice president of the United States should have been attempting to facilitate the end of this meeting, okay?

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Otherwise, in President Trump's beliefs, we are getting screwed. That has been a longstanding Trumpian position. But there is something else going on here. And this was made clear during the press conference. President Trump always saw the economic minerals deal as a sort of foot in the door to prevent a Russian invasion.

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Everything that needs to be said has now been said. He should have, and Trump should have, and everybody should, and Zelensky should have. It would have been everybody's interest to say, okay, guys, now we've taken 45 minutes of questions. We're going to go in the back room. We're going to talk, and then we're going to do a signing ceremony, right? So here's what happens.

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Vance decides he needs to jump in and he needs to defend President Trump. Again, I know this is Vice President Vance's sort of typical role as bulldog for Trump. I get it. That's fine. But it does set off a conflagration. So here is Vance. And again, what he says right here is not particularly controversial. But Zelensky decides that he is going to go after Vance.

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Now, the reality is that whatever relationships Zelensky has with Trump, his relationship with Vance is terrible. His relationship with Vance is terrible because Vance has openly said he does not care if Russia just eats up Ukraine, just doesn't care.

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Because Vance associates with a number of public figures who say some of the wildest things about Ukraine it is possible to say and some of the most pro-Putin things it is possible to say. And I'm sure Zelensky knows this. And so Zelensky takes offense, I think, at the fact that he's in the room with Vance. And that's Zelensky's fault. It is. But Vance then escalates. So you'll see.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We're going to break this down. This is the critical clip from the meeting. It's several minutes. We're going to stop and start it so we can analyze what exactly happens here. Here is Vice President Vance jumping in to defend President Trump over the accusation that somehow because he wants to negotiate an end to the war, that this makes him pro-Putin.

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Can I ask you? OK, stop it right there for a second. OK, so so what Van says there is totally inarguable. Okay, the vice president, he doesn't think he's about to get into a fight with Zelensky. Zelensky jumps in and starts fighting with Vance. Again, there's some people who think that Vance set up, I don't think that's right.

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If you hear what vice president Vance says right there, not only does he rip on Biden, but he literally says the words, Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. Now there's been controversy for two weeks over whether this administration is willing to admit that Putin started the war.

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Because if the United States has workers in Ukraine who are, for example, mining rare earths minerals, And then the Russians invade. The United States is immediately dragged in. And President Trump is not wrong about this.

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That is Vance himself saying that Putin invaded the country and destroyed a large chunk of it. So this is not Vance attempting to start a firefight. Zelensky jumps in and starts arguing with Vance. And I'm not sure what was going through Zelensky's head right here, honestly. It could be that he was planning some sort of conflagration to get European support.

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Again, it could be that he's trying to signal to the folks back home. It could be he just doesn't like J.D. Vance. But this thing breaks into a wild nuclear meltdown here. Here is Zelensky going after Vance.

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Pause it right here. Okay, so you'll hear Vance's response. So Vance's first sentence in response to Zelensky is the correct response. And that should be the end of the meeting. He should have said, you know, President Zelensky, I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that will actually end this war properly. We're going to have these discussions behind closed door.

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In fact, for centuries, this has been a Western way of making war, is that if there is in fact the British East India Company that gets involved in trade in a far-flung place, and then they are attacked by the local government, That does actually dredge up the problem of perhaps the British Empire getting directly militarily involved.

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Instead, Vice President Vance takes the opportunity to throw two grenades. One is directed at President Trump and one is directed at Zelensky. The one that is clearly directed at President Trump is that he mentions Zelensky as you will see, Zelensky going to Pennsylvania in the final days of the campaign and walking around Pennsylvania with Josh Shapiro. That is clearly directed at Trump.

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Okay, the reason he is mentioning that is to piss Trump off because that is like a red flag in front of a bull. If you mention that Zelensky, which again, it was an idiot move, a foolish move, I commented on the time, that Zelensky went to Pennsylvania and campaigned with Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who was campaigning for Kamala Harris in the last stages of the campaign.

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If you mention that in front of Trump, Trump is going to get enraged. He's also going to get enraged because Vance says out loud what Trump has probably been thinking. Trump's like, I've been contained this whole time. And Vance says, you're being really, really disrespectful. If you say to Trump, this man is being disrespectful and loved Joe Biden, that is like a red flag in front of a bull.

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Meanwhile, he then says to Zelensky, a thing that no leader can sit there and hear, which is you're losing the war. You're having to forcibly conscript people, which is an accusation about the inhumanity of the Ukrainian regime that

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Frankly, Vance didn't use with regard to, say, Vladimir Putin, who has kidnapped apparently tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and then taken them back to Russia for russification and all of this. So you can hear this is this is the part. So Zelensky started it. And then J.D. just pours the fuel on the fire, like really pours the fuel on the fire. Here we go.

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And so you don't want to screw with the British East India Company. That is almost how President Trump is seeing the rare earth minerals deal. That is what he's doing right there. Meanwhile, Zelensky is saying, I can't go back to my people and say that I signed a minerals deal or anything else without security guarantees.

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If the final settlement does not involve actual explicit security guarantees, I can't actually go back to my people with that. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I've also been suggesting for years that the United States might have to go over Zelensky's head in order to negotiate the end of this war and then cram it down on him.

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Okay, so Zelensky is so obviously spoiling for a fight. He's so obviously spoiling for a fight. And J.D. pushes back on him in a way that is designed to blow up the entire thing. The people who wanted the fight in this meeting are Zelensky on the one side, who clearly was spoiling for a fight from pretty much the first moment,

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And then J.D., when he gets his chance, the vice president of the United States, when he gets his chance, he immediately throws two grenades again, one designed to piss off Trump and one designed to piss off Zelensky. And Zelensky, who's been spoiling for a fight the whole time, jumps on that grenade with his chest. I mean, jumps on that grenade.

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And then he gets into a fight with Trump in the Oval Office. And then Trump, predictably, the fallout is that President Trump says, well, we don't get out. Trump throws him out of the Oval Office. And then he releases a statement on Truth Social, quote, We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today.

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Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It's amazing what comes out through emotion. I've determined that President Zelensky is not ready for peace if America is involved because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiation. I don't want advantage. I want peace.

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He disrespected the United States of America and its cherished global office. He can come back when he is ready for peace. OK, so what is the actual impact of all of that? Now, again, the reality is that the end of the war, as I say, from the very beginning, the end of the war is Russia ends up with control of Donbass and Crimea. Security guarantees are issued by Europe.

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There's some tacit American support of those security guarantees in all likelihood. Whatever accelerates the process toward that is good. Whatever decelerates the progress toward that is bad. Did this whole tete-a-tete accelerate the progress toward that? So many things can be true at once. One, I think Trump was the adult in the room pretty much his entire time.

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Two, Zelensky came in spoiling for a fight. And as we'll examine in just a moment, that's probably because he was talking with many of the wrong people in the United States and also possibly because he's strategizing for European support. Three, Vice President Vance definitely escalated this. You can hear it in the exchange.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is Zelensky who is pushing Trump and Vance, but it is Vance who decides to get incredibly personal. And I think that that may have something to do with Vance's own views on foreign policy, which again, I don't know how well those match up with President Trump's generalized worldview on foreign policy, even if they cross over with regard to their perspectives on Zelensky.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Zelensky then made the swores. Again, this is either brutal incompetence by Zelensky or an attempt to essentially drive support for Ukraine from the Europeans via hatred of Trump. It may be that could easily be that. So Zelensky goes on Brett Baier that same evening. And here is Zelensky over and over and over refusing to apologize to the president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They might have to, the United States, might have to go to Russia and say, listen, we know the outline of the deal. You may not like it. We may not like it. Zelensky may not like it. But again, outline of the deal, Donbass and Crimea remain in Russian hands. There are, in fact, security guarantees to the Ukrainians, and that's the best it's going to get.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So did any of this like change the underlying dynamics of the deal? Maybe not. But the perceptions from other players, say Russia and China, are going to matter. So Russia put out a statement saying that the United States' sudden shift in foreign policy, quote, largely aligns with its own position.

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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quote, the new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision. There's a long way to go because a lot of damage has been done to the whole complex of bilateral relations.

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But if the political will of the two leaders, President Putin and President Trump is maintained, this path could be quick and successful. And of course, they then insulted Vladimir Zelensky throughout all of this. So.

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One of the big questions that we're going to have to answer here is whether this meeting is symptomatic of a broader American foreign policy shift or whether it is reflective of bad political calculations by Vladimir Zelensky, whether it is reflective of specific designs in Ukraine that doesn't have implications for, say, NATO or the Far East.

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That is the big question that comes out of all of this. And we'll get to that in just one moment. First, tomorrow night, folks, 9 p.m. Eastern, President Donald Trump addresses Congress. A moment this big demands coverage like never before. That's exactly what we are bringing you. For the first time ever, Matt Walsh and I will be live from D.C. at the president's speech as history unfolds.

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It all starts with our exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire, plus setting the stage for President Trump's address. Then watch Trump's speech with us live as we bring you the kind of real-time analysis you won't get anywhere else. And don't go anywhere after. It's backstage live, breaking down every major moment in real time. This is the coverage you won't find on Legacy Media.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Watch it all exclusively at Daily Wire Plus. Okay, so the Republican reaction to this was to condemn Zelensky quite properly. So Lindsey Graham, there's no bigger backer in Congress of the Ukraine involvement by the Americans than Senator Lindsey Graham. He said that Zelensky probably should resign over all of this because he's now blown out his level of support with Americans.

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OK, so entering this meeting, all President Trump wanted was a grip and grin. All he wanted was for Zelensky to show up and Trump would shake his hand and there would be a sort of implicit understanding that almost became explicit during this meeting. that the rare earth minerals deal was a sort of trigger force for the United States providing security guarantees.

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So Speaker of the House Mike Johnson repeated that general sentiment, suggesting that this is on CNN as well as NBC, that we know Vladimir Putin is going to be trusted. We're not abandoning Ukraine. But Zelensky is a disaster area.

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OK, so again, this has been the sort of general Republican response to all of this. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said something similar. He said, listen, we're not trying to undermine Ukraine. We're trying to get to a negotiated end here. And, you know, you can preen and you can posture, but the negotiated end kind of looks the same no matter how you slice it.

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Howard Lutnick, who's the Commerce Secretary, repeated this. He says, listen, Zelensky came in here and wanted to make a make-believe bargain that wasn't on the table. What was he doing?

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And then Scott Besant, who's the Treasury Secretary, said something similar. He says, listen, the whole point of getting to an economic deal is to get to a peace deal. I mean, this is like the, this is what Trump was saying in the room. Again, Trump was the adult.

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And Trump comes very close to saying that several times in the actual meetings. Zelensky comes in with another agenda. And as we'll see, it's probably because he was prepped by Democrats, apparently. He comes in and he wants President Trump in the room to say that he is going to give a security guarantee, a thing that President Trump does not want to do.

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And this is right, by the way. Again, this is not just from the United States. The British ambassador to the United States, again, Impedal Mandelson, he said that that was the whole point. The whole point of the rare earth mineral deal was to set up the possibility of a peace deal that would then include some security guarantees.

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OK, by the way, you know who agrees with all this? Donald Trump. Donald Trump agrees with all this. So yesterday, President Trump went to Truth Social. He posted a quote from some dude named Michael McKeown, who I've never heard of. And here is the quote he posted, quote, Now Zelensky will have no choice but to back down and accept Trump's terms. But here's the genius part.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Trump is actually protecting Ukraine without dragging the U.S. into war by negotiating a mineral drill. Trump ensures that Americans will be involved in Ukraine's mining industry. This prevents Russia from launching an invasion because attacking Ukraine would mean endangering American lives, something that would force the US to respond. Trump played both sides like a master chess player.

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In the end, Zelensky will have no choice but to concede because without US support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia. And once US companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences. Don't underestimate Donald Trump. In this game of chess, he's 10 moves ahead of everyone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so that's what Trump was trying to do. Trump was trying to give Zelensky the W and Zelensky wouldn't take the W. So why did this go so wrong? Well, one reason apparently is because according to Michael Goodwin writing at the New York Post, Zelensky decided that he was going to take his hints and his advisory opinions from Democrats

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Quote, before meeting President Trump, Zelensky met with anti-Trump Democrats who advised him to reject the terms of the mineral deal the president was offering, according to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Quote, just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington.

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Because again, from President Trump's perspective, the United States should not have to provide that security guarantee. Basically, Europe should have to provide that security guarantee. So that is the setup right here. Now, beyond that, there's personal dislike between these two leaders. So Vladimir Zelensky does not like President Trump. He's angry at President Trump.

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He confirmed the Ukrainian people will not support a thick peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine. The meeting, as the world now knows, went quickly off the rails and ended with Trump angrily ejecting the, quote, arrogant ingrate from the White House. But apparently, again, the goal here for Democrats was to basically sink the deal.

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So Chris Murphy, who had advised Zelensky before the meeting, again, he is a hardcore Democrat who'd love to run for president, senator from Connecticut. Here he was now suggesting that Trump was a Putin acolyte for the failure of the meeting. So in other words, Murphy sent Zelensky to get absolutely creamed in that meeting. And then he turns around and says that Trump is working for Putin.

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So Murphy set this whole thing up to fail, presumably, or at least he was involved in it. Okay, so what is the actual outcome of all of this? Well, first of all, you have the idiot protesters. So a bunch of protesters showed up. The Vance family was supposed to go skiing. And people showed up for miles around to yell at J.D. Vance. They had to go to secure locations. This kind of stuff is gross.

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Really, really gross. Here's what that looked like.

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Yeah, you can hear people screaming at various cars. They're just trying to go skiing for the weekend. So that's just absolutely delightful. What are the actual impacts from all of this? Well, on the one hand, it could be that Europe finally steps up and Trump actually gets what he wants out of this. That Europe decides that they are going to actually fill the gap.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the UK and France said they would lead a European effort to forge a Ukraine peace plan to present to President Trump as they sought to patch up differences between Kiev and Washington following Friday's White House clash.

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted nearly 20 allies in London on Sunday, said the progress had been made in building a coalition of the willing, which would commit military assets, including troops on the ground, to secure any eventual peace. He said more countries would need to come on board if Europe is to build a force that would actually deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.

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Well, I mean, that's what Trump has been calling for all the way. And it's very weird to hear the Europeans suddenly doing the stuff that Trump actually wants them to do. Like, for example, spend on defense and commit to defending their own continent. Here is Ursula von der Leyen, she's the head of the EU, suggesting, weirdly enough, peace through strength.

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He believes that President Trump and Vice President Vance do not like him, that they've said nasty things about him, which is true, that they have said things that are untrue about the Ukraine-Russia war in terms of casting moral aspersions at Ukraine that are unearned while going easy on Vladimir Putin. There's a case to be made that that's true as well.

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Now, again, maybe this was Zelensky's play. Maybe Zelensky's play was alienate Trump, knowing that Trump doesn't like him very much, and then play up to the Europeans and get what you want from the Europeans. There's some problems with that, namely that the United States' materiel is way better than the Europeans' materiel.

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And the other problem, of course, is can you trust the Europeans, given the fact that the Europeans have a long history of being absolute suckers when it comes to being taken in by foreign dictators? I mean, it is worth noting at this point that during this war, during this actual honest-to-God war, EU imports of Russian oil surpassed the financial aid they sent to Ukraine.

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So in other words, they paid the Russians more than they sent to the Ukrainians, which just shows you their levels of commitment. But perhaps reality is starting to set in for the Europeans. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, he said, of course, Europe should step up. It's bizarre for Europe to ask the United States to be the one that actually fills the gap.

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Ladies and gentlemen, there's a paradox and someone has already overlooked it.

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Start relying on yourself. Not in isolation, but with full awareness of your own potential. Europe, if there's something we lack today, it's not economic or demographic power, but the belief that we're truly a global force. Now, again, there's a reason why President Trump likes the Polish, because again, they're saying the correct thing right here.

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Even the UK's Keir Starmer, of course, is a left-wing socialist type. He says, we'll put boots on the ground and in the air to preserve any peace deal.

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The Trump-Vance case is Zelensky is being intransigent because he wants my moral condemnation, but moral condemnation don't get the job done. The thing that gets the job done is whatever gets us to that off-ramp. So if that means that we have to sort of massage Putin in public relations in order to get him to the table, then we'll do that. That is another one of these conflicts that's happening.

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Okay, so again, Trump seems to be getting what he wants here. Europe steps up. They do the heavy lifting. Probably Zelensky has to come back and sign some sort of deal with the United States. And the deal gets cut, in which case, good job. Everybody goes home happy. The reason there's a lot of heartburn that is happening around this meeting is not really to do with Ukraine.

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It really isn't to do with Ukraine. The question is whether there is a resetting of the world order that is happening right now. Now, a reset from the sort of bizarre vision of the Obama-Biden era. would certainly be in order because the leading from behind, America should not actually engage in peace through strength.

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The United States should essentially allow America's enemies to walk all over America's friends and then every so often throw some half-hearted support to America's friends that we would bloviate on a sort of Wilsonian moral level without actually filling that gap. That is ending. And the era of sort of hard power is returning.

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Okay, so before I get to the actual nuclear meltdown of a press conference, and we're going to go through the whole press conference because I think that it is a disservice to all involved for us to simply focus on the moment where everything went south. This is a long press conference. It was a nearly 50-minute press conference.

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But the question really is whether the Trump administration, what the Trump doctrine is. Now, I've said before on this show, because President Trump told me on the show that the Trump doctrine is peace through strength, that America stronger in the world is better, that America with strong allies is, in fact, better.

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But there's an open question because it turns out that there are members of the Trump administration who don't necessarily believe all of that. So The Wall Street Journal has an editorial this morning. saying. With his first weeks back in office, especially after Friday's Oval Office brawling with Ukraine's president, it's clear President Trump has designs for a new world order.

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Perhaps he could share this vision with the country when he addresses Congress on Tuesday. The conventional view of Mr. Trump is that he's above all transactional. He wants deals at home and abroad that he can sell as great successes. But the way his second term is unfolding, this may undersell his ambition. Mr. Trump's strategy seems to be moving toward that of Tucker Carlson and J.D.

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Vance, who view America as in decline and no longer able to lead or defend the West. Now, that is the question, right? That's the question. The question is whether he is interested in hammering traditional U.S. friends like Canada and Mexico in violation of his own USMCA trade deal or whether he is interested in sort of ceding control of Taiwan to China. He says Trump hasn't articulated this.

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This is the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Trump hasn't articulated this. Some of the intellectuals surrounding him have. Elbridge Colby, nominated for the chief strategy post of the Pentagon, has argued the U.S. must leave Europe and the Middle East to their own devices to focus on the Asia-Pacific. But Colby has also said South Korea might have to fend for itself.

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And he said in a letter to us last year, quote, Taiwan isn't itself of existential importance to America. Mr. Vance is the most vigorous promoter of the abandon Ukraine strategy, arguing the war with Russia is little more than an ethnic dispute. Ross Douthat of The New York Times. who is sort of the clarifier for J.D.

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Vance, says the vice president and president are merely, quote, stripping away foreign policy illusions. So this is the question. The question is whether what we are looking at is America withdrawing from the world, ceding the Far East to China, allowing America's allies to basically run on their own in those areas.

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And, by the way, Vladimir Zelensky, people forget this because, of course, he's been a very famous world leader since the outbreak of the 2022 war. Zelensky was an actor. He's an egomaniac. Zelensky likes being on camera. He made his money on camera. There's all sorts of footage of him wandering around the internet when he was a comedian doing bizarre things, body humor kind of stuff.

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And if they get invaded or taken over, Taiwan, South Korea, well, that's their business. Whether Eastern Europe will be left open to the predations of the Russians, whether the Middle East will basically be left up for grabs between Turkey, Iran, Saudi, the Israelis, and what that will look like. What does it look like in America withdrawing from the world?

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So that's sort of the open question after the Trump-Ukraine meeting. Is this symptomatic of a broader foreign policy shift away from America being the world's hegemonic leader and toward the idea that we're going to retreat from the world behind our oceans and then assume that everything will be okay? Now, I don't know that that's the case.

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In fact, I think that's probably not the case because the truth is there are a lot of conflicting signals. It seems to me that if you look at the Russia-Ukraine situation in isolation, what you are seeing is President Trump trying to get to a deal through any means that he can. I may not agree with the means, by the way.

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I may think that the best approach to Vladimir Putin is to say, listen, you can see we're making every possible signal. We're saying it openly. We want a deal. We want to get to a deal. That deal will keep you, Donbass, and Crimea. That deal will not allow you to invade the rest of Ukraine. That's the deal. And if we don't get that deal, then we're going to pour resources into Ukraine.

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We're going to hit you so hard. Because again, that is how Trump typically negotiates. So it's kind of weird he's not doing that here. Typically, the way that Trump negotiates is Colombia does something we don't like. We threaten to increase our tariffs on Colombia to 50% and the next day they cave. President Trump has no problem throwing his weight around.

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And the sort of strange notion that we have to throw our weight around with Ukraine predominantly and that Russia is actually the conciliatory party here. What are the signs of Russian conciliation? If we saw those, I might be on board with that. I'm waiting to see those still. It seems to me that what actually happened in terms of real politique is that Russia now feels emboldened.

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If you're Vladimir Putin, don't you pour troops across that border as soon as possible? You now know that Zelensky and Trump don't get along, that the United States is not fond of Zelensky. They don't like how he's handling it, that the Europeans, for all of their big talk, aren't going to do much In the moment, wouldn't you try to push as hard as you can?

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Because that is the Russian strategy, is to push where there's mush. I mean, the war may have been lengthened by this meeting, not shortened by this meeting. I don't know. We'll see how it works out. But the real question is overall American approach toward foreign policy. So I want to talk for a second about why, in general, America's involvement in the world matters for America.

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Here's some stuff that you're not going to hear me say. I'm not going to talk about democracy. I'm not going to talk about Wilsonian values. I'm not going to talk about the spreading of free speech and the blessings of liberty. All that stuff is super nice. It's great. If we can get it, terrific. But that is not at the center of America's interest.

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You know what's at the center of America's interest? A thriving America. That's what the center of America's interest is. This is the difference between... quote-unquote neocons, people who in the 2000s were suggesting we needed to spread democracy all over the world, and people who are real politic aficionados. Let's be real. After the Iraq War, everybody is now in the real politic category.

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There are very few Wilsonian thinkers who think that it's the job of the United States to spread democracy everywhere in the world. That rhetoric has been blown up. It's why it was so irritating when Joe Biden used to use it, because it was stupid. But let's be clear. America's national interest does, in fact, rely on a strong America abroad. Because here's the thing.

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With us being the world's hegemon comes enormous economic benefits to the American people. So, for example, if you think that we can continue to fund our unbelievably onerous welfare state via debt, if we are not the leading power on Earth, you got another thing coming. That is not the way this works. We sell our debt, trillions of dollars of debt every single year abroad.

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That's who Zelensky is. He's quite performative, like very performative. And guess what? So is President Trump. And so, as it turns out, is Vice President Vance. So that's the setup. Okay, the powder keg is right there. Now, it didn't have to go sideways. It didn't.

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The question is, why does the rest of the world buy American debt? And there are several reasons. One, they think that we'll repay them. And this has several elements. One, we are economically strong. Well, part of America's economic strength is not in fact autarky, overpriced products. One of America's economic strengths is that we are not a highly regulated society, unlike much of Europe.

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Our tax structure is better than that of Europe in many ways, particularly for business. We are more globally competitive. Our economic strength relies, yes, on globalization. I know that that word has taken on weird connotations. All that means is that when we trade with other countries, that's actually typically very good for the United States. It makes better products and services at a

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Our economic strength is the reason that people buy our debt, because they figure we're the best bet on the block. Two, foreign policy strength, which undergirds that economic strength. This is something people don't like to talk about, but the reality is that free trade, for example, isn't something that just randomly happens.

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It happens because the United States Navy is guarding all the shipping lanes on planet Earth. It is the United States that ensures the Straits of Malacca, where a huge percentage of world trade goes, is open. The reason that there are so many countries that are willing to buy our debt is because the United States is involved with those countries in ways that include security.

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In fact, as we'll talk about in a moment, one of the reasons that the United States dollar is the world's global reserve currency is because of our foreign policy strength. And then finally, lack of viable alternatives. Because we occupy so much space on planet Earth, that means there is no alternative to investing in the United States. What are you going to invest in China?

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China's a debt-driven society. You're going to go invest in the EU? The EU is the most non-innovative society in the developed world by far. Hey, second. Why does the rest of the world buy American debt? Because they want fungible assets that translate into dollars. So, for example, foreign banks will buy American bonds. Why do they buy American bonds? That's debt.

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Zelensky could have come in, could have done the grip and grin, could have gotten the win, could have walked out, and that would have been enough. But Zelensky really blows it. I mean, he really, really blows it here. I will say, of the three people in the room, the adult in the room is Trump. By far, it's not close. Zelensky comes in. He's very aggressive. He is, in fact, rude to President Trump.

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Because they can then easily exchange those bonds for dollars. And people need dollars because dollars are the world's reserve currency. What does that mean that dollars are the world's reserve currency? You hear that all the time. It's a huge thing that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. That means...

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An enormous percentage of trade all around the world, not involving the United States, happens via the dollar. So, for example, if, for example, the Indians want to trade with the Chinese, they both translate to dollars. They don't just go rupee to yuan. Instead, they both translate to dollars. It's true all over the world.

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If you want to trade a euro for a ruble for decades until the current sanctions, both the EU... and Russia would translate that into dollars and then trade with each other using dollars. So banks around the world will exchange these foreign currency into dollars and then they'll trade those dollars for other forms of dollars, other currency.

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So according to the Brookings Institute, 54% of all global trade invoices are done purely in dollars. And then even the ones that are not done in dollars, The foreign exchange happens in dollars. 88% of all foreign exchange transactions happens in dollars. And there you are talking about tens of trillions of dollars every single year.

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And this has huge benefits for the United States because when people buy our debt, because they want access to the dollar, it funds our welfare state. Where do you think, who's paying for that? Ain't you, ain't taxpayers, it's debt. It injects capital into our markets. If there's lots of dollars wandering around abroad, those dollars have to go somewhere.

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And it turns out a lot of those dollars go into our capital markets, our stock market. It also, because we have such enormous leverage in global markets, allows us to use economic weaponry like sanctions against Iran or to increase tariffs against our enemies. It gives us leverage in foreign policy. So what keeps the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency?

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Well, there are a few factors. One, stability of the currency, and that requires stability in the country. That means economic growth in the United States. Two, availability of the dollars, right? If the United States is really stable, but we trade with a currency you can't get elsewhere, no one's going to use that as a reserve currency.

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So that means that trade, that means that global involvement matters an awful lot. Now, here's an example. The reason the U.S. originally became the world's reserve currency is because in 1971, the U.S. ended something called the Bretton Woods Agreement.

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The Bretton Woods Agreement was an agreement that was signed in 1944, very end of World War II, in which the United States basically – we pegged our currency to gold, to the price of gold, and then all other currency pegged themselves to the United States dollars. In 1950s and 1960s, the United States wildly overspent.

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We spent way too much money on our welfare programs and we started to bankrupt ourselves. So what happened is massive gold outflows. What people were doing is they were showing up at the central banks in the United States and they were saying, we want to trade our U.S. dollars for gold. And so Nixon said, we're not going to be dependent on gold anymore. We stopped pegging the U.S. dollar to gold.

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So that should have completely debased the dollar, right? Because now what is it pegged to? Well, instead, Nixon pegged it to the full faith and credit of the United States, right? Look at your dollar bill. That's essentially what it says. So how did we ensure that people would trust the dollar? Well, one of the ways is we created something called the petrodollar system.

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So we went to Saudi Arabia, which is at the time with OPEC, the dominant oil trading firm on planet Earth. And we said that they should only use dollars for transactions involving oil. So if you wanted to buy oil from Saudi, you couldn't use a ruble. You couldn't use a yuan. You had to use a dollar. What did Saudi get in exchange?

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We would provide military protection, economic aid, and security guarantees to Saudi. So again, foreign policy matters an awful lot for domestic economic policy, for how we spend, for the value of the dollar. What factors undermine the dollar as the world's reserve currency? Well, number one, foreign policy weakness. If we retreat... then it turns out people don't want dollars as much.

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He's a little rude to J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance... I do not think acquits himself well in this particular exchange. I know there are people on the right who think that J.D. Vance handled himself beautifully here. I think that J.D.

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They do not see us as a good bet. They also are going to move away from the dollar and start embracing more local forms of currency. Every time we use economic weaponry, for example, its effects diminish. So this is why peace through strength matters. Peace through strength is a deterrent. You don't want to have to use economic or military weaponry.

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You spend on your military, so no one wants to screw with you. And then you don't have to, for example, levy enormous sanctions on the Russians, right? If we had had a peace through strength policy before Russia invaded Ukraine, then Russia wouldn't invade in Ukraine. And then we wouldn't have had to put giant sanctions on them.

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And then the Russians wouldn't have moved into a full-on satrapy relationship with the Chinese. And then they wouldn't have moved away from the dollar, which has led to a broader de-dollarization. Other factors, domestic overspending. If we spend too much money on our welfare programs, this makes us way more dependent on foreign purchases of our debt.

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If we withdraw from world markets in trade, that makes dollars way less available. And if there is chaos in the markets in general, If, for example, the free trade lanes start to break up, if the US Navy retreats, there is now pressure for regional trading blocks to stop using the dollar as the reserve currency. So what would actually happen if we lose that status?

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Why is all this important to you? One, massive increase in borrowing costs. So the national debt, we can no longer pay that off. We can no longer sell more of it. That means radically increased taxes at home or radically increased inflation or both. Two, currency depreciation and inflation. Because if less people are buying the dollar globally, the price of the dollar goes down.

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If there's less demand and the supply remains the same, the price of the dollar goes down. So that means all your prices go up. It means less foreign investment in U.S. financial markets. So your stock prices drop as well. The availability of capital to start businesses drops pretty dramatically as well. And of course, we lose our ability to use economics as leverage.

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Vance actually threw a couple of hand grenades into the middle of the conversation because there may in fact be some foreign policy differences between Vance's view of the United States in the world and Trump's view of the United States in the world. That may be emerging. It's kind of an interesting conversation. We'll save for a little later in the show. What are the ramifications of all of this?

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I can no longer do sanctions because obviously if you're trying to cut somebody off from the use of the dollar and they're not using the dollar anymore, no matter. So all this is materializing in real time. As the United States retreats from the world, as the United States loses its relative power, it's not absolute power, it's relative power. As that happens, things start to get worse.

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Here is a chart of the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency. And as you can see, it's from the IMF. As you can see, the US dollar share of foreign reserves has dropped from somewhere around 72% in 2000, all the way down to, if you're adjusting for interest rates and exchange rates, all the way down to about 56%.

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That is a massive decrease in the US dollar as a share of foreign reserves. That is a problem. It's something that we should be looking to fix. The only way to fix that is with productivity at home, a strong and healthy market here at home. cuts to our national debt, cuts to our welfare state. And yes, a continued presence abroad that ensures a stable world and global situation.

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Again, that is not for the good of other countries. That is for the good of you. That is the good for me. That is good for American citizens. At no point during this little disquisition have I mentioned the following words, democracy, liberalism, free speech, sexual orientation. I've not mentioned any of those things.

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And when you're talking about clear, real policy interests, that is why it matters how the United States orients itself to the world.

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And if China goes after Taiwan or goes after the Taiwan Straits, that's going to have massive knock-on effects for American citizens, not just in terms of the semiconductors at TSMC, but in terms of the breakup of the global trade system, of the free market, of American power and its perception abroad. And yeah, that's going to cost you. It's going to cost all of us.

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It doesn't require an invasion of the United States. We have big oceans, thank God. In order for the United States to suffer, because the United States, it turns out that when you dismantle a global hegemon like the United States, that doesn't tend to be amazing for the global hegemon. Meanwhile, as it turns out, other things were happening on planet Earth that were not important at all.

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That would be the Oscars last night. So this may be the first you heard of the Oscars because no one watched any of the movies. We reviewed all of them on Friday, and it turns out the only two that did any box office at all were Wicked and Dune Part 2, and neither one really did particularly well last night.

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The Oscars itself was semi-apolitical except for one bizarre statement in support of Hamas that happened when a documentary that was all about the evils of the Israelis, you know, like a year and not even a year and a half after the mass murder of Jews on October 7th and the continued holding of hostages in the Gaza Strip.

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Which direction does the world go after this blow up of a meeting? And now I want to get into the actual meeting. So as you can see, the interpersonal dynamics are already set from the very beginning for things to be pretty contentious. When Vladimir Zelensky shows up at the White House, he is wearing a sort of military jumpsuit.

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These schmucks got up, a person named Basil Adra, Rachel Jor, Hamdan Balal, and Yuval Abraham. It's not too hard, by the way, to find a left-wing Jew to join along with people who wish to slaughter Jews in order to rip on Israel. Actually, not all that difficult a task.

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So there's a movie, a documentary called No Other Land, which earned approximately 128th of Am I Racist, I believe, at the box office. And these guys got up to talk about how Israel was the problem in the Middle East, you know, the week after Palestinians held a giant ceremony celebrating the strangulation murder of two toddlers before returning their dead bodies to the Israelis.

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But, you know, Hollywood's going to be Hollywood.

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These people are high on their own supply. I don't need to listen to this schmuck anymore. Honest to God. Just disgusting. Truly disgusting. Get up there and stand for Hamas. Let's be real about this. The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists. That's what they literally do. Hamas is a dominant force inside the West Bank. Hamas continues to occupy the Gaza Strip.

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The Palestinians are by and large supportive of terrorism against Israelis and wish to exterminate the state of Israel. The reason that there is a quote-unquote military occupation of these areas and not domestic home rule by the PA is because every time Israel attempts to withdraw from these areas, terrorists take them over and use them as bases for terrorist attacks.

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The reason for checkpoints is because of terrorist attacks. The reason that Israel has to maintain a military presence in these areas and put its own people in harm's way is because of Palestinian terrorism and exterminationist hatred for Jews.

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So yeah, for sure, you definitely should give a best documentary award to this sort of propaganda on behalf of terrorism in the year and a half after the worst terrorist attack on Jews since World War II. It's just vile stuff, but you know, leave it to the Academy. Okay, meanwhile, there were some good things that happened during the show. I think the best moment came when Kieran Culkin,

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And now this has been a sort of bugaboo for many people on the right for a long time. Zelensky wears what Trump has called a costume. Why doesn't he wear a suit? Now, would it have behooved Zelensky to wear a suit for Trump? Absolutely. What's the downside?

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was given an award for a movie called A Real Pain. He won Best Supporting Actor. And his speech was really, really charming. He basically suggested that he get his wife pregnant for the fourth time. It was very funny.

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That's great. That's charming and wonderful and hilarious and good for Kieran Culkin. Seriously, like the best thing I've seen at the Oscars in years is that particular moment. And then there are some low moments. Like for example, every prostitute in America has to be thanked. So the movie that won Best Picture is Anora.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Anora is the story of a sex worker, which means a prostitute, who cynically marries a half-moron, 18-year-old Russian oligarch son. And then it turns out that the romance doesn't exactly work and she's sad. That's the whole movie. Hope you enjoyed it. Well, the guy who won best director and best picture for it was a guy named Sean Baker, and he felt the necessity to thank the prostitutes.

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Let's do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Deep respect. Deep respect for people who sell their body for money. The whole movie, by the way, is a repudiation of that. The reason she's sad at the end is because she has to go back to being a sex worker, and that sucks. It is amazing to me how people in Hollywood will make movies with very clear conservative messages at the end, and they don't even realize the movie they just made.

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I understand that Zelensky is trying to keep his country's spirits up, but it seems to me that if he had shown up in a suit, had a great meeting with Trump and walked out, that would have been a pretty good boost for the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. Is it really more important that he shows up in the jumpsuit as some sort of slap in the face at Trump?

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Mikey Madison won Best Actress over, apparently, Demi Moore. So I guess that the plot of the Oscars was just the plot of The Substance. where the young, better-looking young woman apparently wins the Oscar over the older woman. Whoops. Anyway, here is Mikey Madison also thanking the prostitutes of America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's true. There is no more incredible experience than hanging out with the prostitutes. Okay, also, Daryl Hannah showed up to show support for Ukraine. Now, I do find it hilarious that Hollywood has decided that this is the same Hollywood that will stand for Hamas, will also show support for Ukraine, which is interesting.

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I have a feeling it has less to do with their support of Ukraine than the fact that Trump does not sufficiently support Ukraine in their view. It's all oppositional. Here is Daryl Hannah doing her routine. Okay, well, you saved Ukraine. Great job. Also, Adrian Brody won Best Actor for, again, playing a veteran of the Holocaust.

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So he played a very similar part when he won for The Pianist, and now he won again for The Brutalist. And I have to say, it is pretty incredible. that he tried to call out antisemitism, but Hollywood is so perverse that he can't just call out antisemitism in a movie about antisemitism. He also has to call out racism and all the rest of it.

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In Hollywood, the way that it works is you can't say antisemitism without saying also racism, sexism, and homophobia. It's like a formula. And if you don't say the magical incantation, then they smite you. Here is Adrian Brody.

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Again, this setup leads one to believe that one of the things that Zelensky is doing here is he is recognizing tacitly that the United States is out of the Ukraine business. And what he's actually trying to do, perhaps strategically, is blow up the meeting in order to get the EU to step in and try and provide some sort of aid that the United States is unwilling to provide.

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It's always the same crap from Hollywood. It can never be a specific malady. It always has to be racism, sexism, narcissism, bigotry, homophobia. And if you don't say them all at the same time, then obviously it's because you don't like black people enough or something like that.

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Speaking of black people, apparently we have to have a standing ovation anytime a black person wins any award for the first time. So we're getting low on the list. We've had a black president. We've had a black secretary of state. We've had a black vice president. We've had... Best actors who are black, best actresses who are black, best directors who are black.

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And so now we've reached the point where we need standing ovations for the first black man to win best costume design. When we get down to best key grip, and I guess we'll still be doing standing ovations for this, as though black Americans could never win costume design until this very moment. Here we go.

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Huge. Broke that glass ceiling. That was the remaining glass ceiling, guys. We beat racism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Until this very moment, until this very moment, when a black man finally became the first black man to win best costume design, I thought that racism really was going to triumph in America. But now that Paul Tazewell has become the first black man to win best costume design, I got to say. Man, I think we're there, guys. I think finally we're there. Okay, that was the whole Oscars, basically.

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Conan O'Brien was fine. He didn't do anything particularly shocking or wonderful. He wasn't as annoying as some of the other hosts. He wasn't Jimmy Kimmel or something. Maybe one of the best moments for Conan was joking with Adam Sandler, who showed up in shorts and a T-shirt, basically.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If that's the case, then Zelensky actually got something that he wanted out of this whole situation. But you can see right from the get-go, there's some antagonism right at the outset.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And I want to go through everything that led up to the press conference because it sort of explains where everybody is, President Trump, Vice President Vance, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, and how we got to the nuclear meltdown.

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Okay, so some people like this. I've been reliably informed. I've never been a fan of Adam Sandler so far. I just, that is what it is. Well, that was your Oscars review. It was lackluster as were virtually all the movies this year. Hopefully we'll do better next year.

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Alrighty guys, coming up, Andrew Klavan joins the show to analyze Inora, the film that won best picture at the Oscars last night, as well as some of the other pictures that were nominated first. However, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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OK, he's all dressed up today. Right. And Zelensky, you can see, is a little bit ticked off by this. Obviously, a huge size differential. Zelensky is not a big man. And Trump is a very large human being. And then they finally sit down. And they are and they have this conversation.

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So again, we're going to go through this in detail because this is, I think, one of the most fascinating and probably historic conversations we have ever seen publicly between a president of the United States and a foreign leader. And we should recognize that conversations like this have wide-ranging ramifications in terms of future policy.

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For example, the Iraq War was largely begun, the original Iraq War, the Gulf War, might have started because of a stray comment from a low-level State Department staffer who sort of implied that if Saddam Hussein had walked into Kuwait, the United States might not actually do anything about it. So her name was April Glaspie.

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And the State Department had told Saddam Hussein that Washington had no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait. And at that point, Saddam took that seriously and he walked into Kuwait. So stray comment. certainly big blowups like this can have some pretty radical ramifications for how foreign policy is conducted.

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In the same way that the Russian invasion of Ukraine probably has to do with the United States pulling out of Afghanistan ignominiously, in disgrace. In the same way, comments that are made on the public stage can have extraordinarily powerful ramifications for the future of foreign policy. That's why we're going to go through this in such detail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All of us could have pretty radical ramifications for Ukraine, for the United States as well. We'll get into that. First, this country was founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Great Britain?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You can make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I want to remind you what a wise man wrote in October of 2022, quote, Henry Kissinger has been publicly excoriated for suggesting that the off-ramp to this conflict will be territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia, a repeat of the Moscow Peace Treaty that was signed after the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1941. But he may be correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years at this point. All my business phone calls are via Pure Talk. They are great. You can do the same. Excellent coverage. Better price. PureTalk.com. That new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase. Also, the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts in 2025.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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With April 15th approaching, time is now running out. If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds the problem. Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone could be a costly mistake.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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And this is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart? Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels. This means they know exactly which agents can help resolve your case effectively.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million bucks, their team of attorneys and negotiators bring proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably. With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder.

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Ep. 2149 - Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting GOES TOTALLY NUCLEAR

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Protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. So when this starts, President Trump is actually quite warm to Vladimir Zelensky. Here he was right at the outset.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So you can see from Zelensky's body language, he's immediately on his guard. He's already very nervous. He's clearly not liking what he's hearing from Trump. What Trump is saying here is extremely good for Zelensky. Zelensky came in oriented against Trump from the beginning. And you can see what Trump is saying here is he's looking for some sort of win. That's all he says right from the beginning.

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We had a negotiation spat, but that worked out great. And we're looking forward to getting in and digging, digging, digging, working, getting some of the rare earth. But it means we're going to be inside. And it's a big commitment from the United States. What is he saying there? What President Trump is saying there is we look forward to getting boots on the ground, digging things.

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particularly if the West is unwilling to bear the full economic and military cost of a larger war with Russia. In the end, it may be that the least bad scenario is about simply preventing the worst case scenario. That wise man, of course, was yours truly.

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And once we're there, it's sort of a tacit security guarantee. Now, Zelensky comes out firing. Zelensky comes out and he's like, I want a security guarantee in the room. Hey, what you got? Yeah. You understand why he wants it. He is the president of Ukraine. He does not want another negotiation that ends with, in two years, the Russians coming back in.

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However, these are negotiations that you save for the back room. This is not stuff that you do in the front room. Why is he negotiating in the room with President Trump? Trump isn't rejecting a security guarantee outright here. Trump has said nothing about a security guarantee. It's Zelensky who starts pushing him right out the gate.

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OK, now here's the thing. Trump could blow up him at this point. But you're two minutes deep in the meeting. So what does Trump do? Like an adult, President Trump sits there. He listens to Zelensky and he doesn't blow it up. He understands what Zelensky is saying. Zelensky is saying, I don't make any compromises. Putin's a killer. I want security guarantees. I want to work the Europeans into this.

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I've been arguing since mid-2022 that the off-ramp in Ukraine involved territorial concessions to Russia, Donbass, and Crimea in return for security guarantees that would ensure no renewal of Russian war in Ukraine. That has been the clear off-ramp for legitimately almost three years at this point.

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He's having a negotiation in the room in front of the press. So Zelensky is the one who starts this whole thing. And for 40 minutes, Trump allows him to do it. Why? Because that's what an adult does. What an adult does is he says, listen, I understand that you've got to rant for the cameras. You've got to do your thing for the cameras. I get it. I totally get it.

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And in the back room, we're going to negotiate what this actually looks like. And listen to how sober President Trump is here. I mean, it is an amazing thing. For the guy who's supposed to be the one flying off the handle, in this meeting, it is not Trump who flies off the handle. It is Zelensky and then Vance who flies off the handle. So here is President Trump.

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Well, folks, it was a very hot weekend in the news. President Trump has made some significant gains with regard to the Panama Canal. So President Trump has been issuing a lot of threats over the Panama Canal, which, of course, was built by the United States back in the early 20th century, late 19th century. And President Trump has wanted to maintain control over the Panama Canal.

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President Trump on Saturday announced that he had ordered military airstrikes in Somalia, taking out a senior ISIS attack planner and other terrorists the planner had recruited, according to Fox News. The strikes come just weeks after an ISIS-inspired terrorist killed 14 people and injured dozens more after plowing a truck into New Year's Eve revelers in New Orleans.

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At least they have a site there that is controlled by the Chinese. They were attempting originally to actually put their embassy on that part of the Panama Canal. a subsidiary of CK Hutchinson Holdings, which is a Chinese-run company out of Hong Kong, controls that port. They also control the Cristobal Port, which is on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Why is that a concern?

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Trump said, quote, these killers we found hiding in caves threatened the United States and our allies. Trump said the strikes destroyed the caves the terrorists were living in and, quote, did not in any way harm civilians. He said our military has targeted this ISIS attack planner for years. Biden and his cronies wouldn't act quickly enough to get the job done. I did.

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The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is we will find you and we will kill you. This is very, very good, obviously. Secretary of State Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who, of course, is excellent, put out a statement saying, I authorized U.S. Africa Command to conduct coordinated airstrikes today targeting ISIS Somalia operatives in the Golis Mountains.

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Our initial assessment is that the multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes. No civilians were harmed. This action further degrades ISIS ability to plot and conduct terror attacks, threatening U.S. citizens, our partners and innocent civilians. He said that strikes should send a clear signal. The U.S.

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stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the country and its allies, even as it carries out robust border protections at home. So, again, this sort of isolationist notion that that is what Trump is all about. I have yet to see the evidence of that.

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Well, meanwhile, the big story of the weekend is that President Trump was going to launch these massive tariffs on Canada and China and Mexico. And the tariffs were basically 25 percent tariffs blanket tariffs. on Canadian product, 25% blanket tariffs on Mexican product, 10% blanket tariffs on Chinese product. There were some exceptions for oil that was coming in from Canada.

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And the big question when it comes to tariffs is whether President Trump is using them as leverage or whether he's doing this ideologically. This is always the big question with President Trump. Because using them as leverage, he's been quite successful. There is no one in the business world who is better at leverage than President Trump when it comes to making deals.

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President Trump loves the leverage, and he gets what he wants. He did this just a couple of weeks ago with regard to Colombia, the country, not the university. He threatened them with 25% tariffs and said they would escalate unless they took back illegal immigrants, and they immediately caved. Well, it seems as though that may be what is happening as of Monday.

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Now, President Trump was sending some vague signals. Here he was announcing, and he sent a few different signals here. He said, listen, I like tariffs. Now, maybe, again, the reason that he is talking up tariffs as a policy is because this is a great strategy when you're playing chicken. You put a brick on the accelerator and say, listen, I'm perfectly happy to go off this cliff.

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You want to go off the cliff? Let's do this thing, man. Let's make it happen. And so he talks up tariffs as a way of saying, listen, I don't mind. We'll do it. You think we won't do it? We will 100% do it. This is not a bluff. I'm happy. I'd rather do it. And then when he gets what he wants, he can back off the tariffs. That seems to be the strategy he's employing here.

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Here's President Trump announcing the tariffs. This would have been on Saturday.

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Well, the concern was that in case of some sort of serious conflict between the United States and China, the Chinese could use those cutout companies to basically obstruct traffic in the Panama Canal, preventing American warships from being able to transit that port at a stretch of one day or two days, as opposed to 27 days.

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Okay, so a bunch of different things happening here. So President Trump is saying, listen, I love the tariffs. Nothing can make me remove the tariffs. Nothing, nothing. And then we found out on Monday morning after markets immediately dipped at open because they thought maybe these tariffs were permanent, that they were anything but permanent.

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In fact, President Trump was able to leverage major concessions out of the Mexican government. We'll get more into tariff policy in a moment for a start each day off, right? Black Rifle Coffee helps you wake up each morning feeling dialed in and ready to make the most of your day so you can make the best of your year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Everything from getting funding and equipment to first responders to helping veterans get medical care. Black Rifle Coffee has a huge selection of dark roasts, light roasts, everything in between. Take that coffee quiz on their website. Get matched with a blend perfectly tailored to your specific taste.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, a portion of every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee goes toward supporting veteran and first responder causes. Your money goes a long way toward giving back to those who serve our nation. Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com right now. Use code DAILYWIRE for 20% off America's coffee. My kids get me up real early in the morning. Got to get ready for the show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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All you need to do is breathe into it first thing in the morning. You'll know exactly what's happening with your metabolism, whether you're burning fats or carbs. Based on your measurements, Lumen creates a personalized nutrition plan just for you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But what's great about Lumen is I can breathe into it before and after workouts and meals, so I know exactly what's going on in my body in real time, which is a fantastic feature. Lumen will give you tips based on those readings to keep you on top of your health game. Your metabolism is your body's engine powering everything you do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so President Trump said, listen, we're not going to allow the Chinese to effectively control ingress and egress from the Panama Canal. Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.

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Thanks to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Shapiro for 20% off your purchase today to start getting healthier. According to President Trump's Truth Social feed, Quote, I just spoke with President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico.

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It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican soldiers on the border separating Mexico and the United States. These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants into our country.

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We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one-month period during which we'll have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Besant, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and high-level representatives of Mexico.

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I look forward to participating in those negotiations with President Scheinbaum as we attempt to achieve a deal between our two countries. So remember, President Trump had used his emergency authority to stop fentanyl illegal immigration in order to make the tariffs happen.

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And he's now saying that because Mexico is alleviating the emergency, presumably, this is going to be delayed by a month so a new trade deal can be negotiated. So it was all leverage. So it was not, in fact, a sort of overall love for tariffs as President Trump saying he likes tariffs overall in order to gain leverage. Meanwhile, he is now starting to make clear exactly what he wants from Canada.

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He said, quote, Canada doesn't even allow U.S. banks to open or do business there. What's that all about? Many such thing, but it's also a drug war. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the United States from drugs pouring through the borders of Mexico and Canada. Just spoke to Justin Trudeau. We'll be speaking to him again at 3 p.m. Now, presumably.

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There are other concessions that the Canadians could make. That would mean that the tariffs end up being relieved with regard to Canada. Okay, which again, all of that is good and fine. Using tariffs as a form of leverage is something President Trump is very good about. He's very good at it. As overall policy, it should be noted, by the way, tariff policy, trade wars are bad and not easy to win.

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Trade wars tend to impoverish people. Trade wars tend to impoverish the American consumer in particular. Here, for example, is a map of what happens with just the auto parts in your car if a trade war were actually to take place. Okay, this is a map of a capacitor's journey through North America.

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A Michigan circuit board manufacturer buys a capacitor for a company in Colorado, which imported it from Asia. Let's say it came from China. That's a 10% tariff. It goes down to Chiodad Juarez in Mexico, where it's inserted in a circuit board. When it comes back up through the board, it's another 25% tariff. Then when it goes to Canada, it'd be inserted into a seat, for example.

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That is another 25% tariff when it comes back down. So you're talking at that point about an aggregated 60% tariff on the product, right?

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These sorts of things have a major impact on American markets, which is why you saw the stock market take a dump at the very beginning of the day when it looked as though Trump was in principled fashion pushing tariff policy as sort of a net good to the United States. But again, President Trump, it looks like, is doing this as a leverage play.

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It looks as though President Trump is pushing these tariffs specifically in order to get something out of Canada. That, by the way, was the take of Conrad Black, who was a journalist up in Canada. He said, like, what are you guys worried about? This is about shutting down the border, spending 3% on NATO defense. Get some concessions for Trump. It's a big win for him. He gets the victory.

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He chalks that up and the tariffs go away. The Canadians, for their part, are getting very militant. Justin Trudeau, who is still titularly the prime minister of Canada, he announced retaliatory tariffs right away.

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Now, of course, the reality is that that would hurt Canada more than it would hurt us. If they tariff American products, then they're taxing their own consumers. But this is what happens in a trade war. You increase your tariffs. The other countries that are being targeted increase their tariffs to retaliate because they say, OK, well, we're not going to let

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your goods in our market if you're not letting our goods in your market. And then if this sort of thing were to be carried out over a long period of time, it would be a real problem because China particularly is more than happy, just as with USAID going away, more than happy to fill that gap with cheap free trade with say Canada or Mexico or the Europeans.

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The Europeans, by the way, are already setting up for this. The Europeans are already anticipating that President Trump is going to try tariffing the Europeans. And so they've been creating more free trade agreements with themselves and presumably also with China. But when it comes to playing chicken, President Trump is very, very good at playing chicken.

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Mexico is sending 10,000 troops to the border. Mexico pledging to stop the flow of fentanyl. These are big wins for President Trump. There's no other way to put it. Again, I've said this all along. When it comes to many of the things that Trump does, if you did them in a vacuum without trying to use them as leverage, there would be a major problem.

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And many of the things that Trump says in order to get those things done are things I disagree with. So, for example, you heard him railing against trade deficits. Trade deficits are not a thing. A trade deficit is when you buy a thing from someone else and you gave them money and they gave you the good. You have a trade deficit with your grocery.

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If we buy a bunch of stuff from Vietnam, that doesn't mean that Vietnam has ripped us off in some way. The United States can still be the world's leading economy while having a giant trade deficit. And meanwhile, there are a bunch of poor countries that have trade surpluses. That's not the point. For President Trump, it's the effect of what he's attempting to do that matters.

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It is not what he says about the thing, apparently, that matters. So he gets a win out of Mexicans. Presumably, he will get a win out of the Canadians as well. The United States throwing its weight around, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. I'd like to see what it looks like when the U.S. throws its weight around with regard to, say, China as well.

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We're doing a little bit with that 10% tariff on China. I'm hoping that one is more permanent. Meanwhile, Democrats are poorly positioned to take advantage of any of this. We'll get to that in a moment. First, no matter where you're watching or listening right now, take a second, hit that follow button. It costs you nothing.

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It makes a massive difference in fighting back against the algorithm that really, really would like for you not to hear this. If you want the full show, uncensored, uninterrupted, unshackled from big tech overlords, there's only one way to do that. Become a Daily Wire Plus member.

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Okay, so the question is, what is that threat designed to do? So Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, he said in his confirmation hearing that Beijing has the ability to turn the canal into a choke point in a moment of conflict. That's what I'm talking about. They could theoretically, for example, sink barges at both ends of the canal and prevent shipping traffic.

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As a member, you get unlimited access to our entire library of premium entertainment, including the culture-shaping documentary, What Is a Woman? and the hilariously offensive box office hit, Am I Racist? Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe now and join the fight. All right, meanwhile, the DNC remains absolutely out in the wilderness. So the Democratic National Committee had to pick a next chair.

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Who did they pick? They picked a guy named Ken Martin. Ken Martin says that the Democratic Party is doing just fine. He, in fact, was the leader of the Democratic Party organization in Minnesota. He was a deputy to Tim Walz. And he basically said we did amazing. Kamala Harris was amazing. Tim Walz was amazing.

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He said the fight right now is against Donald Trump and the billionaires who bought this country. He has they have nothing. They have literally nothing. He said, quote, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, this is a new DNC. We're not going to sit back and not take you on when you fail the American people. But he had also said that there was nothing wrong with the party.

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Quote, we don't call it a postmortem or autopsy. Our party's not dead. It's still kicking, right? What we really need to do is get a handle around what happened last election cycle. We know we lost ground with Latino voters. We know we lost ground with women and younger voters and working class voters. We don't know the how and the why yet. Now, we kind of know, but you guys keep doing it.

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Here is some evidence for why that is, in fact, the case. So Jamie Harrison, who's the outgoing DNC chair, at one point they had to select the top committee at the DNC and it has to be gender balanced according to the DNC. And so he announced that they didn't know what to do because they didn't have enough non-gender binary, non-binary gender queer people on their executive board.

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It was handed over to the Panamanian government by Jimmy Carter. And that Final facilitation of transfer happened in the 1990s over the course of time. And in the meantime, the Chinese have been using extraordinary power bribery, graft in order to take control of two ends of the Panama Canal. We have here a map of the Panama Canal.

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Good luck to the Dems, man. Wow.

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uh one male one female and one person of any gender man why are they losing amazing who wow wow meanwhile who are the other candidates for dnc chair well there's one dnc chair candidate named gina repass who uh gave her pitch as to why she should be the chair of the dnc

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You remember just a few years ago when the Suez Canal was blocked by one ship that went sideways? That could easily be done at certain choke points in the Panama Canal, which actually does get incredibly, incredibly narrow near the ends, both ends of the Panama Canal. Over the past two decades, China has developed many economic ties with Panama, including through its Belt and Road Initiative.

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Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So Ken Martin is the new chair. Congrats, guys. But even better is the new DNC vice chair. You're not going to believe it, but it's it's wonderful. It is the inestimably stupid David Hogg. Yes, you remember David Hogg, the failed pillow company guy? Remember the guy, the kid who was a student at Parkland over here in South Florida during the Parkland shooting?

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But he became world famous for stumping against guns and shouting about gun control and being a theater kid about all this sort of stuff. Remember this? And then he was admitted to Harvard despite... what apparently was a 1270 SAT score. He'd been rejected, I believe. And then he got admitted based on his activism.

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Meanwhile, Kyle Kashuv, another student at Parkland, who'd scored, I believe, a 1600 on his SATs, was rejected because they uncovered some bad old texts. Well, now this schmuck has somehow parlayed his apparent victimization at Parkland into the vice chairmanship of the DNC after a career of stupid tweets at Harvard University.

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Man, oh man, you guys, he's supposed to be, by the way, driving young men back into the arms of the DNC. This one, this one, this stick figure of a human. Like, oh my God, this is really just amazing, amazing stuff. I just want to point out before we hear his victory speech. And again, he is literally only famous because he was a student at a school where a school shooting took place.

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That is the only reason. There's no other reason. Hey, here are some of his better tweets over the course of the last few years. this deeply stupid human. Quote, those who say defunding of the police doesn't poll well, so we shouldn't talk about it, are wrong. It's our job as organizers to talk about what matters and how to stop the police from murdering people and terrorizing communities.

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We don't follow the polls. We change them. So you've got to defund the police activist as your vice chair of the DNZ. Here he is on his future hopes for life. Quote, I'm never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle.

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Long-term, it's cheaper, better for the environment, and will never tell you it hates you or ask you to pay for college. Wow, DNC. You're really representing those blue-collar working people who go to church, aren't you, right there with this David Hogg? My goodness. He's like if Timothee Chalamet somehow got even more fragile and annoying. Truly an amazing, amazing example.

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David Hogg tweeted February 2020, Lincoln was a really good president. People got mad at him. So then he tweeted, actually, I was not aware of the scope of how detrimental he was so many Native American populations. He was really not a good president. Lincoln was not a good president from the vice chair of the DNC.

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I thank my indigenous peers that brought my attention to Lincoln's atrocities committed against Native Americans. I'm deeply sorry for not acknowledging these crimes that I was unaware of until now. I will do better in the future. David Hogg, 2020, your new vice chair. How about this one? Quote, I'm one of the most politically toxic people in the country. I'm too radical for American politics.

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The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is a giant influence operation in which China, quote unquote, gives you things. There are always strings attached. Those strings attached may be surveillance of your country. It may be control. over significant national resources. That's what the Belt and Road Initiative is.

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No, I'm not running for office. We have enough straight white men in power. He ran for vice chair of the DNC and then was made vice chair of the DNC. David Hogg. Man, oh man, these geniuses. Here he was with Bill Maher attacking Israel. This is just a few months ago. These are the people. I can't imagine why the Democratic Party has an approval rating beneath that of prostate cancer.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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So the victory that President Trump just won is that Panama has just announced that they will not renew the Belt and Road Agreement with China. This makes it the first Latin American nation to leave the Belt and Road Initiative.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Panamanian President José Raúl Molino said his country would not renew its agreement with the Belt and Road Initiative following a visit from Secretary of State Rubio over the weekend. Here is Molino.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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in one or two years, the renewal, because it is every three. So this initiative that was signed, when it was signed, at the time it was signed, will not be renewed by my government.

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So there are other countries in Latin and South America who are looking at the possibility of joining the Belt and Road Initiative, and they are no longer presumably going to do that, or at least they're going to take very seriously the possibility of not doing that. Secretary of State Rubio tweeted, when I met with Panamanian President José Rubio Molino and Foreign Minister Javier Champa,

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to make clear that the United States cannot and will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to continue with its effective and growing control over the Panama Canal area. We also discussed efforts to end the hemisphere's mass migration crisis and ensure fair competition for U.S. firms.

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This is an unmitigated good, and President Trump throwing the United States' weight around with regards to Panama and achieving some quick results that is also apparently happening with regard to Venezuela. According to Mediaite, six Americans were freed from captivity in Venezuela on Friday as President Trump concluded his second week back in office.

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The government of President Nicolás Maduro freed them after receiving pressure from the Trump administration. There's been a lot of talk about President Trump, what his foreign policy looks like. When it comes to the Monroe Doctrine, he takes that very seriously. The idea that the Western Hemisphere is a United States pond.

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That, of course, has been the stated goal of the United States since the early 19th century. But that is something that is being reinvigorated by the Trump administration

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Secretary of State Rubio put out an entire piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining that the United States was going to be shifting a lot of resources and attention to the Western Hemisphere, which, of course, makes perfect sense since we have mass migration crises, huge illegal immigration crises that are springing from the lack of American influence in places like Latin and South America.

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Now, meanwhile. Elon Musk is moving to blow up the U.S. Aid and Development Agency. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk's allies are moving swiftly to exert control over vast swaths of the U.S. government. Musk oversaw a successful effort by his representatives to get direct access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars to Americans every year.

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Individuals working for Doge accessed the U.S. Agency for International Development following a clash with security officials. The moves marked the start of a far-reaching campaign by Musk to upend the federal government agency by agency, according to his allies.

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The effort prompted outrage from Democrats and some Republicans who said that Musk doesn't have the authority to overturn programs and spending priorities decided by Congress. They also raised concerns about the nature of Musk's operation because, of course, he has not been Senate-confirmed in any way, shape, or form.

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The Panama Canal is really important because it cuts down shipping time across the bottom of South America by 27 days. It allows instead all sorts of shipping traffic to be pushed through Panama. It's an amazing thing. I've been down to Panama. I've seen the Panama Canal in person. It has its locks on both ends. The water level is increased and lowered in order to facilitate shipping.

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Doge had initially been conceived as a sort of advisory outside panel, but Doge instead is actually operating inside the U.S. government in many ways, which, of course, violates the Senate's advice and consent procedures. So if we're going to do this, then it should go through Senate advice and consent. Now, what is Musk doing? Well, some of what Musk is doing is obviously great.

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He's going through and he's cutting an enormous amount of waste and fraud in the program. He's shutting down programs that are wildly inefficient. Musk said he was on track to cut federal spending by $4 billion a day. He said career Treasury officials were routinely making illegal payments. The Treasury press office didn't respond on Sunday to a request for comment.

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Now, meanwhile, this is broken out into the open because of controversy over USAID. On Saturday, roughly eight Doge representatives sought access to classified systems and floors at the USAID building in downtown Washington. Security officials initially resisted Doge representatives' requests.

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The security officials, John Voorhees and his deputy, were then put on administrative leave for not complying. Now, let's be real about this. The president of the United States is in control of the Treasury Department and USAID. So if the president of the United States decides to, quote-unquote, declassify material, he can.

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He has the summary power to declassify material, as we learned to our great chagrin over the course of the last four years when we had many, many conversations about what the president could and could not do in declassifying material.

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The Doge representatives were given access to at least the executive secretariat and nerve center for coordination and communication for the agency's highest levels in the office of the general counsel, the current USAID official, and Senate Democratic aide said. Now, USAID... is filled with extraordinary graft. It is a 10,000-person, $40 billion agency.

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Musk posted on X over the weekend that USAID was a corrupt organization filled with Marxist staffers providing no evidence for his broadsides, according to the Wall Street Journal. But it is true that the USAID has given enormous amounts of aid, billions of dollars in aid, to foreign organizations, non-governmental organizations, many of whom are dedicated to doing left-wing agitprop work abroad.

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Now, there is one problem. The problem is that if you actually destroy USAID as a functioning agency, rather than going in with a scalpel, then what you actually could be doing, unfortunately, is sort of an unintended consequence of breaking things and moving fast, is opening the door to things like China's Belt and Road Initiative.

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Because if USAID is giving aid, and a lot of that aid is crap and should go away, but if it's giving some aid that is good to countries, for example, that are wavering between United States influence and Chinese influence, and then you withdraw... Chinese influence grows.

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If you don't like the Belt and Road Initiative in Panama, you shouldn't like the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa or in Southeast Asia or in any other place that China is attempting to spread its tentacles. Again, in the world of tech, moving fast, breaking things, blowing things up, having to rebuild them, that's just the way that business is done.

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In the world of government, if you are, for example, a foreign country that is reliant on USAID to sort of prop you up, And that goes away. Do you think you're just going to sit there and wait for the United States to figure out its bleep? Or are you just going to turn to China? China is quite happy about this particular move.

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One particular account on Twitter, which is, shall we say, very, very Chinese friendly, is celebratory about the death of USAID, quote, because USAID isn't really a humanitarian aid agency. It's a covert intelligence arm funding coups, protests and regime changes. What exactly are some of the things that this person objects to?

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You have to pay a fee in order to go through if you are a shipper or if you are the U.S. military. Apparently, one of the victories that President Trump has now won is that some of the fees will be gone for U.S. military shipping across the Panama Canal. What you can see in this map. There are two sites on this map that are really important for folks who can't see it.

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The USAID opposed the Cuban regime, the Venezuelan regime, opposed the Bolivian regime, opposed, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan. that it was a front for counterinsurgency operations. Okay, those are all good things that are in the United States' interest. Well, folks, we waste an awful lot of money in this country, but there is no reason why you should waste your own money.

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This is why you should use Pure Talk. This country was founded on freedom, freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out? Great Britain. Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well.

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You don't need to pay hundreds of dollars a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just 45 bucks a month, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for zero dollars. And yes, this is for premium service. Unlimited talk, text, 25 gigs of data, and mobile hotspot at a fraction of the price of the big guys.

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all on America's most dependable 5G network. Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 by visiting puretalk.com slash Shapiro today. Switching is simple. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. All of my trusted phone calls happen using Pure Talk.

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They have great coverage, great price. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com. slash Shapiro. Claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase. Again, that's Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Also, you know, every time I go shooting, I think to myself, this is fun. It could definitely be a little better. And guess what? It can.

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Let me tell you how to make shooting more safe, more fun, and overall cooler. If you've never used a suppressor before, you are missing out. Trust me. Once you shoot suppressed, you're never going to want to shoot unsuppressed again. This is where my friends at Silencer Shop come in. They don't just sell silencers. They specialize in making sure your shooting experience is awesome.

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The experts at Silencer Shop will help you find the perfect silencer so you can enjoy your guns even more. And now is the perfect time to get one. Why not let your tax return work for you this year? Invest in a suppressor, completely upgrade your shooting experience. The best part? Silencer Shop makes the entire process ridiculously simple.

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They're the number one source for suppressors in America with the largest selection of top brands. Silencer Shop helps handle all the paperwork so you don't have to. With their nationwide dealer network and easy-to-use kiosk system, you can get started in minutes and have your suppressor faster than ever. So don't wait. Visit silencershop.com slash Shapiro.

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Turn your tax return into the ultimate shooting upgrade. That's silencershop.com slash Shapiro. Silencer Shop is the best way to get a suppressor. That's silencershop.com slash Shapiro. So China could be like two things can be true at once, as always, as always. And this is, I think, really important when it comes to the policy of an administration that I support. Many things can be true at once.

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Policy is complex and shaded. It's not all good and it's not all bad. When it comes to things like USAID, again, going through in targeted, precise fashion and nuking programs within USAID that need to die would be a wonderful good. And Doge can do an amazing amount of good there.

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Panama, of course, is a very narrow bridge of land, a spit of land that exists between North America and South America. And the Panama Canal carves across some parts of that spit of land to create a free-flowing waterway that goes between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Balboa, which is on the Pacific coast of the Panama Canal, is controlled by the Chinese.

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At the same time, nuking the entire agency, for example, could be opening the door to Chinese influence operations in a wide variety of areas all over the globe that the United States is then going to have to backfill. And that could be a problem because China is fully stalwart about all this stuff. China will always offer you a check. China is perfectly willing to bribe anyone. China is corrupt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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China is tyrannical. The Chinese regime, the CCP regime, is evil full stop. It is an evil regime. It is not our friend. It is not our friendly competitor. The Chinese regime is an oppressive communist tyranny that steals IP, undercuts American markets, and targets all of America's interest for destruction. That is what China does.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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Okay, so just recognize that we live in a world filled with harsh enemies who are perfectly willing to fill gaps left by the United States. Now, you may be willing to say, okay, fine, whatever. We leave a gap. China fills it. Do we really care enough? And that's an open question. Depends on the interest. Some interests just aren't worth it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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However, we should be at least smart enough to acknowledge that there are effects of a vacuum created by the United States. That is a rather important thing. Okay, back on the good side of the ledger, President Trump is apparently killing aid to South Africa.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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This, of course, is a good thing because when it comes to South Africa, South Africa has become an increasingly racist state focused on expropriating the property of whites. Now, you can talk about the evils of South African apartheid, which, of course, were tremendously evil. And you can also point out that the way to come together after apartheid

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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the demise of an apartheid regime would not be confiscatory policy designed to harm the white people in Africa in racist fashion. That's exactly what the South African government has done. That's what the Zimbabwean government did also, by the way, completely destroying the country in the process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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South Africa has pushed forward an expropriation measure signed by the president Cyril Ramphosa designed to bring land reform in the public interest, meaning just seize property, presumably from white farmers disproportionately. South Africa, by the way, because it has impoverished itself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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in ways that it need not, because South Africa has pursued a racialist policy, because South Africa's identity is largely tied up in a sort of anti-colonialist mindset. It has also become a plaything of places like Iran and China, who very often are funneling money into South Africa. President Trump was like, no, we're done with this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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We're not going to give aid to a country that is in racist fashion, seeking to expropriate property from white farmers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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He's absolutely right about this. And the fact that it was ignored, nay, forwarded by the Secretary of State under the Biden administration is a tragedy. South Africa is a deeply corrupt, criminality-filled state. It is a failing state. And the fact that we've been pouring money into it is a disgrace. So good move by the Trump administration on that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!

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Speaking of other good foreign policy moves, I think all of the talk about President Trump being in isolation as president, it's kind of weird because what we're seeing so far is definitely not isolationism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

Well, folks, we are almost 100 days into the second Trump presidency, and we will give you our review where the polling stands and everything else. First, it is our first ever 100 hour Daily Wire plus flash sale. The best deal of the season on your annual membership is live right now. The work isn't over. The real fight starts now. The Daily Wire is on the front lines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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A slew of companies are already warning of higher prices or have already increased them, including Procter & Gamble, Best Buy, Unilever, Ford, Shine, Timu, AutoZone, and Hermes. Now May. The Halloween and Costume Association Warren tariffs are threatening to wipe out Halloween and severely disrupt Christmas as well. And back to school season is already at risk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Remember, there's a long tail to these sorts of policies. Meanwhile, Magnificent Seven are suffering in the stock market a little bit. Their bruising losses, according to the Wall Street Journal, pose a new test for markets. Even after a rally last week, the Magnificent Seven are off to their worst start to a year since 2022. Each stock has fallen more than 6.5%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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They've collectively lost $2.5 trillion in market value. Meanwhile, China is upping its own game. So one of the big places where America has a systemic advantage is in the field of AI. That requires sophisticated semiconductors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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This is why one of the big worries right now is that even if the United States were able to successfully box in China, if China tried to go after Taiwan, TSMC, which is where 92% of all the world's sophisticated semiconductors are produced, would be in their crosshairs. If that were to happen, China would actually benefit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Because if the biggest producer of the sophisticated microchips goes down, China has been doing a great job ramping up its secondary microchips. And now it turns out they've been working on sophisticated microchips to compete with TSMC. According to the Wall Street Journal, Huawei Technologies is gearing up to test its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence processors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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The company hopes could replace some of the higher end products of NVIDIA. The steady advance by one of China's flagship technology companies points to the resilience of the country's semiconductor industry, despite efforts by Washington to stymie it, including by cutting off access to some Western chip-making equipment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Huawei is approaching Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of a new chip. It's called a SEN910D. The company is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as soon as late May. Now, again, maybe it's not ready, but the bottom line is that right now the world is not prepared for the loss of TSMC chips, except for probably China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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And again, when you take a look at the status of the economy, most of the impact of the tariffs has not yet hit. That is the big problem for President Trump. When you look at President Trump's trade war on China and his elevated tariffs on the rest of the planet, As I have said now about a thousand times, there are preconditions to fighting a successful trade war.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That is lower than any other president at this point on record in his first term or in his second term, actually. President Trump historically has not pulled particularly well. If you look at his first term, 100 day point, also fairly low. President Trump has always had a very high floor and a very low ceiling in terms of his polling data, meaning that his floor is usually 38, 39%.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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You need to get ready for it, just like a regular war. If you're going to win a regular war, you need to make sure your supply lines are in place. You need to make sure that you actually have the materiel. You need to make sure that you have the recruitment efforts. You have to have the strategy, right? You have to have your allies in place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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All that stuff happens in a war, and it also happens in a trade war. If you just run into the trade war, you end up with the situation in which President Trump currently finds himself with public opinion and with the economy in a bit of a box canyon. Now, maybe President Trump is able to extricate himself from that box canyon by cutting a bunch of trade deals very quickly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That obviously is what Scott Besant is working on. But the markets are freaking out. And again, the main effect of the tariffs have yet to actually hit on a practical level for most Americans. Meanwhile, it is unclear if Republicans are actually going to be able to get their big, beautiful tax bill through.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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So I think it would be almost unthinkable for Republicans not to be able to get their big, beautiful tax bill through this one big bill that's going to include defense and immigration spending as well as a tax bill. If that doesn't happen, that's already been baked into the market. If that doesn't happen, you will see a market collapse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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If the tax bill does not go through, if the tax rates suddenly skyrocket back to what they were before the Trump tax cuts of his first term, if that were to happen, faith in the ability of the federal government to even ensure any level of consistency and predictability in the economy would drop as well. So are Republicans going to get it together?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Because so far, it seems like the Republican Congress has achieved virtually nothing. They've not actually enshrined any of the doge cuts that Elon Musk's doge have made at this point. Congress has not yet been able to get this big, beautiful tax bill through. They need to get it through like ASAP.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Republicans pushed President Trump's big, beautiful tax and spending package closer to the finish line with votes earlier this month, approving a budget framework. But hard intraparty fights remain in writing and ironing out the multi-trillion dollar package.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Most GOP lawmakers are on board with the broader plan to extend expiring pieces of the 2017 tax law, introduce no tax on tips, boost border spending, cut other government outlays. Speaker Johnson wants to get the bill finished by Memorial Day, but fights are smoldering over details. You have some deficit hardliners who are very skeptical of the tax bill.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That includes members like Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Meanwhile, you have people who are concerned that there will be some sort of changes to Medicaid. Because that health insurance program does have a bunch, it's a means-tested welfare program. There are a bunch of people on it who probably don't necessarily need to be on it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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But there are a lot of Republicans in purple districts who are afraid that any Medicaid cuts whatsoever means their seat goes away. Such members, according to the journal, include Representatives David Valadao of California, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania. Those are both in battleground districts. And again, you have a bunch of senators also who are in sort of purplish states.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Susan Collins, who's in a blue state in Maine. Murkowski, who's been... in a red state, Alaska, but is a very moderate senator, and Howley in Missouri. have all opposed deep cuts. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, I need to make sure that I maintain my health. I hit the gym. I spend time with the family. But here is the thing. Eating vegetables, bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on the willpower and the caffeine. I learned pretty quickly the peak performance actually requires good nutrition. And again, those veggies are my enemy. That's why I'm so thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every single day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

1357.844

That sounds miserable, time-consuming. With balance of nature, fruits and veggies There's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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He rarely goes below that. At the same time, he rarely gets above 45, 46% in the opinion polls. With that said, he has dropped fairly significantly. in these opinion polls, in many of them, and it's not just one, This is particularly rooted in the economy. Now, again, when it comes to the Democrats, the good news for President Trump is he's blessed by his enemies. His enemies are awful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, so I can pop it right into the protein smoothie, and that keeps the gun show going strong. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get that free bottle of fiber and spice. Keep yourself healthy the easy way. Balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. It's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. Also, you ever wonder what gives elite athletes, business moguls, high performers their edge?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

1406.519

Many are turning to Amra Colostrum. This remarkable superfood is nature's original whole food supplement. It contains over 400 bioactive nutrients that work at the cellular level. Armra helps build lean muscle, speeds up recovery time, enhances overall performance without relying on artificial stimulants or synthetic ingredients.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Whether you're running a company, pushing your limits in training, or simply looking for a natural advantage in your daily life, Armra Colostrum optimizes your body's systems for peak performance and sustained energy. Research has demonstrated Colostrum does more than just strengthen performance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

1433.884

It enhances your body's ability to absorb essential nutrients, supports the development of lean muscle mass, and improves endurance. At the same time, it works at the cellular level to accelerate repair and regeneration, helping you bounce back faster after intense physical exertion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Plus, Armra Colostrum can also support your microbiome and balance and strengthen immune defenses throughout the body. Those who want a stronger immune system. We've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 15% off your first order. Go to tryarmra.com slash Shapiro or enter Shapiro to get 15% off your very first order. That's T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Meanwhile, there are a bunch of Republican lawmakers who want President Trump to get rid of the ban on salt deductions. Again, those would be Republicans in places like New Jersey, New York, California. Right now, the way that it works is that you don't get to discount the taxes you pay on the state level before you pay your federal income tax.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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A lot of Republicans in blue states would like to see that go away again to preserve their seats. So will Republicans be able to square all those circles? I think they will be able to get there, but they had better get there. President Trump's presidency now relies on a couple of things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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One, ending this trade war or recalibrating it so that it will be more likely to be successful, which requires dramatic moves. Or two, and or two, it actually requires both, the tax bill. Both those things need to happen. If both those things do not happen, then President Trump's presidency will continue to spin out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Because as the economy goes, look, President Trump's subtle promise, not so subtle promise, for all of his career is he's a great businessman and he will make sure the economy is okay. And right now, a lot of investors, including many investors that I know, have a lot of faith in President Trump that he's going to be able to create a solid business environment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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One of the reasons that so much of tech country voted for President Trump is because they were deeply afraid of Kamala Harris's anti-tech perspective and anti-market perspectives. Many of them have been shocked by President Trump's tariff war. They are still hopeful that President Trump is going to back away from that and move in a more free market oriented direction.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That is what President Trump needs to do if he wishes to make the American people happy with his presidency again, which will give him the political capital necessary to do everything else. And again, the part of this 100 days in that's a problem is that he's doing so many other really, really important things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Last week, he signed an executive order, which is one of the most important executive orders that he signed his entire presidency. It was an executive order to get rid of disparate impact analysis. That has been a hallmark of federal government policy for decades. Basically, disparate impact analysis suggests that any policy

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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And the American people hate the people that President Trump faces down even more than they dislike President Trump. So, for example, the same poll showing President Trump at a 39 percent approval rating shows that seven in 10 Americans say the Democratic Party is out of touch. Six in 10 say that about Trump. Nearly seven in 10 say that about the Democratic Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Where in aggregate, say black people don't do as well as white people, even if the policy is totally neutral, must be presumed to be racist. And he got rid of that because he said that's stupid.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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There are lots of policies that are neutral and that have a different impact on groups because it turns out people in various groups don't behave the same way, aren't interested in the same things and all the rest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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As I've said many, many times, if you draw a line down the middle of literally any room with a lot of people in it, you'll end up with two groups and those two groups will be unequal in a wide variety of ways. Height, weight, good looks, brains, all of it. So disparate impact analysis was always terrible. President Trump got rid of it on the federal level last week.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That's an important accomplishment. President Trump has been fighting DEI tooth and nail. President Trump has been going after these left-wing universities, which by the way, it is now appearing are disproportionately funded by foreign sources.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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There's a piece in the free press today, a shocking piece that shows an explosion in overseas funding for American universities between 2021 and 2024 under Joe Biden. Basically, our American universities were infiltrated by Qatar and China in the main. Between 2021 and 2024, $29 billion in foreign money was donated. Qatar and China were among the largest sources of funding.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That, by the way, dwarfs any other period in American history. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, the floodgates opened during the Biden era. It's not a financial issue. It's a national security issue. Qatar is the single largest source of foreign donations to U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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universities since reporting began in 1986 with $6.3 billion coming from Qatar, which, by the way, is a cutout for Iran. Just another reason why the administration should not be using Qatar as a proxy in Middle Eastern peace talks or Hamas hostage releases or Iranian nuclear talks. Qatar is in fact an Iranian country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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You think Qatar has billions of dollars just to like blow on American universities? You know exactly the purpose of that. Qatari donations ramped up significantly during the Biden administration. Nearly a third of all donations from Qatar, over $2 billion over that period, were given between 2021 and 2024. Also, by the way, huge source of foreign funding coming from China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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This is where the truth lives. It's where the mission begins. Join millions who believe our best days are ahead. Go to DailyWire.com. Use code DW100 to join the fight. Also, America's fastest growing news podcast, Morning Wire, is now available on video. If you want the news in just 15 minutes a day, make sure to watch on DW Plus, YouTube, and Spotify, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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The biggest recipients, Harvard, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, MIT, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Yale. So all the top schools. Okay, so President Trump has been fighting these schools. All that's really important. On immigration, President Trump has been fighting the good fight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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It remains the bright spot of his administration in terms of the polling data, despite all the attempts by the media to simply lie about President Trump's immigration policy, to suggest that he's deporting innocent people, innocent two-year-olds, for example. They just lie about what exactly he is doing. The latest example of this, by the way, a judge over the weekend

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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is raising alarms the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with, quote, no meaningful process, even as the child's father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country. U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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District Judge Terry Dowdy, a Trump appointee, said the child appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week. Well, it sounds from this article as though this kid was just basically randomly, but US citizen randomly deported with mom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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So whatever the American people think of President Trump, they think even worse about the Democratic Party. By the way, there is a good reason for that, which is that the Democratic Party is so unbelievably unhinged. They are so incompetent at this, truly incompetent. It is amazing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Okay, except that mom wanted the child to go with her. That's the actual story here. Trump administration officials pointed out the mother told ICE officials that if she was deported, she wanted to take her two-year-old with her, which is a perfectly natural thing to do. Most people don't leave their two-year-olds behind in a foreign country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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The filing from the Trump administration included a handwritten note in Spanish that was claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. So again, the media tried to report that as the Trump administration kind of stealing away in the dead of night two-year-olds. That's not happening. And meanwhile, the left wing has been very, very bothered and hot over the arrest of a judge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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That judge's name is Hannah Dugan. Hannah Dugan is a Wisconsin judge. And she was arrested for obstructing justice. By the way, she deserved it. This is the part that actually is hilarious. So here's Chuck Schumer, for example, suggesting a constitutional crisis has arrived because a judge in Wisconsin has been arrested by the FBI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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As we'll see, it's a target rich environment for Democrats out there, particularly on the economy, but they cannot help themselves because they're constantly running to the radical left of their own base. They're saying idiotic things on a daily basis. So over the weekend, for example, J.B. Pritzker, the rotund governor of Illinois, who has to be lowered into the Illinois Capitol by Crane,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Okay, so that's actually not what happened here. So what exactly happened here? Well, there was a judge, and this judge had in her courtroom a person named Eduardo Flores Ruiz. He was a Mexican national, illegal immigrant, who was there for a hearing on battery charges.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Before the hearing, a lawyer told Judge Dugan that ICE agents were waiting outside the courtroom in the public area and they were going to arrest this guy and deport him. So Judge Dugan spoke with the federal agents and said they needed a judicial warrant and to speak with the chief judge of Milwaukee County. So they did.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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One of the officers went to the chief judge who told the officer there was a policy in the works about where in the courthouse ICE agents could actually arrest people. Ashley told the agent hallways were areas where an arrest could be made. So this illegal immigrant who has a rap sheet as long as your arm was going to be deported as soon as he stepped out of the courtroom into the hallway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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So the judge took this person who was in fact an allegedly violent criminal, right? Was there for an assault charge. and said, wait, come with me, and ushered this person through a door leading to a non-public area of the courthouse. Agents then saw Mr. Flores Ruiz and his lawyer, this is the New York Times, again, this is not like some right-wing publication, and his lawyer in a public hallway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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One agent entered an elevator with them and watched them leave the building, but did not immediately make the arrest. The complaint said other agents then arrested him on the street after a foot chase. A week later, FBI agents came and arrested Judge Dugan at the courthouse, and she was charged with obstructing immigration officers and concealing someone to prevent an arrest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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which, by the way, is the correct charge, under 18 U.S. Code, Section 1505, it literally says, "...whoever impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States..."

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either house shall be fined under this title in prison not more than five years or if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism in prison not more than eight years or both.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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So she tried to help an illegal immigrant escape from the Trump ICE department by taking him through a secret entrance and they arrested her as they should. Even Andrew McCabe, you'll remember Andrew McCabe from Russiagate. Andrew McCabe, who is no right-wing fan of Trump, even he admits this is a solid case against the judge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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So again, even the left is sort of admitting that this person ought to be arrested. But according to the left, it's also a constitutional crisis. The New York Times is David Brooks, a man so ridiculous. He once suggested that Barack Obama would be an excellent president because he had a nice crease in his pants. I'm not even kidding. That's a real thing he did.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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He was giving a speech in which he suggested that basically anybody who is a supporter of Trump ought to be harassed on the streets, a la Maxine Waters several years back. Here was J.B. Pritzker doing this routine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Here's David Brooks suggesting it's time for civil disobedience.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Okay, again, if they think this is heroic, then good luck for them in the polls. Again, if the American people are focusing on immigration, President Trump is popular. It's the economy that is sinking him right now. President Trump put out a truth over the weekend saying, quote, we need courageous justice in our country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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If the courts don't allow what we've been allowed to do for 250 years, America can no longer be the same. Crooked Joe Biden will have destroyed our country with his open border madness and allowing criminals of every type to enter. With no attribution, murderers, drug dealers, gang members, even the mentally insane will make their home in our country wreaking havoc like we've never seen before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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It's not possible to have trials for millions and millions of people. We know who the criminals are. We must get them out of the United States and fast. Again, that is a popular position with the American public. He is doing important things along these lines, which is why he needs to fix the economic turmoil ASAP so we can get back to business.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Meanwhile, President Trump does look like he is shifting on the war in Ukraine, as he should. The fact of the matter is that the Russian government has shown little desire, predilection, interest in an actual end to this war. Over the weekend, more drone attacks across Ukraine, four dead in those drone attacks. That's after President Trump actually asked Putin to stop multiple times.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He literally last week said, Vladimir, stop after a gigantic drone and missile assault on Kiev, among other areas of the country. Well, President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social, literally saying that he is tiring of Vladimir Putin playing around He said, with all of that being said, he has a long thing about how it was Biden's fault that the war happened, which is true.

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But then he says, with all of that being said, there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns over the last few days. It makes me think maybe he doesn't want to stop the war. He's just tapping me along and has to be dealt with differently through banking or secondary sanctions. Too many people are dying.

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Well, I mean, there's a third way that he could be helped along, and that would be increasing the amount of military aids Ukraine's put actual military heft behind any sort of secondary sanctions. Russia economically has escaped many of these sanctions by selling oil to the Indians or the Chinese. They've created their own sort of shadow banking system.

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So the sanctions have been effective in some ways, but they have not been completely effective for sure. And if Ukraine does not succeed on the military front, the rest of it becomes sort of a moot point. Over the weekend, President Trump did meet with Vladimir Zelensky. This happened at the funeral of the Pope.

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Pretty iconic photo that happened at the funeral of the Pope in which President Trump was sitting with Vladimir Zelensky in St. Peter's. Apparently, the French President Emmanuel Macron wanted to sit with them. And Trump was like, no, not happening. And so Macron's chair ended up being taken away. So President Trump had this long conversation with Zelensky.

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The cameras and microphones were far away, but they're obviously talking mano a mano. President Trump is suggested that that does suggest some sort of warming to the idea, the reality that Russia is the problem here because Russia is the problem here. The New York Times has a piece today saying President Trump's standing among Ukrainians is practically on life support.

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But many cheered one statement he made on Saturday after meeting with Zelensky. That would be the statement that I just read. Today's events were a victory of sorts for Zelensky and Ukraine at a critical junction in the war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. The United States has been pushing Ukraine to accept a peace plan that seems in part a gift to Moscow.

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But now Ukrainians see a small glimmer of hope that Mr. Trump will not try to force Ukraine into a lopsided peace plan. Now, again, the United States can't actually force Ukraine into a lopsided peace plan.

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We can't, nor should we, because Ukraine simply cannot give up all that territory and have no security guarantees and vow never to join NATO and not have any European troops on its soil to provide a trigger force or anything like that. It can't do those things. It just will refuse because that's essentially guaranteeing that in two years, Russia invades again and takes the rest of the country.

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However, it is very good that President Trump is seeing reality when it comes to the Russians. He should. According to Vladimir Dubovik, the director of the Center for International Studies at Odessa Mekinov National University, Trump's team has had too much exposure to the Kremlin and its talking points lately. So for Kiev to be able to present their perspective directly to Trump was useful.

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And I think that that is right. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, he mentioned over the weekend that there are options for those held responsible for not actually wanting peace.

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So, you know, again, I think that that is the proper perspective. But the person who obviously doesn't want peace here is Vladimir Putin. Speaking of which, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Russians have been increasing their military presence, not just with regard to Ukraine, but also along the entire NATO border.

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Quote, some 100 miles east of its border with Finland in the Russian city of Petrovodsk. Military engineers are expanding army bases where the Kremlin plans to create a new army headquarters to oversee tens of thousands of troops over the next several years.

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Those soldiers, many now serving on the front lines of Ukraine, are intended to be the backbone of a Russian military preparing to face off with NATO. according to Western military and intelligence officials. The Kremlin is expanding military recruitment, bolstering weapons production, upgrading railroad lines in border areas.

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And again, this is part of the broader Eurasian vision that Russia has, what it would like to be. Russia sees itself as the center of the universe. We discussed this on Friday on the show when we were going through the philosophy of Alexander Dugin, who's widely perceived to be Putin's brain. But it's also been repeated by people like the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

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So Democrats are unhinged. So instead of them just sitting there and saying, listen, President Trump isn't doing the job Americans want him to do, which would be the smart way to actually approach this, they've decided instead that they're just going to go psychotic.

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It is just a generalized Russian perception that Russia needs to be an empire, that that empire is eventually meant to span all the way from China in the east, all the way to the Atlantic in its west. That means finding or creating friendly regimes, not only in Eastern Europe, but eventually in Western Europe as well. Now, not all of that's going to be done through military conquest.

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But if you're Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, you're the Baltic states, if you're Finland, and you're looking across the border at a giant Russian military, and you have a NATO that seems bizarrely unwilling to face up to the problem,

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If that is the issue, then maybe you see Putin try to break NATO directly by invading a small country and then making the argument, well, do you really want to die for Moldova? Do you really want to die for Latvia or Lithuania? You could easily see that case being made and enforced by Putin.

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Or you could see Putin do with these various states what China has been trying to do with Taiwan, which is through threat of military force and the possibility that no help is coming, try to convince people in those areas to vote for governments that are more Russia-friendly, create a Russian proxy state the way that Russia has created Russian proxy states in places like Kazakhstan or Afghanistan.

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or in Belarus. These are all areas that Russia has really flexed its muscles and has come up with administrations that are extremely friendly to the Russians. Russia is, again, a country that has its own actual driving force. One of the great fallacies of isolationist foreign policy is this idea that everyone is just reacting to what America does in the world. That is not true.

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Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, would-be House Speaker, yesterday, he was in the middle of a protest, and he started quoting Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War, suggesting that America could break down between patriots and traitors. Presumably the traitors would be Republicans.

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Not everybody thinks the same way. Not everybody's an American or a Britisher. It turns out that the Russians have their own perspective on the world, and it's quite aggressive. The Chinese have their own perspective on the world. It's quite aggressive. The Iranians have their own perspective on the world, and it is quite aggressive. Speaking of which, over the weekend...

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a massive explosion in Iran at a port. It killed at least 40 people. What blew up were clearly munitions. I mean, you can see it from the video. There was a fire at the port of Bandar Abbas. It killed at least 40 people. You can see from the fire, it is not burning in sort of a normal color. It's clearly burning chemicals. Those chemicals are supposedly used to make missile propellant.

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The death toll has now spiked sharply. At least a thousand others are reported injured, according to the Associated Press, citing Iranian state TV. 190 are still in the hospital. There was a surveillance video that was distributed by Fars News Agency, which is Iranian, showing a small fire that begins among the containers.

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And you can see workers moving away from the scene and then gigantic explosion that probably killed some of the workers. This is an area where Iran typically ships munitions to places like Lebanon for the help of Hezbollah. So there's speculation as to...

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Whether this was an attack by the Israelis, there's been speculation that maybe it was just them failing because they've actually had that problem before. You remember there's a giant explosion at the port outside of Beirut just a couple of years ago in Lebanon, enormous explosion. And it turns out that that might have just been by accident.

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The Iranians are not particularly good at handling their munitions. This we know. According to Andrea Sella, professor of chemistry at University College London, this bears the hallmarks of an ammonium nitrate explosion.

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Ammonium nitrate is a commodity chemical widely used as fertilizer and as an industrial explosive, but poor storage can significantly raise the risk of an explosion in the event of a fire. So, again, the Iranians, the idea that they are coming to the peace table, that they are ready to make peace, that is a complete fantasy. Meanwhile, things are heating up between India and Pakistan.

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According to the New York Times, India seems to be building a case for striking Pakistan. There was a terrorist attack in Kashmir last week. Kashmir is a border area between India and Pakistan that is controlled, at least titularly, by the Iranians. It's heavily Muslim. They're basically really three kind of areas of Kashmir. One is controlled really by the Chinese.

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One is controlled by the Indians. One is controlled by the Pakistanis. But it's supposed to be under the control of the Iranian government. There is a massive terror attack killing some 26 people by a Pakistani Muslim terror group. Narendra Modi, who is the leader, the prime minister of India, has made the case that there's going to need to be military action against Pakistan for it.

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According to the New York Times, according to four diplomatic officials aware of discussions, New Delhi appears to be building a case for military action against its neighbor and archenemy. Modi said in a speech on Thursday that he was going to deal out severe punishment and the raising of terrorist safe havens.

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Already, there are security forces between India and Pakistan who are firing at each other. Two of the past three nights, actually. In Kashmir, Indian forces are also doing a clampdown right now. And India is declaring its intention to disrupt the flow of water to Pakistan. They have an irrigation system that depends largely on the Indians.

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Pakistan, in the meantime, is saying that will suspend participation in bilateral treaties as well. Now, remember, both of these countries have nuclear weapons, so things could get very hot very quickly between India and Pakistan. Obviously, India is a democratic ally of the United States. Pakistan is effectively an Islamic dictatorship.

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So in terms of rooting interest, the West should be rooting for India in this particular conflict. In terms of the actual dangers of the conflict heating up, obviously those are quite real. Meanwhile, speaking of sort of pseudo-democracies that aren't actually democracies, Turkey is heating up its own ambitions. According to...

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to the editorial board of the New York Times, Erdogan continues to gain control over his country. Erdogan, of course, has total control over the military at this point. When he was first elected, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is... going all the way back to the beginning of the century. He's now been 22 years in power, Erdogan.

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When he was first elected, he was elected as a sort of pseudo-moderate, actually. And then he turned into an Islamic radical. And he has basically reoriented his entire country toward Iran, toward Russia, toward a wide variety of terrorist states in the region. Turkey kind of famously has taken over Syria now.

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Well, Erdogan, he has moved away from the EU, even though there's a large trading relationship between Turkey and the EU and Turkey is a NATO member, which is absolutely insane because Turkey supports terror regimes, including Hamas. Well, according to the New York Times, Erdogan continues to retain control. The Turkish people are not necessarily in love with Erdogan at this point.

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By whatever polling data is available, his chief rival apparently is a person named Ekrem Imamoglu. And now Erdogan has detained him. He's now arresting him. Imamoglu is more likely to form relationships with the West. Meanwhile, Erdogan is going more and more radical. So the West should be looking very seriously what to do about Turkey.

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Certainly, the notion of selling Turkey F-35s, which is something apparently the Trump administration has discussed, that's ridiculous. We should certainly not be doing that with the Turks, given their current orientation. Finally, in sort of foreign news, the Canadian election takes place today. Unfortunately, Pierre Poliev, who was leading by 20 points in the polls at the beginning of the year,

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Right now in the polling data is trailing Mark Carney, who's the person who took over for Justin Trudeau. And there's only one reason for that. One and one alone. That is the trade war with Canada. That is the only reason. It is because the United States launched a trade war with Canada that this happened because Poliev dumped in the polls.

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Canadians decided to orient against the Trump administration. Poliev was perceived as an ally of the Trump administration. And so Carney jumped. It's that simple, which is ridiculous and sad and. Really, really frustrating because the United States could have had an excellent ally in Canada and Pierre Poliev.

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I hope I hope, by the way, there is a late surge for Poliev where people may be waking up from the reverie just long enough to vote. I'm hopeful that maybe that puts Poliev over the top. But if Poliev loses to Mark Carney because of the trade war, that is one of the biggest own goals for the Trump administration of the first 100 days.

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Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to the White House Correspondents Dinner, where things were said that were bizarre, plus breaking news. You remember that helicopter and plane crash that happened outside Reagan National? We now have some information that is really disquieting about it. But remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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OK, so this is just psychotic, OK, because now he's not even arguing about the violation of law, supposedly by the Trump administration. He's not arguing about emoluments. He's arguing here about the budget. He's suggesting if you're on the wrong side of the budget negotiation, then you are a traitor. So, again, President Trump is blessed in his opposition. Absolutely blessed.

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He brings out the absolute worst in all of his enemies. John Ossoff. The soon to be ex-senator from Georgia is the current senator from Georgia is going to lose his next election. He's trying to rile up the Democratic base, too. And he literally said that he'd be in favor of impeaching President Trump. Why? For selling meme coin. as a fundraiser.

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Okay, so Tuesday marks 100 days of President Trump's second term. And it's been a lot. It's been a lot. President Trump has done an enormous number of amazing things, ranging from fighting DEI in every aspect of his administration to going after university campuses that are hotbeds of antisemitism and leftism and wokeness.

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So Democrats, again, they remain wildly unpopular with the American public. With that said, it is not good news for President Trump that he is riding so low in the polls that's particularly true with independents. According to that brand new Washington Post, ABC News, Ipsos poll, among independents, only 33% approve, 58% disapprove.

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I mean, among independents who lean Republican, Trump's approval has dropped from 76% to 63% since February. And it's a very quick drop. And there's one reason for it generally, one reason. And that reason is not immigration. That reason is not foreign policy. That reason is the tariff war. The tariff war has absolutely crippled him on pretty much every other issue.

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According to that poll, only 31% of Americans approve of the recent turmoil in the stock market. Only 34% of Americans approve of tariffs on imported goods. Only 38% approve of his relations with foreign countries. And only 39%, the same as his approval rating, approve on the economy. So as the economy goes, so too does President Trump.

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When it comes to immigration, his most popular issue, he's at 46% approved, 53% disapproved. But that's because whenever a president is unpopular on one issue, it tends to drag him down on a wide variety of other issues. When it comes to whether Americans think he's going too far on particular issues, the issue where only a minority think he is going too far is in deporting undocumented immigrants.

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50% say that he's either handling it right or not going far enough. So again, on immigration, which is his signal issue, that is his key issue since 2015, President Trump is succeeding. But when it comes to the economy and expanding the power of the presidency, 64% of Americans say that he is going too far, for example. And immigration remains his most popular issue.

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The economy is where people are freaking out. And again, that freak out is not unjustified given the current situation of the global economy. And it's not just that particular poll. And we are 100 days in, and so we are doing a sort of retrospective on where the administration stands. And as I've been saying, if you're hoping for President Trump's success, Because I'm a voter of President Trump.

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I'm a supporter of President Trump's. Gave money to his campaign, fundraised for him, campaigned with him. President Trump needs to succeed on the economy because if he does not succeed on the economy, everything else goes down in flames. According to a new national poll by CBS News, President Trump's approval rating is down from 53% in February to 45%. Very significant decline.

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On immigration, President Trump is only underwater by a couple of points. That's not because people change their minds on immigration. It's because of everything else. Look at these numbers on the economy. He went from plus two on the economy in February to minus 16 on the economy. He is now at minus 24 on inflation. Okay, those numbers are devastating for President Trump.

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And again, it is across polls. This is not just one poll that I'm citing. These are not outlier polls. This is an absolutely clear trend. When it comes to inflation and the cost of living, according to a new decision desk survey, only 40% approve, 60% either somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove. When it comes to trade and tariffs, only 39% approve, 61% disapprove. So this is a trend.

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ranging from his attempts to inject Pete Hegsath, the Secretary of Defense, in order to fix all the problems at the Pentagon, to Doge, which is going through all aspects of government spending with Elon Musk and attempting to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. He has issued more executive orders in his first 100 days than any president in history. He's been incredibly vulnerable.

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And so the question is what President Trump is going to do about that. We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, tax day may already be over, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just beginning. If you miss the April 15th deadline or still owe back taxes, the IRS is ramping up enforcement. Every day you wait only makes things worse.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years. Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast. The good news, there's still time for Tax Network USA to help. Self-employed or a business owner, even if your books are a mess, they've got it covered.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track fast. Even after the deadline, it's not too late to regain control. Your consultation is completely free. Acting now could stop penalties, threatening letters, and surprise levies before they escalate. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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You may have missed April 15th, but you haven't run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help. for the IRS makes the next move. Again, that is 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. Also, you might already own a firearm, but having something less lethal as an option, that's a great idea as well. Enter Byrna. That is B-Y-R-N-A.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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I'm as pro Second Amendment as it gets. The thought of using lethal force, not ideal for everybody. Luckily, Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammunition designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes without the unwanted repercussions. And Burna is excited to introduce the all-new compact launcher. Sleek, slim, hits like a sledgehammer.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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The same size as a smartphone, allowing you to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence. This launcher fires at 400 feet per second with 41 joules of force per square inch. It's a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks. One thing I love about Burna is... It's an American company. Over 80% of the components in the compact launcher are sourced in the United States.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Their pistols are hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Again, the reality is that if you ever have to use a firearm, there are all sorts of lethal and legal consequences that could attend. Burna bypasses a lot of that stuff. Burna is legal in all 50 states, requires no background checks. It can be shipped directly to your door.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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Plus, Burna is trusted by hundreds of police departments and government agencies worldwide. Well, President Trump over the weekend, he continues and his administration continue to give mixed signals about the tariff war. So on the one hand, Scott Besson, every time Scott Besson talks, the market goes up, the Treasury Secretary, because he's trying to quiet the market.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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He's trying to tell the markets everything's going to be OK. We're going to come to trade deals. We're going to get off of this tariff train. So Scott Besson was on ABC News this week and he was asked about President Trump suggesting that a bunch of tariff negotiations were taking place. The deals were going to be cut. And here was his answer.

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effective in terms of pushing forward many parts of his agenda. With that said, the polling right now for President Trump is not good after 100 days in. And that is a reflection of sentiment specifically regarding the economy. So if you look at President Trump's brand new poll numbers, they're a bevy of polls and they're all telling the same story 100 days in.

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Okay, so that is not 200 deals that are being done, obviously. So there's still confusion. And here is the problem. When it comes to these trade deals, they usually take a significant amount of time to negotiate. It's not like you can snap your fingers and the trade deals magically get done. There are lots of details. Some of them have to be approved by Congress.

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And meanwhile, President Trump went on Truth Social yesterday and decided to talk up the tariff war. Quote, when tariffs cut in, many people's income taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive number of jobs are already being created with new plants and factories currently being built or planned.

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It will be a bonanza for America. The external revenue service is happening. So, again, this is sort of a talking point that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has retailed is that we're going to replace the income tax with tariffs. That is not going to happen. We're not going to raise the amount of money in tariffs that would compensate for the loss of the income tax, for example.

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And that is not how the American people are feeling about any of this. Again, we have yet to actually feel the significant effect of the tariffs on the economy, but it is coming. I'm talking to people who are in the wholesale and retail space, and they are freaking out about the tariffs. They are seeing their orders cut. They are seeing their prices increase.

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They are seeing the supply chains break. According to Port Technology, the U.S. tariff war is continuing to disrupt container shipping with a significant uptick in blank sailings on Trans-Pacific routes reported over the past week. Blank sailings are where you have these gigantic ships.

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They're carrying all sorts of cargo and they can't just sit in port waiting to be loaded indefinitely because there's something else coming behind them. It's more like a train than it is the way we tend to think of boats floating across the water. And so if they arrive in a port and there's nothing to be put on the ship, they just move on to the next port.

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Well, it used to be because it's extremely expensive to ship this sort of stuff. I mean, the giant cost to move these giant ships all over the planet. It used to be that pretty much no ship left port without anything on it. There were no blank sailings. Well, as we are now seeing, that is not true anymore.

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Data from sea intelligence illustrates a steep rise in blanketed capacity, in blanked capacity on the Asian North America East Coast trade. In week 12 of 2025, there were zero blank sailing scheduled for the period between April 7th and May 12th. By week 15, 35% of all planned capacity for the week starting May 5th had been canceled.

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Those figures rose to 42% by week 16, representing a seven percentage point increase in just one week. And a similar development is happening on the Asian North America West Coast route. For the week commencing 28 April, blank sailings increased from 13% in week 15 to 28% by week 16. There's a dramatic change in the market, obviously.

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Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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You're starting to see a bunch of importers saying, well, we're not going to be able to sell these products with these giant tariffs on them. And so ships are just arriving that are empty. Ships are just not being filled up. Meanwhile, there are a lot of fears of actual shortages, price hikes, sort of like when the supply chains broke during COVID.

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According to a brand new Washington Post, ABC News, Ipsos poll, President Trump's approval rating is down from February. It was 45% in February. It's down all the way to 39% today, which is very, very low. And again, that is all before the main effects of the tariff war that he has declared on the world, also on China, kicks in.

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According to Axios, many retailers stocked up on inventory in the first months of 2025, realizing a storm was coming. Their inventories are poised to dwindle quickly. The National Retail Federation expects U.S. imports to plunge by at least 20% in the second half of 2025 if the current tariffs remain in place.

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Shortages are a real possibility, John Harmon, who is a CoreSight research analyst, told Axios. the CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot warned President Trump in a meeting last week that his trade policy could trigger massive product shortages and price spikes as well. And that's the big guys.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2187 - 100 DAYS: Where Does Trump Stand?

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The smaller guys basically have no options because maybe President Trump relieves tariffs on some of the big guys the way he did with Apple. But if you're a small retailer, you might be screwed. Again, I know people who are in the import-export business and they're getting hammered. I mean, they're looking at the possibility of actual bankruptcy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Well, over the weekend, President Trump was golfing, and then he decided it was time for Columbia, the country, not the university, to F around and find out. So here's how it all went down. It was pretty incredible. So Columbia had announced that they were not going to accept plane flights filled with deportees.

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We'll not allow the Colombian government to violate its legal obligation with regards to the acceptance and return of the criminals they forced into the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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When I went down, I visited the southern border last year. I went down to Arizona and visited the Mexican-Arizona border. There were literal signs that were put up by the Catholic Church directing illegal immigrants where to find resources.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the Catholic Church and many of their subsidized groups down at the southern border have been extraordinarily pro-illegal immigration to the point of borderline violating the law. And J.D., who is himself Catholic, says, no, this is not appropriate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Now, Colombian President Petro had suggested on Sunday, quote, I cannot make migrants stay in a country that does not want them, but if that country sends them back, it should be with dignity and respect for them and for our country. A migrant is not a criminal. And while President Trump had had about enough of that, and within literal minutes, I'm not even kidding.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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He's absolutely 100% right about this. Absolutely 100% correct on this particular issue. On this particular issue. Let's be clear. The Catholic Church is wonderful on many issues. On this issue, the Catholic Church is a disaster area on the American southern border. Great on pro-life issues, terrific on traditional marriage, awful on borders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And ironically, doesn't apply those same rules to, say, Vatican City. Speaking of which, the chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Mark Seitz, he ripped the Trump administration's immigration policy on Sunday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Okay, well, respecting people does not mean accepting them into your country, regardless of their violation of law. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. But again, this is the perspective of so many members of left. Now, they are claiming that they are fine with the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants. I really don't think that that is correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, she purports to be a moderate Democrat. So she says, listen, if you want to deport criminals, I'm fine with that. It's if you want to deport, you know, just kind of your normal run of the mill non-criminal illegal immigrant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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meaning a person who crossed the border illegally, which is a crime, but hasn't committed some sort of other crime, well, then she's upset with it. Here's Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, supposedly a blue dog Democrat of some sort.

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Okay, again, this is going to be the line. How could you be so cruel as to deport an 11-year-old? Well, I mean, if you deport their parents, then the child might have to go with them because it's better that families stay together. J.B.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Within about 10 minutes of President Trump putting out a statement that he'd be increasing the tariffs on Colombian products to 25% this week, followed by 50% next week, the government of Colombia immediately caved, like totally caved. Here's a statement from the White House press secretary. Quote,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Pritzker, the rotund governor of Illinois who has to be lowered into the Capitol building by a crane each morning and who also has presidential aspirations based on the fact that his family is uber wealthy. He is, in fact, the scion of a billionaire family, but that's okay as long as you're a Democrat. inherited wealth.

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In any case, here he was suggesting that he would help deport illegal immigrant criminals, but not the quote-unquote undocumented. Those are just normal illegal immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, now there's one problem. This is the claim that they're making, that they will cooperate with regard to criminal illegal immigrants. But when it comes to, quote unquote, the normal undocumented, they won't they won't help out. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I think that you are fine with criminal illegal immigrants. It only becomes embarrassing to you on occasion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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I base this on the fact that the Biden administration left the border wide the hell open for four long years and you had nothing to say about it. Nothing until it bit you on the ass politically. Plus the fact that the new appointed senator for California, Adam Schiff, is an awful, awful senator. He's an awful congressperson. He says that deporting people who steal toothpaste is an overage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So apparently some kinds of criminals it's OK to keep in the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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OK, that's a terrible. So actual criminal shoplifting, apparently not enough to get you deported. So this is why I don't believe you when you say that you only want to help out with criminal illegal immigrants. I don't believe you. I think that you're totally fine with mass illegal immigration. And this is why President Trump was reelected, because it turns out he pledged common sense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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The government of Colombia has agreed to all President Trump's terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay. Based on this agreement, the fully drafted IEPA tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve and not signed unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And you guys are so off the beaten track on common sense. It is absolutely insane. So, I don't really trust Democrats when it comes to illegal immigration or pretty much anything else, but there is one company that I trust to actually start my 2025 off right. Black Rifle Coffee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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They help you wake up each morning feeling dialed in and ready to make the most of your day so you can make the best of your year. Now is your chance to get 20% off your purchase with code DAILYWIRE at blackriflecoffee.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Black Rifle Coffee's explosive coffees are roasted right here in the United States by a veteran-led team of expert roasters who take pride in serving coffee and culture to people who love America. Every purchase you make helps them further their mission to support veteran and first responder causes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Everything from getting funding and equipment to first responders to helping veterans get medical care. Black Rifle Coffee has a huge selection of dark roast, light roast, everything in between. Take the coffee quiz on their website. Get matched with a blend perfectly tailored to your specific taste.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Again, a portion of every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee goes towards supporting veteran and first responder causes. Your money goes a long way toward giving back to those who serve our nation. Head over to BlackRifleCoffee.com right now. Use code dailywire for 20% off America's coffee. That's blackriflecoffee.com. Use code dailywire for 20% off America's coffee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Again, blackriflecoffee.com, code dailywire. Also, let's talk about something that affects all of us who are responsible and hardworking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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taxes well the new year is upon us so is tax season are you prepared for what comes next you owe back taxes are your tax returns still unfiled did you miss the deadline to file for an extension as we head into the busy tax season the irs is going to start its enforcement procedures let me tell you they don't play around you could face wage garnishments frozen bank accounts even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet but there is good news there's still hope tax network usa has been in this game for years they know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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They've helped taxpayers save over $1 billion in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burden. So do not let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what I need you to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. President Trump made a visit out to California on Friday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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According to the Los Angeles Times, in a somber scene lighted by an orange LA sunset, President Trump walked through the ruins of Pacific Palisades on Friday, shaking hands with firefighters, speaking to a handful of residents as he took in the devastation wrought by firestorms that swept through LA County this month.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Trump said he was stunned by the devastation and vowed to partner with local officials to help victims.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So Gavin Newsom, who's been totally embarrassed by his own incompetence during this scandalous crisis in the Los Angeles area and throughout Southern California, he actually sort of hijacked President Trump arriving to show up on the tarmac to try and pretend that he and Trump were friends or that he's going to leverage Trump. Yeah, good luck with that, Governor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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The visa sanctions issued by the State Department and enhanced inspections from Customs and Border Protection will remain in effect until the first plane load of Colombian deportees is successfully returned. Today's events make clear to the world that America is respected again.

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Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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The body language there, by the way, is hilarious. For those who can't watch, it's Gavin Newsom trying to play like he's the alpha in that particular relationship. And it doesn't work at all. He's trying to lecture Trump. He's making hand motions. And Trump is just solid as a rock, just standing there like, OK, whatever, Gavin. All right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So President Trump had many things to say about the handling of California during this crisis. One of the things that he said is, hey, you know, FEMA. which is always looked to as sort of the first line of defense here. Maybe you guys should handle your own crap in the state of California. By the way, this was the way the disasters were handled in the United States for a very, very long time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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It is a bizarre thing that area-specific crises ought to be thrust on the federal government. Why is it that people in Kansas ought to be paying the bills of the rich people in Pacific Palisades when those people in Pacific Palisades have been paying millions and billions of dollars over the years in order to protect themselves?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Why can't the state of California, you know, take care of its own residents? This is President Trump's point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States. Ultimate FAFO. Absolutely incredible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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I mean, yes, yes. But it didn't end there. President Trump did this whole sort of roundtable discussion with a wide variety of Democrats because, of course, Republicans are an endangered species in the state of California. One of the people who showed up was Congressman Brad Sherman, who actually represents the district that I used to live in in California.

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And here he was absolutely blasting Brad Sherman, saying, you know, one of the reasons this happened is because y'all made it impossible for people to buy fire insurance in the state of California.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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He is right about this. The state of California made it nearly impossible for fire insurance to be bought in the state of California because they put price caps on what the fire insurance companies could actually offer to their customers. And so many of those companies left because I can't insure a house if the cost of insuring the house is greater than the actual premiums I'm going to take in.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So the Trump administration had moved very quickly when it came into office to start arresting and deporting people who were criminal illegal immigrants, and that included many Colombian deportees, people from the country of Colombia. And the president of Colombia then suggested that he was not going to actually accept any of those deportees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's not insurance anymore. That's just a subsidy. Then he wrecked Brad Sherman over water usage in the state of California as well. Here's the thing. What he's saying here is so commonsensical, but Democrats are so alienated from common sense at this point that they're making Republicans look absolutely normal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Hey, again, again, all common sense. President Trump also had a very entertaining exchange with the awful mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who you will recall was at one point considered for Joe Biden's possible vice presidential pick. This human. Here was Donald Trump versus Karen Bass.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Now, Petro on X, Gustavo Petro, the leader of Colombia, who is in fact a socialist, a big fan of Nicolas Maduro, a bigger fan of Hugo Chavez, a person who was elected by a very slim majority in the last presidential election in Colombia in 2022, and who has gradually attempted to accrete power despite his deep radicalism. He is wildly unpopular in his own country.

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Okay, again, it is because of democratic malfeasance and mishandling that all this came about. And Donald Trump is simply pointing that out. This is the most successful launch of any administration in my lifetime. There's just no question about it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We are, what, eight days deep into this administration, and the president has already unleashed dozens of executive orders clearing out dead wood from a wide variety of agencies. He has already made moves to intimidate opponents of the United States into, for example, taking illegal immigrants back. That's what he did over the weekend.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He has directed his own administrative agencies to look at the cost of various boondoggle programs He has decided to overturn DEI throughout his administration. All these things are incredible. One thing that President Trump knows this time that he didn't last time is that it is very important for him to clear out the obstacles to his ability to actually govern.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So there's a big controversy that broke out over the weekend because President Trump fired something like 17 inspectors general. He's supposedly in violation of the law. I'm going to explain that in a moment. According to the New York Times, President Trump fired at least 12 inspectors general, turns out it was 17, late on Friday night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Three people with knowledge of the matter said, capping a week of dramatic shakeups of the federal government with a purge of independent watchdog officials created by Congress to root out abuse and illegality within federal agencies. The firings defied a law that requires presidents to give Congress 30 days advance notice before removing any inspector general, along with reasons for the firing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Just two years ago, Congress strengthened that provision by requiring the notice to include a substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons for the removal. The move was the latest wave of abrupt upheavals following the inauguration of Mr. Trump that put the government in increasing confusion.

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Apparently, the watchdogs that were removed included the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Housing, and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs, along with the EPA and the Small Business Administration. Now, why exactly did they do this?

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The answer is because the Trump administration in the first go-round was hamstrung by independent inspectors general who were put in place by Congress basically in order to hamstring the Trump administration. I personally know many members of Trump administration number one who are nearly bankrupted because of the legal costs they had to undergo thanks to, for example, the Robert Mueller report.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He had sought to cast Trump's tariff threat as an affront to his country's freedom. Quote, you don't like our freedom, fine. I do not shake hands with white slaveholders, he had said, adding later, you will never dominate us. Well, there's only one problem. They got pretty well dominated. So Pedro put out a big statement, like a long rambling statement.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The number of hours that were dedicated to that stupid foray into mythical idiocy was exorbitant. These inspector generals do not work for Congress. They work for the executive branch. It is probably unconstitutional for Congress to appoint inspectors general inside the executive branch that the president cannot fire. The executive branch is its own branch of government.

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It does not work for the legislature. That is not how this works. The president of the United States does not have Congress has its own subpoena power. The Congress has its own investigatory power. The Congress has its own ability to dig into what's going on in the executive branch. That's its oversight power.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Appointing independent inspectors general with a wide ranging ability to dig and dig and dig and dig, not for the crime, but for the man is a massive problem. And President Trump knows that he saw it during his first administration. Democrats, of course, are very upset about all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They would not be nearly as upset if these inspectors general had spent their time deep stating Joe Biden during the last administration. They didn't because these inspectors general tend to be democratic plans very often. Here was the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, ripping the firing of the inspectors general.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Quote, in the dark of night, President Trump fired at least 12 independent inspectors general and important federal agencies across the administration, a chilling purge. It's a preview of the lawless approach President Trump and his administration is taking to being president. Okay, you know what was lawless? The activation of the DOJ to go after Joe Biden's political opposition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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You know what else was lawless? The activation of the intelligence apparatus of the United States government to go after the sitting president of the United States during Trump term number one. You know what's not lawless? The president of the United States firing people in the executive branch. That is in fact not lawless.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And these inspectors general, now there's a good case that there should never be independent inspectors general inside these agencies because independent of what? To whom do they answer? If Congress has its own investigative power, why are their executive branch agents who are not answerable to the presidents of the United States? How do you fire them precisely?

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Now, of course, you have Adam Schiff. Some of the most corrupt people in American government complaining about this. Adam Schiff. who was a congressperson who went on air nearly every day during Trump number one and claimed that the Russians had bought and paid for Trump and that there would be evidence coming any moment that showed that Trump was basically a Russian agent.

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Now he is suggesting that the real reason that Trump is firing all these people, people that Adam Schiff helped sick on him in the first place, the reason he's firing all these people is because he wants rampant waste and fraud.

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And it demonstrates, by the way, how psychotic the far left is when they are in power and when they are out of power. Here was Gustavo Petro's statement. And again, this is after he had lost. He had lost. He basically said, we're not going to take the people you're deporting. And Trump said, well, if you don't, I'm going to completely destroy your economy because you represent

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, again, this sort of absolute hypocrisy is truly awful, and it's the reason why these people are getting fired today. In just a minute, we'll get to other measures that are being taken by Trump Team 2 that they needed to take during Administration 1, but now they've learned.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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First, President Trump hit the ground running in his first week, delivering on key promises, many of which were battles initiated and amplified by the Daily Wire. Our hit comedy film, Lady Ballers, hilariously tackled the absurdity and dangers of men competing in women's sports, a conversation now at the forefront of national policy debates thanks to new executive orders. Am I racist?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The number one documentary of the decade exposed the grifters and race hustlers driving DEI initiatives. Following recent executive orders, DEI programs have been significantly dismantled at the federal level and scaled back by major corporations. We're winning, but the fight? Fight is far from over. Here's the deal. We can't keep doing this without your support.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Every buck you spend helps fuel the battle for truth and sanity in this country. Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Get access to so much more. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Speaking of President Trump making the changes that should have happened during administration number one, President Trump's DOJ is already cleaning house according to the Wall Street Journal. They replaced a Biden-era memo telling prosecutors to show leniency to some drug offenders with a new policy calling for the pursuit of the most serious charges and the stiffest penalties for all crimes.

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They halted much of the department's civil rights and environmental work, and they transferred more than 15 career employees to relatively marginal positions, part of a broader effort to ultimately thin the workforce. That was just week number one. Many department employees are on edge because they are waiting. Senate confirmation of Pam Bondi, that's Trump AG nominee.

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Her chief of staff, Chad Mizell, is leading the department until then. And they are already shaking up the DOJ in major ways. This is good. People should be living on edge. The American people were living on edge when Joe Biden was president. Career employees at the DOJ who are interested in pushing their own agenda should be living on edge. Speaking of which,

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Charges were dropped by federal prosecutors against a surgeon, Dr. Ethan Chaim. We talked about this on the show a few months back. He was indicted last May in U.S. District Court in Houston on four counts of obtaining under false pretenses personal medical information from the online system at Texas Children's Database.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He requested access to the hospital's record database in 2023, claiming he needed information to provide adult care services. He then showed that this particular health care hospital was actually transing the children He disclosed the information to Chris Ruffo, our friend.

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Ruffo then published an article saying the hospital was continuing to provide trans care to minors after it announced an end to the practice. He said that he hadn't done anything wrong. He was a whistleblower. He had not actually revealed any patient information at all. He just said, guys, this is still happening, which is sort of typical whistleblowing, right?

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No private information was actually disclosed. Just the information that Texas Children's Hospital was still doing the thing they said they were not actually doing. Well, now the DOJ has dropped the charges as well they should have. No crime was actually committed in the first place. Again, a new day is dawning. A new day is dawning.

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like 1% of our market in terms of things like flowers or coffee or whatever, and we can all handle that. But we represent 25% of your entire market. So if you want to play this game, we'll just wreck your economy. And Petro backed down almost immediately. Well, he put out a full statement Here it is via Google Translate, quote, Trump, I don't really like traveling to the U.S.

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And that new day was forwarded on Friday by the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as our new Secretary of Defense. J.D. Vance had to break the tie. Again, every vote mattered in the United States Senate. That's why I went to six different states campaigning for a variety of Republican Senate candidates, a majority of whom ended up in the United States Senate.

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The only Republican senators who did not vote for Hegseth were Susan Collins. And again, Susan Collins gets the majority of sort of the flack for this sort of stuff, which is always weird to me because she's in Maine. So you're going to get a purplish senator in Maine. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska is the one who should really be under the gun.

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I mean, Lisa Murkowski represents a state that went for President Trump by one million points. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, who is on the retirement path, he voted against Pete Hegseth on the basis that Hegseth didn't have the experience to run a major department in However, that of course is a bad decision. J.D. Vance broke the tie. Pete Hegseth was in fact sworn in.

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Here was Pete making his statement after being sworn in as our new Secretary of Defense.

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Hex has also pledged that the U.S. military will never back down. Again, there's a reason why I so strongly supported Pete Hegseth for SecDef. He's going to be an excellent Secretary of Defense.

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Okay, Hegseth, of course, is exactly right about all this. If you want more on Pete Hegseth's view on our warfighters, what they require, go check out the Sunday special I did with Pete several months ago, well before he was ever nominated. He's terrific. Deb Fisher, the senator from Nebraska, says, listen, Pete Hegseth is peace through strength. That is correct.

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It's a bit boring, but I confess there are some commendable things. I like going to the black neighborhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the U.S. Capitol between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me because they should join together. I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky, there's a shock, and Miller.

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Okay, again, this is all excellent. Now, just to show you how deeply embedded the deep state is, one of the first things that Hegseth did when he entered as Secretary of Defense is he announced that DEI initiatives, as President Trump said, would be wiped out from the military. So what did the deep state do?

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Deep staters immediately announced that they would be removing teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen from the Department of Defense. And that was not a decision made by Pete Hegseth. Far from it. That was somebody low down trying to undermine the order to get rid of DEI by removing something that everybody basically agrees on in order to create a fake controversy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Hegseth immediately suggested that that had been immediately reversed. He posted the comment in response to concerns from U.S. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama about the malicious compliance we've seen in recent days. Malicious compliance is exactly right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They're members of the deep state, and these are people who are career appointees in a wide variety of administrative roles who are taking deliberately, literally, and to the extreme, many of the executive orders that are being put down simply in order to do humiliating things that then have to be identified and reversed by the actual appointees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Hegseth said, we're all over it, Senator, this will not stand. Now, again, it is absolutely ridiculous that somebody tried to do this in the notion that somehow people on the right are against the Tuskegee Airmen is insane. A few years ago on this show, I interviewed Harry Stewart, who's one of the Tuskegee Airmen on the show. Okay, Tuskegee Airmen are heroes to all Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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This notion that if you want to ban DEI, you have to get rid of it. It's just ridiculous. But again, the goal of so many people in the federal government, career employees, is to undermine what Trump is trying to do. That is why he is taking the measures that he is taking. Now, speaking of this, Tulsi Gabbard is the nominee for director of national intelligence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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She has a bit of a checkered history when it comes to some of the foreign policy positions ranging from Syria to Russia. All of these will be asked about, I assume, in the hearings that will take place this week. The left's opposition to Tulsi Gabbard, however, is too rich. It's just too rich.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So former CIA director John Brennan, who probably, probably should be in jail for perjury, he claims that Tulsi Gabbard should not be DNI. Why? Because she will violate the law and withhold intelligence from Donald Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA, and I follow them. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted... anarchist murderers who were put to death in the Woodrow Wood Wilson administration. So going pretty far back here, they were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my own country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, again, I might accept that from somebody else. From John Brennan, I'm not going to take this. Here was John Brennan in 2018 claiming that the Steele dossier, which, of course, was a compendium of nonsense, originally created at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign and then laundered into our intel community, which was run by people like John Brennan. It's just unbelievable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Here was John Brennan in 2018 claiming that the Steele dossier had no role in the early intelligence assessment with regard to the Russian collusion nonsense, which is a lie. It's not true. The Steele dossier was the original impetus for the launching of so much of the Mueller report.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Liar, liar, pants on fire. And then this guy said the same thing in front of Congress, and it caused a lot of Republicans to think maybe this guy should be brought up on perjury charges.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And the same people in the intelligence agencies who spent years claiming that it was insane to suggest that the lab leak theory about the origins of COVID was real, those same people are now claiming that Tulsi Gabbard is a threat to the free flow of information in intelligence. And I would take any critique I'm willing to hear, but I'm not willing to hear it from you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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If you're one of the people who covered up the lab leak theory, then I'm not willing to hear from you that Tulsi Gabbard might cover up information. That's a weird take. By the way, the CIA has now concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely arose from a lab leak. It only killed 1.2 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide, and China reaped zero of the actual consequences for that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So now the CIA is finally saying it. It only took them a few years to get there. Alrighty, in just one moment, we'll get into more American foreign policy, including some pretty stunning statements by President Trump about the Middle East. First, if you're not a member, become a member. Use Code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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I don't like your oil, Trump. You're going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day over a glass of whiskey, which I accept despite my gastritis. What the? We can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian. So if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance like they did with Allende, but I will die in my law. I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next to Colombia. We already had many. We freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn't understand that. This is the land of yellow butterflies, of the beauties of Remedios, but also... of the colonels, or Leonio Buendia, of which I am one, perhaps the last. You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours in the Americas. We are people of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea, and of freedom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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You don't like our freedom, okay? I don't shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany after being saved from COVID.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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They are the United States and before my kneel, before no one else, overthrow me, President, and the Americas and all humanity will respond. Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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He announced that while President Trump was in the middle of a round of golf, apparently, and he decided to take a break on the front nine, just step off the green for a moment and issue the following post on Truth Social. Quote, I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States with a large number of illegal criminals were not allowed to land in Colombia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the civilization of that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time who founded the Republic, democracy in Athens. Our blood has the black resistance fighters turned into slaves by you. And then it just keeps going, like on and on and on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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I'm in for that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the United States, and I do the same. Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world. What in the hell? Well, let's just be clear about this. He lost and now he's mad that he lost.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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But this is what happens when you screw around with the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world. And you happen to be a much smaller country with a much less robust economy. Genius-level stuff there from the socialist Colombian president who, in fact, is going to be on his way out as soon as the next election cycle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, put out an excellent statement in a post on X in which he suggested, "...President Trump has made it clear that under his administration, America will no longer be lied to nor taken advantage of. It is the responsibility of each nation to take back their citizens who are illegally present in the United States in a serious and expeditious manner."

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Colombian President Petro had authorized flights and provided all needed authorizations and then canceled his authorization when the planes were in the air. As demonstrated by today's actions, we are unwavering in our commitment to end illegal immigration and bolster America's border security. Absolutely correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And President Trump, just for good measure, then put the following post up on Truth Social. Just absolutely, what a troll master he is. My goodness. It is a picture of President Trump in what looks like an Al Capone outfit. And he's got like the Borsalino hat. and the pinstriped suit and the red tie. And in the background is a sign that says FAFO with a drawn happy face.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Yeah, well, here is the thing, folks. The era of weak America is where President Trump pledged this in his second inaugural address. He said, we are no longer going to be weak. We are going to be strong. Here is how this normally would have gone under, say, President Joe Biden. Columbia would have said no. And then the State Department would have done an investigation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And then the State Department investigation would have made several recommendations. And then Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, would have suggested that they weren't sensitive enough, these particular recommendations. They would have gone back to the drawing board several weeks later.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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They would have come back with a series of recommendations, at which point there would have been a commission to do a study on what should be done. And the end result would have been a deportation of like one quarter of the illegal immigrants, along with billions of dollars sent to Colombia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Or you can have brutal, rude, nasty, arrogant President Trump doing the thing that actually works, which is you screw with us and you get the sharp end of the stick. It's not all that tough. It's not all that tough. Seriously. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't thorny international issues. China is a massive thorny international issue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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But Colombia is saying they're not going to accept plane loads of illegal immigrants back into their country. That is not a thorny international issue. That is one that President Trump could solve literally while tweeting from the golf course. Because guess what? This is something President Trump has always understood.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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This order was given by Colombia's socialist president, Gustavo Petro, who was already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the national security and public safety of the United States. Trump then added that he had directed his administration to, quote, immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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When you are the United States of America, the most powerful force in the history of the world, you don't need to play with the peons. You don't. Gustavo Petro is a peon. He is a loser. He is a representative of a failed ideology, and he doesn't have any power behind him. There is no reason for the United States to screw around with him. F-A-F-O. That is the message.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And that message is being broadcast loud and clear by the entire administration. Top to bottom, they're making clear that when it comes to illegal immigration, the buck stops here. The day is over. We are done. Well, President Trump is certainly bringing a different approach to our foreign and domestic policy, but uncertainty still looms.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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In an uncertain economic landscape, smart investors are paying attention to the signs. With increased tariffs reshaping our trade relationships and sweeping changes to taxes and regulations, one investment vehicle stands the test of time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Text BEN to 989898 for your free copy of the Ultimate Guide for Gold in the Trump Era. There's no obligation, only information. With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, thousands of happy customers, you too can trust Birch Gold. Text my name, BEN, to the number 989898 today. There's going to be a bumpy ride in the economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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No matter which way you think it's going to go, it'll probably go the other way. Trying to predict what's going to happen, very difficult, but this is why you hedge. Text my name, BEN, to the number 989898 today to get started. Also, With the new year starting, I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with my busy work schedule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on pure conservative willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly peak performance requires peak nutrition, which means eating enough veggies. But here's the thing. I think veggies might be God's revenge on mankind, which is why I'm thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. Sounds miserable and time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, your body knows precisely what to do with them. They're kosher, so I can just pop it right into the protein smoothie and I'm good to go. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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When I'm on the road, Balance of Nature is particularly indispensable. Last week, I was on the road. Balance of Nature was a lifesaver. Go check them out right now. Balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States in one week. Those 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%. A travel ban and immediate visa revocation on Colombian government officials and all allies and supporters. Visa sanctions on all party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Tom Homan, our borders are, he was asked about things like tariffs that have been placed on the United States or the additional cost of illegal immigration and tracking it down and all the rest. And listen, what price do you put on national security? Here he was on ABC's This Week.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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That is exactly right. And most Americans do not. Most Americans do not. Well, J.D. Vance, vice president of the United States, who I think was created in a laboratory just to deal with idiots in the legacy media. I mean, he is truly amazing at this, like a unique skill. So he was on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, and he was talking about unvetted immigrants entering the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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And here is an exchange that went absolutely viral again. One thing that J.D. does better than pretty much anybody is he refuses to accept the premise of the question being asked by the questioner, which is the key to doing legacy media interviews. Again, I've done it professionally for years. J.D. is as good as it gets at this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Here he was, Vice President of the United States with Margaret Brennan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Okay, well, Margaret Brennan, she had suggested, well, they are vetted. And he said, I don't care what you say. I don't want those people in my country. Why exactly is it that we should have any people who are unvetted in the United States? This is a correct perspective on illegal immigration. Again, the way that immigration in this country has changed over time is really, really significant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Enhanced customs and border protection inspections of all Colombian nationals and cargo on national security grounds. IEPA treasury, banking, and financial sanctions to be fully imposed. And then Trump continued, these measures are just the beginning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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When you have a United States, they vast welfare bureaucracy in which we have made it possible to accept people from all over the globe without screening them ideologically and in which the system does not naturally screen ideologically. What you end up with are a lot of people here to take advantage of the system and who bring terrible cultures with them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Not all cultures are equivalent and pretending they are is a massive mistake. Well, Margo Brennan wasn't gonna leave it at that. She started bringing out the nostrums and the slogans. She said, well, this is a country founded by immigrants. And Vance was like, well, it's a little more complicated than that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Correct. Correct. By the way, he's making a really excellent distinction here. Immigrants and settlers are not quite the same thing. So an immigrant is somebody who comes into an established system of law and follows the laws in order to enter that established system of law. A settler is a person who comes to a place where there is no law and then proceeds to settle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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So the original Puritans, for example, who arrived in the United States at Plymouth Rock, those people were not, in fact, immigrants. Those people were settlers, people who moved over the Appalachians and then settled were settlers. They're moving into an area where there was no law and they were establishing law. That is not quite the same thing as immigrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Now, of course, immigrants have had a heavy share of what it means to be American because so many amazing things in the United States have been created by immigrants. But equating all of these particular categories is foolish. And then adding on top of that, illegal immigrants is ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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Illegal immigrants are not even the same as legal immigrants and not all legal immigrants are created the same in terms of the systems that drew them there in the first place. And immigrants aren't even the same as settlers. So these are all a little bit more complex.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2125 - Trump Goes FULL FAFO!

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But the point that he's making is regardless of how you think about that, there is no reason why the United States ought to be an open borders country. It makes no sense at all. Now, good for J.D., also going after the Conference of Catholic Bishops. So the Conference of Catholic Bishops came out. The Catholic Church has been notoriously open border for generations at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Joining us on the line for Memorial Day is Senator Tim Sheehy. Obviously, he has military experience himself because, of course, he is a former Navy SEAL officer. Senator, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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So, you know, obviously a huge majority of Americans haven't served in the military. On Memorial Day, it's easy to forget what the day is about because people sort of treat it as vacation day in the United States. What should Americans be thinking about on Memorial Day?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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You know, Senator Sheehy, obviously there's a lot of concern about China out there. China is, in fact, a rising geopolitical enemy of the United States. A lot of concern about the ability of the United States military to combat China in places like the South China Sea, the possibility of a Chinese blockade around Taiwan. How worried should we be about that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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And what does that mean in terms of military development?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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What makes Helix different is they don't just sell you a random mattress. They actually match you with the perfect mattress for your body and sleep style. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, somewhere in between, they've got you covered. They make it so simple to get your best night's sleep every night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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All you have to do is take their sleep quiz and get matched with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Trust me, when you find the right match, no wonder how you ever slept on anything else. Most people just go down to that big box mattress store. They lie on the thing for like two seconds and like, ah, this one's probably good enough. It isn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Get a mattress made just for you by Helix right now. Helix is offering an incredible Memorial Day sale. Visit helixsleep.com to get 27% off site wide plus a free bedding bundle, which includes a sheet set and mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order. That's helixsleep.com for 27% off site wide plus a free bedding bundle with any Lux or Elite mattress order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Again, just visit helixsleep.com for this exclusive offer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Yeah, I think one of the things that a lot of people neglect when they look at American politics is just how much of America's soft power, how much of our economic power is in the end based on our ability to project force, keeping those sea lanes open, ensuring that the microchips that are manufactured in Taiwan actually can make their way to the rest of the world, ensuring that China doesn't just take Taiwan, destroy TSMC or

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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or seize control of TSMC, the consequences of an America free world or a world where America really has retreated within its own borders, those are disastrous consequences for American citizens living here at home.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Senator Sheehy, obviously Memorial Day. And because it's Memorial Day, I want to talk to you about what drove you to join the military in the first place. Obviously, it's a volunteer military, which means that the best young men and women in the country are putting aside their own hopes, aspirations, financial dreams for a certain period of time in order to serve the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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What drove you to make that decision in the first place?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Now, Senator Sheehy, on Memorial Day, is there anyone in specific that you're thinking about on Memorial Day?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Well, Senator Sheehy, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you, of course, for your service. Thanks for what you're doing in the United States Senate. And thanks for taking the time to pay tribute to our fallen heroes on Memorial Day. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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Senator Sheehy, one of the things that the Trump administration has really put a lot of focus on is rebuilding the American military, changing the way that people think about the American military.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy

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If you're grading the Trump administration's efforts so far in terms of the Department of Defense, the American military, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's performance, how would you grade it so far?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

Folks, huge news happening over the weekend. Everything from AOC for president to Snow White totally bombing at the box office. First, if you want more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, it is time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, early access to our new releases.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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What he means by oligarchy is actually just very rich people, like people who have made money in private industry. He hates private industry. He hates private markets, Bernie. Bernie is the kind of person who literally has said that private charity is bad because it crowds out government spending. I mean, you have to go pretty far afield to find people who literally hate people giving charity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Bernie has said himself that charity is bad. Private charity is wrong because it might make people feel as though they're actually doing something good when actually the government should be doing that thing. Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who praised bread lines at one point because there's bread at the lines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Bernie Sanders is the type of person who has said there are too many types of toothpaste in the aisles at CVS. Why do you need that many types of toothpaste? He is like a full-scale tankie, meaning a communist sympathizer. There's a reason that this dude honeymooned in the USSR. Here he was going after the quote-unquote oligarchy with John Carl on ABC News.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So, again, this is his shtick, and it is going to be the successful shtick. So then he was asked by Jonathan Karl about AOC because it's clear that Bernie himself, he's 83 years old. By the time of the next presidential election, Bernie is going to be 86, 87 years old. So he ain't going to be the guy. So who is it that he's going to tap on the shoulder? There is a reason he's campaigning with AOC.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So Jonathan Karl asked him about the possibility of AOC supplanting Chuck Schumer in the New York Senate. She might want to run for the Senate. But the reality is that AOC has a better shot of being president than being senator from New York. There's a lot of internal politics in New York. Schumer has his hands on a lot of different levers in the state of New York.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And Bernie threatens to walk out of the interview.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Maher, of course, is totally correct about this. And if you follow people's revealed preferences, meaning not what they say they like, but what they actually like, the feet are moving south. The feet are moving from blue to red. That'd be my family, be my company. And people are literally moving from blue areas to red areas because red areas are better to live.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Unbelievable. So he's getting up, and the reason he's getting up is because he knows that he's being asked to create a war inside the party. What he actually wants is for AOC to run for president. And so, by the way, does the Associated Press.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Quote, Bernie Sanders stepped onto a stage in downtown Denver, surrounded by tens of thousands of cheering supporters in what he described as the biggest rally he had ever addressed. The Vermont senator put his hand on the shoulder of the woman who had introduced him, a signal for her to stay on stage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Quote, she's become an inspiration to millions of young people, recounting her biography from a girl who helped her mother clean houses and later became a bartender before emerging as political insurgent who ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a U.S. House primary. Now, again, that is a very rosy picture of AOC's history. The truth is that she grew up pretty middle class in New York.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Again, there's nothing wrong. Growing up middle class is great. But this kind of idea that she's a total rags to riches story, she went to Boston University. I mean, this is not somebody who grew up totally impoverished. And then she ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a House primary that, yeah, I think she received 15,000 votes in that House primary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The crowd began a chant of her well-known moniker, AOC. In a leaderless Democratic Party out of power in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez has a message and a connection, with a segment of liberals feeling disenchanted with both parties. Now in her fourth term, the 35-year-old congresswoman is working to broaden her appeal beyond her progressive, anti-establishment roots.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Hitting the road last week with Sanders for his fighting oligarchy rallies, she's addressing people who disagree with her and reframing the divide in the Democratic Party not as progressive versus moderate, but as those going after Republican President Donald Trump and those being more cautious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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She said, quote, no matter who you voted for in the past, no matter if you know all the right words to say, no matter your race, religion, gender identity, or status, no matter, even if you disagree with me on a few things, if you're willing to fight for someone you don't know, you are welcome here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So she is posing herself as against the establishment Democratic Party that is unwilling to face up to the challenges of President Trump, which is smart. It is. And the class warfare aspect of what Democrats are going to steer into, that is the next step. They're going to steer full scale into class warfare. That is the reason why they are attacking Elon Musk as opposed to Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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You've noticed a shift in fire from the Democrats from Trump to Musk. Part of that is because Trump is totally tough on. This has been true for a decade. President Trump, because he is made of mud, he is a mud monster. If you throw more mud on him, he just looks like a mud monster. You can't do anything to him. That's not true with regard to, for example, Elon Musk, Democrats think.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Democrats are ripping on Trump. They're ripping on Musk because they would love to steal your income. But did you know that your home could be stolen right from under you without you even realizing it? The FBI calls this house stealing. It's a growing scam targeting homeowners across America. Here's how it works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Charlemagne, the God, the radio host, he says that the Democratic Party at this point is trashed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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You might not discover anything is wrong until collection notices or foreclosure warnings start showing up in your mailbox. So when was the last time you checked your home title? If you're like most people, the answer is probably never. That's exactly what scammers count on. That's why so many people, including our own senior video editor, Adam, trust Home Title Lock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Find out if Prescription Rose Sparks is right for you. To get 15 bucks off your first order, connect with a provider at roe.co slash ben. That's R-O dot C-O slash ben for 15 bucks off your first order. Compounded drugs are permitted to be prescribed under federal law, but are not FDA approved. Do not undergo FDA safety, effectiveness, or manufacturing review.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Only available if prescribed after an online consultation with a provider. RhoSparks could be a better option for you. Go check them out right now. Rho.co slash Ben. That's R-O dot C-O slash Ben for 15 bucks off your first order. Now, Elon is invulnerable in other ways. He's obviously too wealthy for them to threaten his livelihood. He doesn't seem to care very much what people think of him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So that is unlikely to stick to Musk personally. However, that's not the goal. The goal right now for Democrats is very simple. There's a reason they're using the word oligarchy. I don't think they're being stupid. I think it's actually quite smart.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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What they're attempting to do is craft a narrative of a group of people at the top of government in private industry and in the public sector who are working together to corrupt the system. Now, the comeback to that typically from the conservative side of the aisle is, well, if the economy is booming, what are you complaining about?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Not that there's coordination and collusion, but of course business is going to support Republican administrations because Republican administrations remove all of the horrible regulations that have led to the downfall of cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Detroit. Republicans get the obstacles out of the way of business, so business tends to support Republicans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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This has been sort of a longstanding theme in American politics for decades.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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But the way that Democrats are playing it is that there's a sort of corporatist slimy deal going on at the top of politics, the oligarchy, air quotes, in which the Musks of the world are cooperating with the Trumps of the world so that Trump will put money in Musk's pocket and Musk will put money in Trump's pocket and they both go home happy and everybody else gets poor. That is the line.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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It's not true, but that is the line Democrats are going to use. The reason that's clever is because the way that people tend to filter politics You and I, we sit here, we talk politics every day. And so if you listen to this show, you're a member of a tiny cadre in the American public who watches politics at a fairly granular level. You know the players, you know the general arguments.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The vast majority of people in the United States have a picture of politics that is significantly less granular. All of us are right up close to the Seurat painting. George Seurat is a famous impressionist who paints with dots. Sunday in the Park with George is a musical based on the life of Seurat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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If you ever go and you see his paintings at, for example, the museum in Chicago, if you go and you look at his paintings, it's pointless. He's got a bunch of dots and it's like millions of dots. And then when you draw back, you see that it's a picture of something. People who watch politics closely are like people who are really, really close to a Seurat painting. You can see every single dot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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You can see every pixel. Then you pull back and you see the whole picture. Most people are people who wander into the room with the Seurat painting. They see a bunch of people who are by a river and walking on a Sunday and they walk out of the room. It is not a granular view of politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So if you see a picture of President Trump at the inauguration flanked by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Tim Cook and Neil Mohan, and the rest of the, and Sundar Pichai, and all the rest of these sort of tech CEOs, and they're all in a room together. And President Trump is next to them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else. Connect with a community that shares your values, not one that cancels you for them. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. And with new content added every single week, there's always something worth watching. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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These sort of bird's eye view, take half a moment and look at the TV and then move on with your day, view of that is, oh, these guys are friends and they must work together. And so what Democrats are banking on, what they are banking on is a close coordination between private industry and the president, and then an economic fall. That is what they're banking on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And if there's an economic fall, AOC is poised right there and so is Bernie. And let's be clear about what the threat level is. This is why the economy must succeed. You know, people... on the sort of Trump supportive side of the aisle. Maybe they're frustrated with the fact that I've been critical of President Trump's moves toward tariffs, what he's been doing with regard to Canada.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The reason I've been saying that is because the greatest danger to the Trump administration success isn't economic downturn. Anything else can be overcome. An economic downturn gets attributed to the president who is the president when it happens, whether or not he deserves it. That's just the way it works. And so that is the great danger.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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He, by the way, is right that the party is totally toxic. I mean, he's wrong to cite Wes Moore and Gretchen Whitmer as examples of people who are doing an amazing job. But the reality is that Democrats have misgoverned at nearly every level of government. The Wall Street Journal has a piece over the weekend talking about the failures of Los Angeles, my old home city.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And it is great that this White House is very friendly toward business. That's a wonderful thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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But every image showing how friendly this White House is toward business becomes a weapon in the arsenal of people like AOC, who doesn't understand business, doesn't understand economics, hates the rich, like truly does not like them, thinks that there's like a moral quality that adheres to you as you gain wealth that makes you immoral and bad. It's a bizarre sort of Marxist presentiment

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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That makes no sense, just on a moral level. I have been very not rich and I've been very rich and I'm basically the same person all the way through. And that's true of pretty much everybody I know who was at one point not rich and then became rich. It turns out I know many people who are wonderful who are not rich. I know many people who are wonderful who are rich.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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I know many people who are awful who are rich. I know many people who are awful who are not rich. Wealth does not define character. But for people like AOC and Bernie, there's a very flattering view that they can present to the vast majority of Americans, which is that if you are rich, it's because you suckered someone and did something wrong and did something corrupt and you're bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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That essentially participating in the capitalist system makes you morally inferior in some way. The richer you get, the worse you get. This is why Bernie will say billionaires should not exist. He doesn't just mean we should redistribute the wealth. He means there's something literally immoral in being a billionaire. Well, that's precisely the opposite of what President Trump is doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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But people tend to judge politics, again, based on that walking through the room, looking once at the painting, walking out. And if they see closeness between the White House and various industrial capitalists who have done really well, tech bros who have done really well, and then the economy sinks, all of that is going to be tied to the ship.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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All of that is going to get tied into the sinking ship if the ship should sink, which is why the ship really needs not to sink.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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As part of this, for example, over the weekend, it was reported that the White House, through an outside event production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsors for this year's Easter Egg Roll, which is prompting major concerns from ethics experts in shock from former White House officials from both parties.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The sponsorship offers range from $75,000 to $200,000, with the promise of logo and branding opportunities according to a nine-page document sent to potential sponsors and obtained by CNN. The egg roll has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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All the money raised by Harbinger will go to the White House Historical Association. But the solicitation of sponsorships marks an unprecedented offering of corporate branding opportunities on White House grounds running counter to long-established regulations prohibiting the use of public office for private gain. A former official said this is an enterprise.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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This is not your grandmother's Easter egg roll where people lined up outside the gate and go and roll an egg and get a little gift bag and walk out. The pitch document includes logos for both the White House and Harbinger, which previously produced the event during President Trump's first term and is offering initial planning and event day execution for sponsors that sign on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Quote, the Democratic mismanagement of America's big city is becoming a liability for the party. A shining example is Los Angeles, where city leaders this week announced a $1 billion budget hole owing to a slowing economy and soaring payouts to public unions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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It features imagery of Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, members of the Trump family, the Easter Bunny and the White House press corps, including CNN correspondent Caitlin Collins. The document says sponsors of the White House Easter egg rule provide financial support activities and giveaways to enhance the event while gaining valuable brand visibility and national recognition.

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Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So what does this mean? It means that you can have naming rights for a key area or an element, a sponsor logo featured on event signage, custom branded baskets, snacks, beverages, or souvenirs. Now, is any of this like truly awful? No, I mean, who cares? This idea, this is some sort of open bribery or something like that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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It seems to me that if you're raising money for charity and people want a sponsorship opportunity attached, that's true for pretty much every private charitable enterprise I've ever associated with or seen. Go to, seriously, a charity dinner and you will see a bunch of corporate sponsors of the charity dinner. And that's where the money comes from. Is this a big deal? It isn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Except that if the economy sinks, then Democrats are going to try to tie this to President Trump. The same thing is true with regard to, for example, Tesla. So President Trump did a big presser, you'll recall a few weeks ago, on the lawn over at the White House where he talked about buying a Tesla.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And this was ripped on by the members of the media, suggesting this is a form of corruption, this is Trump trying to prop up the Tesla stock or whatever. Well, the truth is that Joe Biden had done exactly the same thing with Stellantis. There's nothing really new here. But that's not the point. The point is the close cooperation, which I think is quite good, between Trump

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Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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and people who are successful in business is going to be wrapped around the Republican Party's neck and capitalism's neck if the economy should shift south. That right there is the biggest problem that Trump, it's why we cannot afford either as a country or as a body politic for this administration to economically downturn.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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City Administrative Officer Matthew Jabo told the council on Wednesday this year's extraordinary shortfall could necessitate thousands of layoffs. Mayor Karen Bass blamed the recent wildfires, extreme uncertainty in terms of federal funding, and downward national economic trends. In other words, blaming Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Because the next thing that comes is a horseshoe theory populism that takes capitalism and stomps its boot on it. What you're going to get the rise of is on the right, these sort of anti-capitalist populists. These people definitely exist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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These people are actually an increasingly loud contingent of the Republican Party who believe that capitalism is evil, that business is bad, that capitalism takes away from home and hearth. This very live debate inside the right And meanwhile, on the left, you are going to see the rise of the Bernie Sanders types.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Bernie is well-placed inside the party right now, and whomever he taps on the shoulder is quite likely at this point to be the nominee, particularly if that person can knit together some of the other aspects of the Democratic agenda. AOC is perfectly on brand when it comes to the wokeness. She obviously is very involved in standing up for DEI and all the rest.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So she checks the boxes of the radical left on the woke side, but she's also reaching over not into that, That's not how she's campaigning. She's campaigning as a full scale Democratic socialist in the in the mold of Bernie Sanders. So I know people laughed. I wrote a column back in 2008 when Barack Obama was first running for president before he received the nomination.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And I said, beware, because the actual danger here is not Hillary Clinton. The actual danger here is Barack Obama. And I think it was in 2007, actually. Well, it turns out that right now, the real danger is AOC. I'm just telling you right now, right here, that we can laugh at her. I've been laughing at her for years. I think she's a ridiculous figure. I also think that she's talented on camera.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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I think that she speaks the slogans with passion. And I think that in the Democratic primary, she's a dangerous, dangerous candidate. Who's going to run against her and be able to overcome her?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Because if you actually try to poo-poo AOC, if you try to say, well, she's dumb, which is true, if you try to say that she's dumb in a Democratic primary, she's just going to say, well, did you oppose Trump sufficiently? Because the smarter people in the Democratic Party are biding their time, like Slotkin in Michigan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And if you say, well, you know, she's never done anything, she's going to say, well, I never got anything done because I was just too dedicated to the cause. And she'll have Bernie's support base. And Bernie will transfer that support base over to her. She's a dangerous candidate inside the party. For sure, for sure. So do not take your eye off the ball there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The reality is that the city's fiscal problems have been building up like dry tinder, and Ms. Bass has made them worse. And this, of course, is exactly right. Apparently, L.A. 's unemployment rate in December was 6% that is higher than any state and even Puerto Rico.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And for the Trump administration, do not take your eye off the economic ball. That is the single most important thing that you can do is to calm the economic waters. It is deeply important. Right now, according to the Wall Street Journal, people are selling their stocks. They're starting to look elsewhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Just two months after JPMorgan Chase declared American exceptionalism the broad and dominant investing theme of 2025, ordinary investors across the world are looking elsewhere. Instead of riding the wave of US outperformance, they are parsing the potential implications of tariff wars and major shifts in US foreign policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And for much of this volatile stretch, markets in China and Europe are outpacing expectations. These are things we do not need. And much of this is being self-created. So unless somebody can spell out the long-term plan for how this helps the American economy. And by long-term, I really mean short to midterm. Because again, the election is coming up fast. I know, we just finished one.

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Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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But it is 2025. 2028 is the election. It's not a lot of time. If the idea is we got to undergo some economic pain in order to get economic gain, that better be some fairly short-term pains for some pretty long-term gain if you hope that the successor to President Trump is going to win the White House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, meanwhile, speaking of controversies that could be a problem for the Trump administration, so President Trump right now is going up against an incredibly left-wing judiciary, particularly at the district court level. Apparently, today, there's supposed to be a hearing. The Trump administration has a hearing. with a three-member appeals panel to overturn a judgment from Judge James Boasberg.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That was the temporary restraining order that blocked the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport plane loads of migrants without due process. That's what the lawsuit suggested. Justice Department lawyers will demand that Boasberg be thrown off the case. This is according to Politico.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Josh Gerstein of Politico says this is a big test for Trump's team's in-your-face approach to all the litigation it now faces, coupling confrontational court filings with an all-out fusillade on both cable news and social media against judges who have blocked administration policies. Boasberg, of course, is not going to go along with it.

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I think it's very doubtful, by the way, that the appeals court goes along with Trump's attempt to get Boasberg thrown off the case. According to Politico, There are two Republican appointees on this three-judge panel. One is a Trump appointee named Justin Walker. The second is a George W. Bush appointee named Karen Henderson.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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High taxes, burdensome regulations, the city's $17.28 an hour minimum wage, litigation abuse, shoplifting, another crime, raised business costs and insurance premiums, litigation abuses, busting the city's budget. Payouts totaled $240 million in the last fiscal year alone. The city of Los Angeles is collapsing from within. So what are Democrats to do?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Josh Gerstein says, will they embrace Trump's expansive view of executive power, or will they show concern about what Boesberg has called the very frightening possibility of almost any migrant being rapidly expelled to a third country based solely on the say-so of the executive branch? Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disput disputun

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Because their governance is really, really poor and President Trump is moving incredibly fast and it's very difficult for them to figure out what is the point of differentiation? Where do they want to put their chips? Where is going to be the line of attack that they can use against President Trump and Republicans? And so Democrats are going to have to define exactly what they are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. saying that you should not eat too many trans fats because the aliens might get you or something. Like, it's a good policy, but it's not exactly based on the best available science.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Now, there is a rule that has been put forward by the political commentator, another one of my friends, Matt Continetti, which I think is exactly right. If you're trying to scope out

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The future candidates of any party, the going rule for the last several decades has been that the successful candidate, the successful presidential candidate first runs against his or her own party and then runs for the presidency. So President Trump is an excellent example of this. He came in 2016. He ran against every aspect of the Republican Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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He broke the Republican Party and then he took the presidency. Barack Obama did this in 2008. He overcame Hillary Clinton, who is considered the establishment pick, took over the party and then won. And so if you're looking at the Democratic Party right now, what exactly is the Democratic Party? Now, there are a few angles they could take.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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All right, you guys, coming up, fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal about American women abandoning marriage. We'll get into that in detail. First, you have to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Why? Because there's so much good stuff that we're going to be adding. I mean, first of all, this show continues.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Okay, so if you like this show and you want more of the show every single day, you need to be a Daily Wire Plus member. There's that. Okay, but beyond that, we also have Backstage Live, Morning Wire, Matt Walsh's movies, Am I Racist? What is a Woman? Run, Hide, Fight. We have All Access Live. All sorts of great stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The only way you get the thing you want, which is more of my show, of course, is to join Daily Wire Plus. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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There are a few angles that could be taken to take over the Democratic Party. Angle number one would be the better administrative angle. This would be the Bill Maher angle. Or say the Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson angle in their new book, Abundance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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which is a book basically about how Democrats ought to suggest that government actually is good at certain things and then should get a lot of regulations out of the way so government can build the Hoover Dam again or government can build affordable housing without any of the environmental regulations or build a bullet train or whatever it is. Now they can make that case.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Well, Democrats have a serious problem. President Trump's approval ratings maintain their status. He's somewhere close to 50%, which is higher than he has been nearly in his entire political career. His main policies are quite popular, ranging from crackdowns on illegal immigration, which is a very popular position, to even his positions with regard to Doge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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I think that case is relatively unsuccessful, but they could say, listen, we're good at administration. The problem is Democrats have a very bad record of administration as demonstrated by places like New York, places like Chicago, places like Los Angeles or Detroit. So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that most of the Democrat hardcore does not care about that stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Most of the Democrat hardcore cares more deeply about the quote-unquote moral issues in the country rather than just being good at administration. They don't understand that being a good administrator on the local or state level actually does have a moral component.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Because if you wish to, for example, alleviate poverty, one of the best ways to do that is to provide a stable and useful local government. But Democrats have stopped believing that, at least the primary voting Democrats. And so now they are left with a couple of other angles. One is... the sort of DEI angle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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That would be the idea that the Democratic Party stands for diversity, that really what the Democratic Party is about is recentering the marginalized. This would be the elevation of Kamala Harris, for example.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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This would be the attempt to elevate candidates of color at the expense of other candidates who might be better qualified, or by the way, elevating people like Pete Buttigieg on the basis of his sexual orientation to a presidential candidacy, not because he was good at fixing potholes in South Bend, he was not, but because he's gay, right? That would be the DEI Democrats.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And that's certainly an angle. And there's a lot of support for that inside the Democratic Party. The problem is that's the angle they've been taking and it has been failing. Democrats may double down on stupid. If they do, they're unlikely to win back the presidency. According to a brand new poll from Morning Consult, Kamala right now has the support of 36% of Democrat primary voters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Next in line is Buttigieg, who's at 10% support. No other candidate on the list received double-digit support in early primary polling. Tim Walz, AOC, and Gavin Newsom each have 5% support. Billionaire Mark Cuban and Governor Josh Shapiro each have 4% backing. So part of that is going to be name recognition. Obviously, Kamala Harris has very high name recognition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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She was the last Democratic presidential candidate, even if she lost to President Trump. So maybe it's that or maybe it's the Democrats who are trying to double down on DEI. That seems like that is likely to be an unsuccessful angle. However, they also cannot go back to sort of establishmentarian Democratic politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The establishment has failed the Democratic Party, and they know it, which is why Chuck Schumer is under serious fire right now. Chuck Schumer was making his pitch for why he should continue to be sort of the leader of the Democratic congressional contingent on Meet the Press over the weekend, and it is just lackluster stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Again, most Americans are into cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, and Democrats really don't know how to deal with it. And Democrats who spend at least a moment in the real world know this. So Bill Maher, with whom I am friendly, but Bill is definitely a Democrat. He is not a Republican. Maher was on his show on Friday night, real time on HBO.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Okay, so does that inspire? The answer there is no. Chuck Schumer is getting run over by the Congress, run by Republicans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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While the possibility of a resurgent Bernie Sanders should scare everybody who has money in the stock market, or, you know, money in general, in these uncertain economic times with tariff tensions, recession worries, stubborn inflation, it's no surprise that gold prices keep breaking records.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Rather than watching from the sidelines during market volatility, consider taking some proactive steps to protect your savings. That's why many Americans are connecting with Birch Gold Group. They've helped thousands of people convert existing retirement accounts into physical gold IRAs. One ring of gold might be a smart hedge against inflation or economic uncertainty for you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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To learn about owning physical gold in a tax-advantaged account, text BEN to 989898. Birch Gold will send you a free information kit with no obligation. Their A-plus Better Business Bureau rating and numerous five-star reviews reflect why I recommend Birch Gold to help you protect your savings through gold investments. The economic challenges we're facing, they took decades to develop.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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The real question is, how long will recovery take? What's it going to cost along the way? It is not going to be an easy economic road going forward in my own personal opinion. But then again, it rarely is. Text Ben to 989898. Connect with Birch Gold Group today. Diversification is just a smart business strategy. Text Ben to 989898 and get in touch with Birch Gold Group today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Also, let me tell you something. I never realized just how bad my old mattress was until I got my Helix mattress. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already griping? Well, that was me more often than not. Don't even get me started on how that old mattress turned into a heat trap at night. In fact, that mattress was so bad, like it started to sag.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Anyway, since switching on over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest days and the craziest headlines. Here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect mattress for you. And the reality is that my mattress, which is firm but breathable, is giving me better sleep quality. It can do the same for you because you'll get a mattress made just for you. Helix is offering right now an incredible March Madness sale.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Visit helixsleep.com slash Ben, get 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off site-wide. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer and start sleeping better today. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben, helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off site-wide and a better sleep tonight. So what are Democrats left with?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Democrats are basically left with the Bernie Sanders wing. Bernie Sanders led an insurgency originally against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which wounded her for the general election.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Then, of course, he ran again in 2020 and really threatened to take over the party until Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment mobilized Jim Clyburn and the heavily black Democrat electoral base against Bernie Sanders. And then, of course, he didn't run in 2024 because there was an incumbent, but he was very critical of Joe Biden for at least part of that race.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And there he was mocking the Democrats over their absolute incompetence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And now he's out touring the country. The Bernie Sanders energy, Bernie's too old. He's not going to be the guy. But the Bernie Sanders energy is the insurgent energy inside the Democratic Party. Because the insurgent energy inside the Democratic Party is not a sort of administrative liberalism that is effective in its approach. It is full-scale class warfare. DEI is played out.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And so they're going back from race Marxism or sex Marxism back to like the original Marxism. This is the direction of the Democratic Party. This is where the energy is. And this is exactly what the Trump administration should be concerned about. Not in that Bernie Sanders and the AOC wing of the party are going to defeat Donald Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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But if the Trump administration fails, why the Trump administration has to be very, very good at what it does. If they fail, the next thing up on the Democratic side of the aisle is Bernie. And whoever Bernie taps on the shoulder, because it's not going to be Bernie personally. So apparently over in Tempe, Arizona, tens of thousands of people showed up at a rally for Bernie Sanders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Now, again, big rallies are not a proxy for success. Mitt Romney held big rallies in 2012 and then lost to Barack Obama. But Right now, Democrats can't draw flies. Democrats are toxic. Bernie Sanders is going around and holding rallies, and literally tens of thousands of people are showing up. He's an 83-year-old, lifelong, useless leech on the ass of society.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And tens of thousands of people are showing up to hear him and to hear AOC, with whom he is campaigning. So here's Bernie in Tempe, Arizona.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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OK, so again, this sort of fight oligarchy. There is a class of people who are running the country and they're evil and they're rich and we need to tear them down to the ground. It runs in direct opposition to exactly the sort of abundance Democrat mentality pushed by Ezra Klein or pushed by Derek Thompson. But it is the thing that Democrats are animated by.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Originally, according to The Wall Street Journal, when visiting Omaha, Nebraska. AOC and Bernie reserved a place that held 800 people. Then they had to move to a bigger venue of 3,400. And then when they went to Tempe, 15,000 people showed up. And Bernie said, this is insane. I'm not running for anything. People are outraged and they're frightened and they wanna fight back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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And this is one form of beginning the struggle to fight back. And it is not a coincidence that Bernie is tapping AOC on the shoulder. AOC, of course, has a very young, very woke, very socialistic contingency who follows her. Sanders is taking a really interesting approach.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Again, he's wrong, and his perspective on capitalism is not just wrong, it happens to be evil, but it is an interesting approach. He's abandoning certain issues that are sort of tentpole Democrat issues right now, and he's focusing instead on pure class warfare, pure unbridled Eugene V. Debs class warfare. He's an old school wobbly, Bernie Sanders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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So for example, when it came to the border over the weekend, Bernie was interviewed and he said that Trump was actually right about the border. Now this is a switch in time for Bernie. So if you remember all the way back to 2016, when he was running against Hillary Clinton, he actually talked about solidifying the border. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Because he understands, this is correct, that you cannot have both socialism and an open border. It doesn't work that way. So now he's reverting back to type. He's going back to a sort of protectionist socialism, which does involve actually closing the border. This is where the horseshoe theory comes all the way around for people like Bernie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Okay, so again, that is Bernie saying that Trump is basically right on the border, why he's abandoning the worst issues for the Democrats. Immigration is a bad issue for Democrats. Bernie, he'll talk about trans, but only if forced to do so at point of gun. This is not a major issue for him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Instead, he rails against his own party, which again is the prereq to actually successfully running in the United States. He rails against his own party and he does pure unbridled, kill the rich and eat them class warfare. So here he was railing against his own party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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OK, so again, of course, he has an interest in saying this. He is an independent from Vermont who has basically become a quote unquote thought leader inside the Democratic Party because they have no thoughts. And so he is just pouring old school Marxism into the vessel of the Democratic Party. Here he was talking about the quote unquote oligarchy. Now, again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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Any actual definition of oligarchy would have to include Bernie Sanders in it. He's the most powerful people in the country. He's very wealthy. He obviously has that lake house. He has a big following. If you're talking about oligarchs in control of the levers of power and capable of controlling people's lives, Bernie should be near the top of that list.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2144 - More Trump WINS: Joy Reid GONE!

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Well, folks, nature is healing, and nowhere is it healing more, apparently, than at MSNBC. Now, I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this news. Joy Reid is apparently losing her show at MSNBC, and that is a loss for, I think, all of us, considering that approximately 11% of the content of the show was simply provided by Joy Reid and her asinine commentary on politics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Some of these departments probably have to do it, but other departments not. So, for example, in HHS, RFK Jr. has instructed his people that they probably should, in fact, respond to Elon's email. They put out an email suggesting, quote, this is a legitimate email. Please read and respond per the instructions by Monday. And HHS is the largest single department inside the federal government.

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But there are other parts of the federal government, particularly in the intelligence community or the defense community, where it's not clear they're going to answer those emails. Why? Because it turns out that if you have a bunch of sort of long term projects in the intelligence community, you can't just write that in an email and send it to Elon's team.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has instructed personnel in U.S. spy agencies not to respond. According to the text of an email she sent to the workforce on Sunday, citing the agency's sensitive and classified work. Defense Department employees were given similar instructions not to respond.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, what Elon is focusing on is breaking the pipeline of money that moves between the federal government and a bunch of sort of blue areas of the economy. But it is very important at this point to recognize that when it comes to Doge, Doge alone is not going to solve the fiscal problems. Doge is not changing the regulations. That's not what Doge is doing.

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Doge is going in and finding ways to fraud and abuse. But as I've been saying for literally months, ways fraud and abuse amount to a negligible, a very small percentage of actual federal spending.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Unless you're talking about the giant wasteful programs that are, for example, means-tested welfare programs, and you're talking about absolutely restructuring those programs in a more beneficial way, you are just cutting around the edges. And even the sorts of things that we like to see Even those sorts of things are not, in fact, going to materialize into gigantic cuts.

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The Wall Street Journal did an investigation into what Doge has actually cut at this point. And again, there's been a lot of talk about what Doge has cut, how much they've cut. Doge has suggested that they've cut $55 billion in federal spending, citing canceled DEI and climate contracts. And again, all of that is good.

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First of all, $55 billion as a percentage of the American national budget every year? is a very, very small percentage of America's budget every year. Like in the last year of the Biden administration, we spent approximately $7 trillion. $55 billion would represent one 127th of that. It's a very, very small percentage of the federal budget. But beyond that, it hasn't actually cut all of that.

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So the Wall Street Journal, looked at what the contracts actually are cutting. And what they found is that the savings from contracts amounted to about $7 billion. And the journal projects the actual savings could be closer to $2.6 billion over the next year if the spending levels remain consistent. Only about 2% of those funds would have gone to contracts related to DEI.

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So you're talking, again, about very small amounts in the end. Now, it's very good to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. It's good to change in sort of public perception the meaning of what government spending is.

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But the really big things that need to happen if you actually want to unshackle the economy, if you actually want to see productivity gains, if you want to see business growth, if you want to see the economy... Boom. What you actually need to do is target precisely the kinds of programs that no one is politically willing to target.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now listen, in this informational environment, there is a lot of information floating around. Some of it's true, some of it's not so true. How many times have you heard somebody spout off opinions as if those were cold, hard facts? The media tend to spin, politicians distort, social media amplifies, and somehow the truth just gets lost somewhere. It's pretty frustrating.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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We live in a world where narratives often matter more than reality, but here's the thing, the data don't lie. And if you want the data, you need usafact.org. USA Fact isn't about narratives, it's about data. Real, nonpartisan, verifiable data straight from government sources. Whether it's taxes, healthcare, or the economy,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And this reflects a serious problem for the Democratic Party. They do not know which way to move. They are stuck because of identity politics and largely because of immigration. They are now stuck in a rut of their own making, and it is very difficult to break out of that rut. And so you're seeing Democrats struggle against the box, thrash against the box of reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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USA Facts gives you the numbers you need to cut through the nonsense and make informed decisions. And make it easy. Go to usafacts.org, sign up for their free weekly email that you can rely on to get the data behind the news. It's like a personal briefing on the state of the nation, delivered directly to your inbox. No spin, no bias, just the facts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Look, you care about how our government money is being spent, where taxes are going? This is for you. Go to usafacts.org right now and get clear, contextualized facts on the issues that matter. It's time to know the facts because data don't lie. That's usafacts.org. Check it out today. USA Facts. Also, let me tell you something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I didn't realize when I had that bad old mattress how bad it was until I got my Helix mattress. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already griping at you? Well, that was me more often than not. Don't even get me started on how my old mattress turned into a heat trap at night. I tend to get pretty heated up at night and you just wake up and you're all sweaty. It's gross.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Since switching to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest days and the craziest headlines. Here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions. Instead, they use their sleep quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or you share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match just for you. Again, I needed that firm but breathable mattress, and that's what they gave me. Right now, Helix is still offering an incredible President's Day sale. This sale is exclusive for my listeners. It's even better than you will find on their main website.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Visit helixsleep.com slash men and get 27% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash ben for 27% off site-wide. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash ben for this exclusive offer. That's helixsleep.com slash ben. The single most important op-ed of the last five years. was penned by House Budget Committee Chairman Jody Arrington and former U.S. Senator Phil Graham back in September of last year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it talked about what is actually driving America's systemic national debt? What is driving our national deficit? And the answer, believe it or not, is not even Social Security and Medicare alone because the vast majority of Social Security and Medicare are actually paid for by payroll taxes. Doesn't mean that they're not a huge drain on our economy.

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They are because taxes are a giant drain on our economy and Social Security and Medicare in and of themselves. are wildly inefficient. If we took the money that people are putting into payroll taxes and instead put it into the Dow Jones back in 2006, when George W. Bush was suggesting, the stock market has risen times four since then.

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But the actual systemic drivers of the debt, as Arrington and Phil Graham pointed out back in September, are actually the means-tested social welfare spending programs. And precisely the things that neither party actually wants to touch.

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Things like Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, supplemental security income, temporary assistance for needy families, federal housing subsidies, and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. And one of the points that Graham and Arrington make in this op-ed

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is that since 1967, defense spending has fallen from 68% of unobligated general revenue to 37.2% in 2023. So we're just spending way more on these means-tested welfare programs. As defense spending plummeted, they write, swords were not beaten into plowshares, which would increase economic growth and wages, but instead were used to fund welfare payments.

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Today, the United States redistributes a larger share of its GDP, 29.4%, through transfers and taxes than any other developed country on planet Earth except France at 30.1%. And in fact, this is an unbelievable statistic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Former Bill Clinton pollster Mark Penn points out the Democratic Party is more unpopular than they've been any time in his lifetime. Here he is running down the polling data.

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After counting all transfer payments as income to the recipients and taxes as income lost by taxpayers and adjusting for household size, the average households in the bottom, second, and middle quintiles all have the same income. And so we are such a redistributionist country.

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That if you're in the bottom 60% of income earners, you're all basically making the same income because so much money has been redistributed from the top 40% to the bottom 60%. And if you're in the bottom 20%, you're actually making the same amount of money as a guy who's in like the middle quintile of income because of all the transfer payments. It's driving people out of work.

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It's ensuring that the massive national debt gets larger. We are now paying more interest on our national debt than we are paying for our actual defense budget every single year. Something that Neil Ferguson has pointed out is a mark of a declining empire. These things cost things, but these are the hard things.

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What's actually going to bring long-lasting success is not going to be cutting around the edges. It's not going to be posturing. What's actually going to bring long-lasting success is the politically difficult thing. And if nobody's willing to do it, then basically we're just going to end up in this sort of progressive, this progressive populist horseshoe.

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Where despite all the talk about innovation, government just continues to grow and eat up an increasing portion of Americans' earnings and savings. Where a smaller and smaller percentage of the population is actually working while the government continues to spiral out of control in terms of growth.

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And where productivity does not actually outpace all of the spending of government and the taxation of government. That is the problem that is faced by President Trump. Now, the easy thing for Democrats is that when things fall down because of all these giant programs that they themselves have enshrined, they just claim capitalism failed. This is the magic of being a Democrat.

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The magic of being on the side of the blue is that when government screws up the economy to the point where there's a collapse, they immediately turn around and blame capitalism. This is exactly what happened in 2007, 2008 during the real estate crisis. Bill Clinton.

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And the Democrats rammed through particular government mortgage programs that were designed to allow people with bad credit or no credit to get into homes at subprime rates in order to make home ownership more equitable. And in the end, all of that went bust and then capitalism got blamed. Well, the same thing could easily happen right here and it could take free markets right along with it.

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That is the big danger. And so at some point, Congress particularly is going to have to pick up the bag here. And President Trump is going to have to start pushing for some real systemic change on the regulatory side. He's going to have to push for some real systemic change when it comes to these means-tested welfare programs.

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Again, the kind of stuff that populists like, but that actually is eating up a giant chunk of the American budget every single year. If the premise of the current American political moment is that we are in a moment of scarcity, which is true, that we have scarce resources, that we are in danger of being outproduced by countries like China,

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that the American budget is too large, that our tax burden is too high, that we're spending too much money. You have to look at the right places, because if you look at the wrong places, you're not going to solve the problem, and then things will go bad, and then James Carville's predictions will start to come true. Now, meanwhile, over in Germany.

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Fascinating election, and this seems to be the pattern all across Europe, is that the center-right party wins and then refuses to make common cause with the actual right-wing party in its respective country.

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You see this over and over and over, that fear of the quote-unquote far-right is leading center-right parties to join with center-left parties and then undermine their own credibility, which leads concomitantly to the rise of that supposed far-right. So right now in Germany, the results are pretty fascinating.

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Friedrich Merz is the clear winner of the German election, according to the Wall Street Journal. The question for the conservative leader is how fast and with whom he can cobble together a government and whether the United States will seek to influence the process.

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Despite a historically strong showing by anti-establishment nationalists in a ballot that extended Europe's recent lurch to the right, Merz's Christian Democratic Union scored a comfortable victory once all ballots had been counted.

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This means that Merz this week will start talks on forming a government, at the end of which he's likely to become Germany's next chancellor, but the way there could be really, really rocky because basically the breakdown was this. The CDU and its CSU sister party in Bavaria obtained 28.5% of the vote. Coming in second, was the alternative for Germany.

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This is the party that Elon Musk has been pushing, among others. AFD came in at 20.8%. And actually, if you look at an electoral map of Germany, it's absolutely fascinating. Basically, every province that was a part of East Germany voted for AFD because they hate the communists so much. And every province that was in West Germany voted for the CDU because they're sort of moderate right.

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party absolutely collapsed. It scored 16.4%. That's the worst score since the late 19th century. The question for Merz is how he's going to put together a coalition because Merz originally said he didn't want to side with the AFD. The AFD has been slandered, in my opinion, as a quote-unquote neo-Nazi party.

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I see no evidence that the party itself is a neo-Nazi party. Its platform looks very much like the platform of the Republican Party in the United States, although more populist on economics and probably less free market oriented. which is weird because when it was founded, it was founded as a libertarian party.

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The AFD, of course, has people who are hangers-on and associates and people who are involved with the party who have expressed neo-Nazi tendencies, but those people are both rare and not in positions of high leadership inside the AFD. The AFD's success is being driven in large part by opposition to immigration. which originally was led by the CDU.

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Originally, that was Angela Merkel's proposal to let in millions of Syrian refugees into the country, and it completely wrecked the entire body politic in Europe. Well, the CDU has now turned on immigration, not in the same way as the AFD. The AFD has turned on immigration in a much more public way.

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So the question is going to be whether the CDU will sit with the AFD or whether they're going to turn back to Olaf Scholz and try to get together with Olaf Scholz. So if the CDU decides to try and side with the center-left, this will be very much reminiscent of what has been happening in France, where Emmanuel Macron's party

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refused to form a coalition with the Marine Le Pen National Rally, the supposed far-right party in France, which, again, has a program very similar to AFD. And instead, they decided they were going to try inside with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's a nutcase socialist crazy person. And Macron has destroyed his own popularity in the process, and the right is rising again. Here is the reality.

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If in a coalitional system in Europe, your party, your center right party sides with the left, it will not be perceived by the public as a move toward right wing moderation. It will be pursued. It will be perceived as a move toward the left and away from the actual principles for which people voted.

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The truth is that the mandate in Germany is for there to be a right wing government in which the AFD is a partner. AFD co-leader Alice Feidel said, quote, our hand is extended to implement the will of the people. Again, very hard to imagine a neo-Nazi party led by a lesbian who's in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman. That's who Alice Feidel is. She said the CDU just needs to take it.

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Otherwise, a change in policy in Germany won't be possible. Merz has already said he would under no circumstances form a ruling union with the AFD. Suda David Wilp, the vice president of external affairs at the German Marshall Fund in the United States, said, quote, Friedrich Merz would be loathe to work with the AFD. Pressure from the United States is unlikely to sway him.

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The problem, of course, is that the Olaf Scholz party is now saying they don't want to side with CDU. So maybe that if Olaf Scholz rejects it, then that will give Merz the possibility of opening up again. Back to AFD. It'll be fascinating to see because here's the thing. If there is no immigration crackdown in Germany, AFD will continue to gain ground and they should.

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Meanwhile, in other international news, obviously tragic things happening with regard to Pope Francis. Pope Francis has been in the hospital for several days at this point. As you know, I'm not a fan of the Pope, but everybody should pray for his health nonetheless. Pope Francis remained in critical condition on Sunday. Blood tests showed early kidney failure.

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He remains alert, responsive, and attended mass, according to the Vatican. The 88-year-old pontiff is battling pneumonia and a complex lung infection. Of course, he is... Quite ill and he's quite old. And everybody in the Catholic Church is aware that these are probably the last days of Pope Francis. Unclear exactly who is going to take over. Obviously, there will be a conclave.

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I assume it will not be, spoiler alert, an intersex person like in the idiotic movie Conclave. But it'll be fascinating to see which direction the Catholic Church swerves toward. Pope Francis has led the Catholic Church in a very left-wing liberation theology direction. I think it has been not beneficial for the Catholic Church. I think it has undermined its raison d'etre.

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So Democrats are trying to figure out exactly to whom they turn in the wake of Donald Trump's victory and the fact that he's now steamrolling through his agenda. So do they turn back to the supposedly moderate types, the Joe Biden types? Biden advisor Tom Donilon says they should never have gotten rid of Joe Biden. They shouldn't have moved over to the identity politics brand of Kamala Harris.

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I think that he has sidelined many of the key causes of the Catholic Church in a modernizing left-wing world in favor of conciliatory positions on some of the most controversial issues in the international community. And that has been an idiotic move, I think. The Catholic Church, if it's going to represent anything, ought to represent the eternal values upon which it was based.

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And those are largely social values. And they have a lot less to do with, say, redistributionism and environmentalism and putting cathias on baby Jesus, all things that apparently Pope Francis was in favor of. So obviously prayers for his health, despite our disagreements. But we will see in very short order in which direction the Catholic Church

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On Sunday, Variety and The New York Times reported that Reid's 7 p.m. weeknight show, The Readout, is being canceled and will air its final episode this week. Apparently, she is leaving the network completely as a result, which, of course, is not a shock. She's not going to want to stick around and play second fiddle. Perhaps she will join Jim Acosta at a brand new network. Ooh, maybe Jen Rubin.

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So let's start with, you know, what actually happens if Pope Francis should pass. And despite all of my disagreements with Pope Francis, obviously all our prayers are with him in a time of travail. If he should pass, then the conclave begins. I assume, according to the movies, we select an intersex pope, is my understanding. But what is the actual sort of process?

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Who's making up the College of Cardinals at this point? Who are sort of the likely frontrunners for the possible papacy?

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So how does the process actually take place? Because obviously we all know about sort of the black smoke that's rising from the conclave and then the white smoke when they finally figure out who exactly is going to be the next pope. But how does it actually take place on sort of a day-to-day level?

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OK, so should they turn back to a sort of more moderate type in Joe Biden who turned out not to be moderate? Or should they double down on Kamala? Kamala is still wandering the landscape. And remember, she has a couple of assets. One, she's black and two, she's a woman. And the Democratic Party, these are the things that apparently still matter most.

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Well, Michael, I really appreciate the insight into all of this. I now know more than I did at the beginning of this conversation, a rarity in our conversations. Really appreciate it. Good to talk to you. Good to see you, Ben. See you next time. Coming up on the show, continued controversy over the Trump administration's approach in Ukraine.

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Plus, President Trump fires a bunch of top military brass. First, Daily Wire Plus members are getting the news today. There will be headlines everywhere else tomorrow. Right now, members are inside live chats debating the news in real time, sharing their opinions, talking with other fans just like you.

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Thousands more are streaming exclusive series, culture-shaping documentaries, and hit movies you're not going to find anywhere else. And they're doing it all knowing every dollar they spend is building a platform where their values, their voice, and truth cannot be silenced. Now is the time to join us as we build the future. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join right now.

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Meanwhile, controversy continues over President Trump's approach in Ukraine. It is unclear exactly what the vast gap is actually between what Trump wants and what is likely to be achieved at this point.

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President Trump has made very clear that what he would like is presumably for Russia to retain control of the Donbass and Crimea and for the Ukrainians to be given security guarantees, but not NATO membership. He's been ripping on Vladimir Zelensky. It is very unclear at this point why he has been ripping on Vladimir Zelensky.

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I understand there are a lot of people who believe false things about Zelensky, such as that he is a dictator. He is not, in fact, a dictator. He is the legally elected president of Ukraine during times of martial law, when like half your country is occupied by another country.

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Many of your people have actually run to other countries as refugees, and many of your people are actually, you know, on the front lines fighting. It turns out very difficult to hold an election. Zelensky has been called that. President Trump suggested there needs to be a new election before some sort of peace deal is held. That doesn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

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Here was Kamala Harris back in the headlines over the weekend. I know you forgot about her, right? You didn't even remember she ran for president at one point, but she did and she lost. And here she is receiving an award from the NAACP.

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For his part, Zelensky came out over the weekend and said, listen, if me resigning would create peace, I'd be happy to do it or give me security guarantees and do something and then I'll resign. Happy to leave as soon as the war has basically come to some sort of conclusion that actually guarantees Ukraine safety and security for the foreseeable future.

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Now, the truth is, if Zelensky himself stepped down today, presumably the person who picked up the baton, because there wouldn't be an election, would be somebody who very largely agrees with Vladimir Zelensky's approach. The Ukrainians have lost hundreds of thousands of people dead or wounded.

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They're not simply going to allow a situation in which Russia can walk through the front door and into Kiev in the very, very near future. And here's the thing. I don't think the Trump administration wants that either. I think a lot of this is a distraction. I think a lot of the talk about the controversy between Trump and Zelensky

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has nothing to do with sort of the on-the-ground reality, and you keep seeing that from various members of the Trump administration.

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So, for example, Pete Hegseth, who is the defense secretary, he says, listen, President Trump, you know, he's made comments about this sort of stuff, but we know who invaded whom, and we're not interested in watching Ukraine just turn into effectively a Russian territory.

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Okay, and he's right about all of that. This is a line that was repeated by Mike Walz, the national security advisor. He said, listen, President Trump has said that Russia invaded Ukraine under Obama. Russia invaded Ukraine under Biden. Russia did not invade Ukraine under Trump. So, I mean, it's a tacit acknowledgement that Russia invaded Ukraine under Joe Biden, obviously.

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So here is Mike Walz saying that.

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Now, again, does this sound like surrender to you? It doesn't sound like surrender to me. There's a lot of controversy, again, over sort of the verbiage surrounding the Ukraine war. But is this like a total shift in American policy? It doesn't really feel like that. Democrats are trying to make it that way. And this is where, again, I start to get a little bit annoyed. You guys had your shot.

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This conflict should have come to its terminus back in 2022, and then you had three subsequent years to do something about it, and you did nothing. Instead, you slow-walked aid to Ukraine so that they couldn't actually go into Donbass and Crimea, and at the same time declared that the war should continue. You wanted it both ways, and now you're stuck.

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So when I hear you guys talk about how Donald Trump is surrendering to the Russians, you guys, what was your plan? Do you have an alternative? This is the thing about Democrats. What's the alternative? They do the same thing with Gaza.

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Trump provides an alternative plan for Gaza, the only realistic plan I've ever heard about Gaza that actually accords with, you know, actual factual on the ground reality. And they start screaming about it. Same thing with regard to Ukraine. Here is Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

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So Jack Reed right there, he mentions these mineral contracts the United States has actually suggested to the Ukrainians. And Zelensky's pushing back. He's saying, you guys want too much from me. Let's make a different deal. All of that is perfectly rational and within the realm of reality.

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If Zelensky can negotiate a better deal with the Europeans or with the United States for those rare earth minerals, great for him, good for him.

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And that would be good for both the United States and Ukraine because, as the Trump administration has openly suggested, an economic relationship with Ukraine enshrines American security interests in Ukraine, much the way the United States has security interests In Taiwan, for example. None of that is out of the box. None of that is crazy.

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Now, listening to Democrats who blew up the world suddenly complain about Donald Trump coming in and trying to fix things is really bizarre. It's hard for me to think of anyone who is a worse advocate in favor of the United States than the former Obama U.N. ambassador and then... policy advisor to Joe Biden, Susan Rice. She says that Trump on Ukraine is going to embolden China to invade Taiwan.

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What was it exactly when Joe Biden withdrew from Afghanistan utterly and left it to the tender predations of the Taliban? But what was that exactly?

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Well, I mean, again, you guys set up the predicate for all this. Now, I don't want China to invade Taiwan. And one of the things that I hope the Trump administration is pursuing, and they've talked openly about this, I assume they are, is a pivot from places like Europe, where Europe should be able to take care of its own business. Again, Europe, the EU is much larger than Russia as a collective.

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We can pivot from there to China and help protect Taiwan. Because if Taiwan were to fall, that would have some grave consequences for Japan, for Australia, for the supply chain, for the future of pretty much all sophisticated manufactured goods. Now, all of that matters an awful lot. So the pivot, I think, is something that the Trump administration has openly talked about.

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But it is amazing to watch Democrats and the left-wing media freak out about Trump's foreign policy. And they're so delusional about what foreign policy even is. So Michael Birnbaum at the Washington Post has a piece called, quote, in first month, Trump upends century-old approach to the world. So what is the century-old approach to global affairs?

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Quote, Trump has gone further than he did in his first term to redefine whom the United States embraces and whom it combats, surprising fellow world leaders who thought they knew Trump's playbook and had been working to please him.

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Instead, the president is spurning a post-World War II international system built to block global aggressors, embracing far older ideas of allowing military powers to build regional spheres of influence and exert dominion over their neighbors. Okay, let's just be clear about this. That was also the system after World War II. The Soviet Union had a very, very, very large sphere after World War II

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And President Trump is not interested in not allowing any blocking of global aggressors. If that were the case, he would, in fact, just withdraw from Ukraine and not try to broker a peace deal at all. This is my favorite sentence in the piece from The Washington Post.

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Quote, Trump appears to be turning back the clock to a time in world history when countries with the biggest militaries constructed empires, demanded tribute from weaker nations, and expanded their territories through coercion. Do you mean like all of human history? Is that what we're talking about?

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Wow. Remember that sort of beat poetry that she used to do on the campaign trail? Well, if you want more of that, Democrats might do it. She might run for governor of California. Democrats themselves are sort of torn between how to approach the Trump administration. On the one hand, they want to go back to resistance-style anger. They really want to just scream at the wind a lot.

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That the bizarre interregnum in which liberals thought that they could magic China into being nice to us, for example, or they could wheedle Russia into being kind, that that was always a facade and always a nonsense? As Rosa Balfour, director of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says, quote, this is classical geopolitics, actually.

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Influence on the areas that are closest to you geographically. Now, again, that doesn't mean the United States wants to abandon the Far East. That would be a huge mistake. Or the United States wants to abandon Eastern Europe. That would also be a huge mistake.

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But a reshifting and realignment of interests such that the people who are closest are spending the most on the thing makes an awful lot of sense. And Democrats whining about it should have thought about that before they decided to sink billions of dollars into a quagmire in Ukraine of their own making. Meanwhile, President Trump is taking serious action inside the Pentagon.

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He abruptly fired Air Force General C.Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday. This is all part of his campaign to... feature merit instead of diversity. The ouster of Brown, only the second black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shockwaves through the Pentagon.

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His 16 months in the job have been consumed with the war in Ukraine and the expanded conflict in the Middle East. By the way, terrible job on both, sir. So thanks for that. If you wonder why exactly he's gone, the answer might be, you know, the quagmire in Ukraine and the fact that the Houthis now run the Red Sea. That might be the thing.

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According to the AP, Brown's public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration's war against wokeism in the military. Trump said he's nominating retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Raisin-Kane to be the next chairman. Kane is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard.

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He was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA. So that seems like pretty well qualified, actually. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced the firings of two additional senior officers, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slife.

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Franchetti is the second top female officer to be fired by the Trump administration. He also fired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in. Now, again, this is not just a quote-unquote purge of the diverse. This is an attempt to reorient the Defense Department toward the priorities of the President of the United States. This is the point that Hegseth is making.

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Let's put in place people who actually listen to the President. Here's the Defense Secretary.

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The problem for them is that they can't find a point of consolidation because many of the things that Donald Trump is doing right now are actually quite popular. And so they're stuck in a weird in-between. On the one hand, they want to preach that Donald Trump is non-empathetic, that what you really need is more empathy. But people don't see the Democrats as particularly empathetic.

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Okay, so again, this seems like a perfectly plausible explanation for what's happening at the Pentagon. One of the things that is hilarious about this is Democrats freaking out about this. So historically, presidents have always fired generals, like top generals.

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Barack Obama famously fired Stanley McChrystal for the great sin of making comments in a magazine profile about Barack Obama and his handling of Afghanistan. By the way, McChrystal was totally right about all of that. Most famously, Harry Truman fired General MacArthur. when MacArthur wanted to move more harshly during the Korean War.

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None of this is the end of the world, but Democrats keep claiming that everything is the end of the world. So you have Susan Rice again saying that Donald Trump is putting politics in our military. He did it? I feel like you did it, madam.

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I'm so sick of hearing Democrats about the integrity of democracy after they centralize all power in the executive branch and then complain about it. Again, all of this is within the realm of the perfectly normal and everybody pretending that this is a threat to democracy is, you know, over their skis at the very least. Alrighty, guys, coming up, we'll get to the trans story of the day.

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A famous actress, meaning, you know, an actor, like a dude who thinks he's a lady, complaining about passports. If you want to be a member and actually access that content, along with all of our other great content, including Matt Walsh's great movies, What is a Woman? and Am I Racist? and All Access With Me? and whatever you want from Michael Knowles and Jordan Peterson.

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Jane Fonda tried to make this case over the weekend. It is amazing that they are now having to trot out 70-odd-year-old people who once rallied for the Viet Cong as their sort of ideological thought leaders. This is a lady who literally went to North Vietnam and declared that the Viet Cong were the victims of the Vietnamese War and was posing next to an anti-aircraft battery with the Viet Cong.

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And now they're trotting her out as some sort of moral voice talking about empathy. Here was Jane Fonda over the weekend.

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There's a lot of options out there for Joy Reid, who is the kind of psychotic leftist who helped run the Democratic Party directly into a ditch. MSNBC, by the way, insists that they are going to continue with their progressive move. They are not, in fact, going to move toward the center, which, again, genius-level stuff from the leadership over at MSNBC, apparently.

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Jane Fonda is not a particularly smart person, but you are a smart person and smart investors prepare ahead of time, just like keeping a life jacket handy before you set sail. That's why so many people are adding gold to their portfolios, leading to record gold prices in early 2025. There's still a great opportunity for you to diversify and strengthen your financial future.

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When it comes to diversifying into physical gold, I personally trust my friends at Birchgold. They're the people I turn to for my own gold investments. Their specialty, helping you convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA backed by physical gold without any out-of-pocket costs. One five-star review, says it perfectly. Knowledgeable, helpful, non-pressure.

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That's exactly why I've stood behind Birch Gold for years. They deliver exactly what they promise. Also, with almost two entire months of the new year already behind us, wow, I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family. There's a lot going on.

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on pure conservative willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies. That's why I'm so thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every single day.

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That sounds miserable, time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies. They freeze, dry them, they turn them into a powder, and they put them into a capsule.

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, which means I can pop it right into that protein shake I take every day, and it's great. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, and get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com.

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promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and that free bottle of fiber and spice. And meanwhile, Democrats are touting an anti-Trump rant. They got a standing ovation in a rather blue area of a red state. This happened over the course of the last weekend or so.

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This is in Roswell, Georgia. But the people who are attending this particular town hall event in Roswell, Georgia are largely Democrats. Here is a town hall rant that was getting a lot of attention from the left over the weekend.

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They're going to move Jen Psaki, who is the former White House press secretary under Joe Biden. They're going to move her to anchor one of the primetime hours during the week. She could be named anchor of MSNBC's 9 p.m. hour, where Rachel Maddow currently is. Maddow might be moved as well. Alex Wagner will remain with the network as a correspondent. So.

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Now, here's the thing. All this rings rather hollow. It does. It is a sound and fury signifying almost nothing at this point because the Democratic Party does not know for what it stands. On the one hand, they want to say that they are for everyone. On the other hand, they want to push woke identity politics. On the one hand, they want to talk about no dictatorship.

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On the other hand, they want government to control every part of your life. On the one hand, they want to talk about Donald Trump is breaking down foreign policy. On the other hand, they want to surrender pretty much everywhere. So which is it? The answer in the end for Democrats is going to rest on Donald Trump's failure. If Donald Trump fails, they win. It's that simple.

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They don't have anything else. The only point of consolidation is if Donald Trump and his administration fail at making America succeed. That is the only way that they have a pathway back to power. James Carville basically acknowledged as much. He just thinks it's going to happen quickly. Here was James Carville over the weekend.

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OK, so again, Democrats are betting that it's all going to fall apart for President Trump. And Carville's suggestion is rooted in the fact that President Trump's approval ratings have slid from the mid 50s in some of the polls down to the mid 40s in some of the polls. That was always likely to happen because, again, the country is indeed quite polarized.

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But massive collapse doesn't appear to be on the horizon unless unless there is some sort of serious economic problem. And that is why the central focus of the Trump administration right now must be on bringing down inflation. It must be on economic growth. That's what the central focus has to be on.

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Yes, we want to see President Trump keep all of his promises, and he will with regard to immigration. Sure, we would like to see President Trump bring an end to the war in Ukraine in a reasonable fashion. But the thing that Americans care most about, this is true of the election, it's true of nearly every election, is their economic well-being.

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And there are some blinking red lights that are on the horizon here. One of those blinking red lights comes courtesy of Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett is now holding an extraordinary amount of cash. Warren Buffett, his Berkshire Hathaway, is holding $320 billion in cash and treasury bills. And the reason for that is he's looking at all the various areas of possible...

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The people who are apparently going to replace Joy Reid in that 7 p.m. slot are Simone Sanders Townsend, who, of course, was a press secretary originally for Bernie Sanders before becoming a press secretary for Kamala Harris. Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman who has moved far to the left, and Alicia Menendez. They are currently the co-host of MSNBC's weekend program called The Weekend.

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investment and he's saying they're already overvalued essentially what he's saying is that we are in a bubble right now and it is hard to look at for example the stock market where the price earnings ratio is way out of whack the price earnings ratio just means the price of the stock as opposed to the earnings of companies right now the average in the dow jones industrial average is 26 times the price of stocks are 26 times the annual earnings of those companies

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A normal distribution would be like 16, 18. 26 is way out of whack. And at the very top end of the spectrum, those top seven companies that everybody talks about, Those companies are at a P.E. ratio of something like 46. So those are overvalued. So Berkshire Hathaway is saying we're not going to sink more money into that.

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At the same time, the real estate market is also inflated because the interest rates have been high for a while. And there are a bunch of people who are holding on to their houses because they don't want to sell them and then get into a higher interest rate mortgage. And so what that means is a sort of artificially limited supply while demand remains at sort of even keel.

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And when that happens, you end up with a real estate bubble because fewer people are selling their homes and the demand has remained the same. So you have a bit of a real estate bubble, which is likely to break at some point. You have a stock market bubble, which is likely to break at some point. These are the worries the Trump administration has on its mind.

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And beyond all that, inflation is driving both of those things because the currency was inflated so much over the course of Joe Biden's tenure because of the velocity of the money that was injected into the economy under Joe Biden and in the latter days of the Trump administration.

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Because of that, there's so much money chasing goods and inflation remains at 3% right now, which is 50% higher than the Federal Reserve generally seeks. And that means that the interest rates are unlikely to come down which means that it's tougher to get a loan. At the same time, even if you got a loan, you wouldn't actually want to spend your money on inflated assets.

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And so you have a bit of a sticky patch here for the American economy. And the only way to truly unstick it is with productivity gains. That is the only way to truly unstick this, is more competition, less regulation, more investment in newer things. The productivity gains of AI have not actually made themselves manifest in the generalized market as of yet.

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There are tens of billions of dollars chasing AI. The problem, of course, is that aside from using AI for kind of everyday searches on the internet, most people aren't using AI yet to make their businesses more efficient and more effective. There's a sort of gap between the quality of the technology and the adaptivity of that technology to your normal everyday business working.

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Most people aren't using it in their businesses as of yet in a major way. So productivity gains have not matched the investment. It's one of the reasons, for example, why companies like NVIDIA have a massive valuation right now because people are pouring tons of money into the semiconductors produced by NVIDIA in order to build up AI.

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But again, the productivity gains from AI in the general workplace are not apparent as of yet. If they make themselves apparent, then we can outgrow all of this, or at least a large part of this. But in the meantime, what can the Trump administration do? They need to take a hammer to the regulations. And this is where we need to talk a little bit about Doge.

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So what Doge is doing right now is wonderful in a large number of ways. You all know I'm a big fan of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, as well as what Elon Musk is attempting to do. And one of the things Elon Musk is attempting to do is he's really targeting personnel in a very serious way inside the executive branch.

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So they are moving into the 7 p.m. hour. According to MSN.com, Sanders Townsend, formerly a spokesperson for Harris, was hired by MSNBC in 2022. Meanwhile, the leadership over at MSNBC suggests that they are going to add Politico's Eugene Daniels and NYU law professor Melissa Murray to the network's lineup as well. So they are continuing to move over to the left.

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So over the weekend, Elon Musk's Doge sent out an email to 2.3 million government workers asking that they justify their work. He basically said, give us five things you did over the course of the last week, and if you can't, then we may fire you. A bunch of the various agencies, again, run by Trump appointees, are saying, you know, you really don't have to do that.

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Alrighty folks, I wanted to give you the opportunity to hear a speech that I made down in Buenos Aires, Argentina at CPAC. It's a speech all about free markets and socialism and why free markets matter. Here's what it sounded like. Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. First off, I want to thank everybody who organized CPAC, put this amazing event together.

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In fact, it's one of the most plentiful substances on planet Earth. There are 7.5 sextillion grains of sand on planet Earth. Sand is annoying, it's useless. Today, it's one of the most important things on planet Earth. Why? Because the silicon dioxide in sand is processed in order to make silicon. And then it is processed again, and then it is processed again.

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Free markets are moral. Socialism is evil. Free markets create prosperity. Socialism creates absolute misery. So let's begin at the beginning. For those who missed it, what exactly are free markets? Let's begin with the definition. So free markets are economic systems by which individuals can freely exchange the products and services of their labor. Individual liberty is the locus of free markets.

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It is processed until it is 99.9999% pure, and then it is poured to create ingots, which are then sliced technologically, infinitesimally, into thin wafers, and then those are polished, and then those are sent to a semiconductor fab plant. And that becomes the basis for all the microprocessors in all your advanced technology, including your phone.

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We literally took one of the most useless substances on planet Earth and turned it into one of the most valuable substances on planet Earth. So what changed? That sand was there when the cavemen were walking around. The only thing that changed was free markets and innovation. That is the only thing that changed.

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Every single thing that we take for granted on planet Earth is the product of human ideas building on one another in organic fashion over the course of centuries. We take for granted that this sludge that seeps out of the ground powers everything we do. But for literally centuries, petroleum was used as an adhesive for patching roofs.

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Innovation means we get better products cheaper literally all the time sourced from everywhere on the globe. That is how a product made in 100 different countries arrives at your door inside of two days from Amazon Prime. The reality is that if you have faith in the free markets, you will be rewarded. And you can see it all over the planet.

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All you have to do is take a look at North and South Korea, for example. North and South Korea have precisely the same genetics. In fact, they were one landmass without a border not all that long ago. Well, today, North Koreans are on average three inches shorter than South Koreans, despite having identical genetics because of malnutrition.

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North Koreans make somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200 GDP per capita per year, as opposed to South Koreans who are in the $33,000 range. 97% of North Korea's roads are unpaved, compared to only 8% of South Korea's roads. That is what happens when you don't have rule of law, when you don't have private property. Everywhere free markets reign, things get better and they get cheaper.

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Take the example of light. We don't think about it. You flip on a switch, a light goes on, it stays on as long as you want it to stay on. You flip it off and it costs you basically nothing. But imagine the fact that for nearly all of human history, light was actually extraordinarily expensive.

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William Nordhausen, Nobel Prize winning economist, he points out that one modern 100 watt incandescent bulb burning for three hours every night would produce 1.5 million lumen hours of light per year. At the beginning of the last century, in the year 1900, obtaining that amount of light would have required burning 17,000 candles.

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The average worker would have had to toil 1,000 hours to earn the dollars to buy the candles. In the modern era, those hours would require about 10 minutes of work for the average worker. That is how much capitalism and free markets work.

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If you look back historically, by the way, the average GDP per capita on planet Earth around the time of Caesar Augustus, basically around the year zero, was about $2 per day. By the time of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, it was $2.80 per day. Today, world GDP, thanks to free market, private property, and rule of law, is in excess of $13,000.

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That's all happened in the course of the last couple of centuries. Meanwhile, socialism creates absolute misery. It creates more misery and impoverishment than any system in human history. It replaces the spontaneous order of the free markets with a top-down system where a bunch of pseudo-experts decide what you should have, when you should have it, and what price, supposedly, you can pay.

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Now, in order to explain this, socialists will rely on what they call the labor theory of value. That's kind of a hangover from the classical era of economics. David Ricardo talks about the labor theory of value.

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The labor theory of value is basically the idea that if you could measure the amount of labor that goes into producing any object, you could objectively determine what the price of that object should be. And then, if somebody charges more than that, that's exploitative.

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So if the normal value of a potato should be $2 and a grocer sells it for $3, that means that the grocer is expropriating profit from the laborer. He has created an unfair profit margin. So Marx and many people who are socialists would say, why don't we just set the price of potatoes at $2? Just set the prices at whatever we want them to be, and then everything will be fair.

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It'll be more efficient. We'll have taken the $1 in profit out of the system, and you'll get a bunch of $2 potatoes. The problem is, this is one of the stupidest things anyone has ever thought. The price of potatoes is not set. There is literally nothing about a potato that should make it $2 or $3 or 50 cents. Why? Well, because the preferences of human beings are fluid.

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As the economist and wisest living human being Thomas Sowell says, the market is nothing more than an option for each individual to choose among numerous existing institutions or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste. Free markets require two elements, private property and rule of law. Private property, of course, is the private ownership of property.

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The price of a good or service can only be determined in a free market because you get to determine what you think the price of a good or service should be. That price can change over time as we decide individually what it is that we want, what it is that we prioritize. This becomes obvious, for example, if you stumble upon a pearl on a beach. You stumble upon a pearl, no labor.

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You found a clam, you open it up, there's a pearl. That thing is worth a lot more than the potato. Why? No labor went into doing the thing. The answer is because the pearl is worth whatever someone else is willing to pay for it. This is the so-called subjective theory of value. It was a discovery of the Austrian School of Economics, to which President Millet is a devotee.

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Because, again, President Millet is intelligent, unlike most of our political class. Their theory was quite simple. The value of a good or a product or a service is whatever you are willing to pay for it. That is why it is subjective. It is up to you. In this view, it doesn't matter how much labor was put into that good or product or service.

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All that matters is what you are willing to trade for it, which is, by the way, the way you buy products. No one has ever gone to a store and thought about a potato and said, you know what? I need to determine the inputs into the potato. I need to determine the mortgage on the farm. I need to determine how much the fertilizer costs, how many wage labor hours went into the making of the potato.

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What you think is, how much am I willing to pay for this potato? How much of my salary am I willing to pay for this potato? Now, this seems like a pretty obvious idea, but it's an idea that's still fought by socialists every step of the way. And because that gets fought, what you end up with is a skewing of the market incentives, a perversion of the markets.

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You end up with false prices, overproduction or underproduction in a given sector, subsidies to unproductive sectors, and all the rest. All of this is the stupidity of socialism. People who believe that they know everything there is to know about what things should cost, the value of things, but actually know the value of nothing. Socialists hate free markets.

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They hate the subjective theory of value or the theory of marginal utility, as it's also called. They believe they should be able to say just what prices are. They believe they can centrally plan the economy, put enough smart people in a room, and they'll set thousands of prices per day. This is what the Soviet Union did. The result is absolute misery.

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And Argentina is a perfect example of how all of these bad ideas, when implemented, cost people their lives, cost people their livelihoods, and destroy entire civilizations. In the early 20th century, as you all know, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. It was certainly the richest country in Latin America.

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But because it never fully developed free markets and inclusive economic institutions, and then because it was plagued by decades of Peronist tyranny, the Peronists utilized their enormous corrupt political machine to buy votes, to pay off their friends, to redirect economic resources to their supporters.

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Until the rise of President Milley, the government was able to basically expropriate property rights at will with impunity. And the result was radical impoverishment. If you look at the record of Argentina from 1980 to 2023, it is one of the rare countries in the West where it actually got harder to live here. In fact, it took more time to work to buy basic goods in 2023 than it did in 1980.

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It's the free ability to dispense with your labor as you wish, to exchange the fruits of your labor with others without intervention by some sort of tyrannical third party. That freedom of exchange leads to a robust system of supply and demand in which sellers and buyers agree on prices.

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Because it turns out that government interventionism, socialism, it fails literally everywhere it is tried. And by the way, Argentinian socialism represents one of the less damaging forms of the disease. The Soviet Union murdered tens of millions of its own citizens. China is still murdering millions of its own citizens.

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Cuba remains a tyrannized hellhole despite idiot Westerners traveling there and thinking it's charming that people are driving around 1950s Chevys. So here's the bottom line. Free markets are moral. Socialism is evil. Free markets create prosperity. Socialism creates misery.

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And that's why what's happening right now in this room, in this country, is perhaps the most important political development on planet Earth at this very moment. For far too long, Argentina has been run by scavengers. Scavengers are people who believe that they get to expropriate whatever they want. They don't have to produce anything. They are owed. They get to destroy the work of the lions.

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But now, Argentina is retaking its place as the leader of the lions. That's thanks to the people of this country who have finally stood up and they've said enough. Enough to the socialist evil. Enough to the impoverishment. Enough to the lies. Enough to the bullshit. It's time to take a chainsaw to all of it. President Millet is now leading the world forward into a new golden age of liberty.

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I really believe that. He's doing so with extraordinary audacity and courage. By shouting afuera and cutting the number of ministries from 18 to 8. By firing members of the bloated public sector en masse, by dumping the corrupt intermediaries in the welfare system, he slashed the budget by 32%. Argentina is recording surpluses now, which was unthinkable, literally unthinkable.

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He's moving toward revaluing the economy by devaluing the heretofore worthless peso. Monthly inflation dropped from 25% last December, month on month, to 2% last month. The stock market is skyrocketing here. That's because Javier Millet understands the power of liberty.

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Free markets require a consistent rule of law, precisely so tyrants can't intervene and skew that market on behalf of a protected class or person. No dictator should be able to elevate his own priorities over that of any other individual in the market. Free markets guarantee what the Nobel Prize-winning economists Darren Asimoglu and James Robinson call inclusive economic institutions.

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A few months ago, I had the opportunity to talk with President Millet, and he told me, quote, we need to embrace the values of freedom, which are ideas in the United States, even though in recent times they may have been degraded and some might have walked off the path. Well, Javier Millet, Argentina, you are leading the West back onto the right path.

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As President Millet put it before the coddled fools of Davos, quote, economic freedom, limited government, unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. The impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fact. It's a reality that we Argentines know very well.

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As President Milley knows, as you all know, the conflict between liberty and socialism is not a conflict in Argentina alone. It is a conflict throughout the West. It's a conflict between lions and scavengers, between a morality that prizes merit and innovation and productivity and dynamism and achievement, and a morality that prizes envy and extraction and ugliness and laziness.

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In his first speech as head of state, President Milley said, today we begin the reconstruction of our country. Well, Argentina, the eyes of the world are on you. If you succeed, the rest of the world is going to follow you. And I believe that you will succeed. If you remain courageous and honest, liberty will succeed, because liberty must succeed. Viva la libertad, carajo.

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These are economic institutions that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make the best use of their talents. Markets prize diversity in the richest possible sense, not in the sense of racial diversity or tribal diversity.

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And I also want to say thank you to the unbelievable people of Argentina who are currently engaging in the single most important economic revitalization effort of the 21st century. What we are watching here is revolutionary. It's a restoration of freedom after generations of socialism.

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They take account of every individual's needs, wants, and desires, which is, of course, why socialists and tyrants, but I repeat myself, hate them. So let's talk about the morality of markets, because this is the big rip on markets, right, is that free markets are somehow immoral. That's a lie. Free markets are the only moral system. Well, what do I mean when I say that free markets are moral?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean that they accord with the basic truths of human existence. Nowhere, anywhere, anywhere on the planet can find a child who doesn't know the basic principles of property ownership. I have four kids, 10, 8, 4, and 1. They all, at a very root level, understand what is mine and what is yours. And this is true across civilizations.

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Now, private property isn't just a natural thing that human beings engage in. It also happens to be just. It's fair. So justice is the proposition, as Aristotle suggested, that equals should be treated equally and unequals should be treated unequally. What does that mean? Well, it means that individuals are equal in their rights but not in their qualities.

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So I have the same rights that you do, but I have very different qualities, which might mean a different earning capacity. LeBron James and I have the same exact rights, but he's a way better basketball player than I am. Meanwhile, I have read way more books than LeBron James because I have read more than one book. That's not unfair, that's just the way that life is.

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What would be unfair would be to shackle LeBron James to a tractor if we were to play basketball so as to achieve equal outcome, or to force me never to read another book so that we could have an equal conversation. There's a very famous Kurt Vonnegut story called Harrison Bergeron in which society does just this.

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If somebody is incredibly smart, they force a radio to play in their ears at all times so they can't take advantage of their intelligence. If they're incredibly strong, they force that person to wear hundreds of pounds of scrap metal so they can't take advantage of their physical abilities. That isn't justice. That's oppression.

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Justice suggests that we each ought to have the same right to take advantage of our own natural abilities. As Thomas Sowell suggests, justice is a process, not an outcome. We're not God that we can simply say, let there be equality or let there be justice. Let me equally dispense all skills equally on the population. That's not the way that it works.

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Instead, we have to begin with the universe that we were born into, says Thomas Sowell, and we have to weigh the cost of making specific changes in it to achieve a specific end. And when we do that, what we find out is that private property is a fundamental human right, that justice demands it.

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John Locke, who is a philosopher prized to the American founding fathers, famously wrote, "'Every man has property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, the work of his hands, are properly his.

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Whatsoever he removes out of the state of nature that hath been provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby he makes it his property.'" Free markets are moral and they are just. They reward merit. They reward hard work and solid decision making.

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What's happening right now, President Millet and the people of Argentina are waking up the world to the fundamental reality that liberty means morality, decency, and truth. You, here in this country, are all teaching the world right now. So today, I want to talk about liberty, and I want to talk about socialism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The assumption by socialists, very often, is that people who succeed in society are sort of leeches. They're the people who work the least. That isn't true. It's not true remotely. Elon Musk famously slept on the floor of Tesla when they weren't making their production supply requirements. Bill Gates began working insane hours at the ripe old age of 13.

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Thomas Edison worked 20 hours a day nearly his entire life, and as he got older, he cut it back to 18 hours a day. Free markets reward hard work. They reward risk-taking and innovation. They reward people who are willing to give up something guaranteed in favor of something not guaranteed. Like Abraham in the Bible, innovators are called to go forth and find a land that they did not know.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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This is what the pioneers in America did when they left cities that were well-established to cross continents to places they didn't know and to build things. And that's what innovators do today. They leave safe, salaried positions very often. And instead, they build something with their own hands. They take risks. They are risk takers, innovators. These are the people who make civilization better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And because entrepreneurs and innovators take the risk, they ought to reap the rewards. The reality is the vast majority of entrepreneurs fail. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in four new businesses fails within year one. Within 10 years, that number is closer to 2 thirds. But every failure in a free market system is a further spur to further effort and further success.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Henry Ford once supposedly quipped, failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. We at The Daily Wire, when we founded our company, that was on the back of a pretty dramatic failure, actually. My business partner, Jeremy Boring, and I, we'd been working at a totally different company. It was a 501c3.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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And we presented a plan for how we could make this nonprofit organization actually generate money. And we presented that plan to the board. The board was made up of a bunch of 80-year-old people. They didn't understand how the internet worked.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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So we explained to them we wanted to spend money on social media to direct traffic to a website, which would then earn money off subscriptions and advertising. We would take that money, and we would put it back into social media and create the cycle of marketing and growth. We tried to explain it. It didn't go over particularly well with the 80-year-olds who didn't know what internet was.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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In fact, they asked me to explain it simply, and I literally, I remember this, I literally took a napkin and wrote on it, I wrote on it, dollar sign, arrow, Facebook, arrow, website, arrow back to dollar sign. I said, this is our business plan. They then fired Jeremy the next day, and I quit in solidarity. It was a giant fail.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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We then took that exact business plan, found angel investors, and built Daily Wire, which will probably do $250 million in business this year. Failure leads to success in the land of innovation. Free markets also happen to reward good behavior. They tend to reward honesty, punctuality, decency. Adam Smith stated this in his lectures on jurisprudence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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He said, whenever commerce is introduced in any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it, which makes sense. Because if you want repeat customers, you don't cheat your customers. Socialists don't have to worry about it. They can always just confiscate more money from somebody or borrow money that doesn't exist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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There's a big story that's been told throughout the West by the left in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union, and it goes something like this. Sure, socialism has never really worked all that well in practice, but really, in theory, it's kind and beautiful and wonderful. And if ever it were truly tried, it would result in a more prosperous and just world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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But if you actually want to succeed in the market, you better be good to your customers. You better not cheat them over and over and over. The miracle of free markets. They promote justice, hard work, innovation, honesty. They emerge evolutionarily. Free markets are not some sort of man-made institution that a bunch of great minds thought out. They came about through evolution of the species.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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They came about naturally. And because they are spontaneously ordered and not created top-down, because they themselves are the product of liberty, that means they also promote liberty. Socialism, unlike free markets, socialism is just evil. Socialism is the philosophy of the thief. It is the philosophy of the man who would prefer to burn everything down rather than to build anything up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Socialism is the philosophy of the man who rails against the cruelty of a universe that isn't run the way that he would like. It's a system that emboldens that whiner, that leech, to play God, complete with the power over life and death. Socialism says, I am here and what you have is therefore mine. Socialism is, at its root, envy, which we used to call one of the seven deadly sins.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Adam Smith defined envy as, quote, that passion which views with malignant dislike the superiority of those who are entitled to all the superiority they possess. It's a pretty good description of socialism. Socialism is envy embodied. Socialism says, I will decide what you deserve. It is the morality of tyrants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Socialism is a philosophy that abolishes the individual in favor of the tyrannical collective. In the words of the postulant ulcers Marx and Engels, the theory of communists can be summed up in a single sentence, abolition of private property.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Now they say that if you abolish private property, that means you also have to abolish the middle class owner of that property, which the devotees of Marx and Engels then did, to the tune of close to 100 million human beings over the course of the 20th century. Socialism is the philosophy that places the individual under the boot of the tyrant. That is what it is designed to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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It is the philosophy of the Peronists, obviously, who declare themselves in favor of a social market, putting capital to the service of the economy and the well-being of the people. Pretty words, but it is, of course, the Peronists who would decide just whose money to steal and how to spend it and who to punish.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Socialism encourages revolutionaries who produce literally nothing and destroy everything they touch. It encourages laziness, it encourages stupidity, and it encourages dishonesty at scale. It encourages people to lie. A very old Soviet joke that was in favor of Ronald Reagan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Stalin is visiting a Ukrainian farm in the middle of the Holodomor, and the farmer is eager to please the dictator, and he excitedly tells Stalin, he says, Comrade Stalin, we have so many potatoes that if we piled them up, one on top of another, they would reach all the way up to God. And Stalin says, but God doesn't exist. And the farmer says, well, neither do the potatoes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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We'll get to more of my speech from CPAC Argentina first. Did you know you spend a third of your life sleeping? That's around 25 years of your life in bed. With numbers like that, your mattress isn't just furniture. It's an investment in your well-being. That's where Helix Sleep comes in. I never thought a mattress could make such a difference until I tried Helix. What sets them apart?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Well, unlike those one-size-fits-all brands, Helix offers 20 different mattress options because they understand everyone's sleep needs are unique. It all starts with their Sleep Quiz, a game-changer for finding your perfect match. When I mentioned my struggle with lower back pain on softer mattresses, they recommended the medium firm option. The result, I've never slept better.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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free markets, they say, are rapacious and cruel at their root. In the words of the socialist leech on the ass of civilization Bernie Sanders, quote, the simple truth is that unfettered capitalism is not just creating economic misery for the majority of Americans, it is destroying our health, our well-being, our democracy, and our planet. Well, that story is, in one word, bullshit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Looking for that cloud-like feeling? Try their Lux. Want the ultimate sleep experience? Go for the Elite. Need extra support that Helix Plus has you covered. And forget those awkward mattress store visits. Helix delivers right to your door. Helix is so confident in their product, they give you 100 nights to try it out. That's over three months to test your mattress in the real world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Plus, every mattress comes with a 10 to 15 year warranty. So if you want to sleep as soundly as I do, head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben and take that sleep quiz. Plus, Helix is offering up to 20% off site-wide and two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. That's correct. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben with Helix.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Better sleep starts right now. helixsleep.com slash Ben. Socialism encourages radical dishonesty by the political class, by the people who work for them, and by the people at large. Politicians lie about what they're achieving because they have to lie because they're not actually achieving anything. They're not producing a damned thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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They're just stealing from some and giving to the others and then destroying all innovation in the process. They're subordinate to lie to them because they don't want to piss off the big man. And the people lie in order to live, which is why black markets tend to thrive in socialist economies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Socialism is designed to destroy the innate creative capacity of every human being made in the image of God. By depriving human beings of their right to property, socialism robs them of that godly power to create. For men to flourish, socialism must be destroyed. So let's turn to the track record. Free markets create prosperity. Socialism creates misery. That is perfectly obvious to anyone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Free markets are the single most successful development in all of human history, bar none. Far from immiserating the workers of the world, as Karl Marx predicted, free markets have radically expanded the living standards of literally everyone. That is because free markets create innovation and competition. In a free market, somebody creates a new thing. That thing is a luxury.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Then people compete to make that new thing cheaper. And then, gradually, it becomes a necessity. A cell phone used to be a thing that Gordon Gekko in the 1980s carried around on a beach and it was the size of a shoebox. And now a cell phone is a thing that every poor person has.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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In fact, historically speaking, the richest people on Earth are poor compared to many of the poorest people living today in civilized countries. The richest man in history was likely a guy named Mansa Musa. He was ruler of the Mali Empire in the 14th century. And he apparently owned so much gold, literally half the gold on Earth was supposedly owned by this one human being.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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He literally owned so much gold that when he visited Cairo and dropped the gold, he basically bankrupted Cairo for the next 10 years because he inflated the currency so much. But here's the problem. If you're Mansa Musa and you own half the gold on Earth, and you happen to live in 14th century Mali, you're really poor by today's standards. You die at the age of 57.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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If you're a citizen of a Western country these days, on average, you'll live into your 70s, maybe into your 80s or 90s. Mansa Musa died at 57, owning half the gold on planet Earth. Mansa Musa never sat on a working toilet. No one else did at the time either.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Right around the time that he was wandering around the Middle East with enormous quantities of cash, the Black Plague was ripping through Europe and killing one third of the population. It took Mansa Musa two years to travel from his empire to Mecca. Today, that trip would take about six hours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Today, the poorest citizens in the world have magical devices that allow you to press a button and talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time across the entire planet. Why? Well, because that's what free markets do. Free markets create prosperity. See, socialism can turn gold into sand.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben BLOWS OFF THE ROOF In Argentina

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Actually, that's a good synopsis of maybe the last 80 or 90 years of Argentinian history, is turning a very rich country into a rather poor one through the mechanisms of socialism. But free markets literally transform sand into gold. Sand, just as a thing on Earth, has existed for all of human history, right? The cavemen were walking around on it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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So it's a pretty impressive speech from the former and current president of the United States. President Trump gave a 29 minute address, very short for him. It began with him suggesting that this was the beginning of a new golden era for the United States. That obviously is his ambition. And then he recapped the last four years, which he characterized as dark, depressing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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We'll see how that manifests in terms of his actual trade and tariff policy. But the bottom line for President Trump is, was, and will be utilitarian. It's going to be about winning. It's going to be about pragmatic winning for the American people. That's the theme that he kept coming back to. And he also, in the more inspirational moments of the speech, I think,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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talked about what he sees as the future of the country and the past of the country, the sort of pioneer spirit that it takes to cross mountains and settle along rivers, the kind of pioneer spirit that it takes to, for example, go to the moon and plant an American flag on the moon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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There's an aspirational nature that's combined with the pragmatic utilitarian on the ground stuff that I think is going to make President Trump's second term unique and could, in fact, make President Trump's second term historically unique. It's pretty rare to have a president who's

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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both pursuing the sort of pragmatic, on-the-ground things that are necessary to fix the broken toilet, and at the same time, pursuing the big ideas, the big, bold ideas. And it's been a long time in this country since we pursued actual, bold ideas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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For a very long time, probably my entire political lifetime, we've been stuck in the position of sort of global managerial class, where it's our job to sort of fix things around the world or fix things at home. President Trump did talk about innovation. He talked about dynamism. He talked about shooting for something that was larger.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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And again, there is to his administration a seriousness of purpose that I think a lot of people found lacking at the very beginning of his first administration. He's learned something. Again, the key line was one that Jeremy mentioned a moment ago. And that key line was that God saved his life in order to make America great again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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And I think that because that happened, because he narrowly avoided being assassinated in front of the American people, having his head blown off on national television, I think that he does have a seriousness of purpose. He could sit back on his laurels. He could right now say, listen, I won. I did the thing that I set out to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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I think obviously he was right in all of that. And then he began to lay out an incredibly pragmatic

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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I won one term, I lost, and now I came back and I won a second term in historic fashion. He's not doing that. He actually has an agenda. And you can see that agenda unfolding in real time. We're noticing as this speech was unfolding, the White House site had already shifted over to a picture of President Trump with the label America is Back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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And it's worth mentioning right here that on his way out the door, this broke pretty much as President Trump got up to speak, that Joe Biden actually pardoned all the members of his own immediate family in preparation for the idea that Republicans were gonna go after them. That's not true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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The reality is, again, that President Trump, I think, is not going to be focused, and I hope he's not gonna be focused, and I think his speech suggests this, This is not a revenge-minded administration. This is a forward-looking administration that is looking to solve the problems of the American people, that is going to put American interests first on foreign and domestic policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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course of action that he's going to pursue immediately and that includes everything from designating drug cartels terrorist organizations to putting back in place remain in mexico from declaring a national energy emergency to drill baby drill those are his words to a foreign policy that's led with strength he mentioned the release of three hostages by hamas over the weekend president of the united states

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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And again, it's going to be measured by its success. That was the word he used many times during the speech, success. And that's always been President Trump's metric of what matters is success and winning. I don't think any of that is going to change in the second administration, but I do think the approach will change much more practical. He actually knows how Washington works now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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He's appointing people who are going to break the things that need to be broken. I'm not sure I've ever been more optimistic about the country in my lifetime, which is, I think, a far cry from where all of us were four years ago. Our faith has been placed in President Trump as president of the United States again.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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And I think that the faith of the American people, I hope and I pray, I think as all of us do, that the hope that the American people have placed in President Trump is well justified. Celebrate the 47th president with 47% off your membership. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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Also dropped some pretty charged language about what he sees as the future of American territory. He used the phrase manifest destiny to describe the possibility of expanding America's territorial holdings, including regaining some level of control over, for example, the Panama Canal, which he said we did not build for the use of China or ownership by China, which of course is exactly correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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The bottom line is this. President Trump said in the speech that he is going to be a common sense president. And that is what you heard. This is a president who is much more focused than he was during his first term. This is a president who actually has an agenda. This is a president who is ready to make that agenda happen in real time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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I don't think that it was the most soaring rhetoric I've ever heard from President Trump, but it was some of the most pragmatic rhetoric that I've ever heard from President Trump. Again, it was a shorter address than he usually gives in these sorts of situations, and I think that played to his benefit because, again, and allowed the American public to focus on what he was saying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Trump Sworn In as #47

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He suggested that maybe the most important wars we fight are the ones that we never fight, which is a strategy of deterrence that he has suggested in the past and that he pursued with alacrity during his first term. He suggested that when it came to foreign trade, that we were not going to impoverish American workers in order to make people rich elsewhere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

Well, folks, since I'm off, I thought that you might enjoy the full interview that I did with Critical Drinker. It's an awesome interview, it's really enjoyable, and it's a nice break. So we've had a literary take on why Lord of the Rings is great and not too long. And now I need a movie expert's take on why Matt Walsh is wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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One of the things that I also find weird about Matt's take on this is that obviously Matt is a very Christian person. The entire Lord of the Rings saga is filled with Christian symbolism and Christian imagery. And it's replete throughout the series. But Matt is a very literal-minded movie watcher, I think.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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Because if we're going to fisk somebody, we're doing it in a comprehensive fashion here. Joining us on the line is the critical drinker to analyze Matt Walsh's hot take that Lord of the Rings is bad because it is too long, among other critiques. Good to see you. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you. How are you?

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this. Did you know that somebody can literally steal your house? I don't mean like they jack it up on a truck or something, but the value in your home actually can be stolen. A scammer can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, and spend about 40 bucks to file it at the county recorder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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Then they can take out loans using your home as collateral. You won't even know it's happening until you start getting collection and foreclosure notices in the mail. Can you imagine if you or someone you cared about became a victim of these scams?

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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That would be incredibly sad and frustrating, especially knowing there are people out there like Home Title Lock who can help keep an eye on your title. Most people never check on their home title once escrow closes. That's why it's critical to find out right now if you're already a victim by going to HomeTitleLock.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

250.406

They'll give you a free title history report and provide you with million-dollar triple lock protection to help keep your home and equity safe. That's why I recommend and I'm proud to partner with Home Title Lock. Many people at The Daily Wire, including people on this team, trust Home Title Lock to protect what's likely one of their biggest assets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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Again, protecting the value in your home is probably your biggest asset. You need to protect it. Get 24-7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts if there are any changes. And if fraud does happen, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million bucks to fix the fraud and restore your title.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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When you go to HomeTitleLock.com and use promo code Shapiro right now, you can get a free 14-day trial and a title history report and find out if you're already a victim. That's HomeTitleLock.com, promo code Shapiro. So I want to ask you how you think the film holds up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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One of the things that I find so astonishing about Lord of the Rings is that if you watch movies that are made in that same era, early 2000s, the CGI really doesn't hold up. It just looks bad. The CGI, and really very little of it is CGI, actually. A lot of it is using things like bigatures.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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The methodology that Jackson used in making Lord of the Rings holds up better than much of the CGI that is currently being made today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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You know, I'm doing well, except I just, I can't deal with the fact that there's a person who works for our company who has such stupid thoughts about Lord of the Rings. So I need to get your take on Matt's take.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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MARK MANDELMANN, So this analysis is really useful, but I need more dunking on Matt. So you said that you've seen a lot of Matt's hot takes. On the list of hot takes, where does this hot take fall?

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

429.344

So I have to ask you also, we talked with the Tolkien expert who literally looks like a hobbit living in a hobbit hole about the Lord of the Rings books. You obviously are familiar with the books. You're familiar with the movies. Which do you prefer, the movies or the books?

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

461.908

Well, I really appreciate your time. And again, I'll have you on any time to dunk on Matt. It's just one of the joys of my life. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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I mean, I have exactly the same issue with Matt's take. I mean, I think it's actually his second worst movie take after The Dark Knight is super overrated. It's his other horrifyingly bad movie take. But the whole point of the—unlike The Hobbit, which is way too long because the plot does not justify the length of those films. And the book itself makes this clear.

The Ben Shapiro Show

FLASHBACK: Destroying Matt Walsh w/ Critical Drinker

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I mean, the whole series of—so The Hobbit itself is about a 300-page book. The entire series of Lord of the Rings is over 1,000 pages. I mean, it is a very, very long book. And the movie doesn't even cover everything that's in the book, and it's still long, and it moves quickly. I mean, it's one of those movies where you finish Fellowship, and you're surprised that it's over already.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

All righty, folks, it's time for another episode of Ben Reacts. Thanks to President Joe Biden, who tonight pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, in the most expected scandal of recent memory. Remember, folks, don't miss out on breaking news and exclusive content like these Reacts videos. Join DailyWire Plus today during our best deal of the year right now. You get 50% off new memberships.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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a plea deal with Hunter Biden that would have allowed him to get off scot-free, essentially, with some probation and some community service. And then he attempted to bury the tax charges in the gun charges. In the end, the judge blew that up because the judge looked at the deal and realized that the deal was, in fact, unbelievably corrupt, and there was no way to even pretend that it wasn't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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So in the end, David Weiss and company at the DOJ, they had to go back to the drawing board, and eventually, The judge in that particular case accepted a guilty plea in a nine-count indictment, three felony tax offenses, six misdemeanor tax offenses, as well as a gun charge because he had lied on his gun intake form.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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He had suggested that he was not, in fact, a drug addict when he was, in fact, a drug addict. Now again, those convictions did not get to the root of the matter with regard to Hunter Biden, which was, was he in fact a bag man for daddy? I mean, we have texts from Hunter Biden to his own children suggesting that he paid the family bills.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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So the chances that he was not in fact a bag man for the Biden family are pretty much zero. Everyone all over the world knew that daddy was the one with the weight. And they figured that by paying Hunter Biden, they would basically buy off daddy. This was always the bargain. Hunter Biden basically admitted as much.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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He went on national television and he was asked whether he would have ever obtained any of these highly paid foreign jobs, if not for his last name. And he said, no. And he said, no. Well, Hunter Biden, again, gets convicted. He goes to jail. That happens back in September.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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No code necessary. It is indeed the final hours of our Black Friday deal. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now. All righty, so... The big news of the evening, of course, is that President Joe Biden, who had vowed that he would not, in fact, pardon his son, Hunter Biden, on gun and tax-related charges, he was lying. Who knew?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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And part of the reason why this happened back in September is because, as you'll recall, there were still ongoing questions as to whether Donald Trump was going to go to jail. So one of the ways that the DOJ responded to allegations of impropriety and corruption in going after Donald Trump was to convict Hunter Biden, the president's son, on this variety of charges without ever touching Joe Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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So the idea was the DOJ was definitely not corrupt because after all, the DOJ went out of its way to go after the president's son, even if it was leaving the president of the United States alone. Well, Joe Biden, you'll remember back in July, suggested that if his son was in fact convicted, he would not pardon him. And then after his son was convicted, he still said that he would not pardon him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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You remember this. Well, it turns out that he was lying all along.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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So tonight, we find out that he was not only pardoned on the charges for which he ended up being criminally convicted or pleading guilty, he was actually pardoned with regard to anything he did between period January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted, including any that have resulted in convictions by special counsel David C. Weiss.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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That is what Joe Biden issued tonight. So it is not just the stuff that he was actually guilty of. It is anything else, right? Any offenses that he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during that entire period. So that entire period, of course, would include pretty much everything related to the Burisma period, which was happening in 2015 and early 2016.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Pretty incredible stuff right there. I mean, that is Joe Biden just taking himself off the hook by proxy. That's what that is. We'll get to Joe Biden's statement on the matter in one moment. First, when a big brand says free, what they really mean is see the fine print.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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There is no shortage of ads from the big wireless carriers offering the latest iPhone for free, of course, but you need to look deeper. You'll quickly realize that in order to qualify, you need to trade in your phone valued at $1,000, enroll in the $100 a month unlimited plan, and then pay the $35 activation fee. That's a lot of money for a free phone. You don't need to do any of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Pure Talk, my cell phone company, has a better option. Get a brand new iPhone 14, which has all the bells and whistles you need. Plus, you get unlimited talk. text 15 gigs of data, mobile hotspot, all for 50 bucks a month. How about that? Half the price of the big guys. You get a new iPhone powered by America's most dependable 5G network right now. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro today.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Switching is super simple. Plus, when you go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro, you do get an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage. Pure Talk is America's wireless company. All righty, so the actual statement that Joe Biden released is really self-serving, as you would imagine. I mean, of course it has to be self-serving, given the fact that, of course,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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This is the president pardoning his own son. And understand the corruption here. The entire attempt to convict Hunter Biden was done as a balancing act in order to demonstrate that they were not in fact a tool of the Democratic administration. So their case was, we can prosecute Donald Trump willy-nilly, but we're not biased because we are also prosecuting Hunter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Except for everyone, because of course, President Joe Biden has always been a super corrupt and venal politician. In fact, from the very beginning of his career, he was attempting to make money for members of his family, whether we were talking about his brothers, whether we were talking about his kids, whether we were talking about his sister, whether we were talking about his entire family.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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But Republicans were saying, well, yeah, I mean, that's all well and good, except that you know Joe is going to pardon Hunter the minute that he has the opportunity to do so. So it's all a fake. And Joe was like, no, no, no, no, I would never do that. I'm never going to. Well, it turns out we're all right. It was a fake. So Joe Biden puts out a statement and it says this, quote,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making, and I kept my word, even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted.

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Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who are late paying their taxes because of serious addictions but paid them back subsequently with interest in penalties are typically given non-criminal resolutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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It is clear Hunter was treated differently. Ah, yes, it turns out Joe Biden isn't doing this because Hunter is his son. It's because Hunter was unfairly victimized by the Department of Justice, unlike Donald Trump, who, of course, had the Department of Justice activated against him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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And Joe Biden said that he should, in fact, have the Department of Justice activated against him, while simultaneously the DOJ was openly stating that Joe Biden had committed crimes with regard to classified materials, but he was senile, so they wouldn't prosecute him. Remember, the selectivity tends to run in one particular direction.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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While the statement goes on, the charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to by the DOJ unraveled in the courtroom, with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter's cases. That, of course, is not what the judge said. The judge, as you will recall in this case, looked at that plea deal, which effectively took the gun charges and then wrapped in all possible tax charges as sort of an addendum, to the plea deal on the gun charges.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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And the judge looked at that and said, wait, I'm not even trying the tax charges. Why in the world would I sign off on a plea agreement that involves cases over which I am not presiding? That's crazy. So once again, Joe Biden is lying. He says, no reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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And that is wrong. There's been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. He's a victim. He is, Hunter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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He spent his entire adult life being a derelict, a drug addict who sires children by random women and then ignores them for years on end, who sleeps with his brother's widow, who runs around the world picking up sacks of cash for his daddy. But don't worry, he's the victim here. In trying to break Hunter, says Joe, they've tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it will stop here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Enough is enough. For my entire career, I've followed a simple principle. Just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair-minded. Here is the truth. I believe in the justice system. But as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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And once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. No, we know perfectly well why you came to this decision. Mr. President, we totally get it. It's because you are super corrupt. That's the reason you came to this particular decision. Listen, I get it. You're a dad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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His entire family has been the beneficiary of his political largesse. They've all used his name in order to pull down sacks of cash. And Hunter Biden, of course, was most famous for doing that, whether he was pulling down sacks of cash by taking money from Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, having no expertise in Ukraine or in energy,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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But also, you happen to be a super corrupt dad. None of these excuses hold water. And you don't get to claim that you agree with the justice system while you simultaneously undermine it through one of the most corrupt pardons in American history right here, which is exactly what is happening.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Folks, we're going to have a lot on this tomorrow morning, so you have to make sure that you tune into the show. I have a lot to talk about here that I'm not able to get to, and the Ben reacts, but I wanted to get this out quickly so you know at least my initial thoughts. We'll see you here next time or again. Remember, right now, this is like your last moment to get that Black Friday deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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Head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe right now and get 50% off your new membership.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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whether he was attempting to take down sacks of cash from the Chinese with 10% held in trust for the big guy. That is according, again, to contemporaneous emails that were found on the Hunter Biden laptop, which were then covered up by the media and of course by the intelligence community, which claimed that it was probably Russian disinformation. Well, you'll recall,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Reacts: Hunter Biden’s Pardon

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that last year there's a huge scandal because the special counsel, a person named David Weiss, first attempted to bury the Hunter Biden charges, particularly when it came to the question of Foreign Agent Registration Act violations, tax felonies, whether Joe Biden was in fact involved in all of this, he attempted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Folks, an enormous amount coming up on today's show. Joe Biden has deadly cancer. How long did he have it and who knew? Plus, tape has emerged of him being seen now in 2023. Everybody knew. Plus, we'll get to the economy and all of the controversy around it. First, if you're not a Daily Wire Plus member, here's what you're missing.

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Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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That's the unique number that identifies you online and allows data brokers to build and sell profiles about you. Without access to your IP or activity data, those companies have literally nothing to work with. I use ExpressVPN all the time. I travel a lot, unfortunately, but that also means that I'm on public Wi-Fi.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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On public Wi-Fi, that means my information is exposed unless I am using ExpressVPN. Plus, ExpressVPN is remarkably simple to use. Just one click activates protection across all my devices, from phones and tablets to smart TVs and computers. Plus, it works on up to eight devices simultaneously, so I can extend privacy protection to the entire family right now.

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Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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You can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link to expressvpn.com slash Ben. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN, E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. Also, I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with the family, even with the busy work schedule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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When I was a little younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. And you know, sometimes I still do, but it turns out that you actually need to eat the good stuff for your body. And that means eating vegetables. But unfortunately, vegetables are God's punishment to human beings.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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So I'm very thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat those 31 different fruits and veggies every day they tell you to eat. That sounds pretty miserable and time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Metastatic means that, of course, it has moved already from its original source to someplace else in the body. Once you have cancer in your bones, obviously the prognosis is not good. It doesn't mean it's necessarily deadly in the next couple of months or anything like that. Barack Obama put out a statement saying, Michelle and I are thinking of the entire Biden family, Joseph Feiter.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take those fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely. what to do with them. It's kosher, so that means I pop it right into the protein smoothie and keep the gun show going strong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Okay, and this, again, ties into a broader cover-up, and that is the cover-up of his health condition, generally speaking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So to talk about that for a moment, audio of former President Biden, his interview with Special Counsel Robert Herr got a public airing on Friday afternoon. So Axios originally posted some segments of this audio, and then they posted the full audio. This, of course, is an interview that Joe Biden did with the special prosecutor Robert Herr.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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You'll recall that the left went insane about this particular interview. Why? Well, because it turns out that Robert Herr, early on in 2024, put out an explanation for why Joe Biden was not being prosecuted for mishandling classified documents.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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And in that document where he explained why he was going to prosecute Biden, he said, basically, people will see him in the jury as a well-meaning older man with memory issues, which is a very nice way of saying he's senile. And the entire left went insane. How dare Robert Herr say this?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Robert Herr must be some sort of Republican operative saying that the president of the United States has memory problems, that he's senile. You might recall Tommy Veeder, Obama van driver and advisor, saying, quote, Herr's claim that Biden couldn't remember the day his son died was an outrageous lie. It's also cruel and irrelevant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Anyone who's experienced loss like that can remember images, smells, bits of conversation. The pain is burned into you. Dates blend together because they're irrelevant. And he was just one of the people who was leading the attack on Robert Herr for saying the perfectly obvious, which is that the president of the United States did not have a functioning brain. Well, now we have the audio.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And guess what? It turns out Robert Herr was actually understating the case. Robert Herr was being kind. He said that he was a well-meaning elderly man with memory issues. Uh, no. This is a person who clearly had senility. Clearly and obviously. And again, I ask the question, where was Dr. Jill? Where was the rest of his family? Honest to God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, can you imagine the absolute kind of moral corruption that it would take to have an ailing member of your family in the most visible position in the world and you keep him out there because what? You still need to clear some cash if you're Hunter or you still need to get a pardon or you just really, really like the power and you really want to be the person who's signing the auto pen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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By the way, who the hell was signing the auto pen? This is not a president who knew what he was doing. Who was the actual president of the United States for the last two years of his administration? Who? That's a big unanswered question. Who the hell was the president? It wasn't this guy. Here was Joe Biden talking to Robert Herb and not remembering when his son died.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I know he will face this challenge with the same strength, resilience, and optimism that have always defined his life. That is Kamala Harris. Donald Trump, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden's recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family and wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.

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I mean, now anybody, again, with sort of a functioning brain can put that together. Even if you forget for a moment, you can put that together pretty quickly. If you ask me, for example, the year that my children were born, I can give you the years that my children were born and also the dates because I know my kids. OK, but like that is not a matter of him struggling.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is a matter of him not. He has to be reminded by people around him the year his son died. Again, I don't think that's because the images were so deeply ingrained in his memory that the dates didn't matter. I think it's because he couldn't remember. Here he was. He can't remember when when Donald Trump was elected. Here's the audio.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Unbelievable. He has to be reminded why he has 2017 on the paper, even after he's told the date that Trump is elected, November 2016. He says, well, why is it? Why does it say on the paper? This is someone who was ailing. He was ailing in 2023. Everyone knew it. Everyone around him and his family put him out there anyway. His staff put him out there anyway, by the way.

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How much they hate Kamala Harris. And my goodness, they were so desperate to ensure that Kamala Harris was never president that they propped this person up as the president of the United States and tried to make him run for another term. Remember, that is October of 2023. That was a year before the next election. And they still tried to prop that guy up. I have another question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Who the hell around him allowed him to do that debate with Donald Trump? I mean, you want to talk about political malpractice. Who allowed him to do that? That's insane. He was out there going, I'm going to take on Donald. And meanwhile, in the back room, they're all going, wait, wait, this is the same guy who couldn't remember the year his son died or the year Donald Trump was elected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's going to take on Donald Trump in a debate. Truly like that's it. And remember, folks, if he had not fully collapsed in that debate, he still would have been running. He never would have dropped. Here was Joe Biden being totally unable to put together a coherent sentence in that special prosecutor interview.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, obviously, everybody's heart goes out to somebody who is stricken with cancer. we have to ask the obvious question, who knew this and when did they know this? Prostate cancer is not a fast moving cancer. Prostate cancer usually takes years to develop to the point of metastasis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so literally, it sounds like Robert Hurst saying, Sir, do you want a break at this point? Guys, you're kind of falling apart here. This was the person that they said was totally. And remember, the entire media lied to you. They lied. OK, because you can say they didn't know the specifics. Fine. They didn't know the specifics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They saw the same thing we were saying, but they didn't just say what we were saying, which is this person appears to be ailing. They said you were absolutely a Republican operative, vicious and mean. If you pointed out what was perfectly obvious to the naked eye and they did so little investigation and so little investigative reporting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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that they tried to prop this person up until he himself had to drop out of the race because it became perfectly obvious to every sentient human being exactly what was happening with Joe Biden during that debate with Donald Trump. That's the scandal. So you have a scandal along the line. Oh, I mean, here's Joe Biden not being able to remember why he kept classified information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Remember, this entire interview is why he had a bunch of classified information about Afghanistan in his library, like filed and with top secret stamped on it. And here he was.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Is this something that you wanted to hold on to?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Even today, the media are still covering this as though it's a Republican's pounce story. That's the way the media work. When Democrats do a bad thing, the story is Republicans pouncing. When Republicans do a bad thing, the story is Republicans being bad. When the Democrats do a bad thing, it's Republicans pouncing. So here is Politico reporting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is very slow moving cancer actually, which is why usually, I asked my doctor wife about this, when it comes to sort of standard of care, There's a little bit more wiggle room on when prostate exams are done or when PSA tests are done, which is effectively a form of blood test in which they can see certain elevated counts that lead to a suspicion that you may have cancer or not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The audio fed into ongoing Republican efforts to portray Biden as mentally unfit for the presidency at the end of his term and to allege that Democrats hid that fact from the public. Oh, did it play into that? Did it? Well, I mean, I wonder how that could have happened. Maybe because it's true. Maybe because it's true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, it is absolutely incredible to me that the media tried to cover this up. The media tried to cover this up. Everyone around him tried to cover it up. I don't believe for a second that Jake Sullivan did not know that Joe Biden was senile. I do not believe for a hot second that Mike Donilon didn't know that Joe Biden was senile.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I don't believe for a second that Joe Biden didn't know he was senile and that he likely had cancer. I don't believe any of that stuff because I can't imagine in my own daily life dealing with people who are older than my parents, like 10 years older than my parents, not knowing that stuff. And first of all, let's just be real about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As you get older, I've noticed this, just as a regular thing in life. As you get older, you end up talking about your health problems with your friends a lot, right? Because as you get older, your body starts to not act the way that it was when you were 20 years old.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you've ever been in a room with a bunch of 80-year-olds, half the conversation is about health because it takes up a lot of their time and a lot of their life. I understand, I get it. The notion that none of this ever came up around Joe Biden, the most powerful person on planet Earth, Honest to God, we are lucky the world didn't explode even worse than it did under Joe Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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When you listen to this, when you realize his health condition, we are honest to God lucky that China didn't go for Taiwan while Joe Biden was president. We are lucky that Russia didn't actually try to break NATO outright, not just attack Ukraine, break NATO outright. Because my goodness, this is insane, totally insane. President Trump asks a relevant question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Whoever had control of the auto pen is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment. It is a major real part of the crime that the presidential election of 2020 was rigged and stolen. Millions and millions of people knew that, but the radical left Democrats waged a campaign of inoculation and innocence like none had ever been waged before.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is why the unselect committee of political thugs who were given a full and complete pardon by the person who wielded the now illegally used auto pen deleted and destroyed all evidence and information from their corrupt and vicious witch hunt against me and many other people whose lives were completely shattered and destroyed by the historically criminal event. Okay, so.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, the 2020 election stuff about it being rigged and all that. Again, you can say that it was rigged in the sort of informal sense that you had the media covering things up that were relevant about Joe Biden. And that part's true. If what he means is that votes were changed. Again, but that's not the issue here. The real question is, who was the president of the United States? Who was it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I want to know. Everyone ought to know. Van Jones, maybe the last honest Democrat. He said yesterday, we're going to pay for this cover up for a very long time as a party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Ad-free, full-length shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media. Access to our award-winning investigative journalism, breaking news, and top headlines. Unlimited access to our entire entertainment library, including the number one documentary of the decade, Am I Racist? And Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's brand new series, Parenting, premiering this Sunday exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Van Jones, again, he's being honest about that. I had a conversation with Van in the middle of the campaign and he was saying the same things. So Van has been honest about this for a very, very long time. Speaking of people who are not honest about this, Senator Chris Murphy, who's attempting a quixotic 2028 candidacy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He was saying that the reason that Donald Trump is in the White House is because the Democrats didn't have the balls to oust Biden. Now, there is some truth to that. Imagine for a second that Joe Biden had actually been ousted from the presidency. Not in the middle of 2024, but like in the middle of 2023, when everybody knew that he was gone. It turns out it was earlier than that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But imagine that Joe Biden, two years into his presidency, had stepped out. Kamala Harris becomes the president. And now you have open primaries. in 2024. Does that change the trajectory? I think Donald Trump still wins, but he's not wrong that Democrats tried to, they tried to push this horse over the finish line. They propped El Cid, like almost literally a dead body on the horse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And it turns out that it didn't work because then Kamala Harris actually got her shot and she lost anyway in the most humiliating electoral defeat, maybe of all time. Here's Senator Chris Murphy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But when I asked my wife about this yesterday, She said, when was his last physical, his last recorded physical? The answer was February, 2024 was his last recorded physical. His last recorded physical did not include a PSA test. She said, that's definitely weird. And he's the president of the United States. So you would do as much of a workup panel as you possibly could.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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OK, I mean. The fact that he's admitting it is kind of the whole thing. Everyone, everyone knew on a sort of colloquial, casual level what was going on. But now what we are learning about the president's mental state, what we are learning about the fact that he had, in fact, a slow developing, now deadly cancer, deep immorality. It's not just political malpractice, which of course it is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is deep immorality. Lying to the American people in this way is deeply immoral. Using an old man who is clearly in ailing mental and physical health in order to get done your political job is just vile. It really is. And everyone around him, everyone who knew, everybody who enabled this should be put out to political pasture as soon as humanly possible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I'm not just talking about members of the family, obviously, who will be. I'm talking about all the senators, all the congresspeople, all the political advisers. This is a stain on the Democratic Party. It should be. It's a stain on the media. I mean, you wonder why the media's trust numbers have collapsed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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This is the reason the media's trust numbers have collapsed because for several years, anytime anyone said, hey, why don't you look into that? Like, no, no, it's Republicans pouncing. Again, it was never Republicans pouncing. And the saddest question, the one that honestly you have to ask, but it's really sad you even have to ask this is,

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If Joe Biden now has stage four deadly cancer, two thirds of people who have it die within five years, according to the stats. And if this was slow developing, one of two things is true. Either they knew and then they, how did they treat him if they knew? Was he getting treatment all the time he was in the White House? Who was doing that treatment? How did that not leak? That's number one.

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The best possible scenario here, just on a moral level, is that they knew and that they got him the treatment that he needed and the cancer just is winning. That's the best possible.

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And then there's the worst possible moral outcome, which is they knew he was ailing, they knew he was old, and they either specifically did not test him or they did test him and didn't get him the treatment he needed because they needed him to remain in the presidency. And that one is like the darkest possible moral scenario here.

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And all these questions are on the table and they should be on the table. And pretending that it's some sort of grave evil to even ask the question is nonsense. It's nonsense. As you know, I'm not in the business of just asking questions around the show. I don't like just asking questions, meaning like throwing out speculation without any proper proof.

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Okay, the medical evidence suggests, not according to me, according to every doctor that I've talked to, this thing was slow developing. which means there was ample time to diagnose many people who could have known. So either they did not do the PSA test because for whatever reason, they decided they didn't want to know the answer or they did the PSA test and they probably knew the answer.

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This is not like your average 82 year old guy or 81 year old guy where, okay, maybe you check for PSA. Maybe you don't. In fact, as people get older, sometimes people don't check the PSA because it's such a slow-moving cancer that the suggestion is that by the time the cancer actually would kill you, you'd be dead anyway of old age. With that said, as people are living older and older,

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And then things get even darker from there. This is an evidence-based question, not a question of just total speculation. And it implicates everyone around him. Between the cancer story and the senility story, this is a nuclear bomb at the heart of the Democratic Party. and the heart of the media, and it absolutely should be treated as such. We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

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First, if you're the owner of a growing business the way I am, imagine a hiring approach similar to speed dating, but instead of meeting potential romantic partners, you would be meeting multiple qualified job candidates in a single scheduled session. Granted, no one actually likes speed dating, but people do like hiring qualified candidates quickly.

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Wouldn't it be nice if there were an efficient format that allows you to connect with several pre-screened interested applicants all at once, streamlining your recruitment process? Well, very good news there is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter. You can post your job today, start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow.

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And right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Zip Intro transforms your hiring process with its streamlined approach to candidate assessment. You just select a convenient time slot. We handle everything else, finding qualified candidates and managing all the scheduling logistics on your behalf.

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You maintain complete control over which applicants you'd like to meet. The best part, you could be connecting with promising talent as early as today. All you have to do, go check out ZipRecruiter right now. It's hiring made remarkably simple. Enjoy the benefits of hiring with NewZip Intro. It's only from ZipRecruiter. Rated the number one hiring site based on G2.

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Try ZipIntro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Again, at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. ZipIntro. Post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Also... Most universities at this point, they're a problem, but not Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.

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They believe we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose. GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come.

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By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God. Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals.

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With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, find a university that actually fulfills your spiritual and your political needs.

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At the same time, it's actually helping you fulfill your dreams. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Meanwhile, the questions about the economy remain at kind of a significant high at this point. Moody's put out a downgrade of American debt yesterday.

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That downgrade in the credit rating was based on the fact that Moody's is saying that we are just going to continue to blow out our debt. That obviously is true, but that's been true for a very long time. Moody's does have a political angle to it. There's just no question about this.

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Moody's is constantly moving its ratings up and down in response to sort of political politics that you could best describe as a sort of center left take on the world.

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This notion that the debt was great, and now that the Republicans are going to pass a tax bill that basically continues the trajectory of debt along the lines it already was, that that is what really sinks the credit rating, that, of course, is really silly. Now, do we have a massive debt problem right now? Absolutely. The 30-year yield on bonds right now

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If you're in your 80s, there's a pretty good shot that they're going to do a PSA. So I didn't want to rely on just my own medical expertise or my wife's medical expertise.

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is really high, like around 5%, meaning that that is the rate that investors are basically charging the government to take a 30-year bond, which means significant uncertainty as to whether they're going to get paid back in inflated dollars or whether it's even worthwhile to buy a 30-year bond.

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That means that there's not a lot of faith in the markets that 30 years from now, the United States is going to have paid off its debt in fiscally responsible fashion. Now, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, he says that Moody's is a lagging indicator. Here he was yesterday.

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Okay, it may be a lagging indicator, but it is also true the United States has a massive debt problem that will be solved by neither party. Basically, the Republicans and Democrats have decided that when it comes to the debt, they're just going to shift around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and fight over who gets to do the shifting.

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To be perfectly frank about all of this, the death of the Tea Party, the much derided Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan actually cared about this stuff. He might be the last Republican leader who truly cared about this stuff in a serious way. And that was considered insufficient to the day. And so he was ousted.

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I also asked our friends and sponsors at Perplexity, given the fact that President Biden was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer with metastasis to his bones, how long was he likely suffering from cancer before his May 2025 diagnosis? Also, what is the standard for PSA testing for men above the age of 50 in the United States? So here is what Perplexity tells me.

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Meanwhile, Walmart, it has been warning that prices are likely going to rise because of the tariffs, which is, of course, true. When you artificially increase the price of your inputs, then the price of goods tends to rise as well. So President Trump put out a statement.

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Again, we may have to bring back good Trump, bad Trump here because, again, he's doing so many things every single day that there's a solid mix of good and bad from President Trump. This one definitely falls into the bad Trump category. President Trump put out a statement that says, quote, Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the reason for rising prices throughout the chain.

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Walmart made billions of dollars last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China, they should, as is said, eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything. I'll be watching and so will your customers. Okay, Bernie Sanders, calm down there.

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I'm sorry that price mechanisms work according to market principles and that if you artificially boost the prices people have to pay for things, when they then use those things to sell to someone else, the prices go up. That, of course, is the predictable result of artificially increasing the price of anything. It's that further down in the chain, prices are going to rise.

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And yelling at people for prices rising is not good economic policy. It's not good political policy. I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama did the exact same thing. There were people... when Obamacare was first passed, who would put on bills how much more you were paying for things because of Obamacare. And the Obama administration got really mad.

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They're like, how dare you inform people that their prices are going up because of Obamacare? And the answer was, well, yeah, because you just stacked a new cost on people. So now the prices are going to go up. When you stack a new cost on goods and services, the prices go up. And yelling at Walmart to eat the tariffs is really quite foolish.

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Again, you want to say to the American people, the prices need to go up to absorb temporary pain so we can rejigger our trade relationship with China? That at least is honest. But eat the tariffs is a ridiculous statement. Eat the tariffs. Come on. And yes, Walmart, I'm sure, is desperate to politically harm the administration.

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First of all, the family that owns Walmart is traditionally fairly Republican. Second, Walmart is a low cost store. You think they want their prices to go up on their consumers? Walmart's competitive advantage is that it undercharges pretty much everybody in the immediate area. That's always been the critique of Walmart is that it undercharges everybody like the local mom and pop stores.

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And so they're going to yell at them when the prices go up. It's silly. It's bad economic policy. I would expect it from Bernie Sanders. I do not expect that from the current president of the United States. Scott Bessins, again, he has to do his best with the cards that he has dealt. The Treasury Secretary says Walmart will eat some of the tariffs. Listen, I'm sure they will.

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I'm sure that it won't all come out in the pricing. But come on.

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Former President Biden was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer with bone metastasis in May 2025, characterized by a Gleason score of nine, indicating a highly aggressive cancer. While the exact timeline of his cancer progression is unclear, metastatic prostate cancer typically develops over several years.

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Okay, so again, that is fine, but try and pretend that there are no trade-offs in economic policy is, of course, very, very silly. And the notion that we're out of the woods on the trade war, that obviously is untrue as well. So yes, we are negotiating some bilateral trade deals. It will take a while for all that to come out in the wash.

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The current average tariff rate in the United States for incoming goods is the highest it has been since 1932. Those are additional costs on American consumers. They are. You can make the policy case that we need to do that for whatever reason, reassuring certain levels of manufacturing or boxing in China or whatever, but at least be honest with the American people about it.

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Scott Besant, he says that countries are going to have to come to the table even more. I think one of the problems here is that there are a lot of countries who are coming saying like, let's give you a 0% tariff rate. And the Trump administration is like, nope, still 10. Well, I mean, I don't know what you want people to offer at that point.

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OK, so if that's still on the table, if the April 2nd levels are like 46 percent tariffs on Vietnam are still on the level. Again, I think that's an empty threat. I don't think that Treasury Secretary Besant wants any of that.

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However, to pretend that we are better off today in terms of our tariff rates, our trade policy than we were on April 1st before Liberation Day would be to maintain ignorance of the current situation. economic plans of the administration. Meanwhile, the question over whether the Big Beautiful Bill gets done before Memorial Day is still on the table.

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So yesterday, the House Budget Panel finally did approve the Trump Big Beautiful Bill following some hardliner resistance. According to Politico, House Republicans finally launched their party line tax and spending package from the Budget Committee late on Sunday night. That was after GOP leaders promised some final changes to appease fiscal hawks after a setback on Friday.

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Just before the late night markup, the speaker huddled privately in a room adjacent to the meeting room with the Budget Committee Republicans who previously blocked the mega bill from advancing. That'd be Representatives Chip Roy of Texas, Jasper Sheen of Oklahoma, Andrew Klatt of Georgia, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.

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High grade cancers often progress faster with studies suggesting metastasis can occur within two to five years if untreated. Again, two to five years because it didn't develop over the course of the last year. Biden's diagnosis followed increasing urinary symptoms and the discovery of a prostate nodule, which underscores the importance of early detection. So what are the standards?

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Once the markup reconvened, House Budget Chair Jody Arrington of Texas, who's been tasked with shepherding this thing through, said negotiations over changes to the more than 1100 page bill are ongoing.

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Apparently, the promises include speeding up enforcement of several policies in the bill, including Medicaid work requirements, Nixon green energy tax perks enacted during the Biden administration, and revoking Medicaid benefits from undocumented immigrants. All four of those Republicans did not end up voting at all in the committee.

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They just ended up voting present, which shows that they don't love the bill, but they're not going to hold up the bill at this point. Whether this still passes without any of those changes actually being enshrined remains a questionable thing.

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Basically, as I said right at the beginning with the big, beautiful bill, the choices were going to be between maintenance of the Trump tax cuts and a bunch of crap or non-maintenance of the Trump tax cuts and slightly less crap. Those were the two choices. It was always going to be a crap sandwich.

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It was just a matter of how much actual deli meat was in the sandwich and how much crap was in the sandwich. And the answer was, if you have a big, beautiful sandwich, More crap, more deli meat. If you have a no deal, then no deli meat and still some crap. That was kind of the way to think about all of this. This is why President Trump is pushing very hard for Republicans to get it done.

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He's starting to weigh in significantly more vocally. He put out a statement on Truth Social, quote, Republicans must unite behind the one big, beautiful bill. Not only does it cut taxes for all Americans, it will kick millions of illegal immigrants off of Medicaid to protect it for those who are the ones in real need.

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The country will suffer greatly without this legislation, but their taxes going up 65 percent will be blamed on the Democrats. But that doesn't help our voters. We don't need grandstanders in the Republican Party. Stop talking and get it done. It's time to fix the mess that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

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And of course, this is the right move from President Trump. If the bill does not pass, the economy is going to crater. I mean, it is that simple. Right now, the markets have priced in the current tax rates and current regulation. If the tax rates spike, then what you will see is the economy drop. Investors will pull their money out because they know that they're going to be paying higher tax.

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It will restructure business in the United States. Again, the markets have already priced this in. Now, does this mean the bill is perfect? Far from it. There's a bunch of junk in this bill, like true junk in this bill. It is true that our debt problems are out of control. It is also true that nothing that's currently being proposed would solve our debt problems.

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Russ Vought over at Office of Management and Budget, he makes the case that this bill is better than what Democrats would have, which of course is true. I mean, again, that is like saying that you are a better singer than William Young or whatever his name was, the guy from American Idol who could barely warble. Like, yes, this is better than what Democrats would provide. Also-

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The current status of my health is better than a man dying of gangrene. Like, yes, Democrats are very, very bad at these particular things. But that doesn't mean that the one big beautiful bill is going to really bend the cost curve in a significant way. Russ Vought says the current House bill includes $1.6 trillion in savings.

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These are not gimmicks, but real reforms that lower spending and improve the program. The bill satisfies the very red line test that House fiscal hawks laid out a few weeks ago that stated that the cost of any tax cut could be paid for with $2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth. but the rest had to be covered with savings from reform. This bill exceeds that test by nearly $100 billion.

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Well, it turns out that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force says there are individualized decisions for age 55 to 69 and no routine screening after 70, but Medicare covers annual PSA tests for anyone over 50. Medicare. And as my wife, I did ask her, you know, PSA testing. She's a family physician.

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$36 trillion in debt is not solved overnight. It's solved by advancing and securing victories at a scale that over time gives a fighting shot to addressing the problem. Okay, but what are the actual problems with the bill? Well, it includes a bunch of bad spending still on Medicaid. Much of the good stuff in the bill only kicks in late. The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out

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that it is good that the bill makes the 2017 tax reform permanent. It's also good that the 2017 reform is 20% deduction for small businesses that pay at the individual rate is made permanent. However, the bill does in fact stealth raise the top marginal tax rate by limiting itemized deductions for the 37% top tax bracket.

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It also has a bunch of tax cuts for some groups and tax increases for others. So the bill limits a tip exemption to an occupation which traditionally and customarily received tips before December 31st, 2024. Unclear what exactly that means. I mean, plumbers, electricians, do they actually get tips, for example?

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Seniors earning up to 75 grand get an enhanced $4,000 deduction, which is a pure vote buying exercise. That's on top of the $16,000 standard deduction. All those tax breaks expire in 2028. By the way, this is one of the ways that you hide the cost of bills. You say that something's going to sunset that never will sunset.

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You say, well, it's only going to cost a certain amount of money over the next three years, knowing it will absolutely be greenlit for the next 30 years. The bill also includes an increase, I believe, in the child tax credit. They're going to make the $2,000 child tax credit permanent at another 500 bucks through 2028. Again, those are not child tax credits.

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A lot of people who are getting those credits do not actually pay taxes. There's an increased $30,000 deduction for SALT. Bottom line is this. Does this make major changes on the spending front? No. Does it have to be passed? Yes.

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Welcome to the world of politics where neither party and basically the American people are not willing to do the actual hard work of having serious conversations about our debt crisis, which means eventually we are going to have to go into austerity measures or inflation or raise taxes or all three.

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Those are those are the actual options that we're going to hit probably sometime in the next five to 10 years. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has now extended its block on President Trump's deportation bid under the Alien Enemies Act. So they are not ruling that President Trump cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of Trendaragua.

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However, the court did put a block on the use of that for the moment. because they say that the Trump administration has not given them their due process. Again, this is why I say that I agree with much of what President Trump is trying to do, but you have to do it in a way that is most likely to be successful.

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It turns out that grabbing people and deporting them and then insisting that they remain deported without just bringing them back for a quick hearing before deporting them again, that is counterproductive. It may look strong on the page, but it actually plays weak in the Supreme Court.

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So the unsigned opinion, according to the justices, say this means advanced notice of deportation and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the deportations in court. Two justices did dissent. That'd be Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito saying that this is plenary power of the executive branch. The ruling does not say again that President Trump cannot use the Alien Enemies Act.

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It just says that if you're going to use it, then you actually do have to pay attention to the due process clause of the Constitution. So it is not the big victory that the Democrats are playing it as. It's also not the giant loss that President Trump has been suggesting that it is. Meanwhile, in foreign policy news, a pretty amazing story out of the Washington Examiner.

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She said, literally every physical that I did for anybody over the age of 50, I recommended that they may as well get a PSA test. So it beggars the imagination that Joe Biden did not have one. The notion that there was no knowledge whatsoever of developing cancer in Joe Biden for years on end. And we only found out about this is only diagnosed at stage four.

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about the influence of Qatar. So we've been talking about this for several weeks at this point, actually going back further than that. We've been talking about Qatar and its relationship with Hamas and its relationship with Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood and all the rest. Well, the Qatari embassy spends a fortune doing outreach.

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That outreach has shifted dramatically from the left side of the aisle to the right side of the aisle, particularly in the aftermath of President Trump's election. Well, now a piece from the Washington Examiner finds that the Qatari embassy paid a PR firm $180,000 per month. It's called Luminate Advisors, a registered foreign agent. They paid them $180,000 a month, nearly $2 million a year.

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And the only thing listed on their new FARA form is acquiring the interview with Tucker Carlson and the prime minister of Qatar. According to the official FARA filing, the date that this particular PR agency and Tucker Carlson agreed to conduct that interview was February 26th, one week before the interview aired.

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The stated purpose of the interview in the FARA documents was that Qatar was going to get pretty rich massage treatment in that interview. So again, the PR agency was paid a fortune to acquire this interview with Tucker and they did their job. They got the interview with Tucker and Tucker gave a very, very, very, very glowing interview with the Emir of Qatar.

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Again, this is just indicative of how much Qatar tries to intervene in American politics. And prior to election day, about 10% of communications from Qatari foreign agents to people in politics in the United States were directed at conservatives, either outlets or commentators. After President Trump won, That shifted to over 50% of total correspondence.

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They tried to do outreach to Fox News Digital, Just the News, The New York Post, The Daily Mail, The Washington Examiner. Qatar obviously is spreading its money around. This is why we should all be quite suspicious of the kinds of business deals that Qatar is trying to cut with people in the Trump camp. Qatar does not do things without strings attached. Clearly, they have an agenda.

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Pretending they don't have an agenda is an act of willful ignorance. Meanwhile, Again, it is a mistake for President Trump to be going after media outlets that are pointing out that Qatar is spreading its influence this way. So President Trump went on Truth Social and attacked ABC News. Now, normally, I'm totally up for the attacks on ABC News. This one happens not to be particularly accurate.

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He says, why doesn't Chairman Bob Iger do something about the ABC fake news, especially since I just won $16 million based on the fake and defamatory reporting of little George Slopidopoulos? He was given warnings, but just couldn't be restrained by management. Now I see they're at it again. I again give these sleazebags fair warning.

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The wonderful country of Qatar, wonderful country of Qatar, is a country of 2.6 million people, 300,000 of which are actual citizens. Some 2.3 million are either foreign workers or possible slaves. Qatar, again, one of the bigger funders of terrorism on planet Earth and a gigantic funder of propaganda operations in America and elsewhere.

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Typically, when you have a stage four cancer diagnosis and it's sudden, it is not a prostate cancer diagnosis. That is typically some much faster form of cancer that has developed. And again, this is not just me saying this because I am not a doctor, but you know who is a doctor? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is the left's favorite doctor. He's one of the designers of Obamacare.

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The wonderful country of Qatar, says President Trump, after agreeing to invest more than $1.4 trillion in the United States of America, deserves much better than the misleading fake news Everyone, including their lawyers, has been told that ABC must not say Qatar is giving me a free Boeing 747 airplane because they are not.

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Instead, and as Fake News ABC fully knows and understands, this highly respected country is donating the plane to the United States Air Force Defense Department and not to me. By the way, ABC News said that. They also reported that after the plane is used by President Trump, it will then go to the Trump Presidential Library. That is one of the stipulations of the contract. That's not their fault.

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If you don't like the deal being reported, don't do the deal. By the way, it's going to be really expensive to retrofit that plane. They basically have to take it apart piece by piece to make sure that there's no Chinese tech in there. In any case, the situation in the Middle East continues to be quite fraught on a wide variety of fronts.

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It is now perfectly clear, for example, that Hamas, the Israeli defense forces, are now going into Gaza full bore. Hamas has been unwilling to sign on to a deal that would free some nine or 10 hostages in return for a couple of months of ceasefire.

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What they want is for Israel to simply withdraw from the entire Gaza Strip and hand them a victory based on them holding a few hostages, which is not going to happen. It turns out, shock of shocks, Hamas' actual goal in the October 7th war was to destroy the possibility of an Abraham Accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

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Days before the assault that left nearly 1,200 dead, according to the Wall Street Journal, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's Gaza chief, told fellow militants that an extraordinary act was required to derail the normalization talks he said risked marginalizing the Palestinian cause, according to the document reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

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So they were openly saying that they wanted to sink the Middle East peace process. Again, these are the wonderful people so much of the left are backing and a few on the right. Wonderful, wonderful people. Meanwhile, Erdogan, Tayyip Erdogan, who is the dictatorial leader of Turkey, is flexing his power in the Middle East. He obviously has been taking over large swaths of Syria.

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in cahoots with HTS, the terrorist group that we are now relieving sanctions on. Again, you make the case for relieving sanctions based on some actual normalization procedures, getting rid of terrorism, moderation, all the rest. There had better be some strings attached to the revocation of Syrian sanctions. Erdogan believes he's now in control of foreign policy.

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Here he was basically, I mean, I do have to find this hilarious. He basically finger-trapped Emmanuel Macron. It's so weird. So Emmanuel Macron, who's a schmuck of schmucks, the current president of France, He is a joke of a leader. He's unpopular in his own country for good reason. He has, in foreign policy, consistently provided space for terrorist supporters.

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Here is Erdogan basically showing physical dominance over the president of France by grabbing his fingers and not letting go. Very weird. He grabs his hand and then he just won't let go. He's like holding his fingers. And Macron is trying to get free. And Erdogan just sits there holding his fingers. He's still holding his fingers. It's super weird. Super strange. Oh, my goodness.

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And he appeared on Morning Joe this morning. And here is what he had to say about when Joe Biden and family and people around him would have known about a deadly cancer forming inside the president. And this raises all sorts of questions about, number one, when people knew. Number two, if they didn't know, were they deliberately avoiding tests?

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Oh, I'm so glad that people like Erdogan have taken plenary control of Western policy in the Middle East, apparently. And meanwhile, the question of an Iran negotiation continues. Apparently, new negotiations have been set between the United States and Iran for this weekend in Rome. The question is, what is the actual crossover? So Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East.

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As you all know, I'm quite skeptical of Steve Witkoff's magical negotiating abilities. Here he was on ABC's This Week explaining that the goal of the United States was 0% enrichment.

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Okay, so that's great. That should be the standard. Not just zero enrichment, by the way, zero capacity for enrichment, meaning no centrifuges, no nuclear program in Iran. Iran, for its part, says no. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arahi told Sky News Arabia, quote, Washington demands are far removed from the reality of the nuclear negotiations, and we will continue uranium enrichment.

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So what exactly are they negotiating over? This is what remains unclear. Is it just Iran trying to buy time? Is it the United States trying to forestall the possibility of either an American or an Israeli attack on the nuclear facilities? All of this remains unclear at this point. I'm still struggling to see what the actual end goal is that seems to be achievable in any way, shape, or form.

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And if the proposal ends up being something like a delayed JCPOA, three years of no development, and then three years from now you can do what you want, that is a fail. The United States Senate has already said they will not sign off on anything remotely like that. Meanwhile, negotiations sort of continue over Ukraine.

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I say sort of because President Trump had conversations today with both the Ukrainians and the Russians. Vice President J.D. Vance explained there's a deadlock in talks to end the war. Putin does not know how to get out of the war. He said, if Russia doesn't cooperate, we will eventually announce this is not our war. Well, I mean, I don't know what exactly that means. This is not our war.

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Live chats with the show, my producers, fans across the country, and so much more. Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Folks, what we are watching right now is one of the most cynical uncoverings of scandal in the history of American politics. It really is an amazing, amazing thing. So why don't we begin with this?

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I mean, presumably what that means is that the United States will get out of both sides. I have a question. That's exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. I mean, Putin is hoping the United States get bored and walks away. That is what he wants out of this. That is the goal. If what J.D.

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Vance means is something else, namely that we'll walk away from the negotiating table and then we'll continue to support Ukraine's efficiency. They are not overrun by the Russians. Agree. If what he means is we're going to walk away and basically just abandon Ukraine in the face of the Russians, that would be a bad policy. Totally unclear at this point what any of this means.

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that theoretically could have led to a better standard of care for the president of the United States in order to get him through the election. This all ties into the broader scandal about the fact that he's obviously in the mid stages of senility. They knew this during the campaign. There was open talk of him having to use a wheelchair after he was elected.

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Vice President Vance did meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky in Rome on Sunday. The meeting at the U.S. ambassador's residence, who was also attended by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to the Washington Post, came as world leaders attended the inaugural Mass of Pope Leo XIV. Zelensky described the session as a good meeting.

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Zelensky said pressure on Russia must continue until it is ready to stop the war. He reaffirmed Ukraine's readiness for real diplomacy and stressed the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible. Again, as I've said, Zelensky is doing the stuff that Trump wants him to do. Vladimir Putin is not doing the stuff that Trump wants him to do.

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Now, how successful exactly is the call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin? Trump had expressed some optimism about this, suggesting that he was going to get a ceasefire done, that Vladimir Putin respects him enough that he will do something along those lines. Steve Witkoff was suggesting the same sort of thing. Here is Witkoff on Sunday.

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So again, it's going to be very unclear as to what happens from here. But it should be made clear at this point that Vladimir Putin does not actually want anything like a negotiated peace that sets the lines where they are. He does not want that. Vladimir Putin believes the United States will eventually walk away. And hell, if you were Vladimir Putin, you'd probably believe that too.

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The United States has, over the course of the last 20 years, walked away from the Kurds, the Afghans, the people of Hong Kong, and now maybe the people of Ukraine. So why wouldn't they? I mean, really, like that is the game that Vladimir Putin is playing. He's playing the long game here.

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United States is going to have to play a similarly long game if we actually wish for Vladimir Putin not to take over the entirety of Ukraine. Meanwhile, my friend Dan Bongino, who is now the deputy director of the FBI, did a sit down interview over the weekend. Dan is fantastic. And one of the things I like about Dan is that Dan is a truth teller.

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He's just going to tell you the truth, whether you like it or not, which is, again, a wonderful thing. He did say something that he was on with Kash Patel. They were talking about how they were quite properly going to go into a deeper investigation of Russiagate.

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That, of course, has been Dan's kind of main focus since 2017, when the media started covering Donald Trump as though he was a Russian cat's paw. So they talked a lot about that. But one of the other big sort of revelations was Dan Bongino said, listen, despite all the speculation, Jeffrey Epstein did in fact kill himself. OK, I'll tell you why I like this. The reason I like this is because

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I'm not a big fan of just pure speculation. I too have played the did Epstein kill himself game because I mean, pretty suspicious, but I believe Dan Bongino. I don't believe he's lying for the deep state. If there's one person who can be trusted not to lie for the deep state, in fact, it would be Dan Bongino. Here was Dan saying a truthful thing.

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And so, again, this announcement actually raises more questions than it answers. If the idea here was that they were going to drop this cancer announcement as a way of sort of distracting from the questions about his senility. And again, that theory is out there and that theory is not totally crazy considering the fact

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Okay, so good for Dan Bongino. This is one of the reasons I like having Dan Bongino in there is because you know Dan ain't going to hide the ball. Dan is not going to lie. Okay, that's true for Kash Patel as well, but it's certainly true of Dan who I know well. So good for Dan. That's good. Again, transparency is in fact the best medicine.

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And meanwhile, the Trump administration in other good things continues to go after major universities that are absolutely promoting anti-American trash and violating the Civil Rights Act at the same time. Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, she's talking openly about raising taxes on endowments for universities. This is worthwhile. It is.

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I mean, the reality is that these universities have become propaganda outlets for a far left viewpoint, very often in violation of the Civil Rights Act, and treating them with kid gloves is not the way. Here is Linda McMahon expressing this.

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Okay, she is right about all this. She also says, you know, if Harvard actually wants to make a deal with us so we don't tax their endowment, probably they should just let us in. That would actually be the proper solution.

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that you have people like David Axelrod openly suggesting that now would be an amazing time to stop talking about all of this because absolutely, because obviously you have a president who's ailing and that's really bad. And so you have people literally saying like David Axelrod, the former Obama advisor, that we should stop talking about his senility because he has cancer. That's ridiculous.

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Okay, so again, all of this is proper. Harvard should try to cut a deal. That's what they should do. Harvard should absolutely try to cut a deal with the Trump administration and actually abide by the Civil Rights Act as they are supposed to do. It is truly amazing to me to watch people suggest that violation of the Civil Rights Act is perfectly okay so long as it is done against Jews.

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That's the argument anyway. Again, free speech on campus is a thing and should be a thing. However, the Civil Rights Act does apply to federal taxpayer dollars. And it doesn't stop applying just because you agree with some of the things that are creating an environment of harassment.

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Listen, if you don't like the Civil Rights Act in general, or you don't like its application to universities, fine with me. Let's talk about it. I'm open to that. But to pretend that the law only applies on one side and doesn't apply on the other is simply silly. Okay. Time for Diddy Watch.

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Listen, I know we really only do Diddy Watch when it comes to Ben After Dark, but the reality is it is kind of a fascinating case. It's mostly a fascinating case because this is what happens when you have a culture that is so willing to look the other way on evil, promiscuous, disgusting behavior that by the time it reaches the level of criminal, there are serious questions about the criminality.

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That's the part of this that really is astonishing. Because there is an open legal question when it comes to the trial of Sean Diddy Combs as to whether he committed the crimes that are alleged. Because the crimes that are alleged are sex trafficking, not him being a complete piece of bleep, which he clearly, clearly is. And so that's actually the defense.

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The defense that Diddy's team is currently running is that Diddy is a piece of crap, but he's not a piece of crap who sex trafficked. And one of the problems that the prosecution is going to have in this case is that he is fully admitting to, for example, beating up his girlfriend. But there's a difference between that and cross-stateline sex trafficking.

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And if all these people consented to this terrible treatment and kept coming back for more of this terrible treatment for the money, How criminal is it? That is the question that the defense is leaving on the table. Again, none of that is a go-ahead for his activity, but we have lost in our society the capacity at all to distinguish between the consensual and the moral.

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We have decided that if something is consensual, it is therefore moral. Again, there's sort of three categories here, consensual, moral, and legal. Very often, something that is consensual is immoral, but also legal. But we have decided basically because as a country, we are more secular now. And because as a country, we no longer believe in morality and legality being separate in any serious way.

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Kind of on both sides, it's very strange. We now determine that if we don't like what somebody did, it must be illegal. Even if it was, you know, immoral and not illegal, it has to be illegal. Like moral and legal are the same category now. We're conflating the two categories. Again, this is not a legal defense of Sean Diddy Combs. Again, we're still getting all the evidence.

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But that's the defense that he is making. According to the Wall Street Journal, faced with a mountain of video and photographic evidence of their client's violence toward women, the defense strategy is to own the bad behavior rather than make excuses. At the same time, his lawyers are trying to make clear domestic violence isn't the same as sex trafficking.

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Candidly acknowledging Combs' flaws might bear fruit in winning credibility with the jury, according to defense lawyers who aren't involved in the case. If you defend the indefensible, the jury isn't going to believe anything you say, said Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor and partner at the law firm Wilkinson Steckloff. So again, Diddy's already taken the reputational hit.

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That's ridiculous. Actually, this creates more questions. I mean, this is a scandal. I'm sorry. It's just an absolute scandal. Everybody knew in 2020 that Joe Biden was not full well. Everyone knew this. And then we were told by the media for years he was not senile. There was no evidence of senility. And now we're finding out, of course, not only was he senile, everybody knew he was senile.

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So why wouldn't he actually just say, yeah, I engage in all this gross and terrible behavior, but it's not criminal? Sarah Kristof, a former federal prosecutor, said lawyers for Combs know they can't get around the video, or cast even to her as detailed testimony of her toxic relationship with Diddy. The legal argument, she said, Combs did bad things, but not these bad things.

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This is according to the Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors told the jury in their opening statement that as proof of the racketeering conspiracy, they would show that Combs committed kidnapping, arson, and bribery.

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As one example, Combs bribed intercontinental security staff with $100,000 in an attempt to keep video surveillance footage of his hotel hallway attack on Ventura under wraps, they allege. Prosecutors will also likely point to Ventura's testimony as proof of the conspiracy charge, which involves showing Combs and those in his inner circle agreed to commit crimes as part of the group.

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She told jurors he had his security team take her to a plastic surgeon after she suffered a gashed to her head during one of the attacks. But Combs' lawyers are going to try to argue both instances were consistent with their defense, saying he didn't do those independently. He was trying to cover up his abuse.

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So yes, he was abusive, and yes, he did those things, but he wasn't doing bribery for the sake of doing bribery. He was basically doing this stuff because he wanted to cover up what exactly the underlying crime was, which was actual domestic violence.

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It's sort of a fascinating case, again, because what we actually should have just said years and years and years ago is that people in Hollywood are disgusting, vile and disgusting. But we've fallen into this trap now of if a woman stays with a man for long periods of time after he demands she does these degrading things, that somehow all of that would be okay except for the criminality.

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It was never okay. What he did was not okay. What she did in staying with him was not okay. And we would be much better off in a society that did not suggest that the consensual and the moral were the exact same thing because they absolutely are not. Meanwhile, apparently, Diddy is actively working for a Donald Trump pardon. Oh boy. I don't think that's going to happen.

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I have a hard time believing that's going to happen. But Kanye West, who in his spare time, when he's not building shrines to Hitler, has publicly appealed to President Trump for a pardon, sharing on X, President Trump, please free my brother Puff. Wow, that sounds just awesome. Now, Combs has praised President Trump in the past.

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In 2015, he said, Donald Trump is a friend of mine and he works very hard, but their relationship turned sour. Because in June 2017, Diddy admitted, according to the Mirror, I think that to be honest, we really don't give an F about Trump because black people are in the same F'd up position. That's not what we're on.

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The tomfoolery going on in DC, that's just regular everyday business to black folks. That's not surprising. I do not think that a pardon is forthcoming for P. McDiddy. I don't think that is likely to happen. Alrighty, folks, the show is continuing for members right now. We're going to get to a bombing in an IVF clinic. What is behind all of that? Plus, we are going to get to the mailbag.

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Remember, in order to watch, you do have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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As we'll see in a moment, there's actual tape of him in an interview with special prosecutor Robert Herr, this was the tape that made Robert Herr say, we can't prosecute this guy because he's too senile. And the Democrats at the time said, no, no, no, no, no. That's Robert Herr being a jerk. That's terrible that Robert Herr would say that. So they all knew he was senile.

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Now the question is, do they all know that he had cancer? Or if they didn't know that he had cancer, how did nobody know that he had cancer? This is, again, not a fast-moving form of cancer. This is the kind of cancer that it takes 10 years to develop. That's not me saying that. That is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel saying that. Here he was on MSNBC.

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Okay, that is crazy. Okay, he's saying what I was saying a moment ago, which is he was the vice president of the United States. Then he was the president of the United States. The notion that you would not do a PSA test, which is a very easy test to do. You wouldn't do a PSA test on the sitting president of the United States. A person who, by the way, apparently had a history of cancer.

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Obviously, our hearts go out to the former president of the United States, Joe Biden, who has been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. That diagnosis, of course, has now been revealed just months after he left office. And everybody has been expressing their good wishes for the Biden family and for Joe Biden personally.

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Joe Biden himself said in 2022, he said he had cancer in 2022. And then they said, oh, he meant that a while ago he had skin cancer. Is that what he meant? Is that what he meant? Here he was in 2022.

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Um, what? What? I mean, he said that in 2022 and everybody went, wait, what is he talking about right now? Wait, which, what, what now? Huh? Well, which cancer was he talking about? Okay, beyond that, here's the bottom line for all of this. These questions are perfectly legitimate. The entire media are going to now mobilize to say you cannot ask these questions. A tragedy has occurred.

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You cannot ask these questions. Absolutely, you can ask these questions. Absolutely, you should ask these questions because we now have a series of questions. Dr. Jill Biden, she was there the whole time. She knew she was she doesn't have any excuses. She knew he was going senile. Everyone knew he was going senile.

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And yet she continued like Edith Wilson to promote his presidential candidacy the entire time. I mean, two weeks ago, she had him out on tour on The View. He was doddering. He couldn't he could barely speak a sentence. And she was finishing his sentences on the view. She was still trotting out. What kind of person does that to their ailing husband? Who does that? That's wild.

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That's where is the rest of Joe Biden's family? Where's Hunter? Where's beloved Hunter in all of this? Where are his kids? Why was there no one around him to say, no, you can't do this? Not just on the basis. of his senility, but now maybe on the basis of the fact that he apparently has a deadly cancer.

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The overall chance that a person diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer is alive after five years, around 37%, according to the American Cancer Society. So who knew this? When did they know this? Why did we not know this? And by the way, who the hell was president for the last several years? I mean, that's a serious question. He had physical problems. He had mental problems.

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And we were told the Democratic Party tried to make this person president for another full term. They tried to make him president for another full term. How delusional is this? So delusional that some people still have the delusion. James Clyburn, who is the congressman from South Carolina, who more than any other person made sure that Joe Biden was the nominee in 2020 as opposed to Bernie Sanders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Yesterday, he said that Joe Biden was fit for four more years. By what standard was Joe Biden fit for four more days? Here was James Clyburn.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Obviously, the announcement of stage four cancer, which is what Joe Biden apparently has. It's metastatic prostate cancer that moved apparently from the prostate all the way into his bones. It's an aggressive form of prostate cancer. The statement went out three fifty six p.m. Sunday afternoon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Okay, so, I mean, my goodness. My goodness. And we'll get to the senility issue in just a minute because all this stuff ties together. Now, again, there were people who actually were talking about this a while ago. There were people who were talking about this in 2024. So, for example... There was, in fact, a report in 2024 of a serious medical issue involving Joe Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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This is from July 22nd, 2024. Jordan Schachtel reporting that President Biden began his campaign trip in Las Vegas, but the day before he abruptly left town, He delivered a keynote address in front of a packed crowd of 5,000 people at the NAACP National Convention at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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He was scheduled to deliver the keynote at another annual convention at the MGM Grand, but he didn't appear at the convention or any of his scheduled events later that afternoon. Instead, he left town, departing Las Vegas on Air Force One for Hoboth Beach, Delaware, where he remained. Since that trip, he had announced over social media he would not seek a second term as president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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So they suggested it was because of COVID-19. But actually, as Charlie Kirk at the time had reported that there was a he said he got a call from a source close to Las Vegas Metro. The official story was that Biden's trip was cut short because of COVID. But according to the source, U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Secret Service informed Las Vegas Metro there was an emergency situation involving Joe Biden and that they had to close necessary streets so the president could be transported immediately to University Medical, which they began to do in earnest. And then there was a stand down order and Secret Service informed local Vegas PD they were going to fly the president to Johns Hopkins back east.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Apparently, the rumor mill in the police department was that Joe Biden was dying or possibly already dead. Laura Loomer, of course, also tweeted at the time, suggesting that the president had a terminal illness. So, again, who knew what when? I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe, like bordering on the impossible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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Apparently, having been seen by medical professionals earlier last week for a finding of a prostate nodule, he was diagnosed Friday with stage four prostate cancer with metastasis to the bone, an aggressive form of the disease. There's a 10 point scale. The so-called Gleason score is a nine on a 10 point scale. It doesn't mean that he is definitely terminal. Prostate cancer moves slowly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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to believe that no one knew about Joe Biden and his cancer until like last week. I find that impossible to believe. Truly, that is a slow moving cancer. This is a president who must have been tested over and over. By the way, we should change the law. Seriously, the law should be changed with regard to presidential health advisories and notifications and public disclosure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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It is not just a matter of medical privacy, how the president is doing. That is a matter of national security and it matters to the American voters. The president should be required, should of both parties, the president should be required to take a full paneled health test every year. And we should know about it. We, the American people, we are owed that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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We should know whether the president has cancer. We should know whether the president has a mental condition. We should know whether the president has high blood pressure. It shouldn't be up to the handpicked doctor of the president of the United States to cover up his health condition. That is a violation of the bargain that the American people have with their elected leaders.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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I mean, this is, it's unbelievable, truly. And again, that does not stand in the way of sympathy for a man who has cancer. The question I have is, why didn't anyone seem to have sympathy for him over the course of the last two years when he was obviously ailing in the middle of public life? It's unreal. It's absolutely unreal. And I just, I don't believe this story. Sorry, I don't.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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I don't believe that you only found out that he had cancer last week. Stage four, metastatic. prostate cancer that takes years to develop. I do not believe that one of the most highly scrutinized people on planet Earth did not know that he had what is a fairly common cancer for people of his age. I... Nope, don't believe it. We'll get some more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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First, your online activity is not private. You know this. Data brokers are tracking everything you do online. Your browsing, shopping habits, even your beliefs. In the United States, they can legally sell that information. Companies buy this data to target you with ads, social media platforms, users to control what content you see, and during elections, it's used to influence your vote.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2202 - Biden Was Senile, Had CANCER, And They Knew!

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To protect your privacy and maintain your autonomy online, you should be using ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN roots all my online activity through secure encrypted servers, making it impossible for my internet provider to see what I'm doing online. That means you can browse without feeling like somebody's watching over your shoulder all the time. It also hides your IP address.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

Folks, tons going on in the news. President Trump has some excellent poll numbers. He is also unleashing the American military on the Yemeni Houthis and Iranian front group that's been attacking shipping in the Red Sea. So the American military going to town over the weekend first. America is in the middle of a comeback, but... The culture war is not yet over.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

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Secretary of State Rubio pointed out that this is also a warning to Iran. Like, we will hit your proxies, and if you continue with this, we will hit you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I have a feeling that they absolutely will. Meanwhile, the big news of the weekend was that President Trump announced attacks by the United States military on the Houthis. So the Houthis are a group of America-hating, Jew-hating, anti-Israel, anti-American, near-satanic terrorists. in Yemen. And they've been at war with the Saudi government for a very long time.

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It turns out a little prevention goes a long way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If the Houthis had never been delisted as a terrorist group, which was a thing that the Biden administration did, if the Biden administration had never put pressure on the Saudis to leave the Houthis alone, if the Biden administration not created daylight between Israel and the United States with regard to Iranian terror proxies, none of this would have happened in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And President Trump's team is working hard to shore all of that up so that Iran is not, in fact, a threat to global shipping lanes or global oil supplies. or a terror threat to the region and beyond. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put out a statement, Godspeed to our warriors who the attacks on American ships and aircraft and our troops will not be tolerated.

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Iran, their benefactor is on notice. Freedom of navigation will be restored. America under President Donald Trump will never back down. This is good. It is unabashedly good. It is excellent. This is strong Trump. And it's great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Speaking of strong Trump, President Trump and the White House took some moves over the weekend with regard to deportations that are sending Democrats into an absolute tizzy. So obviously they are still freaking out over the fact that Mahmoud Khalil, a terrorist supporter who somehow got a student visa and then apparently a green card, is now going to be deported.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Marco Rubio was appearing on the Sunday shows. He's on CBS News' Face the Nation. And he was asked about visa revocation. He says, listen, we revoke visas every single day and we'll continue to do that. If you support terrorist groups, you don't belong in the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That seems pretty simple, right? And that's right. Democrats keep taking the 20% side of every single 80-20 issue. It's unbelievable to watch. Truly, they are awful at this. Rubio was asked also about Mahmoud Khalil specifically. Khalil, of course, basically came to the United States in order to pursue pro-terror rabble-rousing. He worked for the UNRWA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He was brought in a student visa and apparently did nothing except for lead student protests that took over buildings illegally. I hear a secretary of state, Rubio, being asked about this.

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They vandalize colleges.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Okay, so she watches the news intensely, intensely. Okay, so the reality is that Mahmoud Khalil is being deported because Mahmoud Khalil expressed via the group that he led support for actual honest-to-God anti-Western violent terrorism. That is the link. You do not require him to be a funder of Hamas. That is not a thing you require.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The question is not the same as if you were an American citizen. The question is, if you have a green card, do we owe you a duty as a country to allow you to stay in the country when you express support for terrorist groups like full on terrorism? And the answer is no, we do not. Under the law, under the INA, we do not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, speaking of Democrats taking the wrong side of every single issue, over the weekend, the Trump administration got into hot water with a local district judge. Why? Well, because the Trump administration deported alleged Venezuelan gang members under a centuries-old wartime law. U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And one of the things that the Biden administration did was basically push the Saudis to give up that war with the Yemeni Houthis on quote unquote humanitarian grounds. And the result was that the Houthis after October 7th decided that they were going to not only target Israel with some missile strikes, but they were also going to target shipping in the Red Sea.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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District Court Judge James Boasberg early on Saturday evening blocked President Trump from using a law known as the Alien Enemies Act to deport non-citizens held in U.S. custody. Government lawyers said Trump was using the law to target members of Tren Daragua, which is a deeply violent and evil Venezuelan gang whose members have reached the United States in recent years.

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So these are people who are drug dealers. These are violent criminals. We're not even talking about mass deportations here. We're not talking about President Trump is rounding up illegal immigrants in broken down suburbs and he's taking them to the border and letting them go or forcing them. That's not what he's talking about. Trenveragua is a deeply evil, violent gang.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And President Trump is taking people who are alleged to be members of these gangs, violent criminals, and he is deporting them to El Salvador. And a U.S. district judge is saying he can't do that. During Saturday's hearing, the ACLU told Boasberg that two aircraft believed to be carrying Venezuelan deportees took off from U.S. territory on Saturday.

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The ACLU had sued the administration earlier that day on behalf of migrants at risk of deportation. Boasberg said Justice Department lawyers hadn't disputed the claim. They told them that, quote, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in air needs to be returned to the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The judge subsequently issued a written order that didn't explicitly mention planes that were already in the air. So the White House said, OK, well, you didn't say already in the air, except verbally. You wrote down just planes that had yet to take off. It was in the air. It was in international airspace. No.

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Levitt said, quote, the administration did not refuse to comply with a court order, adding it was issued after terrorist Trenderagua aliens had already been removed from United States territory. The written order and the administration's actions do not conflict. Now, one of the reasons this is important is because the left is now claiming that President Trump is defying the judges, defying.

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First of all, what you have here is a judicial activist who does not have the authority to issue injunctions on behalf of the entire United States against activities taken by the administration to deport illegal immigrants who are members of violent gangs to El Salvador. That's ridiculous. If you can just find a U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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District Court judge somewhere in San Francisco to strike down everything Trump is doing, well, then that guy becomes the president, effectively speaking, and that is not how our system of government was meant to work. This stuff will get elevated to the Supreme Court. It will be ruled upon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Senior White House officials huddled on Saturday evening to make a decision about what to do with the judge's order. They decided to go ahead with the plans. During the emergency court hearing, Boasberg said he had not reached any final conclusions on even whether the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was lawful. Okay, so he didn't even come to the claim that Trump had invoked the act illegally.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He said, I'm not sure, so you have to turn around the plane that has the gang members on it. And the White House is like, well, it's in international waters, and you're just saying so. We didn't write it down, so no. He said his temporary restraining order will preserve the status quo until he can hear arguments more fully.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Exxon Sunday the administration had sent two leaders of the MS-13 gang and 21 of its most wanted as well as over 250 members of Tren Daragua to El Salvador. He also reposted a comment from El Salvador's president, Ayib Bukele, that said, oopsie, too late.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Bukele then shared a video with three planes on a dark tarmac that showed gang members being escorted off the planes by security services and sent to jail in El Salvador where the United States is paying for their room and board. Here's some of that video. And as you can see, they're taking these gang members who are in handcuffs off the plane and to jail in El Salvador.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Houthis are almost entirely funded. and staffed by the Iranian military. The Iranian military has propped up the Houthis for literally years. What's been going on in Yemen has been a proxy war. The only reason that that had to involve the United States at all is because the Houthis began to attack shipping in the Red Sea, which is a major artery for international shipping and trade.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And supposedly a district court judge was going to hold all of this up on the basis that he wasn't sure about whether the Alien Enemies Act could be invoked at this point. So the Trump administration paid attention. They've not actually deported people who are sitting in American jails right now.

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The plane was already in the air on the way to El Salvador, and they said, we're not turning it around.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Trump's proclamation that he was invoking the Alien Enemies Act, released by the White House on Saturday, stated that Trenaragua is, quote, undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States, both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

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And so this, of course, has driven enormous, enormous heartburn among Democrats. Oh, he's violating the law. Oh, it's like tyranny now. OK, if tyranny amounts to the president of the United States invoke the law to deport enemy illegal aliens who are members of violent criminal gangs, got to tell you, that is not a winning issue for Democrats. It is not a winner. It is not a winner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And again, the Trump administration, if they receive a binding order from a Supreme Court, is not going to ignore it. The whole idea that local courts have the ability, like single district court judges, have the ability to issue nationwide temporary restraining orders on anything the president of the United States is doing at any time is insane, ridiculous, insufferable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It wasn't even tried until the 1960s in American law. Well, if the idea of local courts issuing nationwide injunctions makes you lose sleep, well, here's the thing. At least you don't have to lose sleep because you have a crappy mattress. You need to get rid of that old mattress and instead get a Helix mattress. I used to have a different kind of mattress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And you know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already complaining? Well, usually that was me. It's gonna get me started on how my old mattress turned into a heat trap at night. Since switching on over to Helix, I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest days. Here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

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Instead, they use their Sleep Quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or you share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match for you. I got the mattress that's firm but breathable, which is what I need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Right now, Helix is offering an incredible March Madness sale that'll help you get the mattress you need. Visit helixsleep.com slash Ben. Get 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off site-wide. Again, everything in your life at this point is personalized. Why not the thing you sleep on eight hours every night? It's gotta be personalized.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is why we are releasing episode one of our series, The Case for Derek Chauvin, tomorrow. If you want to be part of the movement fighting for truth, reason, and great storytelling, it's time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Stream my show ad-free with exclusive content you're not going to see anywhere else. Get unlimited access to premium entertainment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

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Otherwise, it just ain't gonna be good enough. Head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben to get the exclusive offer. helixsleep.com slash Ben. Also, there are a lot of fitness influencers who are offering minimal value at premium prices, but FitBod is different. It provides comprehensive workout planning and tracking tools designed to help you maintain consistency and achieve real progress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

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You've heard me talk about FitBod before. Let me reiterate, it is truly a game changer when it comes to building muscle and creating workout routines that are ideal for you and your body. Just last week, I opened the app before heading to the gym, and within seconds, it was creating a personalized workout based on my goals and available equipment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The app also noticed which muscle groups I'd been hitting harder, so it automatically adjusted to focus on those other muscle groups, which means it holds you accountable. Because let's be real, I'm a dude, which means I like working out like biceps and chest and back and that kind of stuff. And so the app was like, it's time to do legs now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Expert certified personal trainers have fine-tuned their approach to deliver proven exercise science and industry best practices directly to you. Plus, you can transform your fitness journey with over a thousand demonstration videos to perfect your form and technique.

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So I asked my friends and sponsors at Perplexity to actually explain how Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have affected pricing. So I said, how much have prices risen thanks to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea? How much has international shipping been affected by Houthi attacks on that shipping?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You can keep that fitness routine fresh and engaging as the app continuously introduces variety through new exercises, rep patterns, innovative supersets, and challenging circuits, eliminating workout monotony for good. Level up that workout. Join FitBod today. Get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app for free for seven days at FitBod.me slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's F-I-T-B-O-D.me slash Shapiro. Well, there's a reason that more Americans now believe that America's on the right track than at any time since 2004, according to a brand new poll. That's the NBC News poll released on Sunday. President Trump's approval ratings are not where he would wish them to be at this point.

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54% say they disapprove of his handling of the economy, and that is largely because of the tariff war. But the survey found that voters generally feel Trump is bringing the right kind of change on the key issues. On a lot of other issues, the border particularly, Trump is incredibly strong. 56% say positive change on the border.

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In fact, the best way you can tell that Trump is doing an amazing job on the border is that on the list of issues that Americans take seriously, immigration has now dropped from number one to number four. Why? Because it's no longer a problem. President Trump has done such an amazing job on the border that no one is crossing, and so people don't even think about it anymore.

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On government cuts, 47% say his changes are good compared to just 29% who oppose. On his handling of the Ukraine war and NATO, some of the most controversial stuff he's done, more respondents say his actions were good, 41% than opposed it. So pretty evenly split on all of that. As far as inflation, 40% say his policies are having a positive effect. 30% say negative.

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28% say not changing things at all. As far as the sort of partisan gap, his approval rating among Republicans, unsurprisingly, 90%. His approval rating among Democrats, 4%. OK, but among independents, the answer is that his approval rating is much closer to sort of the Republican approval rating than it is to the Democrat approval rating.

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Democrats right now are tearing themselves apart over all of this. They legitimately don't know what precisely to do next. Here is CNN announcing the terrible Democrat. I mean, the Democratic polling numbers, they have favorability numbers worse than cancer at this point. Really bad numbers, according to CNN.

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And the answer is the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have had significant impacts on both prices and international shipping. Global consumer goods inflation increased by approximately 0.6% to 0.7% in 2024 alone due to higher shipping rates caused by Houthi attacks. By the way, that's a lot. Okay, that is a lot.

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just a full-scale disaster area for the Democrats, and they continue to drop. The NBC News polling has them at a similarly low level. Here's what's happening. Republicans already know the Democrats suck. Independents think the Democrats are completely off the rails, and Democrats are disappointed with their own party for not being crazier. That is an absolute box canyon for Democrats.

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How do they escape that? Seriously, how do you escape from Republicans think that you're crazy, Independents kind of think you're crazy, and your own party thinks you're not crazy enough? That is the biggest problem for Democrats. How do we know they think that they're not crazy enough?

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Because a recent CNN poll shows that the most popular Democrat as quote unquote, the leader of the Democratic Party right now, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she is considered by 10% to be the leader of the Democratic Party. That's not so good. The Democratic leader, they feel, best reflects the core values of the party. 10% said AOC. 9% said Kamala Harris. 8% said Bernie.

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6% said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Brutal. Brutal numbers right there. Why is that so brutal? Because guess what? She is totally out of touch with most Americans. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to run for president, she would lose 60-40 because she is insane. Her policies are crazy. But look at the top of that list.

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Basically, if you are a Democrat, the people that you like are the nut jobs and the people you don't like are the ones who are more sane. So John Fetterman doesn't even clock in. John Fetterman is on the list. He didn't clock in. The top names again, AOC, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, who ain't coming back. Jasmine Crockett is at 2%. Then Gavin Newsom at 2%.

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Nancy Pelosi at 2%. Tim Walz at one, by the way, that shows you how much Democrats hate Tim Walz, right? Tim Walz was the VP candidate half a second ago, and now he's at 1% in the polling. He has the same percentage as Al Green. By the way, Pete Buttigieg at 1%. What does this mean? It means the Democrats are addicted. They are absolutely addicted to the crazy and they can't let go of the crazy.

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And it's a major, major problem for them. So last week, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, made the correct political decision not to engage in a government shutdown. Why? Well, as I said last week, it was a giant unforced error. I wish he had, you know, sort of a political matter. I wish that Chuck Schumer had engaged in a continuing resolution shutdown. Why?

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Understand that right now, the inflation rate in the United States is hovering somewhere around 2.8 to 3%. Imagine taking 0.6 or 0.7 off of that. Now you're closer to normality. And a huge chunk of that could theoretically be attributed to just the attacks that the Houthis are launching on international shipping.

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Because then he would have had to own it. Whatever happened next would be on him.

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First of all, President Trump would have had the ability to designate which employees in the federal government were mandatory employees because the spending in the federal government, there's some spending in the federal government that's considered essential spending that goes forward even during government shutdown and stuff that's considered non-essential.

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The non-essential shutdown essential goes forward. That's true for employees as well. Trump would have had more power if the government shutdown had happened along those lines. But number two, anything negative that happened economically over the following few weeks was going to be in Chuck Schumer's lap.

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So Chuck Schumer, flirting with the left, which wanted him to resist, resist, resist, thought very seriously about shutting down the government. And then at the last minute, he pulled back. And he pulled back because he didn't want to be a complete nut job who destroyed his party. And the Democrats are fighting mad at him, enraged at him.

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Here are MSNBC hosts over the weekend bashing Chuck Schumer over it.

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Okay, so there's a lot of talk in the Democratic Party about AOC primarying him. And all I can say is good luck and Godspeed. Seriously, please keep steering in the direction of AOC if you wish to keep losing. And this has been the way that the Democratic Party continues to approach the issue.

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They're not taking the advice of James Carville, which is sit back and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. They're not doing it. Instead, they're jumping both feet on every rake in sight. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell from Michigan says, listen, we need to fight back. I can't believe we did the CR. We should have fought back.

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So then you have Senator Adam Schiff, who was the greatest promulgator of the Russia, Russia, Russia lie. And he's saying that passing the CR was a terrible policy. Please, guys, keep following Adam Schiff. It's doing you wonders.

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The average cost for shipping a 40-foot container has risen to around $3,000, up from less than $1,500 before the attacks. Why? Well, because instead of going through the Red Sea, shipping, which used to take that shortcut through the Red Sea and then through the Mediterranean, instead now they're going all the way around the Horn of Africa, which takes much, much longer, is much more costly.

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He strongly opposes the CR. It was the wrong judgment. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse doing the same thing. He says, listen, we need to stop fighting internally. We need to unify against Trump. The problem is you can't. You can't because half of you are crazy.

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Well, let's let's see you get it back to it. Here's the thing. The other problem for the Democrats is that because the leadership is up to up for grabs, there's an there's a battle among the nuts for the leadership.

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If AOC is a 10 percent, Jasmine Crockett is looking at this and she's going, hey, hey, we've talked about Jasmine Crockett, the very valuable congresswoman from Texas who's trying to become the new AOC and trying to steal some of her thunder. Here she was trying to go after AOC.

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You notice how she kind of slides in right there that there might not be elections in four years later. There are going to be elections in four years. The real reason that she's not endorsing AOC at this point is because she's afraid that she's going to get banged on by the moderate wing of her party. And she is currently riding in that same SSRS poll, which shows AOC at 10%.

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at 4% out of nowhere, the same as Barack Obama. So why precisely would she hand over leadership of the party to a person while she herself might make that climb? The Democrats are in such trouble. They're in such trouble and they don't even understand they're in trouble. They're boxed in. Gavin Newsom, by the way,

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He's been attempting through his Gavin Newsom podcast to move to the center by interviewing people who are on the right. This, of course, is a play for the 2028 nomination among Democrats. He's going to run as a quasi-moderate. The problem for him is in that same SSRS poll, it's like 2% of Democrats think that he's the leader of the party.

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And his approval rating has absolutely plummeted throughout all of this. So they have no leadership. They're completely broken. They got a massive problem on their hands, and they're not doing the thing they should be doing, which is waiting for Republicans to make a mistake.

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So as I say, all Democrats have to do at this point is wait for President Trump to make a mistake, not because President Trump is going to be terrible at being president, but just because every president is faced with crises. Bad things happen in every presidency, and they should wait until he makes a mistake to jump on him. But they just can't do it. They just can't do it.

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Additional fuel costs for rerouting ships around Africa are roughly a million dollars more per voyage. About 90% of ships are now avoiding the Red Sea route due to those Houthi attacks. Container shipping through the Red Sea has declined by approximately 90%. The number of merchant ships passing through the Red Sea annually has dropped from 25,000 to 10,000.

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Over the weekend, Scott Besant, the Secretary of the Treasury, who is excellent at his job, he was talking about President Trump's economy. He said, look, the economy is going to be fine. Again, Besant is doing heavy work on behalf of the administration to quiet the markets given all the sort of tariff chaos that has been taking place over the course of the last several weeks.

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That's exactly right. So one of the things that's happening right now is something that happened during the first Trump administration. Trump would throw out an economic policy. Everybody would freak out. And then the economic policy would get sanded down by all the people around him into something that was more palatable to markets. That is one of the things that Scott Besant is doing here.

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By the way, J.D. Vance was doing the same thing over the weekend with regard to Doge. There have been tons of questions about Doge. and about the fact that Doge is moving fast and breaking things. And that means that some people are getting fired who probably need to be rehired, for example.

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Over the weekend, Vance said in an interview with NBC News, the vice president, quote, Elon himself has said, sometimes you do something and you make a mistake and then you undo the mistake. I'm accepting of mistakes. I also think you have to act quickly to correct those mistakes.

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But I'm also very aware of the fact there are a lot of good people who work in the government, a lot of people who are doing a very good job. We want to try to preserve as much of what works in government as possible while eliminating what doesn't work. And again, that is a smart way to approach all this. If you explain to the American people

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That when you are performing a surgery on a catastrophic cancer inside the federal government, you might have to cut out some stuff that you don't want to cut out. But then you have to allow it to grow back. That's what Vance is essentially saying right now. He said many people are clearly collecting a check and not doing a job.

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He said, I don't know how many people that is in a three million strong federal workforce. Maybe it's a few thousand. Maybe it's much larger than that. But he said, we have a lot of great civil servants who are doing great work. So again, the administration is moving into a more comfortable arena where it's not just moving fast and breaking things.

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It is moving fast, breaking things, and then rebuilding the things that shouldn't have been broken or broken in the process of getting to the root of the issue. They're gonna get better at things as things go on. This is actually the roughest point in the Trump administration in terms of actually being able to make major change. Meanwhile, the situation in Ukraine is in some ways getting worse.

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Vladimir Putin is obviously using the sort of moment in order to consolidate land grabs as much as humanly possible over the weekend. Ukraine's audacious military gambit inside Russia drew toward a close this week as much as it started last summer quickly, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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A rapid Russian advance in recent days left remaining Ukrainian forces increasingly isolated under withering assault. They'd all but pulled out from a sliver of Kursk province by the weekend. How is this happening? Well, Putin went out and he got a bunch of North Korean soldiers who were basically conscripted into service and then forced into fighting in Kursk.

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And again, that adds an average of 10 to 14 days to voyage time. So if you're wondering why it takes you longer to get things than it did a couple of years ago, that would be one reason. 75% of all US and UK affiliated vessels, 60% of EU affiliated vessels are now rerouting around Africa instead of transiting the Red Sea. At least 30 ships have been damaged by the Houthi attacks.

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The Russians used familiar tactics, relentless assaults with overwhelming numbers of troops, including elite units and North Korean soldiers that ground Ukrainian forces down over months. Glide bombs smashed buildings and bunkers where Ukrainian troops sheltered.

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Then in the past month, Russia deployed large numbers of drones controlled via fiber optic cables to strike armored vehicles on the main roads routes for supplying Ukrainian soldiers on a shrinking patch of land. The Ukrainian military's seven-month foray had surprised allies with its vigor and embarrassed Putin.

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But now Putin has turned the tables and he has become the first Kremlin leader since Stalin. He was faced trying to oust a foreign army from his own territory, but it appears that now he has actually done that. Ukraine was hoping to cling on to that territory as sort of a bargaining chip. That bargaining chip is gone. So the question now is whether Putin is going to come to the table at all.

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On Tuesday, President Trump is supposed to speak with Vladimir Putin, according to Axios. Ukraine, of course, has already agreed to Trump's ceasefire proposal. Putin has refused to accept it unconditionally. Trump said, I'll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work's been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't.

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I think we have a very good chance. When asked what sort of concessions he'd be looking for, Trump replied, we'll be talking about land. We'll be talking about power plants. He said they were already discussing dividing up certain assets. Steve Witkoff, the president's negotiator in Russia, described his four-hour meeting with Putin as positive and said the discussions was solutions-based.

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Witkoff said that Putin accepts Trump's philosophy of ending the war with Ukraine. He says the two sides are a lot closer today than they were a few weeks ago. We'll have to see whether that materializes or not because Putin has sort of a history of holding out the football and then removing the football at the very moment at which a consummation becomes possible.

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Holman Jenkins, writing for The Wall Street Journal, is doubtful. He says there won't be a deal anytime soon. Vladimir Putin has received no reason to stop pushing for more concessions to see where the limit, if any, exists.

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Neither has he received any message from the administration that now is the time to cut a deal because President Trump will open the floodgates and make the situation more painful and costly than Putin would find it useful to bear. So it's possible that there is another possibility, he says. He says, strike a deep state peace deal between the incoming Trump administration and the U.S.

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intelligence agencies, bring the best of the U.S. to bear on the problem of managing our Ukraine involvement to an acceptable outcome. Steve Witkoff is flying around on his personal plane, perhaps using his personal phone, while shuttling to Moscow to sample the latest peace musings of Mr. Putin.

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How many intelligence agencies are listening in, including those who usually agree not to spy on us when we agree not to spy on them? These are all open questions, obviously. We'll see what ends up materializing.

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I am doubtful that Vladimir Putin is going to come to the table with anything that looks like a real peace deal here, because again, he has to feel the pressure in order for him to have an impetus to actually sign onto something. Meanwhile, there was some talk that Keith Kellogg had sort of been sidelined in the negotiations. Keith Kellogg is sort of more hawkish member of the foreign policy team.

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President Trump put out a statement, quote, I am pleased to inform you that General Keith Kellogg has been appointed special envoy to Ukraine. General Kellogg, a highly respected military expert, will deal directly with President Zelensky and Ukrainian leadership. He knows them well. They have a very good working relationship together. Congratulations to General Kellogg.

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And this is the right move by President Trump. So I'm hoping that this is the precursor to the Trump administration understanding that if Putin says no, the pressure has to be reversed. And now, instead of being on Ukraine, the pressure really, really, really has to be on the Russians. Well, as you all know, I'm not big into the culture stories.

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And again, normally the Suez Canal handles about 12% of all global trade. That's $1 trillion of goods per year. And that is being shrunk close to zero because of these Houthi attacks. So yeah, it's about time we obliterated them. Well, President Trump announced... Over the weekend that the United States military was now targeting the Houthis is on Saturday.

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And so I have to have experts on to help walk me through them today. It's Emily Austin stopping by. All right, folks, we're here with Emily Austin. She is a news personality. She's also on Instagram at Emily Austin. She has almost three million followers. So first of all, I want to ask you, Emily, how you went from sports personality to kind of news personality. How'd that happen?

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Quote, today, I've ordered the United States military to launch decisive and powerful military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. They've waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism against American and other ships, aircraft and drones. Joe Biden's response was pathetically weak. So the unrestrained Houthis just kept going. It's been over a year since a U.S.

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So I want to go through some of the stories of the day with you. There is a sports story that is on the radar. Apparently, West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez has now put out a rule that his players are not allowed to dance on TikTok. I mean, I generally agree. I don't know why TikTok exists. I mean, I do. It's a Chinese op. But what's the story here?

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Okay. So meanwhile, in other news, Dylan Mulvaney apparently has a book coming out, which is really exciting, was honored on International Women's Day by the ladies of The View. which makes perfect sense since he is, in fact, a dude. And I just wanted to read you. We apparently have excerpts from his new book.

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Quote, My healthy, long brunette locks constantly reminded me of the images I would see of myself in conservative media, the Audrey Hepburn persona I had leaned into for most of my transition. I was the good girl, Jackie O, but I wanted to be the other woman for once. I wanted to be Marilyn. Thoughts?

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flag commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. The last American warship to go through the Red Sea four months ago was attacked by the Houthis over a dozen times. Funded by Iran, the Houthi thugs have fired missiles at US aircraft and targeted our troops and allies.

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Now, meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be unable to actually separate off from this issue. It's pretty amazing. Gavin Newsom tried to. Tried. And the rest of the Democratic Party came down on him like a ton of bricks. But it seems to me that Democrats are not really going to have a choice. This issue is a giant loser for them. They do have an opportunity to win back the presidency in 2028.

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You think so? Listen, the 2024 election is a lot closer than I think people want to admit that it was.

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And you shipped a couple of hundred thousand votes in particular jurisdictions. And suddenly this looks like a much more competitive election. If the economy tanks, obviously Democrats could come back. You never want to rule it out. I think Republicans have a lot of systemic advantages. I think that the population movement to the South is obviously helping Republicans an awful lot right now.

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But things change really rapidly in American politics. If Democrats actually jettison some of the insane culture war issues that they've been running on, and if the economy turns south, then yeah, they have a decent shot, but they can't jettison those issues. What do you make of the democratic field right now?

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These relentless assaults have cost the US and world economy many billions of dollars while at the same time putting innocent lives at risk. This is President Trump on Truth Social. The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.

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Connect with a community of thinkers, not followers. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop and the Daily Wire Plus app for mobile and TV. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. All right, so... Over the weekend, 32 Americans were killed in a massive American storm after fatalities were reported apparently in both Kansas and Mississippi.

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Well, Emily Austin, thank you so much for stopping by. Folks, check out her stuff over at her Instagram page at emily.austin. She's terrific. Thanks so much for your time.

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All right, coming up, we'll jump into the latest episode of Bill Maher. Don Lemon stopped by and had some things to say about black Americans voting for President Trump. First, you need to become a subscriber in order to see this kind of magic. We have so much great stuff coming. I've seen some of the cuts of Pendragon. Amazing, truly incredible stuff. Backstage Live, Morning Wire, Am I Racist?

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All Access Live. So much good stuff for you right now and so much coming. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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The Houthis have choked off shipping in one of the most important waterways of the world, grinding vast swaths of global commerce to a halt, attacking the core principle of freedom of navigation upon which international trade and commerce depends.

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Our brave warfighters are right now carrying out aerial attacks on the terrorist bases, leaders, and missile defenses to protect American shipping, air, and naval assets, and to restore navigational freedom. No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the waterways of the world. To all Houthi terrorists, your time is up.

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Your attacks must stop starting today. If they don't, hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before. To Iran, support for the Houthi terrorists must end immediately. Do not threaten the American people, their president, who has received one of the largest mandates in presidential history, or worldwide shipping lanes.

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If you do, beware, because America will hold you fully accountable and we won't be nice about it. This is what I signed up for, ladies and gentlemen, this right here, because it turns out that freedom of the seas is unbelievably important, and the United States, as the global hegemon, is the guarantor of those freedom of the seas. The use of the U.S. military.

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Americans, by the way, have died in this battle with the Houthis. I mean, there's a thing that has happened where American Marines, I believe there's a couple of American Marines, have drowned in attempting to aid shipping through this area. The Houthis, for a year, they are a ragtag group of people who are radical Islamic fundamentalists. The actual slogan of the Houthis is, I kid you not,

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It's called The Scream. And it's God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, curse be upon the Jews, victory to Islam. Which, I mean, is a little long and doesn't rhyme, but you kind of get the idea of what these folks are about. And they've been holding up international shipping for a year at great cost, as we've discussed.

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The United States launching attacks on pirates is a tradition that goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson fighting the Barbary pirates who were attacking American shipping. So this right here is what President Trump should be doing. This is an excellent use of the United States military. I see some caterwauling from people.

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The basis for which seems to be that if the United States fights the Houthis because they're shutting off global shipping supply, that it must be done on behalf of Israel or the Jews. I'm confused because it turns out that pretty much all the shipping that's going through the Red Sea has nothing to do with the Jews. And yet it is that shipping that is being attacked by the Houthis, actually.

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This is the peace through strength model that President Trump has always applied. Him guaranteeing freedom of the seas, by the way, is also a very good international signal because one of the things that's been happening in, for example, the South China Sea, which is a massive shipping artery as well, is that the Chinese government

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has been exploring further and further away from land masses that it controls into these waterways, holding up boating and shipping from places like the Philippines. And so as a signal to countries like China that the United States is not going to allow the shutdown of international waterways, That is a very powerful signal as well.

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As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Houthis had paid little price for more than a year of piracy that forced the U.S. Navy into a combat pace not seen since World War II. The White House tallies 174 Houthi attacks on U.S. warships and 145 on commercial vessels since 2023. One think tank analyst estimated recently the U.S.

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Violent tornadoes, according to the Associated Press, ripped through parts of the United States, wiping out schools, toppling semi-tractor trailers in several states. It was a huge monster storm that has killed at least 32 more people. More severe weather was expected late on Saturday. Lots of vehicles involved, truly a terrible accident.

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Navy fired more air defense missiles in those 15 months than it had in the previous 30 years. That means expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. This is one of the things that terrorist groups have discovered, ranging from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis, is that you can fire off cheap drones at very little cost, attach some explosives to them and do tremendous damage.

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And the only way to defend against those things right now is very, very expensive response anti-missile systems, for example. So it'll cost you $50,000 to shoot down a $50 drone or whatever it is. Well, the other way to do that is you just kill everybody who's firing the drones. And that seems to be the United States military's policy.

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President Trump, by the way, including Iranian responsibility in here is really important because the Houthis could not do this without Iran. And once again, I hear people who are caterwauling that this is just President Trump wanting war with Iran. Let's be very clear. There will be no war with Iran.

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Even if the United States were to facilitate an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran does not go to war with the United States because if they did, we would obliterate them in half a second flat. That is not a thing.

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All the people who are telling you that there's a false choice between complete passivity in the face of Iranian aggression and total war boots on the ground in Iran is lying to you. Full stop. Lying. All caps. L-Y-I-N-G. Lying to you. The United States is not putting boots on the ground in Iran. That is not a thing. No one wants it. No one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

608.246

The other plausible notion is that targeted strikes could do an enormous amount of damage to the Iranian regime, so they ought to stop while they are behind. They should stop funding the Houthis. They should stop their nuclear program. The Trump administration is taking precisely the correct angle on all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

625.932

And again, the liars who are telling you that this is designed to lead to war with Iran, please name me the person who wants full-scale boots on the ground, hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East war with Iran. Please name the human. I would love to see you point out the human. Seriously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

641.381

Well, the White House shared some pictures of President Trump overseeing the strikes on the Houthis. And I got to say, I love it. President Trump came in from golf. He's wearing his MAGA hat, and he's got the headphones on so he can hear, presumably, some of the commands that are happening.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

657.485

And I love the casual, the sort of casual nature of President Trump coming off the golf course so that he can watch the Hooties getting obliterated on live TV. I do love that. I think that's wonderful. And I think it's with that level of casualness that we should treat America's enemies. If you screw with us, we should stomp you into the ground. We should smash you like a giant boot on a worm.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

681.16

And we should do it while we're playing golf. I love that. I love that so much. It is wonderful. Mike Waltz, who is the National Security Advisor, over the weekend, he points out that we took out a lot of who the leaders here he was on ABC News.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

70.111

You've already seen the attempt by some in the media to try and paint the Trump administration as responsible for all of this. That, of course, is incredibly silly. Natural disasters strike on everybody's watch. The question is what the fallout looks like and what the federal government can do and should do in response that has yet to be seen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

709.909

Well, the U.S. military is right on top of the Houthis. And guess what? When it comes to your online information, data brokers are on top of your information. In fact, they're watching all the moves you make online. What if I told you there's a way to stop that transaction? What if I told you there's a way to get your privacy and freedom back? You can do it with a product called ExpressVPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

726.375

ExpressVPN is an app that sends 100% of your online activity through secure encrypted servers. That means data brokers can't see anything you do online. Their customers, government agencies, big tech companies can't access those logs either. I use ExpressVPN almost all the time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

739.002

I mean, whenever I am on the road, when I'm at a hotel, at airports, literally anywhere I'm using public Wi-Fi, I gotta use ExpressVPN, and I do. With ExpressVPN, none of your online activity is logged, just within the last 12 months. ExpressVPN received over 400,000 data requests from tech companies and government agencies. You know how many of their customers' information was shared?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

757.893

Zero, because ExpressVPN has a strict zero-logs policy, which means you have your privacy back. Plus, ExpressVPN is super simple to use. All it takes is one click. It works on all your devices. You can have it on up to eight devices at once, protecting your whole family. Right now, get an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Go to expressvpn.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

774.018

Get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com. Also, Securing your family's future is really, really, really important. As somebody who always advocates for smart financial planning, I can tell you, having the right life insurance coverage isn't just about peace of mind. It's about giving your family options if the unexpected should occur.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

792.227

That's why I want to tell you about PolicyGenius. They're not an insurance company themselves. They are the country's leading online insurance marketplace. They let you compare quotes from America's top insurers side-by-side completely free with absolutely no hidden fees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

803.238

Their platform uses real licensed insurance experts who work for you, not the insurance companies, so you can find the best fit for your family. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $292 per year for a million dollars in coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. The process is fast and simple.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

818.836

Their licensed support team handles everything, answering your questions, managing paperwork, advocating for you throughout the entire process. Don't just take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius will help you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

833.846

Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click that link in the description. Get your free life insurance quote, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

844.513

OK, he also pointed out that all options are on the table when it comes to Iran, meaning we're not going to let Iran simply set the pace in the Middle East. That is not a thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

85.924

So all the sort of preliminary blame on the Trump administration for what happened with these tornadoes across the country, that's silly. And it is not Joe Biden's fault that a tornado hit North Carolina. It's his fault if the federal government doesn't do what it's supposed to do afterwards. We're going to find out in very short order whether the Trump administration rises to the occasion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

872.742

And again, that carries over to the idea that the Iranians should not be developing their nuclear weapons. This notion that the Iranians are trying to develop peaceful nuclear power in one of the most oil-rich nations on Earth is absolutely asinine. Everybody knows it's ridiculous on its face. The skies over Iran are completely open right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

887.447

So they either come to the table and they avoid getting hit or they will be hit. I mean, that is the reality of the situation. And again, that does not mean a war. How do I know that? Well, because I remember, I'm old enough to remember when President Trump leveled the order to kill Qasem Soleimani, who is the head of the Iranian terror regime. That was back January 3rd, 2020.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

909.3

Did a war with Iran ensue? I noticed not. So here was, again, Mike Waltz saying, listen, the Ayatollahs are not going to have their fingers on the button. That is not something this administration is going to allow.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

954.91

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been tremendously strong throughout the Trump administration, he said the airstrikes will continue until morale improves.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2159 - Trump SOARS in Polling, UNLEASHES On Houthis!

988.072

Now, notice what Rubio also says. He says, we're not talking about putting boots on the ground. This is not something we want. Again, this is what I'm saying. The Trump administration is not interested in hundreds of thousands. People who are telling you differently are lying to you and they're lying to you for a reason. Here is Secretary of State Rubio.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

0.429

All righty, folks, it's Presidents Day, and that means it's time for a quick round of Jeopardy! Presidents Edition. This video is sponsored by our friends at Home Title Law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

100.864

Okay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

102.424

Really? Jimmy Carter did that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

104.584

Wow, that's shocking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

106.845

Who is Jimmy Carter? I mean, he did say that he had sinned in his own mind many times, so, you know. Weird one, Jimmy. Okay, scandals for 800, yeah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

123.548

Oh, wow. Um, hmm.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

128.413

Yeah, this is niche. Because there were a lot of potato-laden scandals during the H.W. Bush term. Remember Dan Quayle misspelled potato? Yeah, I'll say potatoes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

141.771

Oh, okay. Wow, I did not know that. These are definitely minor scandals, too. When I'm thinking of scandals, I'm like Teapot Dome, and you're like, remember that time that Jimmy Carter kissed Queen Elizabeth on the lips? Okay, scandals for a thousand.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

158.417

Yeah, no, Teapot Dome, this is Warren G. Harding.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

161.288

Who is Warranty Harding?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

162.809

Okay, next category. The one that I'm going to totally bomb, by the way, is First Ladies. I'm totally going to bomb next. I don't care about it. That is not a real category of human. First Ladies. We all pretend the First Lady matters and not so much. Let's do Presidential Deaths. We'll go dark here. Sponsored by Policy Genius.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

185.618

Okay, well, actually, two presidents died on July 4th, 1826. Boom, roasted. We're all roasted.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

191.801

Both authors of the Declaration of Independence, by the way. I mean, obviously, this is meant to be Thomas Jefferson, but John Adams was also deeply involved in the authoring of the Declaration of Independence, and they died on the same day, which is pretty incredible. That's like the notebook. Yeah, well, Adams' last words were, Jefferson still lives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

209.109

No, no, no. I don't know if it was like a shootout or something. No, no, no. It wasn't like Burr shooting Hamilton or something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

23.796

Okay, why don't we start with Scandals, since that's what people want to get to first, probably.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

234.232

Yeah. By the way, he was he was super old at the age of 68. And apparently he tried to keep warm by drinking a lot. He was very famous for winning that election based on basically having giant voter events where they handed out free beer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

246.404

Yeah. OK. Presidential death for 600.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

256.273

And which other president died on Independence Day?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

261.28

Wow. Okay, that is an excellent question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

267.829

Okay, I'll take a hint.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

270.753

I mean, there are two presidents with those initials. Okay, so I'm going to say, who is James Monroe? Okay. I did not know James Monroe died on July 4th. Interesting. Okay, cool. That is a cool factoid. I like that. Okay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

287.829

Okay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

296.172

Is this a person who died while president or is this a person who died after being president?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

301.894

Who is Zachary Taylor?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

305.499

Guys, I wrote an entire book about presidents, like, on an imagistic level, and it's my worst-selling book, historically, called Project President. Yeah, Zachary Taylor, who's suspected that he died of poisoning because of that, because he died of indigestion. Lord have mercy. Presidential deaths for 1,000.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

328.343

Let's see. I'm going in reverse where I'm missing the one president between John Tyler and. How does the song go? Yeah, exactly. Washington. You do the hokey. Oh, so he wasn't present when he died. Yeah, punk. He left office in 1848.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

34.754

Well, I mean, you can say that there's actually two presidents who did this, but it's actually Bill Clinton here. Who is Bill Clinton? Who is Bill Clinton.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

346.951

Okay, fine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

348.932

Okay, fine. We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, did you know that American homeowners have over $32 trillion in equity? Criminals are targeting it with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing. Scammers can transfer your title out of your name using a one-page document they file at the county, and then they take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

365.641

The most concerning part? You won't find out about it until collection or foreclosure notices start arriving in your mailbox, leaving you with a financial and legal nightmare. The best way to protect your equity is with Home Title Lock's exclusive million-dollar triple lock protection.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

377.628

This service offers 24-7 monitoring, urgent alerts, and if fraud should occur, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to a million dollars to fix the fraud and restore your title. Our own senior video editor, Adam, trusts them to protect his home You can too. So when was the last time you checked on your title? That's exactly what the scammers are counting on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

393.337

The good news is we've partnered with Home Title Lock to offer you 25% off their services. Go to hometitlelock.com, use my promo code SHAPIRO25 to save 25%, and you'll also get a free title history report to ensure you're not already a victim. And make sure you check out the million-dollar triple lock protection details when you get there. Link below. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code SHAPIRO25.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

412.029

All right, let's do...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

419.06

The question doesn't say Ben. This many principal founding fathers? Like signatories to the Declaration of Independence are we talking here?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

43.257

The other person I was thinking of, it would be Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland famously had an affair, and that actually was during his second term, I believe, that he admitted it. Okay, scandals for $400.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

430.528

There are a lot of main guys. That's 100% subjective.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

439.054

Okay, founding fathers for 400.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

445.825

Yeah, this is true. Alexander Hamilton's son died in a duel in 1801. Bring back that. Okay, bring back dueling. It'd make politics way more interesting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

458.694

Yeah, jousting would be amazing. Okay, founding father for 600.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

467.14

Um, who is George Washington? Yeah, he became a surveyor. Okay, founding fathers for 800.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

480.53

Well, if you had not given me the date, then I would have been screwed on that one. But who is Warren G. Harding? Question it. Okay, again, for 1,000.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

494.173

Um, hmm.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

503.49

What is lesbian dance theory? Yeah. What is grammar? What is grammar? Makes sense. He was extremely meticulous in his writing. Okay, we can do the White House.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

517.815

Who is George Washington?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

525.498

What is $0? $0.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

531.928

Or if you're a foreign country, what is an unspecified amount of money to a specific person in the White House who will then do your bidding? White House for $600.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

546.263

Who is Martin Sheen? Who's Andrew Jackson?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

558.052

Oh, wow. Yeah, much later. Okay. White House for $800.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

564.195

They're all tiny. I've been there. It's like a tiny person's house.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

574.702

Over $100. We're doing prices right here now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

578.585

The White House for $1,000.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

592.553

Who was it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

595.894

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten that one. My architecture knowledge is limited. Okay, the only categories left are, what, First Ladies and Fast Facts?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

602.077

Okay, let's do it. That's fine. Okay, 200 First Ladies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

608.519

Um, who was Abigail Adams? Yeah, she hated it, by the way. She said that it was cold and terrible. Remember when Trump said that in his first term? Yes, and by the way, he's totally right. It is a massive downgrade for Mar-a-Lago. First ladies for 400.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

626.509

Who's Melania Trump?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

631.023

One First Lady who was not born in the United States. Was Jackie Kennedy not born in the United States?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

639.748

Who is it? Louisa Adams. Oh, like John Quincy's wife.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

645.352

Yeah. She was born in London. Yes, that's right. First Ladies for $600.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

653.737

Okay. Well, Abigail?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

657.84

Let's see. Barbara? Barbara?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

661.045

And, of course, Melania, because Baron will be our first emperor. First ladies for 800.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

674.212

So, like, long before. So that would be Joe Biden's first wife. Yep. And Martha Jefferson, who famously passed away very young.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

692.695

Who's Eleanor Roosevelt?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

697.457

Who is Edith Wilson?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

702.179

Phil said Doug Emhoff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

71.528

Sure, why don't you do that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

719.488

No, I don't even know what you're talking about.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

722.409

Now more than one of you are saying it. It's not helping. Laffy Taffy. Laffy Taffy. Oh, Taft's wife? Yeah. Yeah, but I wouldn't have known even her first name. And it wasn't Laffy, I don't think.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

733.193

Where is your head cake?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

750.64

Who was Grover Cleveland? No, who was on the $500 bill?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

765.051

This president and his wife exchanged more than... Poor John and Abigail Adams. You pressed the buzzer too early. Yeah, exactly. Their letters are beautiful, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

78.413

Where is Afghanistan?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

788.565

Yeah, exactly. I was going to say, who is Teddy Roosevelt? Because that seems like a thing he would do, but probably earlier.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

800.268

Really? That was a Washington thing?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

803.011

That's so weird. George, that's so weird. That's so weird, George Washington.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

809.556

That is a weird one. Okay, fast facts for 1,000.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

82.776

I'm figuring. Yeah, these ones are easy. Okay, scandals for 600.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

820.626

Who is Gerald Ford? Wow. What's amazing about that is that Saturday Night Live made him famous for being like a bumbling, fumbling idiot. Every time Chevy Chase would appear, he'd fall over. Probably literally the most physically adept president in the history of all the presidents is Gerald Ford. He was an actual football star. So good job, SNL, as always.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

842.749

I played against nobody, so yeah, that was great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

847.11

Oh, my dad might crush me at this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

849.591

Really? My dad is quite good at Jeopardy. All righty, folks. So that was me playing Presidential Jeopardy. I didn't do as well as I thought I would, but I'm going to blame that on my staff. So there you have it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Do you know more presidential trivia than Ben Shapiro?! | Vol 2

92.743

Who is Donald Trump?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

0.29

All right, folks, so apparently there are a lot of weird drones that are flying around America, particularly the East Coast and particularly military bases. We keep hearing from the government that it's not a big deal. They're not sure what they are. They're not sure what to do about it, but it's no big deal. And here is my problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1008.635

And thanks to our ridiculous tort system in which the loser doesn't have to pay, which is something that I would hope would change sometime in the near future, that if you sue somebody and you lose it, you should have to pay. But that's not the way that it works. That means that there are such things as nuisance settlements. That is not this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

102.093

A reported drone activity prompted at least one airport, New York's Stewart International Airport, to temporarily close its runways for about an hour on Friday night.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1024.078

Defamation cases, particularly about President Trump, in order to prove defamation, you have to prove actual malice. It is not enough to find that the person said something false about President Trump because President Trump's a public figure. So you have to show actual malice in George Stephanopoulos saying it. So ABC News, that's a very rich company. They can afford to pay lawyers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1045.844

Why did they pay out $15 million to President Trump? It's not to settle the nuisance of it. They did it specifically because they were afraid that Trump would win and they would have to sign a gigantic defamation check to President Trump. So instead, they're first stalling that with a $15 million payment, which is absolutely hilarious. Some Democrats are fighting mad about all this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1065.869

One of them, Mark Elias, who of course is a lawyer for a wide variety of Democrats, He tweeted out, knee bent, ring kissed. Another legacy news outlet chooses obedience. A reminder, Democracy Docket is fiercely independent, unapologetically pro-democracy. It will not back down. It will not obey. Sign up to support.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1083.329

Democracy Docket is his own little 501c3, I believe, that raises money so that he can fight lawfare against Republicans. Of course, Mark Elias is really angry. He has made his career, Mark Elias, going to court against a wide variety of Republicans. He's an election attorney for the Democratic Party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

110.199

Apparently, New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Saturday said, quote, this has gone too far and she has directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate drone sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address the issue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1104.23

He, of course, was hired by the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign in case there was any post-election litigation. So he's mad, of course. And he should be. Some people are taking this as ABC News trying to get it off the books, specifically because they don't want to be at odds with President Trump. Maybe this is that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1121.3

We've seen a wide variety of corporate leaders who are pretty antipathetic to President Trump now descending on Mar-a-Lago in order to have conversations with President Trump. That ranges from Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook to Jeff Bezos over at Amazon and the Washington Post. With that said, that is a recognition of the reality, which is that President Trump, in fact, does have the momentum.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

1144.875

President Trump's economic momentum is undeniable. Some of the things he's considering doing, by the way, he's considering apparently privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, which I mean, it's about damn time. The U.S. Postal Service is one of the biggest losers in the American government in terms of just losing the American taxpayer cash.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, for years and years and years, for decades, it was suggested that without the U.S. Postal Service, the mail would not be delivered. And then FedEx came along. And then a wide variety of other parcel services came along. And it turns out that actually you can run a for-profit business that delivers the packages much faster and with better reliability than the U.S. Postal Service.

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Told of the mail agency's annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization. So again, that would make a lot of sense. The Postal Service just bleeds money every single year. They lost $5.5 billion in 2014. They lost almost $10 billion in 2020. They lost almost $10 billion last year.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he's now asking the Department of Homeland Security to deploy special detection systems that use 360-degree technology to detect the drones. He said if this technology exists for a drone to make it up in the sky, there certainly is technology that can track the craft with precision and determine what the heck is going on.

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In fact, it was back in 2022 that Congress had to just sign a $56 billion check to shore up the U.S. Postal Service's finances. So privatizing that, that would be a big win for the American people. President Trump is going to pursue a wide variety of wins in his second term, but Democrats are still struggling for a path of resistance. One of those paths of resistance may be lawfare.

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Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of the state of Minnesota, he says that he wants to file more lawsuits against President Trump because after all, this is how they tried to stop President Trump the first time around.

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Well, we'll see how the lawfare goes, considering a lot of the appellate courts have a lot of Trump nominees on them. Meanwhile, a bunch of congressional Democrats have said they are not going to attend the inauguration, as though President Trump cares at all.

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House Democrats, who will skip the inauguration, include Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Adam Smith of Washington, Deborah Ross of North Carolina, Donald Bayer. of Virginia, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Sean Cassin of Illinois, Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Ilhan Omar, of course, of Minnesota, and I'm sure many others will be joining.

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Now, this is a stupid path for Democrats, honestly. One of the reasons is the American people would like to see Democrats work with President Trump where appropriate. While Democrats are resisting President Trump, one of the things presumably they will be resisting is President Trump's attempts at tax cuts.

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But let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans, taxes themselves. The October 15th deadline has passed. Are you prepared for what's coming next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension?

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Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement, and let me tell you, they're not playing around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. But there's still good news. There's hope. Tax Network USA has been in the game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law.

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They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's a billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burdens. So don't let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

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Now, the reality is it's actually quite difficult to track drones in the same way that you would track, say, a missile. This has been a problem in Israel, for example, where the Houthis have launched several drones. Hezbollah did as well because the drones don't travel highly above the speed of, for example, birds. And so they create sort of a noisy signal on radar.

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Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. So here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you.

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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. Also, selling a car privately, that can be a real pain in the butt. Endless negotiations, tire kickers, paperwork hassles, but there is a better way to get your unused car off your hands. For 30 years, Cars for Kids has perfected the car donation process to make it truly effortless.

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They'll take your car in any condition, running or not, they'll turn it into funds for kids in need, plus a tax deduction for you. It takes just two minutes on the phone or at carsforkids.org to donate. They'll take over from there, getting your car picked up as soon as the next day. No haggling, no scheduling conflicts, no paperwork nightmares.

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They'll receive a vacation voucher and maximum tax deduction while supporting proven programs that help children reach their full potential. With over a million successful donations over three decades, Cars for Kids continues to be a trusted partner for car donors across the country. Again, it's free, convenient, and easy, freeing up your driveway while making a difference for the next generation.

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Call right now, 1-877-CARS4KIDS. That's K-A-R-S, the number four, KIDS, or donate online at Cars4Kids. Again, that's with the number four, Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Donate your car today. That's Cars4Kids.org slash Ben to get started. It is a foolhardy plan to simply preemptively fight President Trump.

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One of the people who knows this is apparently the only Democrat with a brain at this point, John Fetterman, the Senator from Pennsylvania. According to Axios, Fetterman is on an island as he reaches out to MAGA.

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Quote, Senator John Fetterman has become a voice of bipartisanship, making moves that he tells Axios are, quote, responsible and completely appropriate, but that are putting him on an island apart from other Democrats.

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As the vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill fume over many of Donald Trump's cabinet picks and his for a second term, Fetterman is showing a rare willingness to engage with parts of MAGA world. It's easy to think Fetterman could be a new version of Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin. That would be wrong.

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He's a reliable Democratic vote, but he's emerging as an independent voice within his party simply by emphasizing the need to talk more with the other side. So, for example, he met with Pete Hegseth, where he's going to meet with Pete Hegseth this week, President Trump's pick for SecDef.

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Perhaps 15 years ago, I would have believed the government, honestly. Perhaps 15 years ago, I would have been more apt to think, hey, they know what they're doing because no way in hell this government would allow, say, foreign drones or even domestic drones to simply hover around military facilities. en masse for weeks on end. There's no way they would do that.

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He also met, for example, with Elise Stefanik, President Trump's pick for UN ambassador, and he's already said that he's going to vote for her. Fetterman is, this is smart. Fetterman is, again, a very staunch Democrat. He's going to vote with the Democrats 95% of the time. But he also understands that if he's going to defy President Trump's agenda, then he better have a good reason to do so.

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And right now, it just appears that Democrats are still fulminating over having lost the election. They literally cannot understand how they lost to President Trump, again. And I think that's because they fundamentally misunderstand the American people. Nowhere have I seen this better exemplified than in Tim Walz. So Tim Walz, you'll remember Tim Walz. Remember he was the weirdo?

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He was the inflatable at the tire store near the freeway who ran for vice president with Kamala Harris. You remember him. I know he's so forgettable. It really is kind of funny. You struggle to come up with the name of the Democratic nominee and it's been five weeks since the election. Pretty incredible. Well, Tim Walz was on Minnesota Public Radio and he said he can't understand how they lost.

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After all, he's poor. What? So your argument for being vice president of the United States was you're bad at finances and never earned money? Why would that possibly be a good argument for why you should be the heir to the presidency? That makes no sense at all. Like you being unsuccessful over the course of your relatively long life because Tim Walz is currently 60 years old.

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had a sufficient response to this as of yet. Alejandro Mayorkas, thank God, the outgoing Department of Homeland Security secretary, he says the drone sightings are in fact real.

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That is not a good, that is a terrible argument for why I should be vice president. But he seems to think that solidarity in poverty is somehow a winning ticket for the American people. It never was. The American people would actually like to, you know, succeed. The American dream is not to be like Tim Walz. It is to be like J.D. Vance. Here is Tim Walz failing to understand the American people.

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So again, your argument is that they should have solidarity with you because you were poor? Now, remember, Tim Walz actually ran on this. He ran on the idea that you should have solidarity with him because he had no real estate holdings and no stocks, which, by the way, is a terrible way to invest. That's how you end up at 60 years old with no money. Truly. And you want financial advice? Invest.

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Take the money that you're making and put it in the stock market. If you don't know anything about investment, put your money in an index fund. Even if you do know something about investment, you should put your money in an index fund and just leave it there and don't touch it. Don't sell when the market goes down. Don't buy when the market goes up. Just get in the market.

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Do dollar cost averaging, just keep buying into the market. Buy real estate when you have the opportunity to do so and just hold. Buy and hold for long periods of time. But again, this is the same guy who went out on the campaign trail and suggested that J.D. Vance was a sellout for having risen from relatively impoverished background with a horrifying family background.

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to become a Yale Law graduate after having served in the military and then running for vice president after being a senator. Like, that's a crazy, that's a crazy pitch. But I think that a lot of Democrats fundamentally do not understand the American people. And there is this disconnect. And that disconnect is, I think, being radically exacerbated, I do, by the nature of social media.

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Social media radically exacerbates the disconnect between the American people and the elites who write for the media and who are on social media. Social media... encompasses a very narrow slice of the American people. So just to take one example, there is a poll that is now out with regard to Luigi Mangione. Okay, so this poll is from RMG Research. Polled 1,000 people.

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And what they found was that 53% of Americans thought that Luigi Mangione, who is the guy who shot the UnitedHealthcare CEO allegedly, that he was a villain. Only 10% thought he was a hero and 22% said neither. Now online, those numbers are probably reversed. Online, you would suggest 80, 90% of people think that this person is some sort of hero.

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Also, if you're online, you tend to believe that literally every American hates their healthcare. Now, every American hates dealing with insurance companies, but that's true whether you're talking about a car insurance company. It's true whether you're talking about a life insurance company, except for Policy Genius. It's true for pretty much all insurance companies.

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People don't like dealing with insurance. Do you like? I don't like. No one likes dealing with insurance companies. It's annoying and terrible. However, polling tends to show that Americans don't despise their own health care. In fact, they don't want to lose their doctor. They don't want to lose their health care. Here is Harry Enten from CNN explaining.

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Again, that's what the poll statistics actually show. Again, there's a second poll that was done from the Center for Strategic Politics at UHC. And what they found is that 61% of Americans had a negative view of Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter. Only 18% had a positive view. As for Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, 35% had a negative view. 19% had a positive view. The rest didn't know.

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And that includes, by the way, a plurality of Americans who had a negative view of UnitedHealthcare, which all seems relatively normal. But the reaction from the media is so utterly disconnected, and from Democrats is so utterly disconnected. Okay, let us make something clear. What Luigi Mangione did is a terrorist attack.

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It is a terrorist attack when you kill someone in order to quote-unquote raise the issue. If you kill somebody in order to raise the issue, that is the nature of terrorism. You're seeking to bring attention to the issue by doing murder,

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And what the American body politics should do and what everybody should basically do is if a terrorist wants you to talk about the problems of the health care system, you shouldn't give them what they want or you're incentivizing people to kill people. Now, we should absolutely have long form conversations about the health care system in the United States.

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When I say long form, I mean informed conversations, because let's be real about this. People don't know bleep about the health care systems of the United States. They really don't. Just to take one example, Whoopi Goldberg was on The View on Friday and Whoopi Goldberg started running her mouth about health insurance.

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And my goodness, my goodness gracious, does she not understand what health insurance companies do?

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How does she think insurance works? The people who are having these conversations literally know nothing. Mangione himself, in his manifesto, said he knew nothing about the systems. He really, like, he said, he said, I don't know enough about this complex system. I'm just going to kill somebody.

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Drone sightings apparently have been reported in at least six states, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, as well as Virginia. The sightings began November 18th near Morris County, New Jersey, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, here's the thing. It is not only in these areas. How do I know? Well, because I've seen one of these drones.

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Whoopi Goldberg there is suggesting the way insurance, when you don't, if you pay into your car insurance company and you don't take any money out because you don't get into a car crash, do you get your money back? Of course not. That's not how insurance works. But that is the level of the conversation that is being had.

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So don't pretend that we're now having a deep and abiding conversation about health insurance in this company, in this country. We absolutely are not. The conversation has gotten significantly worse, not better. And that is led by members of our cultural and political elite. We'll get to more on that in just one moment. First, if you're still searching for the perfect gift, you shouldn't sweat it.

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Daily Wire Plus gift memberships are 40% off right now, but not for long. This isn't just a gift. It's a ticket to uncensored truth, unapologetic news, and premium entertainment for the conservative in your life. With a DailyWare Plus membership, they'll get a year of daily shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media with limited ads. Live breaking news that gives the full story.

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No agendas, just the facts. Access to investigative journalism exposing what the mainstream media won't. An entertainment library packed with hit movies and documentaries like Am I Racist? along with can't-miss series like Jordan B. Peterson's The Gospels. And here's the best part, to keep shopping stress-free. You pick the delivery date for the DailyWare Plus gift membership.

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We will handle the rest. 40% off Daily Wire plus gift memberships. Go to dailywire.com slash gift right now. So as I'm saying, the political and cultural elite, they're just too online. They're too online. Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of this. So Bernie Sanders over the weekend, he pulled a full Elizabeth Warren.

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He suggested that while shooting someone in the back is irresponsible, but this does raise a longstanding concern he's had about the profit-driven healthcare system.

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Again, this idea that when you remove profit from a system, somehow the system gets more efficient with better products belies everything you know about everything in your life except for health care for some odd reason. And it's not just Bernie Sanders who's doing this routine, by the way. The shooter provides us a great leaping off point to talk about health care.

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Chris Murphy, the idiot senator from Connecticut, he's doing the same routine.

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I saw it on the southern border. In fact, you can see a drone on the southern border if you go and you take a look at our series over at Daily Wire Plus, Divided States of Biden. Went down to the southern border. We did a ride along with Border Patrol. And it was fairly early in the evening, maybe eight o'clock in the evening. And suddenly I look up and there is a drone.

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This sort of language is so disgusting. This idea that everyone who works at health insurance industries, that all of those people don't care about human beings at all. That all they want is profits. That is not how markets work. That is not how markets work. Forget about caring and not caring for just one second.

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Recognize that the grocer who provides you food, he doesn't hate you just because he's charging you for the food. The grocer who charges you food is charging you for the food because that allows them to generate more groceries. That is what that is about. There are massive problems in our healthcare system.

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Again, health insurance doesn't truly act as health insurance in the United States in any real way because they're not insuring against a possible risk for the future, except sort of at the margins. What they really are doing is providing quote-unquote healthcare coverage that is heavily regulated and also heavily subsidized by the federal government and the state governments, by the way.

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But this kind of disgusting notion that is being dumped out there, that the reason people die due to lack of healthcare is because those mean, cruel health insurance executives are trying their best to harm people

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First of all, even if you would assume that was true, assume that was true for just one second, don't you think there would be a competitor, a healthcare competitor, say, a health insurance competitor that might come along and say, hey, we care about people more. Do your business here. This kind of language is actually a danger. It's a dangerous thing to do.

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And again, it spans both sides of the aisle. You see it happen all the time. This sort of notion that if somebody disagrees with how I do my business, then it must be because they're evil and want to harm you. I've mentioned the word emotivism before. That is a phrase, a term used by Alistair McIntyre. It's also used by Philip Reif, a bunch of different philosophers.

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And the basic idea is attributing motive to someone rather than dealing with the actual arguments. And it's really ugly. And it does lead to some pretty... Terrible consequences. So there was a concert in Boston over the weekend at which Luigi Mangione's face was shown and the attendees began to cheer. and people are dancing. This is a person who murdered someone on the street in cold blood.

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By the way, not because he had an unsuccessful back surgery or was covered by UnitedHealthcare. He absolutely was not. This is not good. There is a disconnect. The disconnect is not just with regard to healthcare, for example.

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It's with regard to a wide variety of issues, whether it is the sort of glory of being poor that Tim Walz is talking about, whether it is the supposed hatred of our entire healthcare system, which again, people have their problems with the healthcare system.

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That doesn't mean they want the National Health Service or think that UnitedHealthcare CEO should be shot in the back on the streets of New York. There's also a wild disconnect on issues of race, obviously, between the elites in our society and a huge percentage of the rest of the population. and it's permeated those elite circles.

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And I remember turning to Border Patrol and see again, you see this happen over at DailyWebPlus. I turned to Border Patrol and I say, what is that? Our producers were there too. What is that? And they said, well, it's a drone. I said, well, I assume that that's our drone, you know, like from our side monitoring the border. And they said, nope, that is a drug cartel drone.

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So one of the bizarre controversies of the last week is Kaitlyn Clark, who is the WNBA's only nameable star. The vast majority of the general public has no idea of any players other than Kaitlyn Clark, because of course she was this giant college star, and then she went to the WNBA.

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So Kaitlyn Clark, she did an interview in which she talked about her white privilege at length, and then Megyn Kelly called her on it, and then she spoke some more about her white privilege.

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Sharing her truth, sharing her. Well, she's saying the things she knows she has to say. Obviously, it's not enough, though. It's not enough. She said she acknowledges her white privilege. And she wishes to use her voice on behalf of all of the black NBA stars. Well, is that going to help her one iota? Absolutely not.

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Here, for example, is WNBA team owner Sheila Johnson ripping Kaitlyn Clark as the co-owner of the Washington Mystics. I know you didn't know that there was a team called the Washington Mystics because, hell, no one knows there's a team called the Washington Mystics. Here she is ripping Kaitlyn Clark and the fan base for liking Kaitlyn Clark, saying it's only because Kaitlyn Clark is white.

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Hey, you're not putting the entire WNBA on the cover because not everybody can fit. Nobody knows who any of those people are. By the way, 31% apparently of the entire Washington Mystics ticket sales this year came in two games. I will give you a guess as to which player was featured in those two games. It was Caitlin Clark.

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Caitlin Clark is single-handedly responsible for one third of all your ticket sales this year. And you're about it. You're complaining about it. That disconnect. This is why people are annoyed. This is why people are annoyed with the radical left, which they're just too online. They're just too online. Speaking, by the way, of too online, apparently Kamala Harris, she wants to make a comeback.

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So again, the idea that there are in fact foreign drones flying over American soil, not only... Do I suspect that is happening? I know for a fact that is happening. I then asked Border Patrol, by the way, why they didn't just shoot down the drone. And they said they would need explicit permission from Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

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I'm not even kidding at this point. I would love for some politicians who lose to just go away, like truly. Why can't, why did they just stick around now? My whole childhood, if you lost, you went away. Not anymore. Now, Vice President Harris, she apparently wants to run for governor of California, God love her, or run for president again because she did such an amazing job this time.

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OK, then good luck to her. You know, God bless the Democratic Party and may they continue. ever in this direction. Because frankly, if they wish to disdain reality, the elections will not go their way for a long time to come. So God bless them and may they continue to prosper in their insane dereliction of duty with regard to having any relationship at all with reality.

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Meanwhile, with President Trump coming into office, Russia is attempting to up the ante. They believe that if they continue to press, then presumably NATO will collapse before them. I don't think that's what's going to happen here. I think that what's pretty clearly going to happen.

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is that President Trump is going to call on the Europeans to do their part, and the Europeans will do their part, or they'll get eaten. And they don't wish to be eaten, and so it will be up to them to up the ante. I think that President Trump is not in the business of abandoning American allies to the predations of our enemies.

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He just wants our allies to do exactly what they're supposed to do, namely defend themselves and spend the money and materiel to defend their friends. which makes a lot of sense since Europe is actually quite large and Europe has a lot of money, actually. While the Russians, in anticipation of Trump entering, I think they're miscalculating, they're getting more aggressive.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the Mercury missile corvette, one of Russia's most advanced naval assets, was escorting an oil tanker in the Baltic Sea when a German warship approached.

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The German frigate F-223 had followed the two Russian ships up to a spot near the Danish island of Bornholm before it dispatched its Sea Lynx helicopter armed with a powerful surveillance equipment to have a closer look after a series of incidents in the area had put security forces on edge. The Russian corvette responded by shooting flares at the aircraft, forcing the pilot to turn back.

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This incident on November 26th, the details of which had not been previously reported, was part of an increasingly heated standoff between Russia and NATO in Europe, with the Baltic region emerging as a key flashpoint in a confrontation unseen since the height of the Cold War. Beyond military signaling, Russia has escalated an often violent campaign of sabotage and subterfuge.

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Apparently, Russian warships have been firing warning shots at NATO vessels. Powerful Russian jamming systems have disrupted air traffic. Russian jet fighters have conducted dangerous maneuvers, including dumping fuel on Allied spy planes in the skies over the Baltics, according to multiple Western officials.

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Mayorkas, for his part, says we have no information on foreign involvement with these drones.

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Critical infrastructure, like data cables and pipelines, have been attacked by commercial ships Western security officials say were used by Russian intelligence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Clandestine Russian operators used Lithuania, a Baltic nation, as a springboard for a terror operation involving shipping incendiary devices on commercial aircraft using services like DHL, according to Western intelligence and law enforcement officials. In Britain, a man admitted to carrying out an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned property in London on behalf of Russia.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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In Poland, a shopping mall was torched with authorities suspecting Russia to be behind the incident. Jan Stoltenberg, former two-time NATO Secretary General, said during his tenure, which ended in October, Russia expanded the range of its targets, including destructive sabotage, cyber attacks, and interfering in elections in EU nations that belong to the Security Alliance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Russia's onslaught in Ukraine prompted Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Now, eight of the nine nations that enclosed the Baltic Sea are members of the alliance, prompting jubilant commentary from Allied leaders that it had become a NATO lake, but...

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Russia has significantly boosted its military presence in the region, escalating its aggressive posture toward the neighbors in a way unseen since the Cold War, according to Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister. So, again, what is the solution to this? Well, one of the solutions here would be for all of these nations in Europe to up their game.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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President Trump is going to up the American game. We're going to spend more on our military. We are going to put in place a secretary of defense and a procurement secretary. procedure that allows us to modernize and everybody else should as well. With that said, Russia keeps saying they want a deal.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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The Ukrainian ambassador, Oksana Markarova, she says that Russia is lying when they say they want a deal. Well, we will find out soon enough.

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Now, she's not wrong that the Russian negotiation strategy has been dishonesty for many, many decades. However, we're about to find out when the rubber hits the road and President Trump takes office how fast a deal can be reached. And again, President Trump is not in the habit of making bad deals. This is the thing about President Trump. He's a dealmaker.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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He does not like being on the short end of the deal. And that's going to be true for Russia as well. All right, coming up, we'll get into Chris Rock on SNL. He said something quite awful about the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Again, according to CNN.com, concerns escalated after drones were spotted near Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research facility, and also over President-elect Trump's golf course in Bedminster. According to both military officials and state lawmakers, the sightings prompted the FAA to issue temporary flight restrictions over the properties.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Apparently, there were also reports of drones above the Naval Weapons Station Earl, a U.S. Navy base south of Middleton, although no direct threats were identified. And it's coming from both sides of the aisle, by the way. It's not just a Republican thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Democratic Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey posted videos to his X account showing what appeared to be a cluster of drones over the Round Valley Reservoir on Thursday night. On Saturday, he posted on X that most of the aircraft he initially thought were drones were almost certainly planes.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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So again, it is possible that people are oversighting, they're over-attributing things to drones that actually are planes, or they have camera error. Any of that is possible. However, I have very little trust in the federal government that they are doing the job that they were designated to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said his administration is aware of reported drone sightings and is currently taking them seriously. He, of course, is a Democrat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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He said Friday evening he directed the Pennsylvania State Police to further investigate the sightings and police will be flying helicopters to try to determine where these drones are originating from and what the purpose of the drones are. The same thing is happening in Massachusetts where Governor Maura Healey posted on X about the growing number of drone sightings

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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And then Joe Biden was president and Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to cross the entire continental United States without shooting it down. And only after he got called on it, did he then proceed to shoot down a bunch of weather balloons with hellfire missiles. So yeah, I've got some skepticism. Now again,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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in her state and said that state police were working alongside local and federal partners, urging drone operators to adhere to regulations. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin also made a statement. He said that the state police and the Department of Emergency Management were coordinating closely with numerous federal partners to respond to drone reports.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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He emphasized significant number of national security and critical infrastructure sites in Virginia. Now, again, FBI and DHS, they're saying this is mostly mistaken identity. Some of these may be commercial drones. We don't know as of yet from where they derive. There are a bunch of explanations that are more plausible than the idea that these are, for example, Iranian drones.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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In fact, I think the possibility they're Chinese drones is much more likely, given the fact that we know that China has been attempting to surveil American military sites. So this does raise the question, why don't we just shoot them down? Alejandro Mayorkas, whose job it is to clear this, he says, well, you know, it's the FAA. The FAA says we're not allowed to shoot them down.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Well, then just change the regulations and the procedures of the FAA. This one is not tough.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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So here's the problem with Mayorkas. I don't believe him at all. I don't think that he requires additional authority. I think that he's just a coward. I mean, that was certainly true, again, on the southern border where actual Mexican drug cartels were flying drones above my head. Okay, we all saw them. You can see them on tape. This is not speculation. It's just reality.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Meanwhile, one News Nation reporter named Rich McHugh, he says these drones are sophisticated. They're moving in directions that are sort of different than normal drones would.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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That doesn't mean that these are Chinese drones or Iranian drones or aliens or anything like that. Maybe it's just a bunch of people who are mistaking airplanes for drones. That's quite possible. The thing is, I don't actually trust the members of our government to tell us the truth, even if they knew the truth, because they have not in the past.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Again, not clear. All these drones are of the same make. Not clear exactly what they are. At this point, New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith, he says that some of the elusive maneuvering suggests military sophistication.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Now, again, that's a lot of speculation right there. But the problem is, do you believe anything Joe Biden tells you about this? or any of his designated people, considering that he himself is now probably comatose. New Jersey State Senator John Bramnick, he says something very similar. He says the feds clearly don't want to talk about all of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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I don't know what they are. You don't know what they are. Apparently, the government doesn't know what they are. Certainly, I do not believe members of the Biden administration when they say that they are giving the American people all of the information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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I don't trust the Biden administration for a whole wide variety of reasons, including, of course, the fact that they are extraordinarily pro-abortion. You know, this holiday season, as many are celebrating the gift of life, you do have an opportunity to share that same gift with the mother and her baby. Imagine a young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, feeling alone, unsure of what to do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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She's searching for hope. That's where Preborn Ministries comes in. When Valeria found out she was pregnant, she was beyond terrified. She'd often dreamt of being a young mom, but as a Christian and single, she now felt overwhelmed by shame and was seriously considering abortion. Valeria began the search for an abortion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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It was upon that search she called a nurse at a preborn network clinic who walked her through her options, including the true reality of ending a baby's life with the abortion pill. When she heard that, she knew she couldn't end her child's life. Valeria chose life and now has a beautiful little girl today. For just $28, you can help save a life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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According to CNN.com, mysterious flying objects overhead, concern and confusion and calls for military intervention. This isn't the plot of War of the Worlds, but rather the results of numerous unidentified possible drone sightings on the East Coast in recent weeks. The possible drones have been spotted over residential neighborhoods, restricted sites, and critical infrastructure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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And thanks to a special matching grant, your gift is doubled. Just $28 provides one ultrasound. $140 sponsors five. That means your $140 gift becomes $280, potentially helping 10 moms and their unborn children to donate. Dial pound 250, say baby. That's pound 250, baby. Or visit preborn.com slash ben. All gifts are tax deductible. Preborn has a four-star charity rating. Preborn.com slash ben.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Also, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and creates a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself to glorify God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With 350 academic programs as of June 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others, that's yours.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private. Christian. Affordable. Visit gcu.edu. Again, that's gcu.edu. I've been to their campus. It's a beautiful place. Wonderful student body. Go check them out right now. Grand Canyon University. Private. Christian. Affordable. Visit gcu.edu today. Okay, meanwhile, President Trump had himself a hell of a weekend.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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He went to the Army-Navy game along with Vice President Vance, as well as Daniel Penny. Daniel Penny, of course, has been released now that he's been acquitted by a jury in New York. Good for Trump and Vance for inviting Penny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Penny is, in fact, an American hero because the difference between, say, Daniel Penny and, say, the shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEOs, that Daniel Penny is not, in fact, a murderer. He was defending other people from incipient violence. That is the definition of heroism. He stepped in when no one else would. So that was great. And Trump and Vance hosted Daniel Penny.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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No Democrats, by the way, showed up at the Army-Navy game. No prominent Democrats, which is kind of amazing. Normally, the president of the United States shows up, but as we all know, the president of the United States is no longer the president of the United States, even if he is. J.D. Vance, the vice president, he tweeted, Daniel's a good guy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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New York's mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone. I'm grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he's able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage. Others who attended the game, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Also, there are other members of the political class, including Representative Mike Walz, who is the National Security Advisor of Choice by President Trump. as well as Pete Hegseth, the presumptive Secretary of Defense, President Trump's pick, and Tulsi Gabbard, the pick for Director of National Intelligence. So they all showed up. It was an amazingly patriotic event. It always is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Now again, if they're floating above residential sites, I tend to think that probably these are simply domestic drones, people who are hobbyists or something. But again, when you have large swarms of drones that are apparently flying near, for example, military bases in Virginia or New Jersey, I start to have some questions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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The enthusiasm was high because, let's face it, the American people are in a pretty good mood about President Trump taking over. It is not just Republicans acknowledging that simple fact, by the way. Democratic National Committee official Lindy Lee says it's pretty obvious at this point that Trump actually has momentum for the first time maybe in his political career having been elected.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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She is right about all that, and you can see it and you can feel it. Just adding to the momentum for President Trump is this hilarious story. ABC News has now been forced to pay $15 million to a presidential foundation and museum, the Trump Presidential Museum, which probably will be somewhere in Florida, might be over at Mar-a-Lago. Who knows?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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President Trump's Presidential Foundation Museum will be paid for in part by ABC News. Why? Well, because the settlement, which was filed publicly on Saturday, reveals the network will also pay $1 million in Trump's attorney's fees and will issue an apology.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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That is because back on March 10th, 2024, ABC News and George Stephanopoulos made statements regarding President Trump in an interview with Representative Nancy Mace.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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So Trump filed the lawsuit in Florida federal court earlier this year, arguing with Stephanopoulos and ABC News defamed him when Stephanopoulos said 10 times during an interview with Mace that a jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll, which of course is not true.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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In 2023, a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, but it did not find that Carroll proved that he raped her at all. A judge concluded in August 2023 when dismissing Trump's countersuit against Carroll that the claim that Trump raped Carroll was substantially true.

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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The judge wrote that Trump raped her in the broader sense of the word as people generally understand it, but not as it is narrowly defined by New York state law. So it simply was not true that the jury found that Trump had quote unquote raped E. Jean Carroll. Stephanopoulos went on the air and said it over and over and over and over. And it cost ABC News $15 million.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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Now there's some people who are saying this is a nuisance settlement. Okay, nuisance settlement is where people sue companies all the time. Literally all companies, we've been sued before. Like that sort of stuff happens all the time. And very often,

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Ep. 2105 - What The HELL Are All These Drones?!

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If the amount that you would pay to the attorneys is larger than the amount you would pay in the settlement, you just pay the settlement just to get rid of it, get it off the books. That happens all the time in the business world. We're a very litigious country.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

Well, folks, since I'm off for Passover today, I thought that you might enjoy the full interview that I did with Malcolm Gite. He's basically a hobbit who's an expert on Lord of the Rings, like a real expert on pretty much everything Lord of the Rings. It's an awesome interview. It's really enjoyable. And it's a nice break. Reverend Dr. Malcolm Gite, welcome to the show.

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Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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So my colleague Matt Walsh has been very critical of the movies, mainly along the lines of they're too long. And what I'm taking away from you is that they're definitely not long enough. Oh, no.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Yes. It's been a pleasure to have you here, especially to rebut my friend, Matt Walsh.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Well, I now know my plan for Friday night. So I really appreciate it, sir. Thank you for the time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Well, folks, hope you enjoyed that. We will also be releasing the full Critical Drinker interview about Lord of the Rings as well. So if you're looking for more of that kind of content, just let us know.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Really appreciate your time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, I need to continue to take care of myself this year, even with work being insane. I can't skip the gym. I need to make sure that I'm actually present when I'm with the family. I have to stay on top of maintaining my health. When I was younger, I believed that I could do that with sheer determination and coffee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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But experience taught me that achieving my best performance depends on proper nutrition, especially incorporating plenty of fruits and veggies into my diet. And here's the thing. I don't like fruits and veggies. So I'm very thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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I would have been able to tell that even if you had not told me, which I think speaks for itself. So let's talk about the books. So I will be frank with you that I've only read sections of the books, which is rare for me since I've read a lot of books. And the reason for that is probably Tom Bombadil and the first 150 pages of Fellowship.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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That sounds miserable and time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes the fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and your body knows precisely... What to do with them? They're kosher, so it means I pop those right into the protein smoothies and I'm good to go. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. So let's talk about sort of the setting of Lord of the Rings as far as when Tolkien was writing them, because obviously he's drawing from ancient mythology and he's creating his own languages, but he's also drawing a lot from contemporary politics. And so.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Well, I'm definitely going to start reading it with my kids right now. I have one who's 11 and one who's eight.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Tax season is now here and the IRS is turning up the heat. With the April 15th deadline fast approaching, now would be the time to act. If you've fallen behind on filing or you owe back taxes, delay will only make things worse. Every day you wait increases your risk and the consequences.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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So let's talk about the films and the books. Obviously the vast majority of people at this point who are familiar with Lord of the Rings, kind of in general popular culture, are familiar with it because of the films and the spinoffs. So what are people missing if they've only seen the films, which are really terrific? I think the films are great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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With over 5,000 new tax liens filed every day and powerful enforcement tools like property seizures, bank levies, and wage garnishments at its disposal, the IRS is applying pressure at a level we have not seen in years. Do not make the mistake of facing the IRS alone. Tax Network USA is here to help you take control. Whether your tax issue is $10,000 or 10 million bucks,

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Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Their team of skilled attorneys and seasoned negotiators has resolved over a billion dollars in tax debt using proven strategies. Their consultation is absolutely free. Do not wait for another letter or a surprise levy. Put a stop to the growing interest penalties and threats. Take back control of your finances. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. Tax season is here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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Don't wait for April 15th to make a move. Beat the IRS to it. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. That's TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. Don't fight the IRS alone. Check them out. TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. Let's talk for a second about the stuff that didn't make it into the movies. Obviously, Tom Bombadil did not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition

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But the biggest one that people talk about is the end of The Return of the King actually gets sliced out of the movie completely. Yeah, the scouring of the Shire. Right. The scouring of the Shire is not in the movie at all. So for folks who have not read the book, what is the scouring of the Shire? Should it have been in the movie? What do you make of the creative decision there?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

Well, folks, it's going to be a very big week. President Trump's nominees for his cabinet are going to get hearings this week, maybe votes this week. All the fallout from the fires in California for one time presidential contender Gavin Newsom. Plus, we're going to get into all of the controversy surrounding Andrew Tate. on the right. First, your reminder, get ready.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And he continues explaining exactly what Hustler University is. Again, he's making a lot of money off Hustler, not as much as he says he's making. Andrew Tate at one point said that he was going to be the world's first trillionaire and suggested that he was making something like $110 million per year. But when you actually dig into how much money he is worth...

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Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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He had suggested, for example, that he owned a chain of 15 casinos. The UK Guardian found that apparently not. It's tough to find out how much taste Romanian companies are actually worth. We can find tax returns for only one. Talisman Enterprises listed as a web portal business, which had 1.2 million pounds in debt. And so even many of the places he's declared are like his amazing castle in Italy.

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Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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These are places that you can rent for like 800 pounds a night. In any case, here was Coffeyzilla explaining the hustler's university grift of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Okay, what Alina Haba is saying there is not actually true about Andrew Tate. He is not of the same ilk as President Trump. Find me the person and I'll find you the crime. That is true of President Trump. That is not particularly true of Andrew Tate. And Russell Brand, of course, rushed to the defense of all of this.

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Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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pyramid scheme okay so there is a person who is actually quite wonderful online named Zach Bonfilio who goes by Misfit Patriot over on X and he put out a post saying Mad Guy has an Andrew Tate problem and it's a big effing problem y'all better wake the eff up and see what he's doing before he ruins everything we've worked for stop acting like a dog who finally caught the car we still have work to do and you're effing up and Andrew Tate then replied to that hello Jew this is who Andrew Tate is

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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He's a delight. By the way, big fan of Yahya Sinwar as well. So why exactly did the right embrace and rotate in the first place? Well, because there was a three-step process that took place on the right. First, in response to the left hating men, The right delinked strength from virtue. Virtue was supposedly the thing that made you a cuck, that made you unable to defeat the left.

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Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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What has conservatism conserved in order to defeat that? You have to do things that are not going to be virtuous. Then the right actually linked strength with transgressive behavior because the idea was that it took bad men to stop bad people, which sometimes is true. But then there was the final step.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Some on the right have now fallen into the trap of believing that so long as someone is purportedly anti-left, no matter what insanely non-conservative thing that person believes, from the wonders of sexual promiscuity and mistreating women to standing for Islamic jihadis, all of which Andrew Tate has done, you can commit literally any sin, up to and including being a pornographer, and be treated to applause.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Well, this has to stop because it's stupid and it's counterproductive and it is morally wrong. It turns out that in a reactionary world, the pendulum swings back and forth from wild, disgusting, terrible, radical feminism to sometimes wild and disgusting anti-woman trash. But there has always been in human life one constant. This is a conservative point. That constant? is virtue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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That's the constant. If you're covering for a self-described bad guy like Andrew Tate, you're doing it wrong. If you're traveling to Romania to let him lie about his grift and pretend to weigh his legal cases and act as though he's a paragon of masculine decency, you are participating in the lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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If you spend your days shouting correctly about the evils of pornography and sex trafficking, but not about Andrew Tate, you are, full stop, a fraud. And worse, if you're cheerleading Andrew Tate, that makes you an accomplice to what he's doing, not an open-minded person just seeking truth or asking questions. Well, to simplify, virtue actually matters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Russell Brand then suggested that anyone who objected to the treatment of Andrew Tate on the right, that they needed to sort of check their problems at the door. Here was what Russell had to say.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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But if you want to find a better way to simplify finance operations for your business in 2025, Ramp is a complete game-changer when it comes to managing your expenses, vendor payments, and accounting. If you're feeling trapped in financial busywork or you know your current systems aren't cutting it, this is for you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The news continues, Pace, the wildfire threat in Los Angeles remains very high. The death count has now risen to 24 from 16. That's what officials said on Sunday evening. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Santa Ana winds aren't done provoking the historic LA fires that have so far claimed at least two dozen lives.

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A wind advisory and red flag warning, which indicates extreme fire conditions, were in effect Sunday night with Santa Ana winds expected to move in by Monday and remain all the way until Wednesday. Apparently, the gusts could reach 45 to 70 miles an hour in certain parts of L.A. between Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. And that could make it harder to drop aerial retardant.

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It could accelerate the spread of the fires. There's a big problem in Altadena, which has largely been burned, which is in the Pasadena area. Also, the Palisades blaze continues to be extremely large. The containment of these blazes is not even remotely full. The Palisades blaze is only 14% contained. It's already burned almost 24,000 acres.

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That Palisades blaze, which is the one that you're seeing so much on the news, or you're not seeing as much about the Eaton blaze, which is the one around Pasadena. It really is amazing. If you know these areas, and again, I grew up in Los Angeles, so I know all these areas really, really well. If you look at the map, The astonishing extent of the Palisades fire, it's truly crazy.

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It's approaching Santa Monica in the south and it's moving along the coast all the way through Malibu. And in some cases, all the way up towards Santa Barbara. That's how far the fire map is moving. And again, a lot of that is sort of

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A preliminary attempt to prevent people from being caught by surprise because the idea is if the wind catches correctly, it's going to burn an enormous amount of the dead wood and barren trees that are out there in these areas. But if you look at the actual populated areas of Los Angeles, the evacuation warning zone is now including areas of Bel Air. It's moving all the way toward Beverly Glen.

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In the north of that particular fire, they've moved the evacuation warning area all the way up to Ventura Boulevard in Encino. It's approaching Sherman Oaks. I used to live in Studio City, which is kind of near that particular area. And then again, parts of Santa Monica are now under evacuation warning. Brentwood is under evacuation warning.

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Meanwhile, if you look at that Pasadena fire, the Eden fire, the evacuation warning area is now extending all the way out toward the outskirts of Glendale. It's already hit La Cunada Flint Ridge. These are massive, massive fires, truly massive fires. And so there's a conflation of events here, a confluence of events rather.

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That confluence of events is horrible wildfires, really, really high winds, enormous seasonal dryness, and of course, incredibly bad policy. Bad policy very often is only exposed when the cover sort of gets ripped off. It's sort of like a termite infested area. Until you actually break through the drywall and see the termite infestation, you don't realize how bad it is.

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The fire broke through the drywall and now you've seen the termite infestation and it is awful. Basically, the foundations of the entire governmental system in Los Angeles and California more generally have been eaten away at over the course of decades. So it's easy to find sort of excuses for why this particular reservoir was dry, for example. They had to let it out in order to fix it.

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Okay, the question is, why weren't there more reservoirs in the first place? And the answer is, California hasn't been in the business of building more reservoirs since like the 1960s and 70s. It's been a very long time. The transformers in the Los Angeles area date back in some cases to the 1920s.

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Los Angeles and California have been wildly underserved by a far-left progressive administration that has been in place for the past several decades, being ruled by environmentalists and redistributionist progressives. While the L.A.

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Fire Department chief got herself in trouble, Kristen Crowley did, because she did an interview where she pointed out that the budget cuts had made it difficult to actually fight the fires.

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So she's saying the quiet part right out loud. Karen Bass was apparently wildly furious at her and called her on the carpet to yell at her. The Atlantic, meanwhile, ran a piece titled, quote, How Well-Intentioned Policies Fueled L.A. 's Fires. Okay, who cares about the intent? This is such a difference between how the left and the right think about the world.

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The left thinks that well-intentioned policies are their own justification. If the intentions were good, it doesn't matter if LA burns, which is, of course, totally insane. Because it turns out that in pursuit of these well-intentioned policies, many, many bad things can be done.

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So the Washington Free Beacon, which does some of the best reporting in America, reports today, quote, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristen Crowley warned city officials in November that her department had about half as many firefighters as it needed. When deadly wildfires struck the city two months later, Mayor Karen Bass's administration pulled Crowley's memo from their website.

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Crowley wrote to the city's fire commissioners, a five-person board appointed by Bass on November 18th, and asked them to transmit the message to Bass and the city council. The fire department's size, she said, had not increased in decades despite significant population growth. Crowley said, in many ways, the current staffing, deployment model, and size of the LAFD have not changed since the 1960s.

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In 2022, Crowley said 61% of the department's firefighters failed to meet the four-minute first response time, which is a national firefighting standard. The National Fire Protection Association recommends cities like LA employ between 1.51 and 1.81 firefighters per thousand residents. In LA, that number was about half.

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Two months later, historic wildfires erupted and Crowley's memo magically disappeared from a city website. Why, shocking. I can't believe that they would make all of that disappear. Meanwhile, it turns out that pretty much every area of California law has been screwed up. Many people today are in desperate need of fulfillment from their fire insurance because their house got burned down.

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The problem is that California has spent decades attempting to destroy the entire fire insurance market by placing artificial regulations on pricing. And what that does is it drives out alternative pricing. It drives out programs that you can buy. It limits your availability of choice. It leads people to go uninsured.

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Okay, so I think that the way that some people are defending Andrew Tate today is a conflation of a couple of different ideas. So I think there is a big difference between having people on, have whoever you want on. That's totally fine. Free speech and all the rest. That's totally fine. And cheering on bad people who don't actually care about your principles. And Andrew Tate is the latter.

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According to the Cato Institute, in recent years, state price control regulations have driven private home insurance providers like State Farm and Allstate out of offering new products in the state and led to the non-renewal of thousands of existing home insurance policies.

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This has left many homeowners exposed to catastrophic financial losses from the recent wildfires and created a huge strain on the state-run Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, the insurer of last resort.

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California's price controls, where regulators must approve proposed premium increases, require insurers to submit detailed justifications for rate increases to the California Department of Insurance. Those companies had until recently to demonstrate that proposed premiums are based on historic losses, not analysis based on forward-looking risk assessments, which is insane, by the way.

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In exactly one week, we will be live on the ground in Washington, D.C. for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States. Watch live. Join the fight at dailywire.com slash subscribe. I want to start today with a controversy that erupted online, but is sort of indicative of a broader problem that the right currently has with, say, the influencer class.

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So apparently the insurance companies, in order to justify future price increases, had to say, here's what the fires have been like in the past. So you can't assess future risk. which is literally what insurance is there to do. This, by the way, is true across how Americans think of insurance. We think of insurance totally wrong. Insurance is designed to spec out future risk.

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It is not designed as a quote-unquote coverage plan. That is not what it is. This is true from health insurance to fire insurance to flood insurance. And the thing about insurance is if it's speccing out future risk, that means differential prices if you have a house in the middle of a forest in Malibu than if you're living in downtown L.A.,

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Designed to keep insurance premiums affordable through rates that are, quote, never excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory, these regulations led to rules preventing companies from recalibrating prices to fully reflect what they believed were higher future wildfire risks after 2017.

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The CDI rejected or delayed approval for substantial rate increases in many cases, creating a de facto price cap. Previous research showed average delay was now 293 days between 2020 and 2022, which is significantly worse than 157 days.

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In fact, California was the worst state in the country for rate suppression, having the biggest gap between actuarially indicated rate and the rate approved by regulators. And so what ended up happening there is that people just stopped buying their insurance and insurance stopped offering options because they knew they were going to have to pay out more than they were taking in.

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So they all get thrown onto the tax paradigm, as always. And by the way, Karen Bass continues along these lines. So Karen Bass put out a tweet yesterday saying that you should report price gouging in housing. So like a huge percentage of the housing stock in SoCal has now been burned down, which means more demand and less supply, which means the price naturally goes up.

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And instead, Karen Bass is like, report price gouging to me. Somebody's doing a capitalism. Stop. Well, how exactly are you going to allocate those housing spots if you can't increase the prices? You can't build anything new in California. The regulations are insane.

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So hilariously enough, Gavin Newsom is now attempting, the governor of California, to reverse field and campaign as a moderate Republican. We'll get to that in just one moment.

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First, when The Daily Wire released What is a Woman, it ignited a national conversation, but identity crisis takes it even further, revealing the raw, heartbreaking truth about the devastating impact of radical gender ideology on children and families. This powerful new film from The Daily Wire and Turning Point USA is streaming right now at Daily Wire+.

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Now, again, let me say right at the outset, I am not upset at all with anyone actually just interviewing Andrew Tate. Go for it. Have at it. There are tons of excellent questions to ask Andrew Tate, but none of these people are asking Andrew Tate any of those questions. Instead, a lot of people are sort of glomming onto his very online popularity in order to get clicks.

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Creating bold premium content like this is not easy. It's expensive. It's risky. But it is important. And that's why we rely on your support. Every buck you invest goes back into building a platform that challenges the cultural narrative. Join the fight today at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Get 25% off your new annual membership with code DW25.

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So in the face of his radical incompetence and his state burning down, California Governor Gavin Newsom is now attempting to reverse field on pretty much everything and pretend that he's a moderate Republican. Now he's running as Rick Caruso, the L.A. mayoral candidate who lost to Karen Bass. So first, he put out a statement that he's going to cut through red tape.

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Quote, just issued an executive order that will allow victims of the SoCal fires to not get caught up in bureaucratic red tape and quickly rebuild their homes. We're also extending key price gouging protections to help make rebuilding more affordable price gouging protections. This is what the left suggests is a solution. It is not a solution.

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The prices are going to go up because demand just went up and supply is still constrained. As far as the beginning where he says that he's going to cut red tape, why only for the people affected by the SoCal fires? Why are you leaving it in place for everyone else? I love how now you acknowledge the bureaucratic red tape in California is bad. By the way, it's absolutely terrible.

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Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, he says there will be zero, zero tolerance for looting during wildfires. Again, the question you should be asking yourself is, why is there tolerance for looting not during wildfires, Gavin?

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Well, I only have one question for you. Why did the state of California effectively decriminalize shoplifting in 2020, 2021? State law says stealing merchandise worth 950 bucks or less is a misdemeanor, according to Leo Hannion at Hoover, which means law enforcement won't bother to investigate. And if they do, prosecutors will simply let it go.

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So they're totally fine with mass looting during BLM. Totally fine with looting just on a regular basis. Just walk through a Rite Aid and steal everything in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Now, of course, it makes for bad headlines. So Gavin Newsom has to cover his ass. Gavin Newsom also says that they're going to reimagine how the state of California works.

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They're going to do the Marshall Plan 2.0. Now, he has no idea what that means. Literally none. He's asked about, so what do you mean by that? And he's like, well, we're thinking that. I'm glad you came up with a name for a thing, my dude. Really good job.

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And some people are dishonestly conflating interviewing Andrew Tate with cheering for Andrew Tate or applauding him or talking about how brave and wonderful he is. And Andrew Tate is not brave and wonderful. He rips off thousands of people with his scam hustlers university. He preaches the virtue of treating women in a way you would never ever allow anyone to treat your wife or your daughter.

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What a joke he is. He just did like a minute and a half without saying a single damn thing. He's asked, what is that Marshall Plan 2.0? And he proceeds to babble about synergy. We're talking to local leaders and civic leaders and philanthropic leaders about spending in the giant scale, but also on the particularly small scale. And then he starts doing like mime in a box.

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Like the hand motions are not a substitute for policy, my dude. That is a lot of hand motions. As a guy who talks with his hands a little bit, let me just tell you, that is some wild hand motioning. I mean, if you just scrub through that tape once again and watch the number of hand motions, when he panics, that dude goes right back to jazz hands training in middle school theater.

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He is just going for it. wow, that is a lot of hand motions. He really went through the full panoply. I'm kind of impressed. I'll be honest with you. I thought he was going to run out and then he would pull a new one. He'd be like over here and over here and pulling it down from, and then all the way from here and out here.

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And he is so awful, but he knows one thing and that's Donald Trump is the problem. That's the biggest thing, of course.

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Well, actually, what Senator John Barrasso said, Republican from Wyoming, correctly, is actually what we're going to do is we're going to attach some strings. Like, you actually have to clean up your forests if you want us to spend money on you, which makes some sense.

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It is just it is amazing that Gavin Newsom continues to try to pretend that he is somehow the responsible player in all of this. He's now turned into the online meme. We're all looking for the guy who did this. Who could it be? Oh, man. Or the Who Shot Hannibal meme. It really is. He's a living meme, Gavin Newsom. Well done, California.

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You guys have done yourselves proud with the people that you've elected. Well, meanwhile, President Trump's administration is preparing for its unveiling. That, of course, is going to begin next week. But we are going to get nominee hearings that begin this week because Congress has already been sworn in.

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That means it's time to have hearings for SecDef prospective Pete Hegseth, for Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, And one of the things that you're starting to see is that many of the Trump cabinet members are now starting to say things that are in the realm of the more reasonable. Why?

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No one is saying you can't have Andrew Tate on your show. It's a free country. You should do what you want. What I'm saying is that if you say you're conservative and then you have someone who truly is disgusting on and you proceed to tout them, praise them, not along to everything they say, cheer them, you're doing more than platforming, which again is fine.

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Because it turns out that the advice and consent process and the various constraints of American government tend to wash out most of the radicalism present from the right. Doesn't tend to work on the left because the left then staffs up in the administrative bureaucracy.

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But when it comes to some of the kind of wackier opinions held by a wide variety of members of sort of the Team Trump, those things are being moderated. which makes perfect political sense. So, for example, Tulsi Gabbard, who's been tapped to lead the U.S.

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intelligence community as director of national intelligence, had opposed originally Section 702 foreign surveillance authorities as a member of Congress that allows for metadata gathering and data gathering about foreign parties. And now she's reversed herself and she's going to support that. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made more noises about the kinds of things that he would.

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He says he'll give advisory opinions rather than issuing outright bans. Pete Hegseth has been avoiding some of the more controversial statements that he's made in the past, for example. And so it's not particularly shocking to watch all this happening. This is how government works.

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So, for example, again, Gabber told Punchbowl News on Friday she now supports Section 702 surveillance programs thanks to updated whistleblower and civil liberty protections. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma had said that if she reverses that, there's a good shot she gets confirmed. RFK Jr. told reporters on Capitol Hill last month, I'm all for the polio vaccine.

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And he said that he actually will pursue anti-abortion policies at HHS, despite being pro-choice himself. Hegseth has said that he supports all women serving in our military today, including in combat roles. Now, again, this is because so many of the Trump cabinet members want to work with President Trump. Trump's agenda is going to be the thing that actually rules the rooster.

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This is something Susie Wiles has made absolutely clear. And that's good. The same thing holds true, by the way, of Tom Homan, the out-of-central casting agent bloodhound who's going to track down illegal immigrants and deport them. So he is now the realist in the room, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Homan has spent the weeks following the election right-sizing Trump's sweeping campaign promise to arrest and deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.

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In private transition meetings and occasionally in public, he has emphasized that immigrants with criminal records should be the primary targets for arrest, a narrower set of people than the 15 to 20 million Trump pledged to go after.

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Homan also said the administration would not carry out intimidating sweeps of immigrant neighborhoods and that he's unsure how extensive the actual deportation campaign will be. He said, I keep getting asked the question, how many people are we going to remove in the first 100 days? I don't know. I don't know what the resources are that I'm going to have.

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Congress is going to have to give me funding. Homan says, I've worked for six different presidents. I've seen hundreds of policies come and go. I've seen what policies worked and what policies don't. Well, yes. Now, all the people who are set to be disappointed by the fact that the Trump administration actually has to operate in the real world, get ready.

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The Trump administration actually has to operate in the real world. And there's no reason to be disappointed about that. That's what happens when you win. When you win, it turns out that many of these sort of outlandish things that you say are not applicable in real life. So there's bound to be some disappointments.

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Platforming, the idea that you can never have a conversation. You can have a conversation with whomever you want, but there's a difference between having a conversation with a person and becoming a propagandist for that person.

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And I, for one, am pleased with the realism because I would prefer that things get done even if it's 70% of the pie that I want. This happens to hold true with regard to, for example, the January 6th arrestees. So J.D. Vance, the vice president-elect of the United States, he was asked... on Fox News Sunday about who President Trump would pardon day one with regard to January 6th.

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And he said the reasonable thing, which is people who are guilty of nonviolent offenses will be pardoned. People who did violent things against cops should not be pardoned. I know that a lot of people online were very angry about J.D. Vance saying that. I don't know why. If you assaulted a cop, it seems to me you should go to jail for whatever reason you assaulted the cop. Here's J.D.

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Vance saying, what is the rational and reasonable thing?

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OK, so again, what he's saying there is perfectly reasonable and rational. And there are people online who are, of course, going nuts. Everybody should be. They're all political detainees. I mean, some are and some assaulted cops. And that's not quite the same thing. Anyway, J.D. Vance saying the same thing with regard to Greenland.

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So he's asked, you know, Donald Trump has said that he's not going to rule out military intervention. And J.D. 's like, what are you talking about? Here's J.D. Vance talking about Greenland. Again, this is what rational politics looks like if you have a high IQ, which J.D. obviously does.

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If you're a person, for example, who purports to stand for biblical values or American values or traditional values, you probably have a moral obligation, not probably, you certainly have a moral obligation to ask Andrew Tate

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So, again, all of this is perfectly rational and perfectly reasonable. And that's true across the board in terms of how Donald Trump is approaching policy. So, for example, last week, the incoming Trump team said, you know, Donald Trump may not get a deal done in Ukraine day one, but it's going to get done in the first few months. There are going to be talks. It's going to be reasonable.

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That's right. Mike Walz is the incoming NSA congressman from Florida. He said, listen, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, they're going to have a talk.

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Well, it's also continued by saying, listen, it's not realistic to say that we're going to be able to expel every Russian from Ukraine as well. This has been true forever. The Biden administration acknowledges as much. It's just they refuse to actually create policy around reality.

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who is a self-stated bad man, hard questions about his actions and his beliefs and his past, not to, as so many on the right have, help him falsely rewrite his legal record or ignore all of the things he's actually said while nodding enthusiastically. See, here's the thing. Andrew Tate, now he's trying to play himself off as a politician. He's not. He's an influencer. He's a He's an online troll.

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Alrighty, so again, all of this is rational and reasonable, and that's what Trump 2.0 is going to be. There are gonna be a lot of moments where members of the Trump base are unhappy with the kind of deal Trump is cutting. Why? Because he's the actual president now and he has to get things done.

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It turns out getting things done means involving yourself in negotiations where you don't get 100% of everything, but you get most of what you want. There's gonna be a lot of that in Trump 2.0 with an incredibly slim House majority and an incredibly slim Senate majority as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Okay, meanwhile, we here at The Daily Wire, we have now announced and brought out a brand new documentary called Identity Crisis, all about the transgender movement, particularly directed at children. Well, joining us online is one of the people featured in the film Identity Crisis, Adam Vina. He lost custody of his son after he refused to affirm the child's quote-unquote transgender identity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Adam, thanks so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So why don't we start from the beginning of your story? How did things come to this point?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's really what he is. Now he's trying to start some sort of party in the UK, but he's not a conservative politician, for example, trying to push conservative policies where part of the job of the interviewer is separating out his agenda from his personal behavior. Like what does the public get out of this person versus what they do in their private life?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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So let's talk about what was going on with your son. I mean, obviously you're spending a lot of time with your son, but by the same token, did you ever see any signs that your son absolutely thought he was a girl or anything like that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So what do you think happened with his mother? I mean, why did all of this begin?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So is there still a restraining order in place? What is the current legal status?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, it's a horrifying story. Obviously, we wish you the best. Whatever help you need, we're happy to cover it. That's Adam Vina, the father of five-year-old Aiden who lost custody of his son after disagreeing with his girlfriend about the son's alleged transgender identity. Adam, thanks for telling your story. It's a really important one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is a question typically reserved for politicians. That's not what he is. He's an online troll and he revels in precisely the evil conservatives hate. That is his entire, like not some of it, his entire self-stated persona. If you don't ask about that, you're not doing your job as a conservative, as a traditional person, a person with actual values.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Folks, if you want to see the rest of that story, you want to hear more about that, you should go check out this brand new documentary, Identity Crisis. It's a project of The Daily Wire as well as TPUSA, and that is available over at Daily Wire Plus right now. All righty, coming up, there are some on the right who bizarrely are now trying to defend TikTok, even though it's obviously a Chinese op.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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If you're not a member or become a member, use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Now, listen, I understand the appeal of Andrew Tate. I get it. I've seen his stuff. He's really charismatic. And for decades, the hatred of traditional masculinity in our society has been so strong, so thoroughgoing throughout the media, throughout politics, from our institutions, from our colleges, everywhere, that people...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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including people on the right, have run away from traditional masculinity altogether. And they've sort of feminized what masculinity is supposed to be. Young men for at least a generation, maybe two, have basically been told they were useless at best and toxic at worst. And that leaves a giant vacuum, a vacuum for somebody who can sort of cosplay masculinity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And Tate fills that vacuum with his form of masculinity. But masculinity has good iterations, and it also has really, really ugly iterations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And the iteration that Andrew Tate pushes is not a responsible masculinity, a traditional masculinity that is all about channeling the sort of testosterone-fueled side of man into protecting women and children and civilization and building good things, but the kind of masculinity that tears everything good down. It's a barbarian masculinity that is interested in destroying rather than building.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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This controversy erupted because Benny Johnson had on Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate, for those who don't know, is an online provocateur. He is mostly famous for one time being a kickboxer, and now he sort of runs around with his shirt off with fancy cars and good-looking women and smokes cigars and says some things that are sort of useful critiques of the left, but mostly says crazy stuff online.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Now, Andrew Tate plays a WWE heel. He knows it. I mean, he's not making any bones about this. He released a video yesterday, a very long 21-minute video, rambling video, sitting in a jacuzzi in cold weather, smoking a hookah, and basically saying that he wants to be the most hated man on earth and that he makes money off of that. And he's telling the truth about that. That part is true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But here is the thing. Andrew Tate is, at best, a crap sandwich. He presents totally differently to different audiences. So for people, sort of traditional people on the right, when he's in interviews with them, he will present as a sort of low-rent, anti-feminist talking head. Doesn't know much, but he's saying the things that need to be said, bashing left-wing wokeism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And then, to the crazier side of the internet, he'll present as an anti-Semitic radical who's willing to violate any taboo for the fringes. And then when he's sitting down with someone actually conservative, he'll pretend he's an upstanding person who cares about family values and that he's been out of the sort of sex cam business for a while. In the end, what he really is is a con artist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And he's actually kind of an evil con artist. Not kind of, if you believe the allegations against him, and there are lots of them, an actually evil con artist. Even if you just believe the stuff he said about himself, what he says is evil. He made his money off of cam girls, which is to say pornography. He is a pornographer. He is a self-professed pimp and pornographer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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He made his money grooming women for the sex industry. Now, all the people on the right who are very upset, correctly, about the grooming gangs in Britain are going to have to explain why they're okay with his grooming gang. Here is Andrew Tate explicitly explaining his method. Now, he claims it's all a joke, but it's not a joke. He literally made millions of dollars doing this thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Okay. Now, if you know anything about the grooming gang scandal in Britain, that's exactly what the grooming gang scandal is. That's exactly what it is. They took underage girls. They would convince these young girls that the girls were in love with them. And then they would pass them around their group of friends for money.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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That's exactly what happened in the grooming gangs trials in the UK, which is a massive scandal internationally as it should be. But I guess for Andrew Tate, then if you confess to doing things like this on tape, like he just said, then morally it's somehow okay because you're anti-woke or something. Well, folks, politically, things are changing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You voted big government out and efficient government in. Well, now it's time to trim some fat from big wireless. If you're still on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, why would you do that? I personally use PeerTalk. I can tell you, it gives me the exact same service on the exact same towers with better customer service because they're based right here in the U.S. all for 50% of the cost.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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I've been using PeerTalk myself for years at this point. I got to tell you, their coverage is excellent. It works pretty much everywhere I could possibly want it to work, and I'm spending a lot less money. I know what you're thinking. There's simply no need to spend $85 or $100 per person on your wireless bill.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Now when I can tell you firsthand, you'll get unlimited talk text, 15 gigs of data with mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. I've seen it myself. The average family of four saves about $1,000 a year with Pure Talk while enjoying America's most dependable 5G network. So cut the fat out of your wireless bill. Switch on over to Pure Talk. Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage with Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Why pay the big wireless guys when instead you can spend less money on Pure Talk? Go check them out right now. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Save an additional 50% off your first month. Also, it's a brand new year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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And he has generated an enormous following, an enormous following. So Benny Johnson had on Andrew Tate. And he also had on at the same time, Alina Habbo, who is a counsel for the Trump team. And Alina Habbo was really praising Tate and so was Benny Johnson. And this erupted into a controversy. Here's what that sounded like.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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As a business owner, you can also invite top candidates for your job to apply sooner, helping them stand out from the crowd in any job market. Here's to a new year of hiring made easier with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address. Try ZipRecruiter for free.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. Go check them out right now. Try them for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. Hey, the latest in terms of his legal situation is according to the BBC.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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He's been placed under house arrest by a Romanian judge as prosecutors investigate new and serious allegations, including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons. The allegation, by the way, is that he did exactly the same thing that the grooming gangs did with a 15-year-old girl. Prosecutors had asked the judge to remand the brothers in custody for 30 days.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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That would be him and his brother Tristan. while they continued a new investigation involving a total of 35 alleged victims, including a woman who was 15 at the time. In a statement, Romania's agency against organized crime, DICOT, said six people had been detained in total, both Romanians and foreigners.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He, of course, says that 30 of these girls say we've done nothing wrong, which, again, that's not actually super rare in sort of grooming cases. That's actually the original perspective of many of the girls who actually were groomed in Great Britain by the grooming gangs. Two are the mothers of our children. Two have never even been here to Romania.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Asked repeatedly by the BBC about the allegations of sex with a 15-year-old girl and trafficking underage persons, he walked away and refused to reply. Now, these are new and separate allegations from the old allegations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The anti-organized crime agency in Romania says the accused were grooming vulnerable people who were then housed in different locations and forced to produce pornographic material for online broadcast. One of the foreign men is accused of forcing a 17-year-old foreign citizen to perform sexual acts in order to make online video content.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He's said to have kept all the $1.5 million in profit the statement does not name him. That same man is accused of repeatedly having sexual relations with a girl who was 15 years old when they met. And actually, there's a fair bit of tape of the girl talking about when she met Andrew Tate, allegedly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And if that tape is in any way correct, and if his own statements on tape are in any way correct, she was underage at the time. Some of the other allegations from the new allegations that are being brought include rape. According to the actual case that's being brought, quote, Okay, the... These are pretty significant accusations. Now, maybe it's all lies. Maybe all of it is lies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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But the problem is that he said a lot of things like this on tape. So we'll have to see how that goes. And again, it's not just trials in Romania that are happening. There is also legal considerations in the UK. In March, both of the Tates were taken into custody in Romania on a new European arrest warrant issued by the British authorities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2115 - The Right Should DUMP Andrew Tate

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Those charges related to the arrest were made between 2012 and 2015 and include allegations of sexual aggression. The Bedford trial police in England said at the time they were working with the authorities in Romania on investigation into allegations of rape and human trafficking as well. So they're in a legal snafu.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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At the very least, the stuff that he has said himself on these matters is pretty terrible. He is currently going on trial in Romania for both sex trafficking and rape, all while supposedly running for prime minister of Great Britain in order to stop radical Muslim grooming gangs. He is a Muslim. He's a self-stated Muslim.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And according to his own statements, he was involved in grooming girls for pornography. This again, according if his own statements about himself, I'm not saying it. He's saying it. Here's Andrew Tate talking about exploiting women.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And Nathan Livingstone, who's kept tabs on this, has put together a lot of these videos that we're using right here. Now, Tate has then claimed in interviews with conservatives that he stopped his webcam business long ago, like super long. He stopped his webcam business technically in about 2022. It's not that long ago, as you may know.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And apparently he stopped his webcam business when he found a new grift, the thing he calls Tate University or Hustlers University, which is effectively... a multi-level marketing scheme that is designed to spread social media awareness of Andrew Tate. That's basically what it is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So CoffeeZilla, who does investigations into sort of these MLMs and pyramid schemes, he did an entire investigation into Tate and what Tate does with his operation. Here's him explaining.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

Alrighty, folks, just a firehose of news over the weekend. President Trump cutting a brand new tariff deal with China, and it's turning the markets around. Plus, Idan Alexander, the last remaining American hostage in Gaza, released by Hamas at the behest of the Trump administration. Of course, I know the Alexander family. We'll talk about that. Plus...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is not Israel's unwillingness to end the war that is leading to hostages being taken. That's like blaming the police for the kidnappers not releasing the hostages. No, actually, that's up to the kidnappers. Kamas could end the war today. They could have ended the war October 6th. It never had to happen in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, all of this is part and parcel of broader negotiations happening over the Iranian nuclear program. According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States said it was encouraged by talks with Iran on Sunday after a meeting. But the two sides remain divided on key questions, including whether Tehran will be allowed to enrich its own uranium. Well, I mean, that is the key question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is not one key question. That is the key question. The United States should have no interest in a deal with Iran where Iran continues to develop nuclear missiles. That is ridiculous. Anything that allows them the capacity to continue to develop nuclear materials, which can then be tied to their ballistic missile program, is insane. The United States should not be party to that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That is the JCPOA. That is the thing that Donald Trump labeled the worst deal in history. The United States should not be conceding points to the Iranian government. Again, Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arahi met for three hours in the Omani capital of Muscat in their fourth round of negotiations since April 12th. After the meeting, the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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cast the latest talks mediated by Omani officials as positive and said the diplomacy would continue in the near future. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said talks were difficult but useful in better understanding the U.S. position. Now, again, Iran has another goal in these talks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So presumably that means really it's not a 10% tariff, it's a 30% tariff, which again, looks more rational. As I've said from the beginning, when it came to tariffing China, going after China as an actual geopolitical opponent is necessary. This is the thing that President Trump did in term one that was absolutely necessary. And

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If they can't get a bad deal from the Trump administration, and again, I have faith that President Trump is not going to cut JCPOA Part 2. It would be a rejection of his own legacy. If Iran has another goal, it is delay. And a delay for Iran is as good as a deal. In October, the JCPOA period ends. At that point, they can simply rush to a bomb. Now, they could just rush to a bomb right now as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They could simply violate whatever is left of the JCPOA. And they could rush to a bomb. Herein lies the problem. Right now, there is a window of opportunity for anyone who wishes to end the Iranian nuclear program. That window of opportunity exists because Israel eviscerated a few months back Iran's entire air defense program. So the skies over Iran are totally clear right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Not only that, but Iran still has not developed retaliatory capacity that would deter action by, say, Israel. If Iran is capable of standing the Israelis down by negotiating with the United States for prolonged periods of time, that is their win. Simply the negotiations being dragged out over a lengthy period of time is something the Iranians are going for pretty clearly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The two sides are still very far apart on the question of whether Iran gets to retain its nuclear enrichment program. Witkoff has sent mixed messages himself because he has no expertise in any of these issues. He set out what he called clear U.S. red lines that Iran can't have an enrichment program under a deal, nor should it have any centrifuges, which enrich uranium.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then Iran came back and said they would never accept any such terms. President Massoud Peshikian, who again is a stand-in for the mullahs, said Iran has never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons, but it will not back down from its peaceful nuclear rights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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After Sunday's talk, Arachi said Iran was open to adjusting the amount of enrichment it does and the purity of the material being produced for a limited period as a confidence-building measure. But he said there is no room for discussion about Iran's continued domestic enrichment. So what exactly is Iran giving away that makes Steve Witkoff and company optimistic in any way?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Again, this is just so Iran can delay. And if President Trump doesn't want to bomb Iran, which again, he has set out as sort of binary. There's a third option here, by the way, which is that the United States maintains maximum pressure on Iran. And then Israel goes and attacks the Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I think that is actually the most likely outcome here if I'm just gaming out the possibilities for the next several months. With all of that said, all of this ties into broader Middle Eastern negotiations that are happening over everything from the Abraham Accords to the release of hostages to the future of the Gaza Strip to what's happening in Iran.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, all of this crosses paths, obviously, with President Trump's visit to the Middle East this week. The biggest story in terms of the media coming out this week is a story reported by ABC News, among others, that the Trump administration is now preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It is a $400 million gift available for use by President Trump as new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time, according to the deal, the plane doesn't stay with the United States government. It then moves to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. According to ABC News, the gift had been expected to be announced when President Trump was on his visit to Qatar.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Everybody seemed to buy into on the right and left in the United States. I've talked to many, many Democrats who have acknowledged that Trump was right to reset the table with regard to China. So attempting to box China in with regard to trade, attempting to create a divide in the world such that third party countries move toward the United States and away from China. That is a good thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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A senior White House official said it's not going to happen in Qatar anymore, presumably thanks to social media blowback.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social about the blowback saying, so the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge with 747 aircraft to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the crooked Democrats. They insist we pay top dollar for the plane. Anybody can do that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Dems are world-class losers, MAGA. So again, the arrangement itself is, shall we say, I believe the technical term, the legal term is skeezy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Sources told ABC News that lawyers for the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for the Defense Department, concluding it's legal for the DOD to accept the aircraft as a gift and then later turn it over to the Trump Library. And that somehow does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition on emoluments.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Constitution literally says the U.S. government cannot accept official gifts from any king, prince or foreign state. Apparently, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the top White House lawyer, David Warrington, concluded it would be legally permissible for the donation of the aircraft to be conditioned on transferring its ownership to Trump's presidential library before the end of his term.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And apparently, Pam Bondi, who it should be mentioned at this point was once an actual FARA-registered agent acting on behalf of the government of Qatar, provided a legal memorandum addressed to the White House Counsel's Office last week after Warrington asked her for advice on the legality of the Pentagon accepting such a donation. We'll get to more on that in a second.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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Also, if you're the owner of a growing business the way that we are, imagine a hiring approach similar to speed dating. However, instead of meeting potential romantic partners, you'd meet multiple qualified job candidates in a single scheduled session. Granted, speed dating is not actually pleasant, but people do like hiring qualified candidates quickly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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Right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Zip Intro transforms your hiring process with our streamlined approach to candidate assessment. Just select a convenient time slot. We can handle everything else. finding qualified candidates, and managing all the scheduling logistics on your behalf.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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Reshoring critical industries away from China toward third parties or toward the United States is a very good thing. But if you're going to do this, you need to do it in rational fashion. That means gradually escalating tariffs on China such that manufacturers actually have time to move out of China before the door is slammed shut on them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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You maintain complete control over which applicants you'd like to meet. The best part? You could be connecting with promising talent as early as tomorrow through their efficient back-to-back video call format. It's hiring made remarkably simple. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro, only from Zip Recruiter, rated number one hiring site based on G2.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!

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Try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Again, at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire. Zip Intro, post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Let's start off with this. Qatar is not allegedly giving President Trump a $400 million jet out of the goodness of their sweet little hearts, no matter what Special Envoy Steve Woodcuff says.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They try to stuff money in pockets in totally bipartisan fashion. Just rewind a few years. While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Qatar gave a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation for Bill Clinton's birthday. And didn't even bother to inform the State Department, as they promised they would do. So, again, Qatar will court anyone it thinks will have power, Republican or Democrat.

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It's an equal opportunity influencer. As long as you can help whitewash their image or smooth over the fact that they are, in fact, the world's largest proponents of terrorism on an international scale in terms of PR and in terms of putting money in pockets. Qatar likes to present a modern Western friendly face while shoveling money to Islamic terrorists under the table.

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This is a regime that has, for literally decades, funneled billions of dollars into the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban. We're talking about systematic, ongoing financial support that has strengthened Hamas's grip on Gaza, provided them with the resources, and yes, enabled terror attacks that killed innocent civilians.

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Doha, which is the capital, their five-star hotels, are basically a retirement home for Hamas leaders. Qatar has been credibly accused by the Treasury Department, by international watchdogs, by regional allies of allowing financiers of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood to operate within its borders.

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This is a country that has repeatedly failed to crack down on terrorist financing, even after being pressured by the United States and its neighbors. In 2017, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, quote, I don't know instances in which Qatar aggressively goes after networks of Hamas, Taliban or al Qaeda.

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Qatar has, of course, transferred almost two billion dollars to Hamas over the years, which, again, is one of the reasons it's so sick to send you down, Alexander, to meet with the emir of Qatar if that's a thing that ends up happening. Here is the former Saudi foreign minister, again, not Westerner, Saudi foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir, explaining the problems with Qatar.

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You actually need to reshore critical supply chains like rare earth minerals in order to ensure that we aren't just deprived of the things that we need in the United States in order to compete with China. You need to cut better trade deals with everybody around China so that they don't orient toward China and away from us. And you need to build up the U.S. Navy. We didn't do any of those things.

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Again, that's the Sauds. So how does Qatar excuse all of this? Well, Qatar simply says they don't actually consider terrorist groups to be, you know, terrorists. Here is the Emir of Qatar saying as much back in 2014.

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Okay, so some of the groups they don't consider to be terrorists would be, you know, like all the ones we mentioned, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban. Qatar essentially plays both sides of the table. They say they should be given leeway because they're the negotiation point for the West and terrorist groups.

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But then Qatar helps fund and house those terrorist groups, as well as doing the bidding of Iran. You know who says this, actually? President Trump. There was President Trump on Qatar in June 2017.

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Okay, well, how does Qatar combat these allegations? The answer is they spread the money everywhere, everywhere. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, Qatar is by far the single largest donor to American universities since 9-11. By far, it's not close. You want to talk about foreign influence operations? This would be that.

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They're not doing that because they're so sweet and nice. Why exactly would they sign these giant checks unless they got something in return? Here's the prime minister of Qatar this week explaining to the Georgetown Doha campus. Yes, Georgetown has a campus in Qatar that the service of Qatar had to be their guiding light as part of a greater national project on behalf of Qatar.

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all about that Qatari jet, that $400 million Qatari plane that they want to give to President Trump and his presidential library. First, the news moves fast. Bad news moves fastest of all. Every day, it gets harder to tell what's real, what's manufactured to control and discourage us. The world doesn't need more noise. It needs more facts. That's why starting today,

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We just sort of ran into the room, threw 145 percent tariff on the table and ran out of the room while simultaneously slapping other countries with a rubber chicken. It turns out that was not exactly a great trade policy. The good news is, as I have said all along with President Trump, President Trump lives in the world of reality. If the headlines are bad, he responds.

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Okay, so what exactly is he saying? He says they represent, they're churning out people who work for Qatar. Okay, the greater national project doesn't end at Qatar's borders. Their influence matters. That is why Georgetown University, which has a branch in Doha, just gave a medal to a Qatari royal who praised Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, after October 7th.

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Qatar is also the home of Al Jazeera, the pro-terrorism media network that spreads anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic bile across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Qatar Investment Authority the QIA, controls, according to the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, between $500 billion and a trillion dollars in assets.

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And they use those assets to put themselves in positions of influence. So, for example, in August 2023, the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund bought the Park Lane Hotel in New York for $623 million. Okay. The company was owned by Steve Witkoff's company. The company had been in limbo.

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Park Lane Hotel was in limbo for six years following the attempted seizure of the hotel by the DOJ thanks to corruption charges against one of the original owners, a guy named Lo Take Joe. So when Steve Witkoff says that he really, really likes the Qataris, well, I mean, he does have some warm relations with the Qataris.

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taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest. That's not America first. Like please define America first in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals who are behind Al Jazeera. It just isn't America first in any conceivable way. So back to the original question. Is this good for President Trump?

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Is it good for his agenda? Is it good for draining the swamp and getting things done? The answer is no, it isn't. It isn't. If you want President Trump to succeed, this kind of skeezy stuff needs to stop. And here's the thing. It's already having an impact. It's already having an impact. Quick example. Last week, the Senate considered a procedural vote on the so-called Genius Act.

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This is an act that should have had wide bipartisan support. The Genius Act helps deregulate the crypto industry, an area that's vital for America's economic development. As you all know, I'm a big fan of crypto. I own Bitcoins and Ethereum. If you want to watch me explain why crypto is fascinating and useful, check out my YouTube video on the subject.

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And I know a ton of people in the crypto industry who've been ecstatic about President Trump's deregulatory approach to the subject, which is awesome. But the bill was shot down last week because, at least in part, Democrats said they wouldn't vote for the thing because of President Trump's use of crypto himself.

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You all remember President Trump launching dollar sign Trump crypto three days before taking office as president. Trump himself announced the Trump crypto on X. And Truth Social, he described it as a meme coin, meaning it had no inherent value. It was just there for the kind of bleeps and giggles.

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If the stock market doesn't seem to be doing what he wants it to do, he responds. So long as good information penetrates whatever echo chambers around him, he will, in fact, respond to incentives. It's one of the things that made him a successful president in term one. It's the thing that will make him a successful president in term two. He might start off with a bad idea from, say, Peter Navarro.

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The price spiked to a trading value of nearly $13 billion, making it the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency on planet Earth. And then it proceeded to plummet, like really, really dive. The project allegedly netted people associated with it, meaning the Trump organizations associated with the Trump crypto, some $350 million.

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80% of the outstanding supply of that meme coin is still held by insiders, presumably members of the Trump organization. Overall, according to data shared with CNBC, there were 2 million wallets that bought that Trump meme coin. 764,000 of them lost money. 58 wallets made more than 10 million bucks.

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And then in April, that Trump meme coin announced that the top 220 holders of the meme coin would be invited to an intimate private dinner with President Trump at his golf club. The top 25 were invited to a VIP White House tour.

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According to Bloomberg News, 19 of the top 25 holders of that Trump meme coin that have registered on the website's leaderboard have bought the coins using foreign exchanges that claim to exclude U.S. customers, which means that foreigners are buying a lot of the meme coin and then getting meetings with President Trump and VIP White House tours and all the rest.

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This raises the question of influence peddling. If you basically buy a bunch of Trump meme coin and then funnel money to organizations associated with President Trump so that you can have dinner with Trump, that doesn't look great. Democratic senators, of course, immediately announced that they wanted an ethics probe.

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They sent a letter saying, quote, this latest action raises grave ethics and legal concerns, including the severe risk that President Trump and other officials may be engaging in pay to play corruption by selling presidential access to individuals or entities to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interest in federal action while personally enriching the president's

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and his family. It might be overstated, but let's be clear, some people do seem to be investing in the Trump meme coin for the access. I mean, there is literally a CEO of a company called Freight Technologies that just bought $20 million worth of Trump meme coin, which I gotta say is not like the most solid investment. What was the explanation?

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Quote, we believe the addition of the official Trump tokens are an excellent way to diversify our crypto treasury and also an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the United States. It's like to impact policy. Again, not the least skeezy thing I've ever heard. Now, listen, maybe all of this is overblown. Maybe it's all nonsense.

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Maybe some of it's not true. And I understand some of it's being reported by legacy media outlets. But again, here is the question. Does any of this help advance the president's agenda? You know, the agenda that we all voted for, the agenda we want to see implemented. Does this make his presidency stronger or weaker? Now I'm going to repeat again.

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I don't know whether this activity is criminal in any way, but things do not have to be criminal to hurt the agenda. If you want President Trump's agenda to succeed, taking jets from Qatar is not the way. Taking real estate deals from Qatar is not the way. The largest obstacle to any administration is scandal.

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From Watergate to Whitewater, scandal-plagued administrations have a really tough time gathering the political capital necessary to actually effectuate their agenda. And that's why it's unbelievably important that the Trump administration avoid scandal. That is the reason I'm worried about this stuff. Yes, I think inherently it is bad. I do not think this is good.

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But if it turns out that that bad idea has real-world ramifications that damages presidency, then he moves away from that bad idea. That's what's happening with regard to China. The tariffs aren't going away with regard to China, but they are being dramatically lowered with regard to China. Beijing is going to cut its own retaliatory levies on U.S. goods to 10% from 125%. The U.S.

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I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right.

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Let's say if Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet for his use at his presidential library after his presidency, or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Antony Blinken and then launched a series of crypto products in which mysterious strangers, including foreigners, were investing, all while that crypto firm was being regulated by Joe's administration, we'd all have been pretty upset on the right.

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We might've said that it was worthy of some coverage. Now, as I say, again, it could be all of these reports, all of them. Maybe it's all just a misreading of perfectly innocent business. Sure. It's possible. But the point is this. President Trump has enemies all over the place. He has people seeking to take advantage of their proximity to his power.

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He has media outlets that would love nothing better than to set him up for another impeachment. And I promise you, I promise you, if these issues begin to dog his administration, Republicans will lose Congress. It's that simple. Republicans are this close to losing Congress anyway. And then whatever President Trump hopes to do, whatever agenda we all voted for will be DOA.

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The investigations will never end. There will be more impeachments. All of that will happen. The administration's policy is too important for this sort of activity. President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.

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President Trump was elected based on the American people being sick and tired of the swamp, tired of Hunter, tired of the Clintons, tired of the Biden crime family. Why in the world would President Trump be well served by this sort of vulnerability?

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Again, more importantly, why would those of us who voted for him, who gave to his campaign, who stumped for him, campaigned for him, be well served by this? The answer is we aren't. And that's why it needs to stop. Get some more on this in a moment. First, give your family the peace of mind they deserve with Policy Genius Life Insurance. So here's the thing. We're all going to die.

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Their licensed experts are with you every step of the way, answering questions, handling paperwork, advocating for you so you can get the coverage you need and get back to living your life. Check life insurance off your to-do list in no time with Policy Genius.

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Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. All right, another big economic news. President Trump had announced last week that he had a huge announcement coming. And again, there was a lot that happened over the weekend.

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There was the China trade deal and there was the Adan Alexander release. And then there was this whole story about the Qatari jet and all that. But The big story that he was talking about was an executive order designed to lower the price of pharmaceuticals. So here's what he said.

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He put out a statement on Truth Social says for many years, the world has wondered why prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals in the United States of America were so much higher in price than they were in any other nation, sometimes being five to 10 times more expensive than the same drug manufactured in the exact same laboratory or plant by the same company.

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It was always difficult to explain and very embarrassing because, in fact, there was no correct or right answer. The pharmaceutical drug companies would say for years it was research and development costs and that all these costs were and would be for no reason whatsoever borne by the suckers of America alone.

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says that the reductions are going to last for 90 days while the talks continue. But let's be real about this. They're not going away. Whenever President Trump says that there's going to be a break in the tariff regime, the idea they're going to snap back in 90 days to 125, 145%. Again, the Treasury Secretary said last week that was unsustainable, so it's not going to be sustained.

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Campaign contributions can do wonders, but not with me and not with the Republican Party. We are going to do the right thing, something the Democrats have fought for many years. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that tomorrow morning in the White House at 9 a.m., I will be signing one of the most consequential executive orders in our country's history.

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Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30 to 80 percent. It will rise throughout the world in order to equalize. And for the first time in many years, bring fairness to America. I'll be instituting a most favored nation's policy whereby the United States will pay the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the world.

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Our country will finally be treated fairly. Our citizens' healthcare costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before. Additionally, on top of everything else, the United States will save trillions of dollars. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Make America great again. Okay, so there are a few things he's trying to do here. One is he's trying to find savings.

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in the big beautiful tax bill that do not require cuts to Medicaid. And one of the big issues with the quote-unquote big beautiful tax bill is the question of where cuts are coming from that Republican Congress people want to make the tax cuts quote-unquote deficit neutral. And so some of the questions have been, are they coming from Medicaid?

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And so what he's saying is we're going to lower the price of Medicaid without cuts because we are going to allow Medicaid to basically tie the price that it pays to the pharmaceutical companies for pharmaceuticals to the lowest possible price, like whatever price Sierra Leone is paying or whatever. Make no mistake, this is a backdoor price control. It is not in any way a free market policy.

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What we actually should be doing, and this is something that President Trump should be doing with regard to his tariff policy, is forcing other countries to pay a higher price for the medications that are produced in the United States. The way that things currently work is that foreign countries negotiate on behalf of their nationalized health care systems with the pharma companies.

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And they basically say, we're not going to buy any of these drugs unless we're paying X number of dollars. And that X number of dollars is like 30, 20 percent of what the actual price in a free market system would be. And so American consumers essentially pay the other end of that. American consumers are overpaying because all these other countries are underpaying.

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And President Trump is totally right that that is absolutely unfair. But the thing to do is to get other countries to pay more. Other countries should be absorbing more of the cost. We could be using the tariff war that he has waged on pretty much every country in order to get them to more fairly allocate resources for drug purchase from the United States. Because the problem is this.

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If you artificially destroy whatever profit margins exist for the pharma companies, you just won't get drugs developed. It's that simple. R&D costs a fortune. The vast majority of drugs that are developed in R&D never make it to market. They fail out in phase two, phase three of the FDA trials. Most never even make phase three.

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They're billion, literally tens to hundreds of billions of dollars that get spent every year by pharmaceutical companies and other companies in order to develop things that never come to fruition. It's a very high risk, it's very high risk investment product, biotech. and pharma.

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We're not going back to those tariff rates. Now, again, this is starting to look much more like a rational trade policy. The markets, of course, spiked because everybody in the markets was looking for some sort of off-ramp here. They're trying to figure out exactly what President Trump is doing on trade. Now, I think the markets are spiking a little bit much. What I mean there is that

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And that means it needs to be high reward on the other end, because otherwise, why would you sink that much money into the development of these new pharmaceuticals, for example? If you destroy the profit margin, you just won't get R&D. There's a reason that over 50% of all pharma patents are filed in the United States.

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We're the home of that stuff because they can generate profit in the United States in a way they cannot in the UK or in France, Germany, or Canada. It also means that American consumers bear the brunt of these brand new drugs. Now, over time, as these patents expire, as generics come on the market, the markets move toward the generics. That is a reality.

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And so, for example, the idea that Americans wildly overpay for drugs, just generally speaking, Americans wildly overpay for brand new drugs that are cutting edge. That's true. But the truth is the vast majority of medication that we actually consume is not cutting edge brand new R&D drugs. Here, for example, is a chart about what Americans pay for drugs. And what this chart shows is

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is that 91% of drug purchases in the United States are not for brand name drugs. We pay 422% higher prices for brand name drugs than do other members of the OECD, the other developed countries. However, when it comes to generic drugs, we pay 67%. of what gets paid in the OECD.

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So when you actually weight the average, what you find is that the United States overall actually pays less for drugs than comparable countries do. We pay more for the cutting edge drugs because those are being produced in the United States and other countries are basically free riding off the back of that.

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Generic drugs, because we have a free market system, generic drugs are really cheap here compared to generic drugs in say Canada or the UK, France or Germany. And so because the vast majority of drugs we consume are generic drugs and not brand name drugs, that means overall we actually pay less for drugs. So why is it that the United States pharma spending is out of control?

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The answer is we consume an awful lot of medicine in this country. We consume an enormous amount of medicine. We are fat. This is something that obviously the Make America Healthy Again movement has focused in on. We're fat. We eat crap. We don't exercise. And then we try to heal ourselves on the back end with drugs.

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So we take many, many more drugs than people who are living in Canada, France, UK, Germany. Now, what do you do about that 422% overage when it comes to brand name pharmaceuticals? The answer is you force other countries to pay their fair share. This is where a tariff war and pressure really should be exerted, is getting the UK not to lowball American pharma.

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Make the UK tie its prices to America's free market prices. Why should they get to free ride off the back of the American consumer? So what is President Trump doing instead? He's saying that Medicaid should tie its price to what the UK is paying. What is that actually going to do?

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Well, number one, it means many cutting-edge pharmaceuticals simply will just not be available through Medicaid because Medicaid can't pay for it. You see this, by the way, all the time in Medicaid. You see that many doctors, for example, don't take Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are too low.

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specialists, very many of them will take cash only or private only because the Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low. So you can see that happening with pharma that you need a cutting edge drug and Medicaid just won't provide it because the price is too low. And big pharma is like, no, you know what? We can't, we can't afford to give it to you at that price.

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Even if Medicaid does in fact provide for that drug, they get that drug from big pharma. All that means is that the now higher prices to compensate for the lower prices for Medicaid gets squeezed into the private sector.

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The markets are a momentum-driven instrument. The markets are now trading higher than they were after Liberation Day. So Liberation Day, you recall, April 2nd, that is when President Trump announced this giant tariff regime on the rest of the globe combined, and the markets dropped dramatically. The Dow was trading about 43,000. Well, now the markets are trading up around where they were before.

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So it's not that the pharmaceutical companies are going to quote unquote make less profit, that they're greedy pharmaceutical companies and they're just stashing away cash in the back room and all this kind of, that's not true. It's not true. That's not how big pharma works at all.

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What will actually happen is that people who have private insurance will pay more for their insurance premiums and insurance companies will pay significantly more on the other end. So this attempt to quote unquote lower prices in the aggregate, it's not going to lower prices.

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In the aggregate, it may lower prices on the available drugs for Medicaid, but it will increase prices for everybody in the private sector. And with regards to sort of the overall reduction of prices, there's no way to do that without also destroying the R&D. This is a point that the Wall Street Journal actually made last week.

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They pointed out that drugs accounted for less than 4% of Medicaid spending, $21.2 billion in 2023. The feds spent 10 times more on hospital payments. Even if Republicans required drug makers to give away medicines to Medicaid, savings would not actually amount to what Republicans need in terms of this tax bill. They need $880 billion in savings.

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Trying to wring more money out of drug makers might cause some companies to stop participating in Medicaid, as we've discussed. This is the Wall Street Journal. Patients would then suffer from less access to novel treatments as they do in countries with socialized health systems that impose price controls. Some drug makers already lose money on medicines they sell to Medicaid.

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They compensate by raising those prices in the commercial market. And that is likely to be what the future looks like. And the notion that free market economies, that they don't adjust and move with regard to regulation, it's not true. Pharmaceutical companies cannot just quote unquote charge whatever they want because eventually the patents expire, number one.

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Number two, there's competition in the marketplace. And so other big pharma companies are trying to encroach on the territory of you discover a new drug and within five minutes, somebody else is trying to discover a new pathway for the new drugs. You can see this with Ozempic. Ozempic was really, really expensive.

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And very, very quickly, you're seeing people fill the marketplace for Ozempic with knockoffs, other semi-glutides, people who are attempting now to create oral versions of Ozempic so you don't actually have to take a shot. The market does an amazing job of taking what were luxury products and making them available to the common man. This is true everywhere. It's true in medicine too.

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Things that you now consider to be absolutely impossible Baseline medical care, say chemotherapy if you have cancer. That stuff was considered a luxury item way back when. Because when you first develop this stuff, it's expensive. This is what capitalism does. Capitalism takes luxuries and it makes them available to the common man. I mean, look at your cell phone.

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Go back and watch Wall Street, a movie made in 1987 by Oliver Stone. It's about one of the richest people on earth, Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko, there's a scene where he's walking around with an unthinkable device on the beach. An absolutely unthinkably technologically advanced product. He's holding basically a radio to his head. He's walking around on the beach with a cell phone.

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And at the time, people must have watched, whoa, that dude is loaded. Look at that. Look at it. He's walking around on a beach, not connected to no wire, just with a cell phone that looks like a shoebox. Wow, look at that. And now, of course, every single person, including the poorest Americans, has a cell phone. Everyone. How did that happen?

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Didn't happen through government subsidization of cell phones. It happened through free market economics. If you want better drugs, if you want better treatments, if you want all that, all the people who rip on Big Pharma are perfectly happy to use products developed by Big Pharma the minute they get sick.

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That seems to me a weird calibration based on momentum. And the reason I say that is because if you were to just look at the trade policy before Liberation Day and the trade policy after Liberation Day, the idea that those trade policies are identical and therefore the markets should be identical, obviously that's not true. There are a bunch of 10% tariffs that now exist that didn't exist before.

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R&D is an absolutely necessary component to lengthening the lifespans and bettering the health of people who really are sick. And any sort of executive action, first of all, I don't know where in the Constitution it just says that the president gets to randomly do the kinds of things that presidents of both parties are doing right now. I don't. There used to be this thing.

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It's now a vestigial organ of American government. It used to be called the legislature. You know, you would elect people to Congress and the Senate and they would make specific policies that were directed at specific outcomes. And then you could vote on them and you could throw them out of office if you didn't like what they were doing.

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Now, apparently the president of the United States has the power to unilaterally increase prices in the United States with gigantic tariff regimes at the drop of a hat, price control pharmaceuticals, declare national emergencies on everything available. And again, this didn't start with President Trump. I know there are people out there, oh, Trump is breaking the constitution.

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As almost always, President Trump is rarely the murderer. He's often the coroner. The system was broken and Trump simply points to the system and says, it's broken. And then does the same thing Democrats were doing and everybody goes nuts. We should have been going nuts about this, you know, 100 years ago with the rise of the administrative state under Woodrow Wilson.

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But now we're feeling the effect of all of that. When the president of the United States can, with a signature, put the R&D part of big pharma on the bankruptcy line, that is a problem. Forget whether you like the policy or not. I don't. The president should not have the unilateral power to do this. By the way, the same thing holds true with regard to things like the Federal Reserve.

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The fact that we all sit here waiting day after day for Jerome Powell, one guy, to tell us what the interest rates are going to be is psychotic. None of that is how a market ought to work. It is centralized government economics. And it is bad. It is not good. And it does not bear, by the way, the same sort of fruit that people want it to bear.

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People think that that means everything is hunky-dory because the president can solve things with one signature. You know, it... Checks and balances are actually quite a good thing. As a general rule, they are a very good thing. All right, meanwhile, in other news, there are developments with regard to Ukraine and Russia.

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So Vladimir Zelensky now says that he is willing to meet with Vladimir Putin. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian President Zelensky challenged Putin to meet him in Istanbul this week in Turkey after President Trump swung behind the Russian president's offer of talks before a ceasefire. So... Putin has not declared a ceasefire. Zelensky said, I'm willing to accept a 30-day ceasefire.

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He has said this for weeks and weeks and weeks at this point. Putin has never accepted like a five-minute ceasefire. He pretends to, but it's not real. So now Putin said, I'm willing to do face-to-face negotiations with Zelensky, presumably while the war continues. And Zelensky had said, how about this? How about you declare a 30-day ceasefire? And then we start talking.

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And President Trump said, you know what? I just want you at the table. Don't care whether it's a ceasefire or not, even though the ceasefire was originally President Trump's idea. But is it good that Zelensky and Putin are talking? Sure. I mean, the real question is going to be what comes out of the talks.

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There are still heavy levies against Chinese goods that didn't exist that now exist. So the markets are going to recalibrate. It'll probably end up lower, if I had to guess, than it is right now. but clearly the markets are moving toward more sanguinity and they should be because President Trump has been pushing deregulation at the same time he's pushing this.

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So Zelensky said that he would be waiting for Putin in Turkey on Thursday, raising the stakes amid a flurry of diplomatic exchanges and brinkmanship over the weekend, where both sides sought to balance not making any significant concessions with placating President Trump, who's demanding an end to the three year war. Now, Putin originally didn't respond to Zelensky's offer.

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Again, it goes beyond the scope of Putin's suggestion of reviving peace talks. Trump's support of the Russian president's proposal to switch in his position initially upended European efforts to bring pressure to bear on Russia to halt the war. Trump then over the weekend, he said, Ukraine should agree to this immediately.

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This is after Putin said, let's just get together and talk face to face without any ceasefire. And Trump said on social media that Ukraine should agree to this immediately. At least they'll be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible. If it's not, European leaders in the U.S. will know where everything stands and can proceed accordingly.

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Zelensky, who earlier had wanted a truce, a 30-day ceasefire as a condition of the talks, responded immediately. So again, Zelensky is doing the stuff that Trump wants him to do. Let's be clear, who is doing what Trump wants him to do when it comes to Putin-Zelensky? The answer is Vladimir Zelensky is doing the stuff Trump wants him to do. There's no other way to read this.

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Trump is calling for things and Zelensky is doing them. Trump wants a rare earths minerals deal. Zelensky says, sure. President Trump wants a ceasefire, a 30 day ceasefire. Zelensky says, sure. President Trump wants a 30 day ceasefire out the window so they can negotiate. Zelensky says, sure.

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And every step of the way, Putin is delaying because Putin is basically gambling that at a certain point, President Trump gets bored and walks away. That's the gamble. And it takes 18 months to two years for European weaponry to actually ship into Ukraine and adjust. so that Ukraine can defend itself without American input. Here's one of the big problems people don't want to talk about.

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Again, policy has a long tail. Because we watch politics in real time, we think a policy happens and then immediately it's implemented. That is not how it works. If the United States cuts off aid to Ukraine, it is not as though European arms immediately flow in. Much of the aid that has been provided to Ukraine militarily is only compatible with American ammo, for example.

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You can't just ship in European ammo to use in American armaments. You can't do it. It takes a while to replace all of that stuff. There needs to be at least a sort of runway for things to change over there. Putin's assuming the United States will precipitously pull out and it'll look like Afghanistan. That is what happened in Afghanistan, by the way.

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The United States was providing aerial oversight for the Afghan government in opposition to the Taliban. The United States pulled all of its air support and the Taliban immediately took over and the Afghan government immediately collapsed. That is what Putin is hoping right now.

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He's hoping whatever support the United States is providing in terms of intelligence, in terms of ammo, that that goes away. And then the gap is not filled quickly enough by the European Union. That's the gamble that Putin is playing right now. I don't think that President Trump falls for that trap, by the way. Zelensky put out a statement on social media.

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He said there is no point in prolonging the killings. And then he said, I hope this time Putin won't be looking for excuses as to why he can't make it. So he's showing up in Turkey, basically saying, I dare you to show up so we can talk. One day earlier, Putin rebuffed a ceasefire ultimatum from Kiev and its Western allies, instead calling for direct talks.

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He's been pushing forward that big, beautiful tax bill. And we'll get to the tax bill a little bit later on in the show where the negotiations stand. He's floated some good ideas. He's floated some bad ideas with regard to this tax bill. However, this is also going to lead to the possibility of things like Fed rate cuts.

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Ukraine and Russia's positions remain far apart. Russia basically wants land ceded to it. It hasn't even won in this battle. Meanwhile, Putin also would like for Ukraine to unilaterally disarm, no military support, no membership in NATO, all of which are not going to be a starter on the conversation.

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Russia has been ramping up its offenses, according to Deep State, which is an independent Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group. They said Russia conducted more attacks during the recent three-day ceasefire called by Putin in early May than in the same period the prior month. So we'll see what shakes out in Turkey.

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Putin is speaking with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is the dictatorial Islamist leader of Turkey, who's very much aligned with Russia, about his proposed talks in Istanbul starting at May 15th. President Erdogan said a comprehensive ceasefire would create the necessary environment for peace talks, but Russia just denied it. So once again, Russia appears to be stalling for time in all of this.

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Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said, you know, it's pretty clear here Russia's not making a lot of concessions.

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So that's going to be the question. And we'll find out in short order what exactly Putin is willing to do. My guess is not particularly a lot. And meanwhile, it is amazing to watch as the media and the Democrats ramp up their attacks on John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is the very heterodox Democratic senator from Pennsylvania. He's been heterodox with regard to President Trump.

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He kind of grumpily rejects media attacks that he thinks are unfair against President Trump. He's, of course, been incredibly pro-Israel, shocking everybody who happens to be pro-Israel. Because of course, Fetterman was aligned with the sort of far left wing of the Democratic Party when he was running against Mehmet Oz, who is now part of the Trump administration.

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Well, now Democrats are trying to claim he has mental problems. So the way this works is if you're Joe Biden and you clearly have mental problems and mental disabilities, but you're willing to provide a face for crap Democratic policy, you're totally fine. You're fine. Everything is good. No problems whatsoever.

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But if you're John Fetterman and you have a stroke in the middle of a race with Mehmet Oz and everybody's like, whoa, that seems bad. Democrats are like, he's fine. It's all good. Until the point at which he starts disagreeing with them, at which point it turns out he has a mental problem. Amazing how the politics just seem to dictate whether people think that others have a mental problem or not.

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We are giving you more of The Ben Shapiro Show. Actually, two times more of The Ben Shapiro Show. That's right. We are making the show longer. Twice the analysis, twice the fact. Join in at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Lots and lots of news. We begin with the biggest news, the most impactful news. which is, of course, that the U.S.

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So the Federal Reserve has been holding off on cutting the interest rates because of fears of inflation. If President Trump does not continue with this massive tariff regime, the chances of inflation are going to drop. If the chances of inflation drop, then you could see a lowering of the interest rates, which means more liquidity in the markets. It means cheaper mortgages.

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It's pretty astonishing, actually. According to Axios, Senator Fetterman has unnerved aides with his performance in office, with both current and former staff telling Axios he seems uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator. First of all, welcome to the Senate, where half the Senate is uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator. Have you ever met senators? I've met many senators.

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Many, many, many senators. The number of them are deeply dedicated to their jobs, Limited, shall we say. Capitol Hill's private concerns over Fetterman exploded into public view over the past week as longtime critics and former allies piled on with concerns about the senator.

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Adam Jentleson, his former chief of staff, said, quote, part of the tragedy here is this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness. But I think he's struggling in a way that shouldn't be hidden from the public. What exactly happened?

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Well, apparently there was an outburst during a meeting with teachers union officials in Washington last week with one of the members of the teachers union crying. And that is, hmm, that's weird. Apparently, according to the Associated Press, Fetterman began repeating himself and shouting and demanding, why is everybody mad at me? Why does everybody hate me? What did I do?

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Before slamming his hands on a desk, according to a person briefed on what happened. The staffer was comforted by teachers who themselves were rattled by Fetterman's behavior. Fetterman, for his part, said basically there's a hit piece.

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Asked about the meeting with the teachers union representative, Fetterman said in a statement, they had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration's cuts to our education system. So again, the building momentum is reliant on the fact that he has moved to the right.

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So there are people in the Democratic Party who are now suggesting that there's something deeply wrong with Fetterman. Again, if there was something wrong with Fetterman before, presumably there is something wrong with Fetterman now. However, that is not what changed. What actually changed is not presumably his mental status. He was hospitalized for depression after the stroke. You know that.

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The real question is what changed where Democrats are suddenly panicking? And the answer is that he disagrees with them on some pretty key issues. A Fetterman spokesperson said John expects his staff to disagree with him on things that's normal. Airing out grievances publicly hurts the entire office and puts staff and their work in jeopardy.

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So again, interesting to watch what Democrats now consider to be a health problem worth monitoring and what they consider to be not a health problem worth monitoring. The answer is completely dependent apparently on the politics of the person that they are concerned about. Meanwhile, controversy brewing over the possible arrest of Democratic members of Congress.

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So apparently, according to the New York Post, two Democratic representatives from New Jersey were caught on video storming a Newark immigration detention site last week. One was seen elbowing her way past ICE agents in an alleged bizarre political stunt. North Jersey Representatives Robert Menendez Jr.

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and LaMonica McIver were among the protesters who turned up demanding the closure of the Delaney Hall detention center. It houses criminal illegal migrants with alleged MS-13 gang affiliation who are wanted for crimes ranging from rape to murder. Democrats simply picked the best friends. Here is some of the video provided Fox News by DHS.

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And it shows these two Congress people yelling at ICE agents and then assaulting them, essentially. You can see it's a scrum and you can see some of the protesters moving around. You can see members of Congress yelling at yelling at the ICE agents, trying to shove their way past the ICE agents. I don't know where they think they're going to.

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It means the economy continues to kind of truck along. Right now, according to traders, there's a 57% chance the Federal Reserve holds rates steady through its next two meetings, which was up from 40% as of Friday.

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I'm not sure what they think they're attempting to achieve here. But they got to make some headlines. That's exciting for them. Meanwhile, the DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote in a statement, members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond a bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk.

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Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour. This is an evolving situation. This led, of course, to Tricia McLaughlin explaining that the possibility of arrest is actually still on the table.

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Okay, so we will find out what happens here. Again, Democrats are picking exactly the wrong angle here. It's truly amazing that... The Democrats continue to pick the worst allies in the entire world. All they have to do is just be calm and say, listen, the people who are being arrested, they probably should be deported. They require due process. That's all they have to say. That's it.

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But they can't help themselves. Instead, they're showing up at detention facilities. The race for headlines in the social media age drives some of the dumbest behavior humanly possible. It's truly an amazing thing. They really seem to have no clue about how to handle themselves.

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However, as the markets adjust, I think that you will see that people are gonna start betting on the idea that the Federal Reserve theoretically could, in fact, cut the rates if, again, there is more momentum in this direction. I think, again, that what happened here is that reality set in. President Trump understood the reality and he responded to the reality, which is good.

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whether it's traveling down to El Salvador to visit Kilmer Abrego Garcia, an accused wife beater, or whether they are talking about showing up at detention facilities for actual criminal illegal aliens accused of rape. And then shoving around ICE agents, like what are they doing? What in the world are they doing? But we do in fact live in the stupidest timeline.

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Speaking of which, because we live in the stupidest possible timeline, Kanye West has a new music video. And I feel that we should probably comment on it. So Kanye West, as we all know, has mental issues. I'm not saying this because of his politics. I've been saying that Kanye West has mental issues for years and years and years and years and years. There's nothing new here.

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Years and years ago, when Kanye West was making inroads with the first Trump administration, I tweeted famously, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye, because he's nuts. And Kanye's mental issues continue to contribute, I assume, to his bizarre fixation with the Jews. So he now has a new song titled Heil Hitler.

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So just in case you were still pretending that Kanye West doesn't hate Jews, I'm pretty sure he hates the Jews. I mean, two things can be true at once. One, mental illness. Two, hates the Jews. Both can be true. And in fact, in Kanye West, are true. So he's now cut an entire music video. Again, this is all about transgressiveness. It's all about transgressivism. That's all it is.

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So many of the people who are parroting the Heil Hitler Kanye West song are doing so because they think it's fun to be transgressive and all rules must be broken because if you're standing up to the narrative, you're doing something brave and amazing. Or maybe you're just being a piece of shit. That's also possible. It turns out that some rules exist for a reason.

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And like being against Hitler seems to be a... I don't know. Call me controversial. Call me crazy. Hitler seems bad. I don't know. I feel like Hitler was not a good person. And I feel like the things he did were bad. If that makes me controversial, if it makes me a censor of some sort, I guess, you know, sure. All right, fine.

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Now, again, I've not called for Kanye West to be deplatformed from anything. I'm just pointing out. And many of the people who are very enthusiastic about Kanye West making common cause with people on the right are utterly silent when it comes to his absolutely open shift into Nazism. Many of the people who call him friends and acquaintances and people like, where are they?

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Do they have anything to say about this or no? It's still about the Jews. Pretty amazing stuff. So here is Kanye West's song, Heil Hitler.

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So the actual line is N-word Heil Hitler. Okay, but it's a hard R with Hitler and it's a no R with the N-word is the way this works. If, by the way, you say the reverse, that means you're a racist and you're banned from polite society. If you say the N-word, that ends with an A, but you say Heil Hitler with the hard R, then that means that you're good, transgressive, and interesting.

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You want a president who actually responds to realities. In this way, the president that President Trump actually most resembles in the recent past is actually Bill Clinton. So Bill Clinton in 1993-94 pushed forward Hillary care, got absolutely shellacked, and then moved to the right and governed as a sort of centrist for the rest of his term. He did welfare reform, for example.

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to a wide variety of people apparently on both right and left. So that's exciting stuff. I'm glad that we've decided to do this as a society. And social media, of course, has exacerbated all of this because transgressive behavior gets clicks, it gets attention. That, of course, is why Andrew Tate, one of the most vile people

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in social media, decided that, you know, he's constantly piggybacking on the social media attention whoredom of others. So here he was jumping in a fancy car in UAE, I believe this is, while playing the Kanye West song because all the best people are of a piece. He's smoking a cigar and getting into a fancy car paid for by the people that he is allegedly ripping off with Tate University.

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So that's exciting for all of you. And he puts on the song and then he starts driving down the street. What a rebel he is. Truly, truly a rebel. This is the kind of... Now the social media scene has made the world so much better. By the way, if you think this has no bleed over, why are we paying attention to this? Because social media popularity now translates into mainstream breakthrough.

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We have seen this. We have seen people who were completely anonymous two years ago, who because of the bizarre algorithmic boosts provided by X and TikTok have now become kind of internet famous. And then they make a breakthrough into actual famous podcasts, for example. And suddenly they're showing up and you're like, who is this person? Why is this person here?

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And the answer is they got a lot of clicks. So clicks can translate into some sort of appeal. And we do live in a time where because the left was so censorious, because the left shut the Overton window so unbelievably tight that basically if you didn't agree with Hillary Clinton, you were out there in the wilderness.

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Because of that, many people on the right, their response was no Overton window at all, meaning all discourse must be treated as equally acceptable and valuable, which of course is stupidity. It's just moral relativism. N-word Heil Hitler is not of the same caliber of discussion as say, should we raise or lower pharmaceutical prices based on government mandate? Like, what is valuable?

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The answer is there's not a lot. Again, doesn't mean it should be banned. Doesn't mean it should be censored. It does mean that a rational, decent people would not be spending an awful lot of time with those sorts of folks promoting that sort of trash. But once it starts mainstreaming via social media, then all the bad ideas of the past get to come back. So that's exciting.

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According to a brand new poll out of JL Partners, this is from October of last year, so it's not brand new. According to a poll from October 7th of 2024, people who say Hitler had some good ideas, people who are 18 to 29 years old, 21%. People who are 65 plus, 5%. Why? Well, a few reasons. One, older people are not spending nearly as much time on social media.

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Two, older people actually do have some wisdom. They're not as stupid as people who are 18 to 29 years old very often. There is an interesting racial breakdown. Black Americans, over a fifth of them say Hitler had some good ideas. Presumably Kanye is in that category. 19% of Hispanic Americans said the same. Just 9% of white Americans said the same. So, I don't know.

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He did criminal justice reform bills. He had an actual surplus. President Trump is much more pragmatic. He's kind of Clintonian in the way that he is pragmatic in his politics, as opposed to ideologically driven the way, say, Barack Obama or Joe Biden was.

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Put me on the side of people who say Hitler actually did not have good ideas. His ideas were trash. And the people who support them today... are trash, and the people who invoke them today as some sort of progressive strike against the leftist machine. There are so many ways to oppose leftist censorship, valuable ways to oppose leftist censorship.

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There are so many things that can be said that the left doesn't want you to say that actually have inherent real value. And then there are mentally ill people warbling into a microphone using auto-tune. By the way, I hope that whatever... Kanye is making off his songs, he's paying a percentage to Auto-Tune. Because my goodness, Auto-Tune is basically writing his songs for him at this point.

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I'm so glad that our pop culture has moved in this wonderful, wonderful direction. Exciting stuff. Alrighty, folks, the show continues. For our members right now, we'll be jumping into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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And I think one of the reasons President Trump is looking for an off ramp here is because he's starting to see the incoming wall of the hurricane. As I said before, there was a hurricane headed for American shores, economically speaking. That hurricane came in the form of a giant cascade of empty ships that were arriving at American ports.

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And that was going to create serious supply chain problems. President Trump doesn't like that. And so he is now acting in order to prevent that from effectuating. from becoming a reality. And to more on this in a moment, first, Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible.

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Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data, plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. And the best part? Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus. Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored, ad-free daily shows.

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And as always, you're free. Leftist Tears Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan.

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Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. They're the people I trust with my own cell phone coverage. And let's be real, my calls are very, very important. So if they're important to me, your calls are important to you. Check out Pure Talk right now. Best prices plus, get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan, puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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and China have now apparently agreed to slash tariffs on one another. This is a deal reached by Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, who's been looking for an off ramp with regard to these extraordinarily high tariffs that he said just last week were unsustainable with regard to China. Now, there will still be tariffs on China. China will still have tariffs on American product.

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Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Also, there is a growing expense eating into your company's profits. It's your cloud computing bill. You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every single year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the same exact time?

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Well, if you act by May 31st, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that. OCI is the next generation cloud designed for every workload, where you can run any application, including any AI projects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, Oracle has a special promotion. where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch on over to OCI. The savings are real.

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On average, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, 80% less for networking. Join Modal, Skydance Animation, and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI and saved. Offer only for new U.S. customers with minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off at oracle.com slash Shapiro. That's oracle.com slash Shapiro. Start saving on cost today.

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There's just too much going on in the world of AI. OCI is going to save you money. Again, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, 80% less for networking. Get started today at oracle.com slash Shapiro. Now, as I say, does this mean that all the tariff wars are over? Does this mean that we are moving toward a more free trade world? No.

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It means there's still going to be tariff barriers, which is why I think that the stock markets jump today is maybe a little overstated. And as reality sets in, it's going to settle about back where it was maybe a little bit lower than it was before Liberation Day, so-called Liberation Day. Here is Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, saying 10% tariffs remain here. They're not going anywhere.

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However, the reason that the markets are in fact optimistic is because as James McIntosh writes over at the Wall Street Journal, the grownups are in the room. The reason for the giant bounce in the stock market is because Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is now in control of trade policy and presumably in control of regulatory policy and tax policy as well.

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So what exactly is Besson still looking for? A deeper reform of the Chinese economy, turning it from a mercantilistic exporter into a consumer and leading to more balanced trade. Now, again, that is going to be hard, but the reality is we are now avoiding the hurricane that was approaching, and I think the economy is responding to that in very good ways.

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So good for President Trump, good for Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Meanwhile, in other news, Idan Alexander, who's the last remaining alive American hostage who'd been taken by Hamas on October 7th, is set to be released today. It was going to happen sometime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Israel time.

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But we are starting to move toward what looks like a significantly more rational trade policy with the rest of the world. So yes, we have still significantly raised tariffs on the rest of the world. That 10% flat rate tariff still exists on the rest of the world. Now, the 125 to 145% tariffs that were placed on the Chinese, those have been lowered.

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The Red Cross, which has been utterly derelict in its treatment of the hostages, meaning it had no contact with any of the hostages for well over a year, is going to be facilitating all of this. Obviously, it's a deeply moving moment that Don Alexander is coming out as a 21-year-old Israeli-American dual citizen. And he was kidnapped on October 7th. I, of course, know the Alexander family.

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I know his parents, Yael and Adi. I know his brother, Roy. In fact, I brought them to the Ohel, to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in New York on October 7th. And I had them meet with President Trump. You can see here, that's his mom, that's his brother. And they're showing President Trump a picture of Idan Alexander. So Idan Alexander is coming out today.

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The big question is, what did Hamas receive in return? And it appears that Hamas actually received very little. So this is a good deal by the Trump administration in that sense. It is creating, and again, whenever you have a hostage deal, there's no such thing as a good hostage deal because you are dealing with hostage takers.

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However, the question is what concessions Hamas received on the other end. There are a lot of rumors about what exactly Hamas received on the other end of releasing Idan Alexander. Some rumors include the idea that perhaps the United States will now be more amenable to Hamas being a part of the future of governing the Gaza Strip. That would be insane and ridiculous. That would be ridiculous.

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Hamas took Idan Alexander a hostage in the first place. They took 250 people hostage. A huge number of those people, including babies, were plain out murdered by Hamas. Hamas can, of course, have no part in the governance of the Gaza Strip. They need to be extirpated from the planet Earth. And the release of Idan Alexander doesn't actually change any of that math.

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There have also been rumors that this is going to lead to a sort of broader ceasefire deal. Maybe, maybe not. The Witkoff plan, Steve Witkoff, of course, is President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East. Steve Witkoff had proposed the possibility of a 45-day or 70-day ceasefire in exchange for 11 more hostages and 18 dead bodies. That may come to fruition. We'll have to see.

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There's been talk about humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip. The reason Hamas wants that is so they can steal all of it. So the question becomes, how is that aid secured? However, we can say it is an unabashed good that Edan Alexander is coming out again. It's an amazing thing for his family. I know the family. I was texting with them yesterday. It's an amazing thing.

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So good for the Trump administration along those lines. Clearly what Hamas is attempting to do. is basically settle all outstanding business with the United States so as to then create separation between the United States and Israel in Iran negotiations. That is what is happening with the Houthis as well.

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It is not a coincidence that as the Houthis are basically forswearing attacks on American shipping, and the United States is saying that the United States is no longer going to worry about the Houthis essentially, that Hamas is now trying to do the same by releasing the sole living American hostage, in the Gaza Strip, trying to basically say that the United States now has no part in that conflict.

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Well, okay, fine. I mean, if the United States has no part in that conflict, then Israel should just go into what they need to do. That seems to me a proper solution with regard to the Gaza Strip. Now, the ugliest part, and there is an ugly part to this, is that there are widespread rumors and now news reports that Idan Alexander is going to be flown to Qatar to meet with the Emir of Qatar.

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This is vile. That's vile. He should, of course, meet with President Trump. He can do so in America. He can do so in Israel. There are plenty of places that Idan Alexander and his family can express their gratitude to President Trump as well they should. Going to Qatar to meet the Emir of Qatar. Qatar is a terror sponsor country. Qatar is the number one funder of Hamas.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, after weekend talks in Geneva, President Trump's reciprocal tariff on China will fall to 10% from 125%. So essentially the same as the tariffs that we currently have on, say, England or any other country. A separate 20% tariff the president imposed over what he described as China's role in the fentanyl trade is going to remain.

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It is disgusting to have a hostage who was taken by a group funded by Qatar go to Qatar to thank the Emir of Qatar for his freedom. That's an absurdity on its face if it were to happen. It is wrong. It should not be facilitated by the United States. Qatar is the sponsor state of Hamas.

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In fact, if the Trump administration seriously wanted all hostages out of Gaza, they could do so tomorrow simply by telling the Emir of Qatar that the airbase in Qatar is going away and that it'll move to the UAE, which the United States could do. That should have been the approach of the Biden administration on October 8th. They should have said all the hostages come out or the airbase goes away.

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That's how closely tied together Qatar and Hamas are. Well, Adan Alexander is now 21. Hamas captured him when he was 19 on October 7th, 2023, of course. Now, all of this has some wider ramifications with regard to negotiations in the Middle East. Again, Steve Witkoff continues to say ridiculous things publicly. So Steve Witkoff, again, I do not think he's a good negotiator.

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I do not think that Steve Witkoff has demonstrated his bona fides along any lines. So far, all of the hostage deals have essentially been ridiculous. kind of mediocre in the sense that maximum pressure has not been exerted on the bad guys. Yesterday, Witkoff said, we want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war.

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Israel is prolonging it despite the fact that we don't see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached. There's currently an opportunity window we hope Israel and all the mediators will take advantage of. We're putting pressure on all the mediators and doing everything we can to bring the hostages home.

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Folks, we have a ton to get to today on the show. Stephen A. Smith attacking yours truly over claiming that Derek Chauvin should be pardoned by President Trump on federal charges. We'll get into the possibility of a recession. President Trump is not ruling one out and we'll get into the chaos. in Syria.

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That is like the perfect example. And as we're gonna lay out over the course of coming weeks, I'm gonna lay out in full detail why I believe that Derek Chauvin is not guilty in the killing of George Floyd. That is the real reason, because it is immoral to allow people who you believe are innocent to languish in prison. This should not be a particularly arguable issue.

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So, Chip, when it comes to impoundment, obviously, as you say, it's going to get hashed out by the courts. If the courts come down the other way on impoundment, then there's been talk that Congress might consider rescission.

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There might be a move to basically with 51 votes in the Senate, you don't actually have to overcome a filibuster, rescind much of the spending that's being impounded right now. Do you see that as a viable option?

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Well, Chip, really appreciate the insight. I know that everything is high pitch these days and really appreciate your rational perspective on these things.

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Now, in order for the economy not to tank, you need predictability and you need reliability. I'm not just hearing this from people who are on the left or in the center. I'm hearing this from business people who are on the right. And as a business person who is on the right, you know what I want in my economy? I want a sense of predictability.

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So certain things that President Trump is doing do give that sense of predictability. So for example, we know there's going to be a move to maintain taxes at current rates. That's great. That means I know exactly what to expect in terms of my taxes. We know that regulations are likely to become less onerous. That's wonderful. I know precisely what to expect.

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When it comes to the tariffs, the tariffs are incredibly chaotic. And the way they've been rolled out so far, which is sort of like a hokey pokey, we'll put a tariff in, we'll take a tariff out, we'll put a tariff in and we'll move it all about. Like that particular approach disquiets markets. It means that you don't know whether to invest in a particular contract.

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And just because that person was made into the face of American racism based on literally zero evidence that has been provided that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd based on race, Derek Chauvin was made the face of American racism before his trial. Every media outlet in the country decided he was guilty. The governor of Minnesota decided he was guilty.

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If you have inputs from foreign countries, you don't know whether to re-sign that contract. And you also don't know whether you're going to want to sign a domestic contract because maybe the tariff doesn't go into place and now you're paying twice what you otherwise would have paid.

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This sort of uncertainty is not good for the broader business community, which is why you've seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average giving up all of the gains since President Trump's election. So President Trump was asked about this over the weekend, and he said that he doesn't need to be clearer on tariffs.

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Well, that's not a soundbite. That's a reality. And again, I'm supporting President Trump here. I want Trump's economy to boom. And I can say as a business person with hundreds of employees, I want to know what comes next because that's how I game for how I spend and how I save and how I invest. And that's true for every major or minor business person in the country.

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Now, President Trump, to his credit, is being cautious about his predictions. Howard Letnick, his commerce secretary, was on the Sunday shows and he said, don't worry, no recession is coming. And you know, his mouth to God's ears.

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Okay, now again, I hope that's true. And I generally believe that that is true. However, uncertainty is, in fact, uncertainty. President Trump was asked the same exact question about an hour later. He said, listen, I'm not making predictions about the economy, which, by the way, is the smart response on this. President Trump has a good feel for this.

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A smart response is I don't know what's going to happen because the problem is if you say there's going to be no recession and then there is one recessionary quarter, it's all over the TV for the next three years. This is the lesson that should have been learned during the Biden administration when the Biden administration, the Federal Reserve called inflation transitory.

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And it's now four years later and inflation is not transitory.

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Okay, now again, if the idea here is that we are ratcheting up pressure to then ratchet back down the tariffs, okay, if the idea is that we're trying to pry winds out of other countries, okay, I'm there. If the idea is that tariffs themselves are going to be good for the country, I have yet to see a situation in which that is true that is not from the 19th century.

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The mayor of Minneapolis decided he was guilty. The presidential candidates on the left side of the aisle at that time as Joe Biden decided he was guilty. And it was very necessary for the jury to convict him in order for an entire narrative structure to be created. And that was wrong. Okay, well, there are many people who object to all this. One of those people is Stephen A. Smith.

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And when trade internationally was significantly more limited and spending, by the way, was significantly more limited domestically speaking, as we spoke about last week, the reality is that while we are subsidizing a lot of businesses elsewhere through global trade in our markets. Everybody else is subsidizing our welfare state by buying our bonds. That is a reality.

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And meanwhile, the question is whether these tariffs are being put on in order to drive, again, an ancillary outcome, right? It's not about the economy. It's about, for example, fentanyl. That was the case that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was making over the weekend, that this is all about fentanyl.

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Okay, so again, if the idea is let's make Canada arm up the border and militarize the border, all right, fine, okay. The problem is that the metrics that are being used, like I want the deliverable because that way you get a win, right? If President Trump says, I want Canada to do X, and if Canada does X, the tariffs go back down, I'm fine with it.

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But it's very difficult to make that argument about, for example, fentanyl when you are not saying the thing you want from the Canadians. This is a point that was made by Ambassador Kirsten Hillman. She says, listen, less than 1% of all fentanyl that's being seized coming into the United States is coming from Canada. Last year, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized coming from Canada.

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Now you can make the argument that's because we have a wide open border with Canada, but we had a wide open border with Mexico and 22,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the wide open border with Mexico last year under Joe Biden. Here's Kirsten Hillman, the Canadian ambassador to the United States.

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First, the media would love you to believe that President Trump is a criminal and that Elon is unhinged and all of the rest. Here is the truth. There's a lot of winning that is happening right now. The left's flies are unraveling and their narrative is crumbling and the tears are falling. And that's why The Daily Wire is here to cut through the noise and bring you the facts that others won't.

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Again, if there's a deliverable, great. And force Canada out of the wall to get the deliverable. However, all of this is having an impact on domestic politics in Canada. So if you don't like Justin Trudeau and his party, then why exactly are you doing the things that are going to ensure that they remain in power? So before all this trade war stuff.

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The runaway winner in the Canadian polling was Pierre Poliev, who's terrific. Pierre Poliev is the leader of the Conservative Party. He's one of the most articulate Conservative leaders of our generation. He's terrific.

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And he has now fallen behind in the polling to Mark Carney, who is the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada, who will maintain all of the policies of Justin Trudeau, except without the dumb face. So Mark Carney just won the race to succeed Justin Trudeau as Canada's prime minister, and he vows to win the trade war with the United States and President Donald Trump.

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He's the former governor of the Canadian Central Bank and Bank of England, according to the BBC. He is a green revolution guy. He's never served in elected office. His replacement of the minority government means that he is the new leader of the party that is competitive.

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Bizarrely enough, Stephen A. Smith, who is a loudmouth jackass on ESPN. That's what he does. And when I say loudmouth, I mean the man does not have a volume that goes below eight on the Spinal Tap scale. I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a normal Stephen A. Smith voice. And I say this is a longtime watcher of ESPN.

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According to the BBC, the governing liberals have seen a remarkable political turnaround since Trudeau's exit, as Canadians have been galvanized by President Trump's trade threats and support for annexing their country. At the beginning of the year, Pierre Poliev was ahead 20 points in the election polls. Today, he is tied with the liberals.

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So are you going to get more from Canada with Pierre Poliev as the prime minister than you're going to get from Mark? The answer is yes. And it turns out that politics has a lot of downstream effect. In the end, listen, I trust President Trump on this stuff because I think in the end, as I've said a thousand times, he's a results-driven guy.

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He said over the weekend he wants a dynamic economy and a dynamic country. The way to do that is to provide a steady, understandable economy for investors that reduces regulations and taxes and makes it easier to do business in the country for Americans. That's the way. And here's President Trump.

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Okay, I agree with him, and I think that that is the way that he's going to move, and if the results are bad, I think he's going to change tack. I'll get to more on this in a moment.

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First, you know, one of the things I love about working in the news industry is that every day I get to connect with millions of listeners and share breaking stories and work with incredible talent who are just as passionate about the political sphere as I am.

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There's nothing quite like the energy and thrill of creating content that not only informs, but also resonates with people around the country. If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it the way that you do. And if you own your own business...

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Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire. ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. Also, There's a lot going on in my life, which means I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with family, even with the busy work schedule.

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies. I don't like veggies, and so I'm very thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

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That sounds miserable and time-consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze-dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely... What to do with them? It's kosher, which means I can pop it right into the protein smoothie and keep that gun show going strong. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com.

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Every time Stephen A. Smith comes on the TV, you got to turn down your volume significantly. So Stephen A. Smith is very angry that I have suggested that Derek Chauvin ought to be pardoned. And here he was on his show trying to explain.

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Promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and that free bottle of fiber and spice. Okay, meanwhile... There's been chaos breaking out in Syria since the takeover of HDS. This, of course, is perfectly predictable. HDS is, in fact, a terror group. They're a Sunni Islamist terror group, and they're backed by Turkey.

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You'll recall that Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy group, had been attacking Israel for decades, and then they escalated their attacks after October 7th. And then Israel, in October of last year, went after Hezbollah and basically defenestrated their entire leadership with everything from the beeper attacks to the attacks killing Hassan Nasrallah and all the rest.

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And they hit Hezbollah so hard that Hezbollah was no longer able to support and Iran was really no longer able to support the Assad regime in Syria, which was a terrorist, genocidal regime on its own. There are no good guys in the Syrian fight except for some of the Druze and the Kurds and the Christians.

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That is a complete list of all of the good parties in Syria right now in terms of the domestic parties in Syria. Turkey intervened on behalf of HTS. HTS basically just ran down the road unopposed and took over the country. And the media decided this was a wonderful, unalloyed wonderful thing. I said at the time. It was not a good thing for HTS to take over. HTS is in fact a terror group.

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And I mentioned that there would be some really, really awful downstream effects, including presumably their targeting of Christians. Assad's regime had not been wonderful to Christians. Presumably HTS would be worse.

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Well, Israel, knowing that HTS was a terrorist regime, then moved into the south of Syria, the other side of the Mount Hermon region, and they have now formed a basic coalition with many of the Druze in the south who were also afraid of being targeted by HTS. And Israel also proceeded to blow up pretty much every weapons depot in Syria as all this was happening.

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Israel did that to deny vast stockpiles of weaponry to HTS, a terror group backed again by Turkey. If you don't like HTS, blame Turkey, because that's Turkey. After all this happened to HTS, has been proclaiming to the rest of the world that it was moderate. It was never moderate. And there are salutary effects to Assad falling.

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One of them was that the Iranian crescent that stretched from Iran through Iraq, through Syria, into Lebanon, and then curved all the way down into Yemen, into the Gaza Strip and all the rest of that. That was broken. That was a salutary effect. A downside effect is that a bunch of terrorists took over, right? Not a lot of great solutions in the Middle East, as it turns out.

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Okay, well, now a sort of Alawite reconstitution took place over the course of the last week. There were some battles that happened between the Alawites who were ethnically associated with the Assad regime and HTS. Battles broke out, and then HTS decided, what a great opportunity to slaughter a bunch of Alawites and some Christians along for the ride.

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And so there are an enormous number of people who were killed over the course of last week. Some thousand people were killed. The United States put out a statement from the State Department, from Secretary Rubio, quote, the United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis that murdered people in Western Syria in recent days.

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The United States stands with Syria's religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria's interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria's minority communities accountable.

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The reality is everybody ought to be gaming for the evil of HTS and for the Turks. The Turks are members of NATO. The Turks are the biggest single backers of HTS, bar none. That is what is happening right now. And again, it is horrifying. It is unsurprising and it is horrifying. So here is some of the video of what HDS was doing.

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They're literally making Alawites, and apparently some Christians crawl like dogs. They were shooting people. It turns out evil Islamist terrorists are evil in Islamist. So you can see these terrorists who are beating up civilians, presumably Alawites and or Christians. Okay, and they're just beating people up and slapping them and all the rest of this. Again, terrible people, HDS. No question.

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No question. Okay, so this has now led to, again, not blaming Turkey and not blaming HDS, but somehow people blaming American quote-unquote neocons or blaming Israel or blaming Jews. Okay, there are no Jews in Syria. The only Jews in Syria right now are the Israelis in the south who are literally protecting the Druze from the slaughter of HDS.

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At the request of the Druze, by the way, the Christian community has been targeted in Syria for a decade or more. The truth is that Syria, which used to be a Christian country, if you go all the way back, Syria was a Christian country. That's why so many of the sites mentioned in the New Testament are, in fact, in Syria.

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The Syrian population had already been devastated by Islamic takeover and Islamic rule. They didn't have it great under Bashar Assad. They did better than they had it in, say, Iran. But they didn't have it amazing under Bashar Assad. There were about 1.5 million Christians living in Syria before the Syrian civil war in 2011. That number is now as few as 300,000 Christians.

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And the major challenges existed under Assad. The replacement of Assad by HDS was going to be bad for Christians. The attempt to turn this, however, into a story about the evils of the West as opposed to Assad being an evil dictator who was replaced by people who are completely evil in a different direction.

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If your sort of bizarre supposition is that this is because of America as opposed to because the Middle East happens to be a long chain of terrorist tyrannies following one another with different enemies, I don't think that you've been following Middle Eastern history very long. Tucker Carlson has been on tour in the Middle East. He was over hanging out with the leader of Qatar.

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And in the middle of that, he tweeted out, quote, as predictable as this is, it's still infuriating to see it. For decades, Bashar Assad protected minority religious communities in Syria, including the country's large Christian population. Okay. Those protections were limited at best. Pretty limited, as it turns out. And the downstream effect of Bashar Assad attacking, for example, Kurds.

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Bashar Assad. repressing his people to the extent that he did was going to be a blowback that was very bad for many of the people living in the area during the Syrian civil war. To pretend that Assad is somehow completely not responsible for what happened in Syria while he was dictator in Syria is kind of wild. No one in the United States was allowed to notice this.

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I'm pretty sure actually we were all allowed to notice this. And many people did notice this actually and commented upon it when Assad fell actually. And anyone who did was immediately denounced by neocons as a dangerous extremist. Barry Weiss declared Tulsi Gabbard monstrous and Assad toady for noticing, but it was true.

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Well, actually, that is, I disagree with Barry Weiss about Tulsi Gabbard, but actually what she was condemning was the idea that Bashar Assad was an ally of the West, which was something that Tulsi Gabbard was sort of promoting a little bit back in 2011, 2012, 2013. The weaker Assad was, the more Christians died.

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During the years that neocons in the West backed the war against Assad, the percentage of Christians in Syria went from 10% to 2%. Now that Assad has been driven from power, many of the remaining Syrian Christians are being slaughtered and their holy places desecrated. Barry Weiss and John Bolton haven't said a word about it. But no one who's paying attention can be surprised it's happening.

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OK, so first of all, let's start with this. I don't know why he believes that it would be important, even for his stupid example, for it to be a quote-unquote white Jewish person as opposed to just a Jewish person.

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Neocon projects in the Middle East invariably destroy ancient Christian communities from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between. Can this be an accident? You wonder. Okay. Again, this is a... bizarre and twisted reading of history at best. I'm not going to attribute motives because that's not something that I like to do. I will say that this is so ahistorical.

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The idea that chaos in the Middle East has not targeted Christians is ignorant of literally all Christian history in the Middle East. Constantinople was Constantinople before it was Istanbul. The notion that Christians have generally been targeted by neocons in the West, in the Middle East, is a complete reversal of how history actually has worked in this area.

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I have suspicions as to what Tucker means by quote unquote neocons. But again, the idea that Christians who can live safely in the Middle East, by the way, in about one country, which is Israel, not a lot of Christians who are living safely in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi. These are not places with large Christian populations. Many of these places are places that Tucker is busy defending this week.

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And what's going on in Syria, which is a horror show, is not the fault of the Turks who are literally backing the regime that is murdering people, including Christians. It's somehow the fault of the neocon warmongers. It's a wild supposition. But, again, this is part and parcel of some of the stuff that Tucker seems to be pushing lately, which, again, is the idea.

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That all conflict in the Middle East is the fault of an evil cadre of Americans who are pushing conflict in the Middle East. No one in the Middle East apparently has any agency. Iran has no agency. Hezbollah has no agency. Qatar certainly has no agency. The Tucker spent this weekend over in Qatar. doing a bit of propaganda work on behalf of the Qatari regime.

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And again, this is not an attribution of motive to Tucker. I'm not going to claim, I see some people online claiming Tucker's in the pay of the, Tucker doesn't need their money. I don't think that's right. I think that Tucker's worldview suggests that apparently the only actors in the Middle East who have any agency at all are the United States, Israel, And pretty much no one else, apparently.

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His claim is that I am a tribal identitarian, and thus I would be very fine with the prosecution of a cop wrongfully if a Jew died under the knee of that cop, even if the cop was not responsible. If the fact patterns were exactly the same, but George Floyd had been named Harold Bernstein or something, and the cop was named George Floyd, was a black guy. Okay, that is intensely stupid.

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And so everything bad that happens in the Middle East is the fault of those people. And no one else has any agency at all. So Iran has been growing closer and closer to a nuclear weapon. Iran is the chief sponsor of terror, not only in the region, but all over the world. Iran has its tentacles all the way down in South America. Iran's proxies in Hezbollah, the Houthis, all these people.

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have been engaged in terrorism that affects American interests ranging from the Red Sea to the murder of literally thousands of American soldiers in Iraq by Iranian terrorist supporting groups to the murder of 241 Marines at the U.S. Marine barracks bombing back in the 1980s.

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While Iran has been growing more and more loud, they are currently holding joint military drills with China and Russia right now. Iran also happens to be super vulnerable. Their nuclear regime could be ended basically today by a single sortie. Despite all of that, President Trump is trying to give them an off-ramp, which is the right path, right? He's trying to give them an off-ramp.

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And then if they won't take the off-ramp, there has to be a fist inside the velvet glove. Here's President Trump talking about Iran.

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Okay, so if you can get that deal, great. And if you can't, then there's a threat. So Tucker has decided again that the only two options, and this again is a false binary, the only two options here are either you concede to the Iranian nuclear program or full-scale war with Iran, which again is not a reality. Iran's skies are clear.

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Right now, a single B-2 sortie would take out their nuclear facilities. But Tucker tweeted out, Fox News is wall-to-wall with dead-eyed politicians. Again, the sort of bizarre physical description of people that you disagree with is pretty ugly. I'm not a fan of this sort of stuff. Fox News is wall-to-wall with dead-eyed politicians. They're all dead-eyed.

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If they don't agree with Tucker, you're dead-eyed. Telling you that Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror. He puts that in scare quotes. Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror. I literally just named you. Hundreds and thousands of Americans who have been killed by Iranian terror groups. It says, softening up the base for a war. Again, there is no war with Iran. Nobody wants a war with Iran.

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Was it a war with Iran when America launched a strike at Qasem Soleimani killing their military leader? There was not. But what exactly does that phrase mean and how does it apply to the United States? Here's one measure. Over the past 20 years, how many Americans have been killed by Iran on American soil? Notice that qualifier, on American soil.

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Well, I mean, an American in Iraq is still an American, as it turns out. So is an American in Lebanon. Try to find that number and then compare it to the number of Americans killed by drug ODs or suicide or illegal aliens or carjackings, diabetes, and the COVID vax. Still think Iran is the greatest threat? How about we focus on our own country for a minute? And this is, again, a false binary.

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It turns out that there are, in fact, foreign threats to American interests ranging from shipping in the Red Sea to oil supply coming from the Gulf. And also, all the things that he mentioned are really bad. I noticed that for a guy who is very concerned about illegal aliens, carjackings, diabetes, and the COVID vax, He's spending an awful lot of time in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Russia lately.

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It's intensely stupid for a variety of reasons. Why don't we begin with the first? This would not have been a national news story if that were the case. The reason this entire story was national news is because of the race of the people involved. In fact, when black people were routinely beating up Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, it was covered up by the New York Times and was not a national story.

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And this is not an argument in favor of quote-unquote endless war. This is an argument in favor of reality. And living in the realm of reality is a healthier perspective on foreign affairs than the sort of bizarre melange of claims that are made about dead-eyed people that you disagree with or people who want perennial war.

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How about argue with the argument as opposed to arguing with the phantom that you are creating in your own mind without ever actually coming to grips with the nature of the argument? Well, speaking of spending time abroad, Tucker Carlson, of course, was in Qatar, where he was interviewing the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

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Now, it should be mentioned at this point that Qatar is, in fact, effectively a front state for Iran. They sort of try to play a middle role between the United States and Iran. Whenever there's a negotiation with a terrorist group, it always happens in Qatar. This is where the United States negotiated with the Taliban, sort of America's emissary to the terrorist world. But there's no question that

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that Qatar is in fact a malign force in international politics. They supply literally billions of dollars in funding to Hamas. They've provided literal support to terrorist groups all over the region. They have provided significant financial relief to Iran itself. They have huge ties with Iran because they share a giant oil field.

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Qatar, for example, over the last few years has transferred almost $2 billion to Hamas. They host Hamas operations. All of their leaders, Hamas' leaders, were in Qatar, obviously. They also have a history of terror financing allegations ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to even ISIL. There is also an American Air Base in Qatar. So again, they try to play both sides.

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It is also worthwhile noting here that Qatar is a major donor to America's universities. So if you don't like America's universities and you think they're trash, one major reason would be Qatar, which has spent, I kid you not, over the course of 2001 to 2021, $4.7 billion on American higher education. Those are donations from a country that has 400,000 citizens.

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of almost $5 billion to American universities. So if you don't like the wokeism, you don't like the anti-Americanism at America's universities, it turns out that the money is flowing from Qatar and has been flowing from Qatar for decades at this point. So here is Tucker Carlson with the prime minister of Qatar.

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Again, kind of soft peddling Qatar, its ties to terrorism, its malign actions in the region, its partnership with Iran. And he asked, you know, why do people hate you? And of course, it turns out the only reason that people hate Qatar is because it turns out Qatar is so peaceful and wonderful.

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Okay, the reality is that this was made a national story specifically because the media had a preexisting narrative of race in America and this fulfilled their narrative even if the facts didn't match. Two, if in fact the facts had matched, and let's say that this is a Jewish person.

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Okay, we can stop there. Again, the notion that we have an air base in Qatar, therefore Qatar is an ally of the United States. First of all, Tucker said just a few weeks ago, he doesn't even know what an ally is to Piers Morgan. Because Piers Morgan asked if Israel was an American ally. He doesn't even know what an ally is. What is an ally?

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So apparently Qatar is an ally, but not Israel because it doesn't know what an ally is. Other places, by the way, where American troops are stationed, and we just heard in that tweet from Tucker that apparently if an American dies abroad, an American troop dies abroad in, say, Jordan, an American ally, by the way, or in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, that doesn't count.

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That doesn't matter if Iran funds their murder. All these things are in conflict. All these ideas are in conflict with one another. We currently have troops everywhere from Estonia to Lithuania to Turkey. Is Turkey an American ally? None of this holds together.

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The reason this matters with regard to Qatar is because Qatar, as we say, has been funding enormous, enormous chaos at America's universities. And so one of the things the Trump administration has quite properly been doing is pulling money from universities that are in fact not enforcing civil rights law with regard to Jews.

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Because it turns out a lot of these major universities are perfectly fine with Jew hatred on their campus in a way that they wouldn't be anti-black hatred or anti-Hispanic hatred or anything else. Now, again, you can argue with the civil rights law on anti-discrimination. And I'll hear that argument.

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But the notion that Jews are exempt from those civil rights laws while other groups are not is a bizarre one. The Trump administration doesn't take that seriously.

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And so the Trump administration on Friday said it was pulling $400 million from Columbia University canceling grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the Ivy League school's failure to squelch anti-Semitism on campus. So again, When it comes to Middle Eastern politics and all the rest of it, a lot of bad things can be happening simultaneously.

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That does not mean that America is the bad actor or that actual American allies that, you know, are against terrorism are the bad actors.

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A Jewish person had been arrested for counterfeiting, for passing counterfeit bills, and then had been high on fentanyl and had a preexisting heart condition and then had died under the knee of a cop. Would I have said that the cop was innocent? Yes, because if the cop is innocent, the cop is innocent. That's the way this works.

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And thinking in that way tends to facilitate the actions of the actual bad actors, including, yes, Iran, which is not a peace loving state in the Islamic Republic that has murdered thousands of American troops in places like Iraq, spread terrorism all over the region. And this is not a case for us to go to, quote, a full-scale war, hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground.

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No one, literally no one is arguing this. No one, zero people. But the sort of propaganda efforts on behalf of Iran or by its allies in Qatar is worth noting at this point in time, at the very least. Now, meanwhile, in dumb news, apparently there's a show called Love is Blind. I've been informed of this show by producers Savvy and Jessica. Because as you know, this is not my bag.

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But Love is Blind, there's a major controversy that broke out on this show, Love is Blind. Why? Well, because apparently there's a person named Sarah and there's a person named Ben and they were supposed to get married on Love is Blind. And then it all broke apart at the altar. So we begin this tragic story with their first date on episode two. Ben was raised in a strong Christian household.

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Uncensored ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats, breaking news first, no filter, no corporate leash, and no nonsense. The Daily Wire is where the real story lives. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join the fight today. So a lot of people have been asking why we're focused in here at the Men's Bureau Show on the pardon of Derek Chauvin.

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Sarah was no longer religious. Ben apparently was upset about the church's stance on LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues. And Ben goes to church every week. And so here was one of their first dates or their first date.

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I grew up in a very strong Christian household. There's a lot of things that I believe about like the Bible and I believe about, you know, the Christian faith. But it's all hard to obviously know for certain.

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Okay.

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I hate the word religion. I like using the word faith.

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Yeah. No discomfort around that community at all.

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Okay, so first of all, his fault. Like she's making her politics very clear and at this point he should be out. Okay, so first of all, her politics are psychotic. This bizarre notion that every church that says that homosexual activity is a sin is somehow evil and wrong and terrible. I know this is a left-wing trope. It's really stupid. It's really stupid. People sin all the time, every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Every person who's a church or synagogue or even mosque-going person that I know who's very religious understands that people sin all the time. That does not mean that the church has to approve the sin, which is the shtick that she's doing. She can't go to a church that won't approve all of her moral values or her friends' lifestyles.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Literally, the nature of religion is to try to set out an objective morality that is true whether you like it or not. But in any case... Apparently, this all culminated at the end of season eight because Sarah decided that she was not, in fact, going to marry Ben based on his incompatible values. And all I got to say is you both knew this. But honestly, he knew this more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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The race or religion of the pseudo victim is irrelevant to the question of whether this person was in fact murdered or not. Stephen A. Smith is one of the deepest racial identitarians in our society. He does it all the time, all the time. He does it when he talks sports. It happens literally all the time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And, you know, I'm going to go against the grain here. I'm going to say this is actually his fault. She made very clear what her values were very early on. He was sort of hiding the ball. And I have no—she says, yes, I will go to a gay pride parade. I have no discomfort around that community.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Well, I mean, she could theoretically take away from that that he's, you know, perfectly fine with all aspects of all of this. Anyway, she breaks up with him at the altar.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Hi, guys. Oh, my goodness. Okay. We love you guys, too. We love you. It was a lot, but we're rolling with it. I just want to talk to her. Yeah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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You know, everybody is all in ripping on her. I'm going to rip on him. I think that he acted like an idiot here. She made her politics very clear. I've said this a thousand times with regard to dating and marriage. Marry somebody who shares your value system because you need to build a life and a family with that person. He knew her value system. He was willing to go along with it anyway.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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So people are going to say, well, she's being intolerant. No, she's actually being smarter than he is. He should have canceled this early on. He should have been like, nope, we don't share a compatible system of values. I'm out. Again, I think her values are wrong, but I think that her take, which is our values are incompatible, is not wrong, actually. So, it's definitely bizarre.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Ben suggested continuing their relationship. Sarah found that disrespectful given the context of the show. She felt that if she couldn't commit to marriage, continuing to date would not be meaningful. She's not wrong. She's not wrong. Ben later stated at the reunion he regretted not having deeper conversations. Okay, well, I mean, again, his fault. Totally his fault.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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So I can totally disagree with her politics and also understand that actually the way that she approached this is more correct than the way that he approached all of this. Alrighty, that's enough of that dumb news. Coming up, we'll get into the latest in Ukraine. And very, very hot topic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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The Trump administration is making some moves that, frankly, I'm skeptical that they're going to end with the kind of peace agreement that is going to be durable or lasting if this continues in this way. First, you need to become a Daily Wire subscriber. It's important because we are fighting the fight. There is such a thing as rationality and such a thing as decency.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And there are increasingly few people who actually fight for those things. We try to do that here at Daily Wire. We have tons of material for you, ranging from Backstage Live to Morning Wire to Matt Walsh's wonderful movies to All Access Live. If you're not a member, become a member. Use Code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

335.128

If you're talking about Nikola Jokic, the greatest center of our generation, he'll talk about how Nikola Jokic should not be included in conversations for MVPs specifically because of his race. The reason Stephen A. Smith is saying this kind of stuff is because he is projecting. He is projecting a racial conversation where none exists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

351.854

Here, for example, with Stephen A. Smith, just a couple of years ago, I'm a Celtics fan. So this one sprang to mind. A few years ago, Danny Ainge was the chief of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics. And Brad Stevens was elevated to fill his position. Now it turns out Brad Stevens is a really, really good president of basketball operations. How do we know this?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Well, the Celtics won an NBA championship last year. And he's been one of the most successful NBA executives in all the NBA over the course of his tenure. But Stephen A. Smith was firmly convinced the only reason that Brad Stevens had been elevated is because of his race.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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By the way, worth noting that it's beautiful to be a white guy in America has not precluded Stephen A. Smith from a $100 million five-year contract for ESPN, a failing network where the ratings are going down. The reason that Stephen A. Smith is exercised over the George Floyd situation is specifically because of a racial narrative that is not predicated on facts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And then he's projecting that into me being some sort of racist for suggesting that the racial narrative should not predominate. This is the whole reason that Black Lives Matter was such a mistake and such a fail. Because it was racializing of a question that was not in fact racial.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And this is, again, it's just more evidence that what I'm saying about Chauvin is true, that the reason that Derek Chauvin is in prison right now is because he was the wrong race and George Floyd was the wrong race. And because of that, Derek Chauvin is in prison right now. Because here's the dirty little secret.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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It never would have been a national news story if the races had been reversed or if both people had been white or if both people had been black. It would not have been a national news story. And that means that the officer would have been assessed on the facts of the situation rather than on the racial narrative people like Stephen A. Smith were propagating.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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After all, he's convicted on both federal charges as well as state charges. Well, there are a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that there is a likelihood he serves less time if you relieve the federal charges. The reason for that is because while federal inmates can earn good time credit that reduces sentences, that happens at a much lower rate than it happens at the state level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And meanwhile, again, this is part and parcel of a broader left wing failure when it comes to narrative. The left wing narrative has failed on so many fronts. Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who is from Michigan and she was supposed to be the Trump response. Well, she said, listen, we're on our heels. And she's right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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The Democrats are on their heels because in pretty much every narrative area, they're on their heels.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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So she will not admit the problem, however, she was asked about the fact that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is moving away from the men should play in women's sports routine and she won't even address it. So you can't say that you admit you have a problem, but then not admit what the problem is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

578.069

Okay, well, then it would be very easy for you to avoid the sparks flying by simply saying the obvious thing, which is that boys should not play in girls' sports. Get some more on that in a moment. First, only two things in life are certain, death and taxes. Well, now there is a third certainty.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

605.506

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

623.984

We've got uncensored ad-free daily shows one year free of the DW Kids platform, Benkei, and of course, the magical Leftist Tears Tumblr. The only way you get all that is by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

643.497

puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, let me tell you something. When you have one of those mattresses from the box stores, you really don't think about how bad it is until you get something new and better. That's what happened with me and Helix mattress. You know that feeling where you wake up and your back is already complaining at you? That was me a lot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

658.481

The mattress was sagging, it would absorb heat, it was really bad. But then I switched on over to Helix and I wake up feeling ready to take on even my busiest days and the craziest headlines. Here's what makes Helix different. They don't believe in one-size-fits-all sleep solutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

669.925

Instead, they use their Sleep Quiz to match you with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences. Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share your bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match for you. Honestly, my mattress from Helix, it's so good when I'm on the road, it is very difficult for me to sleep nearly as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

67.028

So when you're talking about Derek Chauvin's concurrent sentences, he has about a 22 and a half year sentence on state charges and 21 on federal charges. But under Minnesota state sentencing structure, inmates usually serve about two thirds of their sentence behind bars and one third under supervised release.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Right now, Helix is offering an incredible March Madness Sale. Visit helixsleep.com slash men, get 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 20% off site-wide. Again, just visit helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer. It's helixsleep.com slash Ben and you get 20% off site-wide. Democrats have lost the thread here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And so many of them are just doubling down on the most extreme elements of their agenda. So for example, MSNBC host Melissa Murray asked Representative Al Green, you'll remember him from being ejected during the pseudo State of the Union address, if the Democrats were being too conciliatory with President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Mm, mm. Yes, they're not being loud enough. They need righteous incivility. Okay, good luck with that. Now, there are dangers to the Trump administration. I've been saying this for weeks now. The main danger to the Trump administration is the economy tanking. That is the number one danger to the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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One of the things that's for sure going to affect the economy is impending talk of a government shutdown. So the government must be funded in very near term or we're going to get a government shutdown. Democrats, of course, are not going to help out with that. Some Republicans are saying that they are willing to undergo a government shutdown in order to lower spending.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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Thomas Massey, again, is sort of the guy who's constantly Leroy Jenkins-ing. every sort of fiscal negotiations. Just assume he's a no, always and forever, because he thinks spending is bad. Agree, spending is bad. Also, you're not doing anything useful right now. In any case, this has become a very contentious issue on the right side of the aisle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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So he would serve like 15 years of the 22 and a half year state sentence in actual confinement under the state charges. So you'd get less time in jail is the short answer. But the other answer is that when you believe a person who is not guilty is languishing in prison, That is the time when the president of the United States ought to either commute a sentence or pardon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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One of the reasonable members of Congress who is in fact a deep fiscal conservative is Representative Chip Roy, who joins us on the line. He, of course, represents Texas' 21st congressional district, one of the strongest fiscal conservatives in Congress. Chip, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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So let's talk about this continuing resolution. There, I think, are several different caucuses, obviously, on the Republican side of government. There are people who will kind of go along with any spending bill. And then there are people like you who are actual fiscal conservatives but wish to live in a world in which reality applies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And then there are a couple of people who I think are more interested in shouting at the wind than actually doing anything. So when it comes to this continuing resolution... As one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress, why should conservatives go along with this continuing resolution?

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Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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The argument from the sort of shouting against the wind type says, well, we always say we're going to fight to live and live to fight another day, but we never fight another day. Why on this one aren't we just, you know, fight, fight, fighting?

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Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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And I think the reality is that, you know, people in my industry, the sort of conservative media industry, it's always in our interest to claim that it's just insufficient fight on the part of Republicans that leads to all of this stuff, which ignores, of course, all the incentive structures as to how Congress actually works. There are a bunch of Republicans who are in purple districts.

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Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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There are a bunch of Republicans who are even in blue districts. And the fact is that when you have a majority that is as slim as the majority Republicans are currently working with, the idea that under this Congress, you're going to restructure Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid so as to solve the national debt

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I mean, I'm wondering how we're supposed to get from point A to point B. You kind of get the best that you can get.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

Well, folks, that was an awful Super Bowl, but here is the thing. That Super Bowl was also replete with a new mood for the country, and you could feel it right from the outset of the Super Bowl. All the woke was basically gone. The commercials themselves... had been changed and transmuted. There were a couple of woke commercials, but they're kind of few and far between.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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And again, the general feeling was just a feeling of this is kind of normie comfort land. And that's fine. Then there was the halftime show. And my review of the halftime show, you know, so Kendrick Lamar is a human. Kendrick Lamar is a human who hates another human named Drake. Apparently they have a feud. And Kendrick Lamar, because of this feud, put together a song called Not Like Us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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This person has won a Pulitzer Prize. A Pulitzer Prize for Kendrick Lamar. Which, I gotta say, worst Pulitzer Prize since what, Rent? That is a bad Pulitzer Prize. And in this song, which is essentially a diss track, about Drake liking underage people sexually. This is what was at the Super Bowl. And my basic Super Bowl halftime review is, actually, it's a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The only problem is I can't understand a word he's saying, but I just say this, good luck, live in peace. I have no idea what he was saying. I don't think anyone knew what he was saying unless he knew the song previously. There was no great dancing. There was no great music. It was about as meh as humanly possible. I suppose if you're a Kendrick Lamar fan, then this is your bag.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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But if you're not, if this is like your introduction to Kendrick Lamar, I'm just wondering why. Just why. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Now, listen, do I wish that America had more cultural moments aside from the Super Bowl? The reality is that we're so fragmented as a culture that it's very difficult for us to get together on anything. Super Bowl Sunday has basically become a sort of secular catechism in the United States. But that catechism, for many, many years, was just a woke catechism. It was end racism in the end zones.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Okay, so the entire stadium knew the lyrics because he's a very famous person because Americans apparently have no taste musically. I know I'm a musical snob. I like Bach, Beethoven, and I've said that rap is not a form of music before becoming a number one billboard charting rap artist because I said pretty much anybody could rap and then I went out and proved it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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But in any case, apparently that was a big deal because the lyric is that Drake was trying to strike a chord, a minor, right? Like, cause, cause like a minor, cause he has sex with, and then he calls him a pedo in the song. So, um, all right, I guess if that's your, if that's your thing, congrats to you. I guess I'm getting old or either that, or I like good music. One of those two things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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In any case, overall, A terrible Super Bowl game. But there's a feeling of peace and comfort that has come across the country. And the media are not knowing how to deal with it. They just don't. The normie revolution is here. How do we know? Because the polling shows it. So President Trump is currently riding in the approval ratings, according to CBS, at 53%. 53% for President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1231.103

Why? Because he's doing the things he promised he would do. And by the way, the age breakdown here is astonishing. Now, President Trump has high approval ratings for one reason, because he has, like, high energy, and you need high energy as well. So do I. Start each day off right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1311.391

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Their product line includes everything from organic, super greens and multivitamins to collagen, weight loss products, protein powder, creatine detox, even skincare, all premium quality at prices people can actually afford. It's no surprise they're the fastest growing supplement brand with over 1.5 million subscribers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

134.062

It was... performances of Lady Gaga shouting about trans people at halftime. And now you have a Super Bowl that is opening with the Declaration of Independence. America is just a little bit back under Donald J. Trump. Here was the opener to the

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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satisfied customers if you're ready to make the switch and start saving we'll make it even easier for you use our link you can save an additional 10 off your first order on top of the already lowest prices in the industry just go to livegood.com slash men save 10 on your first order that's livegood.com slash men don't miss out on this opportunity to invest in your health without overspending and here's the age breakdown in terms of approval rating for president trump

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1374.104

For those above the age of 65, he's at 50-50. For those aged 45 to 64, he is at a 56% approval rating, plus 12. For those aged 30 to 44, he's at 50 to 48, plus 4. Here's the crazy one. Aged 18 to 29, 55% approval rating for President Trump. For those aged 18 to 29... You hear that ringing alarm bell? You hear that giant klaxon that is sounding for democratic hopes and dreams?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1405.684

18 to 29, America's young people, 18 to 29, have a 55% approval rating for President Trump. Why? Because he's counterculture. The left was so dominant culturally that the counterculture became this kind of 1980s era, classic patriotism, American pie and motherhood version of America. And now if you're a rebel, if you want to be one of the cool kids, put on the red hat. It's rebellious now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1432.948

Now this was coming for a while because the left was so censorious, so over the top, so just frankly annoying that everyone got annoyed with them. That's how you end up with a 10% plus 10 approval rating for President Trump among people 18 to 29. By the way, among white voters, he's at a 61% approval rating.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1453.413

Among black voters, he's at a 33% approval rating, which sounds terrible until you realize that pretty much every Republican rides at like a 10% approval rating. 33% approval rating among black voters. Among Hispanic voters, he's at a 49% approval rating in the CBS News poll. That's insane. These are wild numbers for President Trump. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Well, because people perceive President Trump to be moving with alacrity to keep his promises. Again, I think the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has helped Trump so insanely much. Joe Biden was a dead person who apparently didn't like many of the things about the country and farmed out all of his policymaking to his wokest advisors and then was unable to stay awake most of the day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Meanwhile, President Trump is the opposite. According to that new CBS News poll, here's the percentage of 18 to 29-year-olds. I mean, these are young Americans, okay? 18 to 29. 71% of people 18 to 29 describe Trump as tough. 65% describe him as energetic. 63% describe him as effective. And 62% describe him as focused. These are young people. 58% describe him as competent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1522.666

Only 35% describe him as compassionate. Because guess what? Compassionate went out with Joe Biden in the sense that fake compassion is the brand of the Democratic Party. And maybe Americans are tired of that stuff. Maybe what Americans want are some hard truths, some realities, and some normalcy. 70% of all Americans say that Trump is doing what he promised in the campaign.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1546.983

including 68% of Hispanics and 58% of black Americans. That's crazy. These are insane numbers. Insane. By the way, 59% of Americans approve of President Trump's program to find and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally. That includes a majority of every single age group. That includes 66% of whites, 49% of blacks, and 49% of Hispanics.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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It includes, by the way, 23% of Democrats and 59% of independents. President Trump has never had better numbers than this ever. And some of that is due to President Trump. Obviously, he's a once in a generation unique talent. Clearly, he's a historic figure. And the stuff that he's doing right now is going to make him one of the most seminal figures in American history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1596.356

Truly, what he's been doing over the course of the first 20 days. We are 20 days in. The first 20 days of his administration alone. is making him one of the most important presidents of our lifetime. And it's not particularly close, actually. If you were going to rank important presidents of my lifetime, so I was born during the Reagan administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1617.464

So you probably still have to put Reagan on top because the Cold War ended because of Reagan. And the entire American economy was reshifted because of Ronald Reagan. But after that, it's basically Reagan, Obama, and Trump. And Trump is erasing so much of what Obama was able to do in destroying many important facets of the country. You have to put Trump above Obama at this point. which is amazing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1640.122

So you're talking about the two most seminal presidents of the last 50 years in America are Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. I mean, that's what you'd have to say this early on. Now, again, we're super early. We have to see where all of this goes. But President Trump is moving. He's moving fast. And he really is not taking any prisoners. So President Trump did a pre-Super Bowl show

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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He, unlike Joe Biden, who avoided it because he couldn't actually carry on a conversation, his face hole no longer moved properly. President Trump is perfectly alive and willing to talk. Here he was during the pre-Super Bowl show saying you can feel the country taking on new life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Again, President Trump is a happy camper, and there's a new mood in President Trump. During his first administration, I think he was so frustrated, properly so, that his administration was being thwarted at every turn by legal idiocies, the Mueller investigation, various impeachments. You could feel the frustration rolling off him in ways. You don't get that from President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

1729.617

There is a calm about President Trump that is unique, and that means that he's actually incredibly, incredibly focused. So President Trump spoke about the trade deficit during this pre-Super Bowl show. He said, one of the reasons that we're not rich is because other countries have been taking advantage of us.

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Now, I think he's wrong about trade deficits. Trade deficits are not a thing. Again, you have a trade deficit with your grocery store. You have a trade deficit with everyone with whom you actually do business. If you buy a product from Amazon, you have a trade deficit with Amazon. However, he is right that other countries, particularly China, have taken advantage of the United States.

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They've taken advantage of our free trade systems, of our free speech systems. Whether we are talking about them taking advantage of free speech by using propagandistic information gathering spyware like TikTok, or whether we're talking about China taking advantage of our free trade systems in order to essentially steal our intellectual property and subsidize slave labor in their own country.

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Those are things that have taken advantage of the American laborer and have destroyed some swaths of the American economy. That happens to be true. Well, President Trump was on the plane to the Super Bowl and he signed an EO, a proclamation for the Gulf of America, which again, I love this kind of stuff. Here's President Trump on Air Force One signing an executive order about the Gulf of America.

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He's having too much fun. He's having too much fun. Huffington Post was bothering President Trump on Air Force One about a tweet by J.D. Vance, which we'll get to in a moment. And President Trump couldn't help but dunk on Huffington Post.

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Just dunking hard on Huffington Post over there. Now, President Trump did have some substantive comments as well while he was on the plane. So over the weekend, there were three Israeli hostages who were released by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of murderous terrorists released by Israel. The hostages were essentially held in tunnels for over a year. emaciated and starved.

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It appears that the people who were most affected by the so-called starvation in Gaza were not the Palestinians. It, in fact, turns out to have been the hostages who were being purposefully starved by the Palestinians, by Hamas. President Trump said that he saw the pictures. I mean, the situation there is absolutely horrifying.

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One of the people who came out of the tunnels who was released, he was unaware, he'd been made unaware for over a year that his wife and children had been murdered by Hamas. And so during his actual statement, he said he was looking forward to seeing his wife and his kids who were already dead, been dead for a year. In any case, here's President Trump speaking about this.

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The generalized mood of the country is just different. There's an optimism, there's a patriotism to the mood in the country, and you can feel it pretty much everywhere, from the ads to the national anthem to even the fairly terrible halftime show itself. I begin from the beginning. Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles.

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President Trump is not Joe Biden. By the way, speaking of aid to Hamas, it has been revealed that USAID, which is the agency that the Musk Doge is going through and cutting, USAID, is responsible for providing $230 million in funding in just November 2024 alone to Gaza. Since October 7th, the U.S.

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taxpayer has spent, get ready for this, $2.1 billion on Gaza, shipping supposed humanitarian and economic recovery aid into an area occupied by a terrorist group holding American hostages. No wonder Americans don't like USAID. Bill Hagerty, the senator from Tennessee, he says, listen, the appetite for killing USAID in Congress is quite real.

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Okay, it's basically a Trump ad, right? It just is. I'm sorry, cowboys on horses with an American flag in an ad that starts with the founding father signing the Declaration of Independence. That's just a Trump ad. And a lot of these sort of bizarrely anti-American histrionics were just gone. John Batiste, who's a terrific artist, jazz artist, and he does some really excellent stuff.

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No, they absolutely fund Hamas. If you're sending billions of dollars into the Gaza Strip, absolutely 100% they're funding Hamas. There's no question about this.

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Meanwhile, Mike Waltz, who is the national security advisor, he said, listen, we understand that USAID, the aid officials have had their own agenda for a very long time and they're funneling money, American taxpayer money, to absolute trash.

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By the way, it is worth noting the cuts to USAID are highly popular with Americans. Americans do not like spending their money on this trash. All right, coming up, we're going to get to what else Doge is going to cut. Democrats having mental breakdowns over a tweet by J.D. Vance and Elon Musk on the racism in South Africa.

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First, at The Daily Wire, we break the news that the corporate media will not touch. We bring you the facts. First, fast, unfiltered. Our exclusive investigative journalism actually does what journalism is supposed to do, exposing corruption, uncovering the truth, holding those behind it accountable.

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When you join Daily Wire+, you get ad-free, uncensored live daily shows where you can chat with fellow Daily Wire members and the show's team in real time. Plus, you get full access to our entire library of premium entertainment, including Am I Racist?, the number one documentary of the decade, and the films and series that continue to reshape the culture.

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The fight for truth is happening right now. Become a member today. at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to lose their minds over Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House's Department of Government Efficiency has drawn scrutiny for the rapid work of its technology team burrowing into multiple agencies. It says it has identified and cut more than $1 billion in spending in the first three weeks. Now, again, $1 billion is a lot of money in regular people money.

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In government money, it really is not much at all, and they're going to have to dig a lot deeper, and they intend on doing so. More than half of the cost savings Doge says it has found is related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Doge is going to push for far larger cuts via the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate, to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate as well.

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Other massive parts of the budget obviously include major embedded costs, things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the defense budget. Musk's group so far is targeting a subset of programs in those buckets, but Musk has signaled he thinks there are much bigger savings elsewhere in the budget that his group is now shifting its attention to.

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So Medicare and Medicaid's contracting and payments system, they're now going through that looking for evidence of fraud. There's massive fraud in those systems. Now, again, is any of this going to heal America's underlying debt problem? No, it isn't. And the reason that it's not is because the biggest drivers of the debt are these giant entitlement programs that nobody is going to touch. However,

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If you want Americans to be in the mood to cut, you first have to identify the actual giant, obviously wasteful programs. And the way that the media are fighting back against this, pretty amazing. So, for example, the New York Times has a piece titled, For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger, and Tears.

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One thing lost in the Trump administration's war on the federal bureaucracy is the collective voice of the employees. But some have begun to speak out. In the words of Vice President J.D. Vance, I don't care, Margaret. I'm sorry. You work at the pleasure of the taxpayer. You do not have a cush job for life.

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He performed the national anthem, did a terrific national anthem.

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And if you work for USAID, where they're blowing billions of dollars on some of the worst trash in humanity, then I think probably you should lose your job. But according to the New York Times, we're supposed to feel terrible for federal employees who lose their jobs doing jobs that wouldn't exist in the private sector. And the rest of us actually have to be answerable to a bottom line.

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The beautiful thing about being a taxpayer employee is that you never have to be answerable to a profit and loss statement. You never have to generate actual revenue. No return is necessary. All you need to do is demonstrate that you are a member of a preferred coterie that the federal government wishes to pay. But the New York Times is trying to gin up the sympathy.

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Quote, one was fired by email at 1247 a.m. Another wept with colleagues as security escorted her from her office. A third frantically tried to fill a prescription after she got a 24-hour notice that her health care was ending. I mean, well, did they deserve to lose their job or not? If they don't, bring them back. If they do, get rid of them.

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I don't understand why the feelings of the dismissed are supposed to be the chief factor. Like, is all of the government just a giant welfare program or what? Because I was told that these people were supposed to be good-hearted employees of the state, servants of the people and the public interest. And, well, again, Democrats are panicking about all of this.

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For example, Senator Chris Murphy, who is just terrible, senator from Connecticut, he says that we are watching the worst constitutional crisis since Watergate. No, not even remotely closed, my dude.

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That's ridiculous. Make them afraid of his, that's what, does Chris Murphy fear for his life? Really? I've had 24-7 security on me for years. Why? Well, because there are a wide variety of people who have threatened my life. Does Chris Murphy get that on the regular from, you know, people who are watching Meet the Press? Is that a thing? Is he getting that from President Trump?

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Here's what's actually happening. As I've said before, there's a giant pipeline of cash that flows from the federal government to all of Chris Murphy's friends, and Trump and Doge are walking in and they're ending that giant pipeline of cash, and he's mad about it.

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Not only that, the federal government was using its pressure tactics in order to get private industry to do its dirty work, from social media to corporate heads who are embracing dumbassery like ESG and DEI. And now... The Trump administration is coming in and saying, you don't have to do any of that anymore. In fact, it's illegal if you discriminate on the basis of race.

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And companies are reacting to that. They're reacting by getting rid of all of these bad policies. And somehow that's fascism. First fascist takeover in human history to reduce the size and scope of government. Never heard of anything like it. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar, who can't even abide by immigration law when it comes to her brother, allegedly.

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is now saying that Trump has decided he won't abide by the Constitution. Oh, my God. The fact that this joke of a human is somehow considered a leading light in the Democratic Party, that's one of the reasons the Democratic Party is currently riding at 31% approval rating.

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Like, this is good stuff. Right? No histrionics. No kneeling.

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So this is going to be the plan. The plan is rely on the judiciary. Now, that's pretty hysterical, considering that the Democratic Party five seconds ago was talking about packing the Supreme Court. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic Party were openly talking about packing the Supreme Court.

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Joe Biden tried to tweet an amendment into the Constitution on his last day in office. He literally tried to say that there was a constitutional amendment that he had now magically declared the Equal Rights Amendment, which had not, in fact, been in any way ratified by the states. And he tried to tweet it into the Constitution.

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This is a dude who openly acknowledged that he was attempting to defy the Supreme Court on relieving student loan debt. But now they're relying on the courts. Again, the rules just never apply in the same way to Democrats. It's amazing. But the New York Times has found that this is the strategy.

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Quote, more than 40 lawsuits filed in recent days by state attorneys general, unions and nonprofits seek to erect a bulwark in the federal courts against President Trump's blitzkrieg of executive actions that have upended much of the federal government and challenged the Constitution's system of checks and balances.

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Unlike the opening of Mr. Trump's first term in 2017, little significant resistance to his second term has arisen in the streets, the halls of Congress, or within his own Republican Party. For now, at least lawyers say the judicial branch may be it. The courts really are the front line, said Sky Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward.

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So again, judicial orders have been issued in nine federal court cases, include ending automatic citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil.

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Like giant American flags, I'm sorry. And then when Trump came on the big screen, giant cheer, giant cheer. By the way, where we were sitting and watching the Super Bowl in Florida with some friends, giant cheer in the room when President Trump came up with Ivanka there. First regiment in the U.S. Corps of Cadets. And it's like, great. This is great. Normie Americans.

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There was a hold put on that, transferring transgender female inmates to male-only prisons, meaning men to male-only prisons, potentially exposing identities of FBI personnel who investigated January 6th, pushing federal workers to accept deferred resignation. There are a bunch of judges, local judges, who have essentially put nationwide stays on federal policy.

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I don't understand how that works, just judicially. I don't understand how a local judge can issue a nationwide injunction. It seems like a bizarre standard for federal law. So J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, put out a controversial tweet on this matter. He said, quote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.

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If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Now, there are two ways to read this, the way that J.D. Vance actually meant it and the way that the left is immediately taking this.

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What he is saying is that if the judiciary declared something to be illegal that was actually legal, it would not have the force of law. So, for example... If the judiciary simply declared that the First Amendment did not cover political speech, you'd be obligated to ignore the judiciary because the judiciary would be wrong.

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They don't actually have the power, for example, to say, the judiciary, that let's say Congress declares war and the president goes to war. The judiciary can't then say the war is illegal under the Constitution. That's not the way that it works. They don't have that power. In other words, he's saying the judiciary's power is bounded.

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And now the left is interpreting that to mean that there are no boundaries that can be placed by the judiciary at all, which is of course not what J.D. Vance is saying. The left has gone nuts over all of this. They've suggested that J.D. Vance is attempting to overthrow the boundaries of the constitution itself. That is not true. Every branch has its own constitutional duty.

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The constitutional duty of the executive is not alleviated by the rulings of the Supreme Court if the Supreme Court rules wrongly. That is J.D. Vance's entire point. But again, Democrats have to try and claim intermittently that this is a threat to the Republic. Now, meanwhile, what do people actually see as a threat to the Republic? Mainly the crazy of the left.

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You may be asking yourself, if Donald Trump is so dangerous, if all of this is so dangerous, why does Donald Trump currently have the highest approval rating of his entire political life? Why? And the answer is partially because of Trump, but largely because the left continues to be insane.

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So, for example, Chris Hayes over the weekend, he spent the weekend doubling down on the idea that children should be guaranteed sex transition. Like, good luck with this, guys. These are your intellectuals.

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Okay, good luck with this. You get big clap seals from the Bill Maher audience, but it is not exactly going to go amazing for you. Bill Maher knows this, by the way. So one of his guests was very upset over the weekend at the end of the end racism signs at the Super Bowl, like in the end zone. She was like, why did they remove the end racism signs at the Super Bowl?

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Normie America is having a moment, having a comeback. By the way, you heard Trump cheered right there. Trump was very wildly cheered in the stadium when he was shown, when he arrived at the stadium. Here's President Trump. And then they showed Taylor Swift. And like good Americans, America booed Taylor Swift, which was...

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And Bill Maher's like, because they were stupid. That's why.

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And this is the entire point. The left continues to be unbelievably stupid all the way through, consistently and always. Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, who again is apparently now in a running gun battle with Mazie Hirono for dumbest person in the United States Congress. She said over the weekend that under Donald Trump, people of color will be rounded up. But why are they losing?

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I can't I can't imagine. It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

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Well, I mean you don't need a face tattoo saying I'm undocumented for ICE to check your immigration status and find out whether in fact you are here in the country illegally. That is why, for example, we all have IDs and social security numbers here in the United – like that's – Why are they losing? No one knows.

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All right, coming up, we'll get into Elon Musk, who's now sounding off in really, really strong fashion about the deep and abiding racism in South Africa against whites. If you're not a member, become a member. Use Code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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They showed her on the Superdome screen and people were like, no, none of this. President Trump, by the way, couldn't resist it. He actually put up a post on Truth Social about it in which he said, quote, the only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got booed out of the stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving. It's pretty, pretty American.

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Pretty, pretty awesome. Gotta love it. President Trump did meet with the victims and first responders in the terrorist attack in New Orleans, which disappeared from the headlines real quick.

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Remember that ISIS terror attack that killed more than a dozen people in New Orleans and just disappeared from the headlines because we know who did it and we're not allowed to talk about who did it because if we talk about who did it, that might... raise some serious issues about things like immigration or our policies toward radical Muslim countries, for example.

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Well, President Trump did go down to the field and meet with the victims and first responders on the field before the game. President Trump just down on the field meeting everybody. Knowing President Trump, having met President Trump several times, President Trump, when it comes to these sorts of situations, is really good. He's really good in person with people. He knows how to work a room.

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Not such congratulations to the city of Philadelphia, which insists on burning itself down every time something happens to Philadelphia that is either good or bad. That's Philadelphia for you, man, the city of brotherly love. But Jalen Hurts is truly a tremendous quarterback. And the Super Bowl winning quarterback had said before the game that he just wants to root himself in Jesus.

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He's a real bro. You know, like that, there was that feel to it. It just all felt so normal, didn't it? You didn't feel like you were waiting to be sucker punched. Every time you'd watch the Super Bowl, basically since Barack Obama became president, you were just waiting to be sucker punched by some left-wing messaging that had to be drilled directly into your brain. And that just wasn't there.

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Just wasn't there. There was a feeling that, you know, you could just kind of comfortably watch the game and it would be fine. The Secret Service did a Super Bowl ad as well, very patriotic ad. Again, patriotism was the theme of the day because patriotism is now cool. Here's the Secret Service ad.

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And the Secret Service informing President Bush about 9-11.

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By the way, that's the actual way that you recruit people to do things like this. We played just last week, US Army ad that actually shows the army being the army. And here's a Secret Service ad showing the Secret Service doing important and cool stuff and linking it to American history in unashamed fashion. This is Trump's America. It just is.

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A spirit of normalcy and freedom is descending on the country once more. And this country was founded on freedom, of course. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea in the ocean. Had that work out for you, England? Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well.

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You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network. Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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You can make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest to goodness, wireless, priced right. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. All of my important business phone calls take place on Pure Talk.

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You can do the same and save money in the process. Visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to get started. puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, you know what's funny? When I started The Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the awesome content.

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Again, this is the kind of stuff, just kind of normie American stuff that is quite welcome at this time in history.

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Well, it turns out dealing with all the behind the scenes stuff, the hiring, the HR policies, employee issues, that's the stuff that really eats up your time. I know I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable, so don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time-sucking payroll issues, office politics, and HR infractions.

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Focus on what matters most, running your business with help from Bambi. Here's what makes Bambi different. They give you access to your very own dedicated HR manager at a fraction of what it costs to employ someone full-time. And get this. Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month, whether you have 10, 75, even 100 employees.

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If I had Bambi when I was first building my team, it would have saved me countless hours and headaches. Instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance issues, I could have focused on growing my show and connecting with my audience. With Bambi's HR autopilot, And then there were the ads. So I think the most indicative ad of where we are culturally is the Bud Light ad.

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So Bud Light has been apologizing for nigh on two years for having Dylan Mulvaney on a can, for basically deciding to wipe out its entire brand equity by having a man pretending to be a woman as an influencer for Bud Light. And Bud Light got clocked so hard it destroyed the brand. Well, now the way that they have come up with to reinvigorate their brand is to go as bro as humanly possible.

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They're just going to do like man stuff. So they're going to go get Shane Gillis to be in a commercial with Post Malone about a cul-de-sac party involving Peyton Manning. That is Bud Light's idea of how to buy it back. And again, there's no question they're trying to buy it back here. There's no doubt. So many of these brands steered directly into the woke and it didn't work for them.

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It actually backlashed on them. And now they're all trying to buy it back. Bud Light is a great indicator of how this is going.

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And this is corporate America. Nature is healing. Nature is... Now, that didn't mean that all the ads understood the assignment. So, for example... Nike did an ad for women. And again, this sort of ridiculous, over-the-top feminist crap where it's like, oh, all of America thinks women can't succeed. America is pushing women down. Oh, it's so terrible.

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They feature a bunch of female athletes who are defying stereotypes, doing things people, particularly men, tell them they can't do. Oh, it felt really bored and it felt really tired. But there's one thing that is unique about this women for Nike ad. Two years ago, there'd be a bunch of dudes in it. That a bunch of trans dudes, Lea Thomas, would have been in this ad two years ago.

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Now it's a bunch of actual, you know, human women. So here was the ridiculous Nike ad. By the way, I was watching this game with a couple of my kids, with a couple of my nieces. So we had like three girls between the ages of 10 and 13 in the room. They laughed out loud at this ad. They thought it was so stupid. Seriously. Because the entire idea that they're telling you not to do, so do it.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The girls were like, what are they, what? Here we go.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Oh, man.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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Yes, clearly women are victims and put upon. My daughter and my nieces, they were saying these slogans like, they say, they tell you you can't win, so win. They tell you you can't stick your head directly in the toilet bowl, so stick your head directly. Such stupid nonsense. That wasn't the only stupid nonsense.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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The NFL also, in an attempt to reach out to, you want to talk about a bunch of marketing geniuses who do not understand women? Women are not watching football because women want to play football. Women are watching football because Taylor Swift is on the TV and it's a cultural event. That's why women are watching the Super Bowl, because it's a giant cultural event.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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They're not interested in women playing football. In fact, there would be little worse to watch than women playing football. But the NFL didn't add that it's supposed to be based on a bunch of high school movies where a black high school girl is apparently better at football than all the boys. Just ridiculous.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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By the way, both Jalen Hurts as well as Patrick Mahomes, the losing quarterback, are very grounded guys, it seems. And that is quite a wonderful thing. The Super Bowl kicked off with Brad Pitt doing what is effectively just a patriotic ad about how awesome America is. I mean, it literally starts. The ad literally starts with John Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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There she is. Now she's avoiding tackles by all the boys. Okay, now in the real version of this commercial. And then it says, leave the pass behind. And there she is playing female flag football. And apparently this is a sport that some people play, and there are fans in the stands. Let's make girls flag football a varsity sport in all 50 states. Yeah, man. Yeah, with packed stands.

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Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

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By the way, why couldn't you just make that case without her playing against the guys? In real life, of course, the minute that a girl tries to play varsity football with any varsity high school boy, The pieces of her are in the fifth row of the stands. This is not the way human physiology works. It's okay. The vast majority of the ads were, you know, kind of benign or patriotic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

Folks, we have a lot of stuff to get to today. The selection of a brand new pope will be joined by Bishop Robert Barron to explain exactly what about the new pope we need to know. Plus, we'll be getting to President Trump's tariff war. Are we on an off-ramp or is this all spin? And Andrew Klavan stops by to discuss his new book. But first, parenting is hard.

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So now let's talk about the obvious sort of elephant in the room, which is all the talk about his politics. So obviously he has been mildly active on Twitter. He has some old tweets. He's a White Sox fan, which I'm pleased with. He and I are probably the only two White Sox fans currently in existence. But he also, it turns out, has some tweets. including tweets on immigration. And J.D.

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Vance, of course, had made suggestions about a Catholic concept called Ordo Amoris, talking about the order of love. And apparently the new pope had tweeted against J.D. Vance's interpretation of that concept. What do you make of that? What should our takeaway be on the new pope politically?

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Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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Because obviously on matters that the church has never wavered on, like same-sex marriage or abortion or transgenderism, he would be considered wildly right-wing by American political standards.

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Well, Bishop Barron, I really appreciate your time and your insight. Congratulations on the election of the brand new pope.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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All right. Meanwhile, President Trump's big move yesterday was, of course, this UK trade deal. We now know the details of the UK trade deal, and there is less to the eye than it appears. And this is sort of a problem, obviously, for actual policy. So the markets rebounded somewhat on the fact that President Trump had announced a UK trade deal.

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And the markets right now, as I've said before, Benjamin Graham, who is the philosophical mentor to Warren Buffett, used to say that the stock market in the short term is a voting machine and in the long term, it is a weighing machine. What he meant by that is that you're basically voting with your stock as to where you think things are going to go. You're trying to predict a prediction market.

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And so you could be wrong. In the long term, the stock market over time weighs the actual value of things because it takes a while for prediction to become reality or unreality. Well, right now, the markets are trying to respond and take in new information in real time from President Trump.

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And because President Trump is spitting out so much new information, because there are so many members of his administration who are sort of in conflict with one another over trade policy, the markets are roiling. They're going up, they're going down, they're going all around.

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And in the end, they're slightly lower than they were during Liberation Day, which is to say that since Liberation Day, the Dow Jones industrial average over the course of, say, the last month or so is essentially even. Just before Liberation Day, which was April 2nd, the stock market was at 42,000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, 42,225 on April 2nd. And today it's like 41,400.

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So it's down about 700 points. That is not a massive shift, obviously. That shift, however, is in fact indicative of uncertainty because the stock market was going up into the right. And then when it evens out, that's because people don't know what to do next. So what do we make of the deal that President Trump just cut with the UK?

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So he made a big ballyhooed announcement about it yesterday, talked about in the Oval Office, suggested it was a historic deal. And then we actually found out the details of the deal. And the details are not much. So President Trump said on Thursday that his administration and the UK had agreed to the outlines of a deal on trade. He said, it's very conclusive.

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We think everyone's going to be happy. Many countries want to make a deal. Many countries are very unhappy that we happened to choose this one. Now, here is the problem. The deal is really, really limited. Okay, so the actual deal here leaves most UK goods still tariffed at the global 10% tariff the US imposed on all countries in April. There had been a 25% levy on steel and aluminum.

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That levy will now go away. Car tariffs had been put at 25%. They will be lowered to 10% only for the first 100,000 vehicles. Then they go back up. We don't import tons of cars from Britain. We import some, but not like a ton. In return, the UK is cutting some tariffs on US beef imports from 20% to zero, as well as cutting tariffs on ethanol.

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So this is really, really a limited deal, a very, very limited deal. So the reason the stock market responded positively is because any sign of any deal means that people are voting on what they want Trump to do. What they want Trump to do is to remove all sorts of trade barriers. And so when they see a sign that the trade barriers are gonna be removed, the markets get really happy. However,

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The real problem here is that if the underlying policy does not change, then the effects of the policy will be felt. Everybody sees this hurricane coming. This hurricane is the global trade impact of a giant tariff regime placed on nearly every country. Mostly on China, but yes, on every other country.

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It turns out that when you quadruple the tariff rate on the UK, which is effectively what the United States did, that that's going to have some pretty significant supply chain effects. It takes a while for that stuff to be felt because it might take weeks for ships to leave their port and get to the United States.

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And that means that people have not yet made their ships arriving now that are still full because the decision was made as to whether to send the ship before Liberation Day. Well, that's all going to change in the very near future. The hurricane has not yet hit. I live in Florida.

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You check the hurricane map pretty much every day of the summer to see what's going to happen over the course of the next five or seven days. And keep hoping, if you're on the east coast of Florida, the way that we are, that the hurricane is going to swing up and back into the Atlantic Ocean. But that doesn't mean that the impending hurricane has hit yet.

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So if you haven't actually picked up and left the east coast of Florida to move into the interior or something as the hurricane approaches, because you're betting that it's going to move, that does not mean that the hurricane won't hit. It just means it hasn't hit yet. And so the question here is whether the hurricane can be averted by trade policy before it actually hits.

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And from what I see from the UK deal, I'm not... I'm not super complacent about all of this. Prior to the Trump administration, our trade with the UK was governed by most favored nation tariff rates under the World Trade Organization. Those were generally low. They averaged about 2.5% for most goods.

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the trade weighted average most favored nation tariff on non-agricultural goods from the UK was almost zero, 0.5%. For agricultural goods, it was 9.2%. After Liberation Day and the following week, the UK tariff rate was placed at 10%. It remains 10% today.

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So if for non-agricultural goods, the trade weighted tariff rate was 0.5% and today it is 10%, that is if you do your math, 20 times higher than it was just about six weeks ago. And the deal didn't do anything to change any of that. Here's Howard Lutnick yesterday saying essentially that nothing has actually changed.

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He said he's bragging about the trade deal and he says we were at 10 percent and we're still at 10 percent, which doesn't sound like an amazing trade deal to me.

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Okay, so the perfect example of why Trump produced Liberation Day is that we could go from 0.5% on most goods to 10% on most goods and then leave it at 10% and then we get slightly lower tariff rates on our products into the UK. That's why? Again, the question here is what the policy is actually going to look like. Right now, the Trump administration is spinning this policy.

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And so the spin has impact on the markets because we don't know which way the Trump administration is going to go. Every day, the message seems to change. And right now, the administration keeps putting out very positive signals about wanting to do deals. So yesterday, President Trump said that they intend to make a deal with Europe, for example.

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Parenting with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson premieres May 25th only at dailywireplus.com. Also, the news moves fast and bad news moves fastest of all. Every day it gets harder to tell what's real, what's manufactured to control us, to discourage us. The world doesn't need more noise. It needs more wisdom, more facts. That's why starting Monday, May 12th, we are giving you more of The Ben Shapiro Show.

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Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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Okay, so again, whether he wants to make a European deal, obviously the markets are gonna like it if he wants to make a European deal, but what that deal looks like is the thing that's gonna matter in the end. If you wanna make a deal, You want to go buy a new car. And you go in saying, I want to buy a new car. And then at the end of the day, you don't buy the new car.

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Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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The only thing that matters at the end of the day is whether you bought it or not, or what price you paid for that new car. The content is going to dictate what happens next. Not the spin, not the talk about it, what the content is. So if these trade deals look like the UK trade deal, the hurricane is going to hit. It will.

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If these 10% tariffs are maintained on every country, there will in fact be supply line problems. If the tariff rate remains at 125 or 145%, the Treasury Secretary said it's unsustainable. If it takes months to negotiate that out with China, there will be significant supply line impact, supply chain impacts.

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Listen, every business person I know is being impacted by these tariffs in one way or another. And right now the markets are hopeful because they know that President Trump likes reality and lives in the business world, that Trump is going to avert the hurricane. I don't see a lot of evidence that he's going to avert the hurricane from this particular UK deal, for example.

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Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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Meanwhile, the European Union is saying it could target American cars, car parts, airplanes, and other products with tariffs if negotiations with the United States break down. The European Commission, the bloc's executive body on Thursday, released a fresh list of about 95 billion euros worth of American products it says could face tariffs equivalent to about $107 billion.

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That includes American chemicals and plastics, electrical equipment, health-related products, machinery, and agricultural products. President Trump then said yesterday that they expect a friendly meeting with China. Again, the markets like friendly meetings. The question is, how fast can you get to something that does not heavily impact the American economy?

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Okay, so again, the spin's fine. What is the actual content going to be? What is actually going to be inside the package when we open up the package? Is it just going to look like what Letnick said, 10% to 10%? Well, Letnick continues to be very high on the tariff war. He says we're going to roll out dozens of such trade deals.

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Raising stable, responsible kids in this culture, even more difficult. This Mother's Day weekend, we are giving you the trailer for Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series. Here is Parenting, coming exclusively at DailyWire+.

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Actually, two times The Ben Shapiro Show. Twice the analysis, twice the facts. Join in at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Well, folks, we do have a brand new pope. We're gonna get to all the details surrounding the pope in just one second.

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Okay, so whether it will work out just fine, who knows? We're about to find out. Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing, apparently, for higher tax rates. This is a non-starter. It just is. The tax regime that President Trump put into place in his first term, the Trump tax cuts, were a boon to the economy. They disproportionately benefited people who actually were middle and lower class.

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Revising the tax regime to pay for more kind of loopholes and tax breaks in particular areas by increasing taxes on the highest income earners. What that is going to do is sink investment capital. That's what it does. As somebody who has been in most tax brackets at one point in my life, I can tell you I will invest less if I have less money to invest.

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And that's true for everyone who is a high net earner. increasing the income tax on the top income tax brackets in order to pay for more useless government spending, because nobody has the actual balls to say in American politics that we spend too much on our social welfare programs, which we do, particularly our means tested social welfare programs.

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And those are going to break the American economy and shifting around deck chairs in the Titanic by increasing the marginal tax rates at the top by two percent or something. That's not going to save anything. This idea that you're going to get, if the Republican Party is now the tax raising party and the tariff party, we will see how that works out for them at the polls.

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I do not think it is going to work out particularly well. We'll get to more in a moment. First, made in America means something to our country's private equity investors. When you invest $700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you're investing in the success. of Main Street.

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Over the last eight years alone, America's private equity investors have contributed $5 trillion to the American economy. That's money that powers growth in manufacturing, tech, energy, innovation. From strengthening supply chains to helping America lead in artificial intelligence, that kind of investment shapes our future. And it starts with private equity actually backing American ambition.

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Investing in our people, our businesses, our community. It's not just good for the economy, it's good for the country. Learn more about how private equity keeps American small businesses growing and thriving at investmentcouncil.org, paid for by the American Investment Council.

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Ep. 2196 - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Roman Catholic Church has now elected the first American pope in history, placing 1.4 billion faithful in the hands of a missionary turned Vatican prelate who had been critical of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration. Now, this is the way that the media are playing this, is that...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Also, you might already own a firearm, but starting with a less lethal option to avoid financial, legal, mental repercussions of pulling the trigger, that's essential. Enter Burna, that's B-Y-R-N-A. I'm about as pro Second Amendment as it gets. I own a bevy of firearms, but the thought of using lethal force, it's not ideal for everyone.

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Luckily, Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammo designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes without the unwanted repercussions. And Burna is excited to introduce the all new compact launcher. Sleek, slim, it's like a sledgehammer, the same size as a smartphone, allowing you to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence.

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This launcher fires at 400 feet per second with 41 joules of force per square inch. It's a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks without having to deal with the complexities of a homicide. One thing I love about Burna, they are American. Over 80% of the components in that compact launcher are sourced in the United States. Their pistols are hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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There's a lot to be recommended with regard to Burna. God forbid you kill somebody, that's gonna be a big legal problem for you, a headache. And by the way, there are a lot of states where it's very difficult to get a firearm to defend yourself. Burna is legal in all 50 states. It requires no background checks. It can be shipped directly to your door.

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And it's trusted by hundreds of police departments and government agencies worldwide. worldwide. Thank you, Berna, for sponsoring this video. President Trump apparently is privately urging Speaker Mike Johnson to raise the top tax rate and close the so-called carried interest loophole. So what the hell is the carried interest loophole? You hear about this all the time.

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Very often, the media will use a term and call it a loophole when it's not a loophole at all. So they'll say something like a gun show loophole, as though if you're a federally licensed firearms dealer, you can just go to a gun show and sell a gun randomly. That is not true.

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The so-called gun show loophole means a private person who sells a gun to his friend doesn't have to necessarily go through all of the federal background check kind of stuff. And so people called it the gun show loophole when, in fact, all it meant is that if you're not a federally licensed firearms dealer and you're a private individual, that these rules don't apply to you in the same way.

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So it's not the same thing is kind of true of the so-called carried interest loophole. So what exactly is the so-called carried interest loophole? It's not a loophole at all. So what is carried interest? So I asked my sponsor at Perplexity to explain. So carried interest works like this.

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Fund managers typically receive two forms of compensation if you work at like a hedge fund or in private equity or VC, venture capital. So you have two forms of being paid. One is a management fee, which is just income, right? You get paid a flat fee to handle people's portfolios. And then there's the so-called carried interest, which is a share of the fund's profits.

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So the fund makes a profit, you get a share of the profit. But in order for it to qualify for capital gains tax as opposed to income tax, The underlying investments have to be held for more than three years. It's like you just make a quick churn and burn with regard to a stock.

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Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who's a 69-year-old native of Chicago and a White Sox fan, which is great. There are like three of us, and so I appreciate him being in the club. He emerged on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, was introduced to the world as Pope Leo XIV. Here is what it looked like when it happened yesterday.

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You sell it, you make a quick profit, you take the income, and then you paid the capital gains rate as opposed to the higher income tax rate. You actually have to be making a profit off of an investment that held for three years or more. Management fees are taxed at the regular income rate.

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Carried interest is taxed as the long-term capital gain at a maximum rate of 20% if the underlying investments are held for more than three years. So here is the question. If you have a share of the profits, isn't that more like owning a stock? That's the reason why it's treated as actually not a form of typical income.

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It's more like selling a stock because you actually are getting a share of stock that was profitable and then it was sold. So it's more like a capital gain than it is like income.

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Now, you can make an argument that capital gains should be taxed the same as income, but stop pretending that the carried interest loophole is actually just a form of normal income that's getting carved out for hedge fund managers. That's not what it is.

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This sort of economic policy, this sort of populist left economic, it is, it's a populist left economic policy, heavy trade restrictionism for the sake of trade restrictionism as a subsidy to particular areas of the American economy. Add on to that higher tax rates.

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And I'm wondering what the difference is between that economic policy per se and Sherrod Brown's economic policy when he was Senator from Ohio. That is not the economic policy that President Trump enacted in his first term. And that was so wildly successful in increasing the earnings of everybody from the bottom part of the spectrum to the top part of the spectrum. This is a mistake.

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Meanwhile, in other news, the president of the United States is now named a new nominee for his surgeon general. That surgeon general nominee is a person named Casey Means. She replaces another person, Jeanette Nusherat, who had essentially been ousted because of concerns about her views on vaccines. Laura Loomer was a big opponent. Turns out Laura Loomer doesn't like Casey Means very much either.

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President Trump, for his part, says, listen, this one wasn't me. This is probably Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy. Here is President Trump.

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Okay, so President Trump, of course, supporting her for this. Casey, who is she? Well, she is a Stanford-trained physician. She dropped out of residency. She went to Stanford Medical School. And then she turned into a sort of wellness influencer, author, big pharma whistleblower. She had a bunch of major media appearances, including, of course, Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman.

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Here she was, for example, on Joe Rogan talking about what she called the devastating state of American health.

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And so, again, these sorts of concerns are things that Americans are concerned about. They feel like they've been gaslit on American health for a very long time. The reality is that America is obese. America does not exercise enough. America eats junk food a lot. And this is one of the things that Casey Means focuses a lot on is this sort of holistic explanation of all disease.

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She says you basically have to stop treating the symptoms, which very often are symptoms of specific diseases, and start treating what she calls the sort of underlying issue. And that underlying issue is supposed to be foundational metabolic cellular health.

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She says that government policy should focus on things like HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, and waist circumference. Here she was talking about how one of the problems is how doctors basically get paid for treating symptoms, but they don't get really paid for fixing the underlying problem.

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Okay, now that isn't actually the fault of doctors. Very often, if you're a primary care doctor, if you don't send somebody to a specialist and a disease develops, you get sued. So this is a real problem. It's sort of the system of liability and medical liability. It used to be that you had a family doctor. The family doctor would look at you.

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Most of the time, the family doctor would say, listen, this problem does not require a specialist. Now, doctors being risk-averse are sending people to specialists more often. All of that is true. She's correct, by the way, that most of the problems that are attributed to sort of disease...

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If you can treat far earlier the underlying problem with good health, getting exercise and all the rest, that is going to be a good solution to an enormous number of problems. She has suggested, for example, that you need to eat fruits and veggies, limit alcohol and drugs, get enough sleep, exercise, avoid environmental toxins. Here she was discussing fighting for life.

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OK, so he said we must try together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and dialogue, always open like the square to receive with open arms everyone who needs our charity and our presence. There's been a widespread debate over where he is politically, because for the faithful, obviously for people who are faithful Catholics, this means a different thing than for people like me.

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Okay, so she has been called out by now Laura Loomer for supposedly being kind of kooky. The reason that Laura Loomer is going after her is because she put out in her newsletter about when she was looking for romance, that she would pray to photos of her ancestors, that you do full moon ceremonies, that you would talk literally out loud to the trees, plant medicine experience and all the rest.

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But the question is, as Surgeon General, are those going to be her recommendations or more likely are her recommendations going to be things like, you know, you should probably eat well and get exercise and get sleep and all the rest. And back in June 2024, NPR, which is no right wing outlet, published a very long interview with Casey Means talking specifically about her thesis.

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And NPR said Means lays out her thesis for what is wrong in U.S. health care in her book, Good Energy, and how patients can take their health into their own hands. She and her co-author, her brother, Callie Means, delineate how common diseases and symptoms that plague Americans are rooted in issues like poor nutrition, lack of movement and problems with sleep.

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She says, the most foundational level of health is how our cells get powered. You could have a Ferrari if it has no gas and won't run. So good energy is a term to help us understand what we're striving for when we're doing all these dietary and lifestyle investments. Okay, all of this sounds perfectly legitimate to me.

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Don't really see a major problem, but anything can be turned into a controversy inside the Trump administration.

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Meanwhile, in a piece of absolutely horrifying news to people who are bound to conspiracy theories, Kash Patel, the new head of the FBI, and somebody who is widely liked on the MAGA right, of course, he was asked about the death of Jeffrey Epstein by Congress yesterday, and he dropped the bombshell that actually Jeffrey Epstein did, in fact, kill himself.

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So there are a lot of people out there who believe there's a bunch of conspiratorial stuff happening with the Epstein files and all the rest. The people who are in charge are the Trump administration. So if you have Iyer, that's the place you should be directing it. Kash Patel and company are going to have to at some point reveal whatever is there and then say what is not there is not there.

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It seems to me the best way to treat mysterious issues like the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, the FBI is in fact going after New York Attorney General Letitia James for her real estate and mortgage transactions. Now, you will see that Letitia James is the same person who declared that she had to go after Donald Trump because she was fighting corruption every step of the way.

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Well, now, as it turns out, James is a statewide elected official with offices in Albany, but the transactions involve her personal property, purchases and loans processed in New York City and Virginia. One of the mortgage documents filed in connection with James's purchase of a single family residence was signed as a witness by Jennifer Levy, who is the first deputy attorney general.

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I'm Jewish, and so I have no stake in him spiritually in terms of him being the leader of a church. of the Catholic Church. He is, however, an important world leader, a very important world leader because so many people are, in fact, Catholic.

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The second witness was Sharona Parchment, an executive assistant with the attorney general's office. So the question is why all of these government officials were signing a document related to her purchase of a private residence. So serious issues surrounding Letitia James, as so often happens, people who use their offices politically are, in fact, quite corrupt.

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That sort of stuff seems to happen all the time. Meanwhile, Columbia University fallout, as we talked about yesterday on the program, Hamas took over the Columbia Library. Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman. Actually, this is different because Columbia has now been shellacked by the Trump administration. They're afraid Claire Shipman ripped into the Hamas next.

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Okay, so again, this is a different note coming out of Columbia, and there's only one reason for that. It's because there's a different administration in charge. The White House, for its part, praised Columbia because it actually called the cops this time when people trespassed.

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Five hours after a group of about 100 masked protesters forced their way past security guards and pushed through turnstiles into the school's main library, they had their hands zip-tied behind their backs and were being marched out the door by police, according to the Wall Street Journal. And Claire Shipman said violence and vandalism hijacking a library, none of that has any place on our campus.

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The Trump administration praised Columbia's strong and resolute response to the protesters, saying that Shipman, quote, has met the moment with fortitude and conviction. So, yes, all it took was actually enforcing the law. Who knew? Who knew? Meanwhile, the Bidens are out there trying to clear more sacks of cash.

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And the Catholic Church has been a deeply important piece, a deeply important centerpiece of Western civilization since its foundations were laid 2,000 years ago. And so who leads the Catholic Church obviously has a massive impact, not only on how people think, but how a lot of people live, because how you think impacts

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Apparently, they are considering a 30 million dollar tell all book deal that is going to include details from a diary kept by Jill Biden during her time at the White House. The joint book deal is contingent on Jill, whom experts say could be worth $15 million on her own, according to Breitbart.

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But Jill would likely be required to review details surrounding the fact that Joe Biden was, you know, losing his mind and also the terrible debate he had with Trump that basically forced him out of the race. While the Bidens were doing the tour yesterday, they showed up on The View where Joe Biden explained that actually he could have won.

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So he seems like he's in the best of health. He seems like things are going really, really well. He was asked why he didn't get out earlier, and here was President Biden's explanation.

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Oh boy. Oh boy. The worst part of this interview with The View, by the way, came when he was asked about all these books that are now coming out, including Jake Tapper's new book about his cognitive decline. And Jill literally had to step in in the middle.

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And so the direction of a Catholic church moving in a far more progressive direction would be quite bad for the world because a progressive Catholic church focused as Pope Francis very often was on say environmentalism or economic redistributionism or a form of amorality with regard to foreign conflict. That has an impact on how billions of people think, and that could be a problem.

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And there's Jill jumping in. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I can't imagine why the Democrats lost the last election cycle. All right. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is sending an enormous number of mixed signals about its trip to the Middle East next week. I say mixed signals. I mean, really, really, really mixed signals.

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So apparently the Trump administration is now thinking of giving away the store to the Saudis without involving Israel in an Abraham Accord. I don't really see the upside of this for the United States. I'm not sure why exactly the United States has an interest in, for example, giving civilian nuclear capacity to the Saudis without requiring anything from the Saudis in return.

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That seems strange to me. The Abraham Accords were largely predicated on the idea that the United States would help broker a broader regional peace. This is what the Camp David Accords were about in 1978 with Egypt and Israel. This is what the Abraham Accords were originally about between the Israelis, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco. The United States played broker.

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The United States now seems to be under President Trump trying to speed run the process by basically forcing Israel to do what the Saudis want by giving the Saudis everything they want and then saying that Israel can either jump on board or not jump on board. According to Israel Hayom,

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Washington has now abandoned its insistence that Saudi Arabia established diplomatic ties with Israel before nuclear cooperation talks can proceed. Reuters reported the U.S. has dropped its demand for Saudi to normalize relations with Israel as a prerequisite for advancing civil nuclear cooperation talks, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. So here's the question.

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Why exactly is it in America's interest for Saudi to have civilian nuclear capacity if we don't get anything and the region doesn't get anything in return? What is the upside, precisely?

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Meanwhile, the Trump administration has now openly announced that the United States is negotiating with Iran over a nuclear deal without Israeli involvement, which seems like a pathway actually toward conflict because if the United States were to sign a bad nuclear deal with Iran and Iran were to continue to develop nukes, Israel's not going to sit by idly while that happens.

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So that's a strange move as well. And of course, the Trump administration announced earlier this week that they were no longer going to be fighting the Houthis at all, as long as the Houthis weren't attacking American shipping. Meanwhile, the Houthis are firing missiles at Israel. Now, again, it's not the United States' obligation to act on Israel's behalf in Yemen.

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Anymore, that's Israel's obligation to act on behalf of the United States in Yemen. However, opening daylight before you go into a fourth round of negotiations with the Iranians, in which the Iranians almost certainly will attempt to play for time, stall for time, gain, quote unquote, civilian nuclear capacity that is aimed at weaponization. This seems like very strange.

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These are strange policy moves to be certain. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also said, announced that he is no longer going to be going to Israel next week. President Trump, of course, is traveling only to the Gulf nations. He is traveling to Saudi. He is traveling to UAE and he is traveling to Qatar as well.

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On the other hand, a Catholic church that is committed to the eternal biblical values to which it is wedded, that kind of church does an enormous amount of good in the world. And to pretend that the Catholic church has nothing to do with how people live is, I think, a preserve of the fully secular.

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So again, there are multiple reports that there is strain in the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, presumably because Trump wants Israel to get to the end of the Hamas war as fast as humanly possible along lines that he is laying. And Netanyahu can't do that for whatever reason.

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The Trump administration wants to divest from the Middle East as fast as possible, while apparently drawing closer to Saudi Arabia. Wants to cut some sort of deal with Iran. A bad Obama 2 deal is not a win for the United States. So the sort of confusion in the region continues for sure.

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Meanwhile, GOP senators are saying they're not going to sign off on a treaty that basically gives Saudi civilian nuclear capacity if the United States doesn't get some sort of regional peace in return. The Senate is going to have a say on that.

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Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tom Cotton also said, if they want the most durable and lasting kind of deal, they want to bring it to the Senate and have it voted on as a treaty. One of the reasons why the Obama deal was so weak, an agreement between the American president, whoever he or she may be, and a foreign leader can be reversed by future presidents.

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That's what President Trump did seven years ago. Here, Graham and Cotton announcing a resolution to ban Iran from enriching uranium entirely, saying there will be no Iran nuclear deal approved by the Senate that includes civilian nuclear capacity that is a fraud.

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And meanwhile, the United States is now suggesting that the U.S. will be part of distributing aid in the Gaza Strip. Mike Huckabee, who's the ambassador to Israel, we had him on the show last week, spoke about the need to transfer humanitarian aid to Gaza, saying there's a desperate need for humanitarian aid in Gaza. Hamas is not capable or willing to provide it.

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So presumably, this now means that the United States or its partners are going to be providing it. I don't understand why the United States, any more than I understand the Gaza peer under Joe Biden. I do not understand why this is a good idea. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, particularly. delivering more aid into the Gaza Strip that will. OK, so let's say they pass it out to civilians.

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One minute later, Hamas is going to take all the aid from the civilians. That's what Hamas does. They literally shoot the civilians to take the aid. The United States being involved in that process makes very little sense to me. I don't see what the U.S. interest is there. It doesn't free the hostages, including the American hostage, Edana Alexander.

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In my book, The Right Side of History, there's an awful lot on the history of the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church's contributions to everything from the beginning of the university system to the beginnings of science. And obviously it matters an awful lot to an enormous number of people across the world, Christian and non-Christian, who the Pope is. And so what exactly does the Pope think?

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It doesn't facilitate the end of a war in the Gaza Strip. Again, the signals that are coming out from the Trump administration on the Middle East are, at the very least, incredibly puzzling. Joining us online, Andrew Klavan. He has a brand new book titled The Kingdom of Cain. It was released earlier this week, and it's all about how to deal with the problem of evil in a world filled with it.

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Andrew, thanks so much for joining the show. Great to talk to you. Good to see you. So let's talk about the kingdom of Cain. You look at three murders in history, including Cain's killing of his brother Abel, in order to examine how exactly to deal with the problem of evil. So what's sort of the thesis of the book?

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So to go back to the original story of Cain and Abel, obviously there've been a wide variety of interpretations of what that story is supposed to mean. Every time I read it, my takeaway seems to be the reverse of many people's, which is that the book is, that story is actually in the book of Genesis about the redemption of Cain.

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that Cain is the first character in the Bible who actually repents of sin. One of the big stories with Adam and Eve is that they don't repent of their sin. God confronts them and they blame the snake. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake. And so they have to be cast out of the Garden of Eden. Cain, by contrast, he's told that he's essentially earned the death penalty.

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Well, we have some evidence of what the Pope thinks. Some of it is indirect. So he was introduced by the name Leo XIV. The Pope gets to choose his name. He changed his name when he becomes the Pope. And so how that name is chosen may have some sort of reflection on what the Pope thinks, where he is, where he puts his emphasis.

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And then he throws himself on the mercy of the court and recognizes that he's done something deeply wrong before God. And so it's actually the first, not only murder story, but the first repentance story. What do you make of the story of Cain?

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You know, Drew, one of the things that I think you do so beautifully and you do in a lot of your work is when you're talking about themes like the theme of suffering, you do it in the form of storytelling. You do it in the form of experience. And that is really the only way to deal with the problem of true evil or true pain in the universe. You can't do it in the form of philosophizing.

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Anybody who tries to philosophize evil, who tries to figure out on a sort of rational level, how do you deal with evil in the world? How are you as a person supposed to confront evil in the world? You face the problem of Job. All of his friends keep coming to him and giving him sort of rationalistic responses for why evil has happened to him in the universe. And there is no real answer to that.

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Now, when it comes to church doctrine, like true church doctrine, it's not going to change anytime. And that is the foundation of the idea of an eternal church from what I understand from my Catholic friends. So if the church were to radically switch its positions on, say, abortion or same-sex marriage, that'd actually run up against the doctrine of the Catholic church.

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Your book is much more about how to experience suffering and go through it, I think.

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Well, the book is The Kingdom of Cain. You can go get it everywhere by my friend, Andrew Klavan. Andrew, congrats on the book. Thanks a lot. It's great to see you. Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now. We're going to jump into the mailbag, answer some of your questions. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member.

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Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And the Pope can't single-handedly do that. What the Pope can do is decide where to put his emphasis. Is he gonna put it on social issues or is he gonna put it on economic issues where there's more wiggle room in terms of doctrine?

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Is he gonna put it on environmentalism the way the Pope Francis did, or is he gonna put it on the spread of values antithetical to Christianity the way that Pope Benedict did? While by choosing the name Leo, according to the Washington Post, the 267th Pope is joining a group of 13 other popes who took the name. The previous Leos were reformers, including Pope Leo XIII, elected in 1878.

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His encyclical, Rerum Novarum, spoke of human dignity and the dignity of labor, according to Reverend Christopher Robinson. Popes have been selecting papal names for centuries. I know obviously my friend Michael Moles, who is extremely Catholic, was very happy about the choice of Pope Leo's name, suggesting that it has a lot to do with a sort of values conservatism.

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Beyond that, the media are running around claiming that this Pope is woke. Again, this is, I assume, linked to the fact that he was very close with Pope Francis and With that said, the evidence so far suggests that he is extremely conservative on issues, including social issues, that he is very liberal on guns, that he is very liberal on immigration.

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Like if you were going to gauge him as a political candidate, not as a pope, which I understand the problems with that. I understand Catholics don't see this the same way that everybody else does. I'm talking about his political impact because that's one of the reasons he matters to the rest of the world who's not Catholic.

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If we are looking at what he has said, for example, about culture and about social issues, this is a direct quote from him, quote, Western culture often seeks to promote sympathy for beliefs and practices that contradict the gospel. For example, the homosexual lifestyle and alternative families made up of same-sex partners and their adopted children.

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Another quote from him, the promotion of gender ideology is confusing because it seeks to create genders that don't exist. And so they're indistinguishable from what would be rote Catholic doctrine. It was always funny to me that when Pope Francis would express support for the unborn, the media would run it as though it was a story. Nothing has changed would be the story there.

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Or when the Pope said that he was not in favor of same-sex marriage. Then suddenly that was run. It's like a front page story. Now, the problem with Pope Francis politically is that he would then kind of play around the edges. Pope Francis had suggested that same-sex couples could come and be blessed. It was kind of unclear whether he meant as individuals or as a couple.

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It probably was the former. It was treated as the latter. Obviously, he was making some sort of overtures to the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign activists. Whether this new pope is going to do that or not is absolutely unclear. People are pretending that he is some sort of wild lib. I don't see the evidence for that at all.

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Apparently, he's a registered Republican because, again, he's from Chicago, so we actually know where he's registered. He's voted in some Republican primaries as well. He's also retweeted a bunch of material that is anti-J.D. Vance and President Trump with regard to immigration. So, for example, according to Mediaite, he joined Twitter in 2011 saying,

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And apparently he tweeted on April 14th, a retweet of a Catholic blogger named Rocco Palmo that denounced the White House's illicit deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and quoted Bishop Evelio Menjivar. Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet? Other recent tweets from Pope Leo XIV take issue with J.D.

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Vance's comments about Ordo Amoris, the Catholic theological concept on the order of charity. Vance, you'll recall in January, had suggested that this should be interpreted as love your family and then your neighbor and then your community and then your fellow citizens. And after that, prioritize the rest of the world.

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So Pope Leo XIV, his predecessor, Pope Francis, actually put out a letter addressed to American bishops chiding that particular view. And then Prevost, who is now the Pope, said J.D. Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others. So this has been used as sort of an excuse by people on the right to reject the pope.

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Meanwhile, the left is always eager to embrace a pope that it perceives to be a friend. For his part, President Trump put out a statement about how it was an honor to have an American pope. Here was President Trump yesterday.

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So, again, obviously, apparently President Trump's tariff plans are working because we're now reshoring American potpourri. We have decided that the pope must be manufactured in the United States. And again, he's a White Sox fan, so that's a nice thing. And we will see where he is politically, where he chooses to put his emphasis. There's more on this in a moment.

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Thanks to Silencer Shop. Joining us online is Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Rochester in Minnesota, the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, direct from Italy, where the new Pope has been selected, Pope Leo XIV. Bishop, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

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So first of all, what was it like actually being there during the conclave?

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So when we talk about the new pope, obviously a lot of political focus on the new pope because the pope speaks for 1.4 billion Catholics and is interpreting 2,000-year-old tradition.

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And I think that, first of all, we should discuss the distinction between how people like me would view the election of a new pope, the selection of a new pope, and how Catholics see it because obviously it's a very, very different thing. For me, I'm just looking at the political ramifications in sort of the secular world or even in sort of the broader spiritual.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But for Catholics, this is a very different thing.

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So let's talk about the fact that he is an American pope. What does that mean? What difference does it make where the pope comes from?

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Well, folks, Democrats are on the run, and we're going to get to just why in a moment. First, The Daily Wire continues our fight. As you know, on this show, we've been calling for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. Derek Chauvin was railroaded.

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I mean, again, this is President Trump saying, let's use a scalpel, not a chainsaw. And then he put out a statement to that exact same effect. Quote, the golden age of America has just begun. Over the past six weeks, our administration has delivered on promises like no administration before it, always putting America first. Doge has been an incredible success.

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And now that we have my cabinet in place, I've instructed the secretaries and leadership to work with Doge on cost cutting measures and staffing. As the secretaries learn about and understand the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain and who will go. We say the scalpel rather than the hatchet.

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The combination of them, Elon Doge, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level. We just had a meeting with most of the secretaries, Elon and others, and it was a very positive one. It's very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it's also important to keep the best and most productive people.

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We're going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done. The relationships between everybody in the room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is simply to make America great again. So again, that is President Trump reading the tea leaves.

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He understands that many people are going to start targeting these sort of broad level cuts without specificity and pointing to victim stories. And of course, there will be victim stories because when you move fast and break things the way that you would at a tech company, then there are a bunch of people who lose their jobs who are sympathetic.

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The medical evidence demonstrates that he did not, in fact, murder George Floyd, that George Floyd had significant pre-existing conditions, that he was high as a kite. The tape itself does not show everything that the media made it out to show. The case, when it was actually conducted in court, was a political sacrifice to appease the mob. That's what it was.

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There are gonna be some things that get broken that actually might not need to get broken.

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And so Trump's saying, listen, at the very beginning, we go super hard, but now it's time to actually make sure that we don't break anything that we need and that the departments actually go through and take the recommendations under consideration and then with a scalpel, not with a baseball bat, go through their departments. That is a smart move by President Trump.

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A lot of people are painting this as a sort of flip by President Trump. It is not. It is what President Trump always does. He course corrects to the most successful position. That is the thing that he is attempting to do right now. And meanwhile, the same, I believe, is holding true with regard to tariffs. So yesterday.

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Amid all of the hubbub about President Trump's new tariff regime, President Trump reversed some of these tariffs.

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According to NBC News, President Trump issued exemptions on tariffs for a variety of goods coming into the United States from Mexico and Canada just two days after he put the sweeping tariffs in place, leaving investors and businesses grappling with the whiplash of his back-and-forth trade policy.

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The other problem is they all want to be that leader. And so they have their own form of stupid protest. And then finally, they're afraid of being left behind in the great awokening. They're afraid of being seen as insufficiently far left and nutty. And so now it's just all signaling all the way down.

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Those exemptions to the 25% tariffs enacted on Tuesday would apply to about half of goods coming into the United States from Mexico and about 38% of goods from Canada, that comply with the North American trade deal reached during Trump's first term, according to a senior administration official. So again, this is being portrayed as a flip-flop, and in a certain way, it is.

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But it is also a recognition of reality, which is when the market takes a giant bump, at a certain point, you're going to look at that and go, hey, maybe we shouldn't do as much of this as we've been talking about. When the poll numbers start to go the wrong way, maybe that requires a course correction. A brand new poll from The Economist's YouGov on the tariffs

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explains that a majority of Americans believe that the cost of tariffs on foreign products imported into the United States would fall mostly on companies and people in the United States. Now, whether that is true or not, that perception is really bad for President Trump. If the prices rise and all of that is blamed on the tariffs, the American people are not going to be happy.

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And trying to whistle past the graveyard on that was a mistake that Joe Biden made, right? You remember the transitory inflation that was not transitory at all? Or the implication that your life was better than you thought it was? People don't like being told that when the prices are going up, actually everything is hunky-dory.

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So again, it is not about whether, in fact, China feels it more than we do. China will feel it more than we do, but what do we care? If you're an American citizen, What you care about is how America is feeling it unless you actually believe that Canada and Mexico are enemies. Why do we care if a tariff is affecting Canada and Mexico more than it is affecting us? It's not a comparative thing.

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Most things affect foreign countries more than they affect the United States. We are uniquely strong. We are uniquely well-positioned in the world. We have a uniquely strong economy and constitution. But if things are worse for Americans on an absolute level, not a relative level with regard to other countries, on an absolute level, Americans feel it.

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This is why, for example, President Trump yesterday announced the reversal of the Mexico tariffs. He put out a statement on Truth Social. He said, quote, after speaking with President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico, I've agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA agreement. This agreement is until April 2nd.

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I did this as an accommodation out of respect for President Scheinbaum. Our relationship has been a very good one. We are working hard together on the border, both in terms of stopping illegal aliens from entering the United States and likewise stopping fentanyl. Thank you to President Scheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation.

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So again, if the idea here, as I've said before, if tariffs are for leverage, if tariffs are a ratchet, then great. You got something you want from Mexico? You don't have to tariff the products. That's good.

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If, however, there is a principled attachment to tariffs, as though tariffs are going to make America economically stronger just on their own, that is not a saleable position for the vast majority of Americans. When it comes to the economy, there's just reality. There are just facts. That's also true when it comes to nutrition. A lot of people worry about their kids' nutrition. I certainly do.

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Yesterday, Al Green, you know, not the famous sort of R&B singer who created Baby Boom, not that guy. The other Al Green, the 77-year-old guy waving a cane with a bad haircut at President Trump. Well, he was censured by the House because, obviously, if you get kicked out of a State of the Union address by the sergeant at arms, you're going to receive a censure vote.

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You know how most children's vitamins out there are basically candy with a vitamin label? They're loaded with two teaspoons of sugar, artificial ingredients that kids really do not need. Well, this is where Haya comes in. They've created an amazing chewable vitamin that kids actually love. The best part? Zero sugar, still totally delicious.

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What impressed me was learning about their ingredient list. They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals. And they've thought of everything. It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, thoroughly tested for safety. That means you and I can both feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to this high-quality standard.

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Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens? Hiya now has Kids Daily Greens plus Superfoods, a chocolate-flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids, packed with more than 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, and digestion.

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You just scoop, shake, and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious, nutritious boost your kids will actually like. They even send stickers with your first order so your kids can decorate the bottle and make it their own. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order.

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To claim the deal, head on over to HayaHealth.com slash Shapiro. Again, that's H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H dot com slash Shapiro. Get your kids the full body nourishment they deserve to grow into healthy adults. Also... Did you know that Andrea Bocelli, Steph Curry, Justin Bieber, Tim Tebow almost didn't exist? All their moms were encouraged to end their pregnancies.

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When a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, she's often pressured by somebody else to terminate. She wants to make the right choice, but society tells her, well, the baby isn't really alive. It's not a big deal. This is where Preborn steps in. Preborn and their network of clinics offer compassionate care to moms, providing the support they need to choose life, including a free ultrasound.

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It's amazing, but when a mom hears her child's heartbeat, she becomes twice as likely to continue the pregnancy. If you believe in protecting life, it is time to join with Preborn. Together, we can empower women to make life-affirming choices. When we support moms and motherhood, we transform families and futures. Just 28 bucks provides one ultrasound. 140 bucks helps rescue five babies.

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Monthly donors receive stories and photos of the lives they've helped save. Dial pound 250, say baby. That's pound 250, baby. Or visit preborn.com slash ben to make a difference today again. That's pound 250, say keyword baby. So Scott Besson, who's an excellent treasury secretary, he really knows what he's doing, but he's being put out there to defend tariff policy.

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He's at the Economic Club of New York, and he was talking about what he thinks the American dream is. And he dropped this line.

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Okay, now, again, if these trade deals are actually hurting the American people, and there are some that are, then we should reexamine them. However... Part of the American dream and part of upward mobility is being able to afford things, obviously.

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Making the argument to Americans that access to cheap goods is not part of the American dream, tell that to people who have to pay more for their mortgage. That is a good. Tell that to people who have to pay more for services. Those are all goods and services that you have to pay for.

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In fact, several Democrats voted in favor of the censure. This censure vote ended with Democrats singing, we shall overcome, as though something had happened to Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma when Al Green was removed for yelling nonsensical crap about Medicaid.

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Actually, access to affordable things is in fact part of the American dream because upward mobility relies on you being able to afford things. That is a reality. And so again, I think President Trump is going to look to markets. I think that... Once again, he looks at the results of his policies, and if they are not achieving what he wants them to achieve, he changes the policy.

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Speaking of which, Vladimir Zelensky has changed his tune entirely in Ukraine. He is now not saying any longer that the war is going to last a very, very long time. He was saying that just a few days ago. Now he is saying that they are seeking a swift end to the war.

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We are working on all possible scenarios to protect Ukraine. The baseline scenario is to hold positions and create conditions for proper diplomacy.

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Again, Zelensky is where the United States wants him. Now the United States needs to get Putin to the table. That's the next step. We have massaged the Russians enough. Now it's time for us to exert enough pressure to get Putin to actually come to the table, make some concessions and get to the end of the war. It takes two. It takes two to tango with regard to that war.

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Now, speaking, by the way, of corruption, I know a lot of people connect this war to corruption. You want to hear about actual corruption. This is my favorite corruption story of the day because it is quite wonderful. So apparently, apparently Hunter Biden is no longer able to do his art. I know you're shocked.

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You thought that Hunter Biden was a great artist capable of selling his paintings for half a million dollars a pop. However, according to Politico playbook, a pardon from his dad spared Hunter Biden from prison, but the former president's son remained saddled with debt and was forced out of a home he was renting by the recent Pacific Palisades fire, according to Politico's Josh Gerstein.

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Biden detailed his grim financial situation in a court filing yesterday, saying he has struggled to sell his paintings in recent months, moving only one in the past 14 months, compared with 27 in the prior two or three years.

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He reported significant debts and lackluster sales of his memoir, just more than 4,200 copies during a one-year period that led up to the trial in Delaware last spring, in which he was found guilty of lying about his drug addiction on a federal gun purchase form. Well, I wonder what happened. Why did the market drop for his paintings? I mean, that's weird.

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So for like two or three years, his paintings were selling like hotcakes because everyone wanted a Hunter Biden painting. And then no one would buy his paintings. What could have changed? Hmm, it's a mystery wrapped in enigma. Or maybe people realized that his father was not going to be president for much longer.

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And then if you bought a Hunter Biden painting, you were flushing your money down the toilet. Whereas before, if the idea was that he was actually the president of the United States and you bought a Hunter Biden painting, guess who got access to daddy? But don't worry, it was never corrupt. This family is as clean as the driven snow.

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I can't imagine why the Biden administration was widely derided and hated by the vast majority of the American public. It is a gigantic, unsolvable mystery. Meanwhile, it's time to initiate a brand new segment here on The Ben Shapiro Show. We call it The Takedown. Here is the deal. The left loves to put out monologues, speeches, grandstanding diatribes, completely unchallenged, but not here.

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In Takedown, we're going head-to-head, breaking apart their arguments piece by piece, exposing the contradictions, the logical fallacies, and the actual lies. It's time for The Takedown. Today, we are going to go through the response of the venerable intellect, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to President Trump's State of the Union address the other night. And it was amazing.

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She was knitting a sweater while she did it. And so, you know, her brain was apparently largely taken up by that absolutely difficult task. Here is some of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to say about the President of the United States address to a joint session of Congress.

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Okay, so I assume here she's talking about Representative Al Green. You will note at this point that President Trump was in fact invited to address Congress. That is how he got there. He was invited by the Speaker of the House to address Congress. And then everybody else was invited. And then you get kicked out if you break the rules. So immediately she's starting off without any logical foot.

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And it gets worse from here.

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According to Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, it was the people at the top of the income tax spectrum who benefited the most from the Trump tax cuts of 2017. It was geared toward millionaires and billionaires. Now, I can tell you that my tax rate actually increased under the Trump tax cuts. However,

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The question that really should be asked is not whether people at the top saw more of a decrease in their taxes than people at the bottom. Of course they did. People at the top pay way more taxes than people at the bottom on both an absolute and a relative level. The top tax bracket in the United States at the time of the Trump tax cuts was 39% and it dropped down to 37, 36%.

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If you're at the bottom of the tax bracket, you're paying basically no income tax. So it'd be very difficult to actually pass a tax cut that benefited you. Obviously, gains from income tax cuts are going to be disproportionately to the people who pay the taxes.

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The real question, and the only one that really matters, is after the Trump tax cuts, did the share of total taxes, of like all taxes, paid by the top increase or decrease? So in other words, if $100 in taxes got paid by the American people, what percentage of those taxes were paid by the top 1% in 2016 before the Trump tax cuts?

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And what percentage were paid in, say, 2020 after the Trump tax cuts? So I asked our friends over at Perplexity that question, quote, what percentage of total income taxes did the top 1% pay in 2016? And what percentage of total income taxes did the top 1% pay in 2020? And here is the answer, quote, in 2016, the top 1% of taxpayers paid 37.3% of total income taxes.

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In 2020, the top 1% of taxpayers paid nearly 42% of all income taxes. This data shows an increase in the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% between 2016 and 2020, rising from 37.3% to 42%. So all that talk about how the richest in our society were sort of disproportionately benefited by the Trump tax cuts.

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If that's so, then why did we pay a larger share of the taxes total than we did before the Trump tax cuts? Kevin, continue with AOC here.

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I love this non-argument by AOC here. This is a tremendous logical fallacy. So she is essentially arguing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, meaning that there's a complete absence of evidence that President Trump wants to cut Medicaid. He said over and over and over he doesn't want to cut Medicaid. That's why he didn't mention it, because he doesn't want to cut Medicaid.

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Deeply inspiring. I mean, first of all, is anybody, you know, not tone deaf in the Democratic caucus? But beyond that, this is what you got? Really? Well, that's not all they got. The House Democrats have also released a brand new viral video. It is a take on Street Fighter in which a bunch of Democratic Congress people, as well as a social media influencer by the name of Solhi Jessica Wu.

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And she is suggesting he didn't mention it because he does want to cut Medicaid. I'd need like some evidence to suggest that he wants to cut Medicaid. Like where is she getting all of that? And the answer is she's sort of inferring it from the fact that if you are going to do a budgetary bill, as Republicans are proposing in the House, then it needs to be deficit neutral.

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And that means that there need to be cuts from somewhere. But again, President Trump has already said he doesn't want to cut from Medicaid, which means the cuts are going to have to come from somewhere else or the bill is going to have to change, obviously. Here's AOC continuing.

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The math ain't mathin'. Wow. She sounds like a great accountant. The math ain't mathin'. Well, I mean, what she's actually referring to is the fact that part of the bill refers to the committee that deals with Medicaid, among other things, to try to identify cuts. But it doesn't say that Medicaid has to be the source of the cuts.

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So Democrats just keep saying a thing over and over for which, again, there is no evidence. So then she decides that she is going to start talking about the work requirements of Medicaid. Now, one of the things that Democrats don't like to talk about a lot is the fact that there are a lot of people who are on Medicaid, who are on Medicaid because, in fact, they're claiming disability falsely.

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One of the great multipliers in terms of our welfare dollars is disability. But here was AOC talking about how work requirements were really not in any way being harmed by Medicaid disability.

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Okay, so a few notes here. Once again, I asked my search partner here, Perplexity, what percentage of people on Medicaid are working? Because she says it's all hardworking people. Nobody's jobbing the system or anything like that. The answer, in 2023, approximately 64% of Medicaid adults under the age of 65 were working either full-time or part-time.

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I'm just going to point out that means 36%, more than one third of the people who are on Medicaid were working, not at all, not at all. Okay, so that is not a very, very minute percentage. That is a lot of people who are in fact not working. In fact, 44% of Medicaid enrollees under the age of 65 were employed full-time. 20% were working part-time.

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Now remember, these are people who are lower than their retirement age. They're lower than their retirement age. It is also worth noting here that an enormous number of people on Medicaid do claim a permanent disability, including huge percentages of people claiming disability who are relatively young. Again, according to perplexity, approximately 21 to 22% of Medicaid enrollees have a disability.

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I will admit I did not know who Miss Wu was until this video dropped. And all I can say is woohoo. In any case, they basically drop into frame and by drop, they pretend they're dropping into frame like a street fighter character and then bounce around. And there's a description of them as though they're a character and to choose your fighter. The House Democrats released this video.

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That is way higher than it used to be, by the way. The claims of disability in the United States have risen almost exponentially over the course of the last couple of decades. According to perplexity, adults aged 19 to 49, 22% claim a disability on Medicaid. If you're 50 to 64, 43% are claiming a disability.

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So, I asked my magical friend in perplexity, what qualifies you for a disability under Medicaid? The answer is that you have to meet these criteria. One, the disability must prevent the individual from working and be expected to last for at least 12 months or result in death.

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Two, the condition must be a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that results in anatomical, physiological, or psychological abnormalities, as shown by a medically acceptable clinical and laboratory diagnostic technique. Now, there's only one problem with this.

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You know how easy it is to find a doctor who will say that because you have high blood pressure, you have a disability, or you have back pain, and that is why you have a disability? And there is not a really fantastic way of checking whether these folks have disability. The instances of disability fraud in the United States are legion. They are radically high. Here is an insane statistic for you.

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I asked my search partner at Perplexity the following question, quote, how many Americans claimed disabilities in 1980? How many claim disabilities today? Here is the answer. In 1980, 933,597 disability benefits were awarded. In 2024, over 70 million Americans reported having a disability. Did we get all that disabled over the course of the last 45 years?

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Like were people really that much healthier in 1980? Then we went from like 1 million to 70 million reporting a disability in 2022. Really? I understand we're a little older of a country, but not 70 times older of a country. And finally, finally, AOC had some ideas about the evils of tax, no tax on tips. This one is particularly rich because she used to be a waitress.

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Listen to her argument for why there should, in fact, be a tax on tips.

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And let me tell you, President Trump must be just running scared at this point. So she's bouncing around this soul. He Jessica Wu. And then AOC, it says New York's 14th congressional district. And then represent Lauren Underwood and represent Catherine Clark, who looks as though she was performing, you know, some sort of bizarre act. And then it like I don't I don't even know what to say.

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Okay. So let's talk about the myriad idiocies in this particular segment because there are a bunch. Number one, she's admitting full scale that a bunch of people are going to start taking tips in order to avoid taxes. Why, it's almost as though economics is dynamic. And when you increase the tax rates on certain things and decrease them on other things, people do the things with less taxes.

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Remember, the entire democratic idea about economics is that it is a fixed pie. So if you tax people more, they won't change their behavior. You'll just get more money from them. And here she is acknowledging that if no tax on tips goes through, a bunch of people are going to start taking more of their pay in the form of tips in order to avoid taxes.

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Almost as though tax rates impact economic activity. Mm-hmm. Strong. And then she adds another thing here. I love this. She says, you know, the employers need to pay... Do you really want to be paying tips? Do you want to be paying tips to everyone? The employers should just pay a living wage. Now, this mistakes who actually pays the bills of the employers. The answer is the customers.

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So here are your choices as a customer. Either the employer pays a lower wage, say $750 an hour if you're talking about the federal minimum wage. And then you take a bunch of tips on top so you don't have to pay taxes on it.

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And then the customer is the one paying for those things in order to achieve the same result as if you had to pay a higher price in order to pay the taxes that the employer is going to have to pay on the wage. You understand? The customer has to pay for all of it. The employer don't got a source of money other than the customer. So no matter how you slice it, is the customer paying?

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The only question is, if for example, you get rid of the tax on tips, are the employees going to be taking more of their pay in the form of tips from the customer? Or are they going to be taking their pay more in the form of a check from the employer? But the bottom line is probably going to be about the same. And if you force the employer to pay more,

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to increase the quote-unquote living wage, that all gets passed on to the consumer anyway. So there you have it, the brilliance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Just stunning, stunning stuff. Well, folks, since we do have this new segment called Takedown, if you see any crazy monologues that you'd love to see me debunk, leave them in the comment section below.

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Well, folks, it's a Friday and that means it's time to talk about stuff that I don't know about, namely cultural stories. Now, you know, I'll talk about tariff policy. I talked earlier this week about whether the dollar will long remain the world's reserve currency. But the thing I don't know about is the stuff that literally millions of people actually care about and talk about.

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And that is these big pop culture stories. I've brought on an expert on that. That's our daily wire host, Reagan and kind of Reagan. Thanks much for stopping by.

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Choose your fighter. We need a cutaway there about Rob Schneider from a hot chick knocking one of these women through a wall with a pillow. Choose your fighter. Some of these women are like 60 years old and bouncing around like they're 17. This is what you got? Really? This is the thing that you have? This is not going to do it, gang. The Democrats are in disarray.

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I mean, once you involve the kids in that, I kind of agree with it. Meaning that if you're kind of blogging about you cooking at night or it's you and how you put the kids to bed or something, that's one thing. Once you start actually involving your kids in the making of this sort of stuff, then you're just a Hollywood mom.

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And I mean, I've known a lot of Hollywood moms because I used to live in Hollywood and I knew a lot of people who had kids in the industry. And that stuff is always borderline exploitative. There's a reason why Hollywood kids generally end up screwed up adults.

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And so it's not a real shock that when you take those means of production that used to require an entire studio system in order to make it happen, and then you just give it to everybody, there'd be a lot of people who exploit their kids for the money. I mean, I think it's a pretty good take, actually.

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My wife has said, I've mentioned this on the show before, that she at some point wants to write a book titled I'm a Terrible Mother and So Are You. because that's actually the reality of being a parent is that you realize that you fail literally all the time.

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And so the sort of perfect parent that mommy vloggers very often are portraying, the only way you can achieve that is actually through just lying or through exploiting your kid.

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Well, that seems not great.

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I mean, it's Hollywood production very clearly, right? And I think that's the thing people miss about. This is true of reality TV. It's also obviously true of mommy blogging or whatever. There's a reason none of my kids, there are no pictures of them online. And we keep them completely away from the spotlight, specifically because of safety reasons.

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And we don't want their life to be dominated by it. But I mean, if you're making money off putting your kids on camera, then it is likely going to devolve into that. Unfortunately, that looks pretty much like every Hollywood mom. that I've ever met. It's pretty bad. So kind of like only fans for moms, right? They democratize the means of production.

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Speaking of which, apparently there are only fans updates that I have not yet heard.

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And I have so many questions about the logistics. I mean, just like the who provided the buffet. Like, I just I don't know.

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Thank you. I appreciate that. Actually, I wasn't that curious. Yeah.

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The best they have is the continuing sort of woke vibes. Tara Setmeyer. Democrat in the mainstream media was on the Dean Obadiah show. And if you've never heard of that show, you're not unique. The first you're ever hearing of it is here on this show. So congrats to Dean on finally having a listenership.

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Yeah, I mean, that was, I will be honest, one of the first things that occurred to me about that car. But it is, you're right, a horrifying thing. Unfortunately, mainstreaming pornography has been a thing for a very, very long time. I wrote a book back in 2005 that I was widely derided for called Porn Generation, all about the pornification of American society. Yeah.

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And I suggested that it would become absolutely endemic, that every young person in America would have seen pornography by the time they were 13, 14 years old. And again, everyone mocked me at the time for saying that, but it became very clear that that's exactly what's happened here.

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The jurors themselves acknowledged they'd been put under severe pressure. President Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin. That would, in fact, by the way, reduce his possible sentence because the federal statute requires a certain level of sentence. His state conviction would remain, but... It doesn't have the same sort of mandatory sentencing. We're leading the charge on this one.

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Of course, young women are only seeing sort of the quote unquote upside and never the downside, which would be, you know, the fact that she has no soul. That's going to drive a bunch of young women to do really, really stupid and terrible things to themselves. And if they think that the money is going to pay for all the damage they're doing to themselves, I have a hard time believing that.

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That's so nice.

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Yeah, well, I can see why Bonnie Blue turned out the way she did.

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That's pretty obvious. And by the way, not a rarity, we now know that Kim Kardashian's sex tape was pre-screened by her mother for particularly salacious cuts. So, good times.

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And Tara Setmeyer stopped by to explain that censoring Al Green for screaming nonsensically during the State of the Union gave her slave-ic vibes.

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That's amazing. I mean, White Lotus actually is pretty subversive in this particular way. They take a bunch of liberal values and then they really mock the hell out of them. It doesn't make the show conservative. I mean, the first season is certainly not conservative, but they will definitely mock the living hell out of kind of the pretensions of limousine liberals.

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And that's really what the show is about. It's about limousine liberals from New York and L.A. who go on these extraordinarily expensive vacations and act like horrific human beings, basically.

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The shocker there is that it took them 20 years, basically, to put another Christian in a kid's movie.

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Now, that show originally, I believe, was supposed to feature a transgender character, correct?

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I mean, they better because they have completely failed. I mean, Disney's stock has been just ravaged over the course of the last few years. Their growth trajectory is terrible because they alienated all the parents. Like they forgot that the people they actually need to cater to are the people like me with four kids. We used to be Disney annual pass members.

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In California, we used to go to Disneyland almost twice a month maybe. Yep. And we used to take the kids out of school and go. And I have not been back to Disney World now that we're in Florida for several years because of the move that they made into sort of wild social leftism.

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Yeah, I mean, if they change course, sure. You know, forgiveness is, I think, a virtue. And so if they actually change course and you start to see more of a consistent stream of non-woke nonsense coming from Disney, then absolutely. I mean, I would love nothing better than to take my kids to Disneyland. It's great. Disneyland is wonderful. I mean, it's some of the greatest IP in history.

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It's going to take a while to earn back trust.

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Yes, it was just like slavery, wherein he was at no point a slave, and in which he implied that he was going to lead an impeachment effort against the current sitting president of the United States, just as a slave would. Oh, my goodness, these folks. Well, some Democrats may be starting to wake up.

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And as they say, it's young white males who are going back to church. So I'll take a little credit for that one, guys.

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That's a backlash. There we go.

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Well, hopefully that results in marriage and not just insult-ness. That would be the only complicating factor.

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Well, Reagan Conrad, thank you so much for stopping by and informing me on all the things the world actually talks about most of the time. I really appreciate it.

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Well, folks, it's time for you to go behind the paywall and explore the rest of the news with me. But in order to do that, you actually have to be a member here at Daily Y. We have so much great stuff behind the paywall. So, Reagan, what is your favorite thing that we have behind the paywall?

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I'm a little bit hurt and insulted. But if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Anybody who has an IQ above room temperature, one of those people, believe it or not, is Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom, he is slick. He has no principles. the governor of California. I have some personal experiences with Governor Gavin Newsom. In fact, the first time I spoke with Governor Gavin Newsom was all the way back in, I believe, 2013. And Governor Newsom was then not governor.

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He was running for governor. And he was on a Los Angeles morning show that I was doing at the time. And I asked Governor Newsom at the time about the idiotic idea of building a bullet train extending from Los Angeles to San Francisco that would stop in Fresno. And they were talking about how it would cost billions of dollars. And I said to him, well, don't we have cars and planes in this state?

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Don't we have an I-5 that goes directly up the state? I've driven it many times. Why precisely would we need to spend billions of dollars on a bullet train? And he said at that time that it was a terrible, stupid idea. He then proceeded to be elected governor and spent billions of dollars on a stupid, terrible idea that never materialized in any way, shape, or form. So...

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Let's just say that whenever he declares that he's had a change of heart, I treat that about the same way I would treat his prior relationship with Kimberly Guilfoyle, with a large grain of salt. In any case, Gavin Newsom has started a new podcast, and I will admit that I'm eager to listen to every episode if it's as good as this. So Charlie Kirk, our friend from TPUSA, was on with Gavin Newsom.

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And Charlie asked Gavin Newsom, like, why is your party so addicted to the idea that boys should play in girls' sports? And Gavin Newsom, the reason I'm bringing this up is not just to rip on Gavin Newsom, which is fun. I mean, let's be real. But the reason I'm bringing it up is because Gavin Newsom is doing the intelligent thing. He says, hey, maybe boys shouldn't play in girls' sports.

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And, you know, acceptance is the first step toward actually fixing the problem, Democrats. And here is Gavin Newsom leading the way.

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Wow. Wow, wow, wow. So that is Gavin Newsom giving up the ghost on this issue, which is, of course, the thing that Democrats must do. As I've been speaking about for years at this point, the thing that makes Democrats seem totally nuts the most is this particular issue. But Democrats are having a hard time on this one because just a few days ago,

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Go to PardonDerek.com right now. Sign the petition. This is the kind of stuff that we do over at Daily Wire. We need your help on this one. PardonDerek.com. Alrighty, so Democrats are having a really big problem. They are deeply unpopular.

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The entire House Democratic Caucus voted in favor of the idea that men need to play in women's sports if they identify as women. The entire Senate Democrat Caucus voted the same exact way and ended up defeating a bill that would have enshrined rights for women in sports. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, was asked about Gavin Newsom's comments. And here's what he had to say.

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The hell? What? So the way you oppose sexual predators being unleashed on girls is forcing grown-ass men with their dingleberries hanging out to shower with the ladies in the women's room before a swim meet. That's the way you prevent sexual predation, according to Hakeem Jeffries. Again, at some point, the reality is going to set in for Democrats. That's what's going to happen.

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The reality is going to set in for them. Either it will because they decide to wise up or because the voters keep clocking them over and over and over. And so much of this, again, is being driven by the media's bizarre fixation on the idea that this is some sort of civil rights issue. So for example, Politico has a piece titled Newsom's Move on Trans Athletes, Jolt's 2028 Campaign.

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Gavin Newsom's provocative new position on trans athletes on Thursday reopened a rift in the Democratic Party that could serve as one of the earliest flashpoints in the party's 2028 primary. Is it a provocative new position?

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Or is it the position of literally all of humanity for all of human history until the last seven minutes when the entire media and Democratic Party decided that boys who cut off their junk were girls? Within hours of the California governor condemning trans athletes playing in female sports, shocking his party in his home state, some Democrats unloaded on the likely presidential contender.

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And so while they roam the landscape suggesting that President Trump is falling apart, that the Trump administration is wildly unpopular, that is not what the polls are showing. The polls continue to show that Democrats and the Democratic Party writ large are in serious political straits.

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It's disgusting, said Lori Lightfoot, the former Chicago mayor, with an approval rating so low that she ended up being ousted as the mayor after one term. There are kids waking up in California with this news thinking their governor hates them, and rightly so, said Pramila Jayapal. She urged Democrats to, quote, not take the bait and give in to their anti-trans people rhetoric.

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But to moderates, Newsom was offering a lifeline for a party plagued by culture wars and the polarizing politics of trans women in sports. His comments were the latest from a field of potential contenders seeking to distance themselves from identity politics in 2024.

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Again, sort of fascinating to see some Democrats beginning to wake up to the political realities of the dumbass positions they've been holding on this one. And they're gonna need to come to terms with some other political realities. Like for example, the fact that Americans are very much in favor of closing the borders. It turns out that Americans don't like open borders very much.

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And some Democrats, say John Fetterman, have been coming to grips with this. The reality is that in order for Democrats to win the presidency, they have to run as left to moderate Republicans. They must. Joe Biden ran as a left to moderate Republican in the 2020 election.

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Barack Obama in 2008, before his reelect in 2008, Barack Obama ran as a person who wanted to bring common sense to government and unify the country after a divisive era. Bill Clinton, by today's standards, would have been judged a left to moderate Republican. That's just the reality.

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And so Democrats are going to have to start to recognize they've ceded the middle ground to Republicans over and over and over again. And if they want to keep doing that, listen, I'm perfectly fine for them doing it. But at a certain point, reality is going to have to set in. Listen, reality needs to set in. We live in a world where narratives often matter more than reality. But here's the thing.

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The data don't lie. If you want the data, you need USAFacts.org. USAFacts isn't about the narratives. It's about data. Real, nonpartisan, verifiable data straight from government sources. Whether it's taxes, healthcare, or the economy, USAFacts gives you the numbers you need to cut through the nonsense and make informed decisions. And they make it super easy.

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Go to usafacts.org, sign up for their free weekly email that you can rely on to get the data behind the news. It's like a personal briefing on the state of the nation delivered directly to your inbox. No spin, no bias, just facts. Like if you care about how our government is, for example, spending money and where your taxpayer dollars are actually going, this is for you.

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Harry Ensign yesterday on CNN explained that there is a real reason why Democrats are currently riding at 20% in the approval ratings.

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A lot of folks are interested in what Doge is doing. If you want the background, go to usafacts.org right now. Get clear, contextualized facts on the issues that matter. It's time to know those facts because the data don't lie. And you can always have your own narrative. But the data are the data. You want to know the data so that you understand what the hell's going on in the world.

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That's usafacts.org. Go check it out today. Again, usafacts.org. All the rest is spin, but the facts are the facts. usafacts.org to get just the data. Also, starting a business is really exciting, but the financial chaos that comes with all of that, Not quite as exciting.

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When I launched The Daily Wire, we became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee expenses, spending countless hours reconciling statements. It was a nightmare until we got it all figured out. But it doesn't have to be that way. You need Ramp. Ramp's a free corporate card.

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It handles all your tedious financial operations, like manually logging receipts and chasing approvals. Ramp does all that automatically, so your team can focus on the stuff that truly moves the needle. Forecasting, planning, scaling your business. If you're in an industry the way I am, time to execute breaking news coverage right when it happens. And here's the reality.

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Most finance teams spend 80% of their time on mind-numbing busy work, chasing down expenses. Only 20% on what actually matters, strategic planning and growth. Ramp flips that equation completely. Over 25,000 businesses trust Ramp, including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America. That's why they were just named number one in spend management by G2.

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And right now, for a limited time, listeners of the show can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro. That's ramp.com slash Shapiro. Now, meanwhile, on the right side of the aisle, one of the big problems for the right side of the aisle is, yes, you want to move fast. You have power now. You got to move fast. You got to break things. You got to do them.

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At the same time, you have to balance that with the reality that Americans actually don't like radical change very much. You have to somehow achieve the signal ability to craft radical change without undermining your own agenda. And so far, the Trump administration has been doing a good job on this.

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So, for example, despite all of the media freaking out over Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and Elon Musk, it turns out the poll numbers remain pretty strong on this. Here's Harry Enten explaining this.

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Okay, so herein lies the rub. If you look at that poll, it says Musk should have, quote, at least some influence on government operations. In other words, people don't want him to go in there with a chainsaw the way many people on my side of the aisle would love for him to do. They want him to go in with a scalpel. And President Trump recognizes political reality.

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Again, I've said this about President Trump before. This is a man who lives in the world of political reality in a way that most politicians do not. Most politicians are so ideologically attached to their positions that even if those positions start to go wrong with the American people, they hold by them.

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And there's something to be recommended about that because at least you know the differentiation between the parties. I mean, I'm clearly an ideological person. I have a set of beliefs that fit into a broader worldview. And I think that that's helpful to my listeners because they know where I'm coming from.

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But for President Trump to be successful, he has to continue to be as pragmatic as he has been. So yesterday, he made clear that he would be. Yesterday, according to Politico, President Trump convened his cabinet in person to deliver a message. You are in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.

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Agreed. I mean, even Democrats at this point in the mainstream media are recognizing this simple fact. Democrats continue to do performatively stupid things. I don't know who they think they're appealing to, but there is a serious collective action problem inside the Democratic Party. None of the Democrats wants to appoint sort of a Democrat leader to rally behind. That's one problem.

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According to two administration officials, President Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments, but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was in the room.

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The meeting followed a series of mass firings and threats to government workers from the billionaire Tesla founder who helms the Department of Governmental Efficiency. President Trump then stressed that he wants to actually keep good people in government and not to eject capable workers en masse. Here's President Trump saying just that yesterday.

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Well, folks, there's one kind of young person that Democrats like, and there's one kind of young person that Democrats really don't. The kind of young person Democrats like, as it turns out, the theater kid. That is the type, the theater kid. And when I say the theater kid, I mean very specifically performative young people who cast aspersions at everyone who is older than they are, cast blame.

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Listen, I hope Democrats fight this one all the way. I really hope they fight this one all the way because their fight against Doge is one of the dumbest political fights I've ever seen anyone pick. They will be able to ding Elon Musk as a human just in terms of his individual polling numbers. But what they are fighting right now is against government bureaucracies being cut.

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That is what they are fighting against. And Doge is doing a really good job, so is the Trump administration generally, of calling out the waste and fraud that have been happening inside the system. Now, look, the real reality when it comes to America's national debt and bending the cost curve is that trimming around the edges, getting rid –

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of even many of the billions of dollars that are put out by USAID. That is a worthy cause that is not going to truly bend the cost curve for the United States. The entire budget of the USAID is $40 billion. The United States is running trillion-dollar deficits every single year. We currently have a $36 trillion national debt.

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Unless you change the actual entitlement systems, which nobody is willing to do, you're not going to cure the problem. With that said, is it very good that it's happening? Sure. And is it hilarious the Democrats are trying to find a way to defend the massive bureaucracy they have created, this giant cash cow that they created and controlled for 100 years?

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They're trying to defend it against the predations of big balls? Isn't that kind of hilarious? Absolutely it is. And their arguments, of course, make zero sense at all. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, she's very upset because there is a rumor that Doge had basically plugged into the FAA in order to help correct the aviation systems. And again, cut out the waste, fraud and abuse.

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Here's Maria Cantwell getting very upset about it.

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Well, you certainly cannot have a man controlling the airspace and working on aviation who, you know, owns the most successful space company of our time and creates machines capable of firing 20-story rockets into the air and bringing them back down and catching them. Can't have that guy involved with aviation.

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They had a report that says that a young technologist known online as Big Balls, who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has access to sensitive U.S. government systems. But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances. Yeah, sure.

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The person we need at the head of the transportation department is a man who couldn't fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana, but is gay and loves choo-choo trains and takes two-month paternity leaves without telling anybody. That's who I trust with our federal aviation security. And this is a losing battle for Democrats. And if they continue to fight it, it is not going to end well for them.

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I think most hilariously is the argument that's now being put forward by the media that what Musk is doing is somehow wild, crazy, out of the unprecedented. So CNN's Pamela Brown, she was very upset yesterday. She said, would you be okay with George Soros doing what Elon Musk is doing?

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OK, first of all, I love the ire from Pamela Brown. What would happen if George Soros's people were just put in charge? They were in charge. Alex Soros posts pictures of himself with every single Democratic leader at his palatial apartment above Central Park. Every single one of them, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz. Soros has been in control of the bureaucracy in ways both large and small for years.

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And if not Soros, people like Soros. Who do you think is staffing these bureaucratic institutions? Who do you think is receiving checks in the non-governmental sphere from institutions like USAID? Organizations run by people like George Soros. So no, this isn't unprecedented. It's just the American people are ready for the cuts.

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Well, Democrats are shocked at what is happening with Doge, but here's something that I learned recently that actually shocked me. Over 85% of grass-fed beef in stores is actually imported from somewhere else. That is right. Most of what you buy is not American beef. That's because the country of origin labeling law was repealed in 2015.

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So right now, meat can be packaged here in the United States and then earn a product of USA Label. even if it was born, raised, and harvested overseas. Luckily, at GoodRanchers.com, they're changing that. They're sourcing 100% of their meat from American farmers and ranchers.

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That is the thing that I think people are deeply worried about, is whether they would pass a security clearance, the kind of security clearance that, for example, allowed Biden administration appointees to full-on leak Israeli war plans to the press. Those security clearances have been doing a hell of a lot of work. They've been doing an amazing job over there.

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All products on Good Ranchers have trustworthy ingredients, and unlike those products of the USA stickers, you can rest assured every cut of meat from Good Ranchers actually is born, raised, and harvested right here in the United States. There are no hidden additives, no antibiotics ever, no seed oils, just pure, clean meat.

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Plus, with their farm-to-table transparency, you're supporting American ranchers while getting meat you can feel good about serving to your family. Producer Savvy, she talks all the time about it. how her family enjoys their Good Ranchers wild-caught seafood box.

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She gets the peace of mind of also knowing she's supporting paralyzed veterans and her food is sourced from American farmers and ranchers. It's not too late to start the year, right? Invest in your own health and support American farms with every purchase. Right now, get free ground beef, chicken breast, or wild-caught salmon in every order for a year, plus 25 bucks off with code BEN.

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Start 2025 off right. Visit goodranchers.com and use code BEN for this incredible offer. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. Also, Start every day off right with Black Rifle Coffee. Black Rifle Coffee helps you wake up every morning feeling dialed in, ready to make the most of your day.

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My kids wake me up extraordinarily early every morning and I am just zonked until I get that Black Rifle Coffee in me and then I'm ready and raring to go to take on the day. Now is your chance to get 20% off your purchase with code dailywire at blackriflecoffee.com.

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Black Rifle Coffee's coffees are roasted right here in the United States by a veteran-led team of expert roasters who take pride in serving coffee and culture to people who love the country. Every purchase you make helps them further their mission to support veteran and first responder causes. Everything from getting funding and equipment to first responders to helping veterans get medical care.

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Black Rifle Coffee has a huge selection of dark roast, light roast, everything in between. Take the coffee quiz on the website. Get matched with a blend perfectly tailored to your specific taste. Again, a portion of every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee goes towards supporting veteran and first responder causes.

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Your money goes a long way toward giving back to those who serve the country. Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com right now. Use code DailyWire for 20% off America's coffee. That's BlackRifleCoffee.com. Code DailyWire. BlackRifleCoffee.com. Code DailyWire. Meanwhile, Scott Pesent, the new Treasury Secretary, was asked about what is the impact of Doge over at the Treasury Department.

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He says, we're not violating the law. What the hell are you talking about?

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So, again, the kind of lies that are being told are absurd, but the panic is being driven by the fact in the end that the entire gravy train for the Democrats has been a permanent bureaucracy designed to funnel cash to their friends. Well, all of that is coming to a crashing halt. President Trump and his administration are laying off nearly all USAID staff.

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According to the New York Times, the Trump administration plans to reduce the number of workers at USAID from more than 10,000 to 290. These are the kinds of cuts, by the way, that Musk does. When Elon comes into act, he just kills all the jobs. He just destroys all the jobs and he keeps a small group of people to run the thing and then fixes the problems.

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The engineers that Elon Musk has working for him typically are young and incredibly smart, which is why they work for Elon Musk. So the six young men who are sort of leading the charge are apparently all between the ages of 19 and 24. And this has been determined to be a very, very bad thing, again, by so many of the people on the left. Just terrible.

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Because he says there is no reason why we need 1,000 employees, 2,000 employees to run a company that is not running at a solid profit. So those sorts of cuts, are they worthwhile? The answer is absolutely. Some of the programs that are supported by the Democrats here are utterly insane, crazy. Here, for example, is Representative Cynthia Loomis explaining some of the programs that were in USAID.

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She's from Wyoming.

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And do those seem like good expenditures to you? By the way, BBC's Media Action, which is the BBC international charity, received millions of dollars in American government grants from USAID. Perhaps the worst expenditure from USAID. USAID in 2016 gave $310 million of your taxpayer money to a Palestinian cement factory project.

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It was a private venture by a company called Sanad to create cement mills and factories. What do you think they needed all that cement for? What do you think they used all that cement for? I'll give you three guesses. What did the Palestinians in Gaza use all that cement for, paid for by your taxpayer dollars? Hmm. Any any any ideas? Oh, yeah.

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That would be the 300 miles of terror tunnels that Hamas built underneath the Gaza Strip, leading to the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip after October 7th. So just slow clap for the geniuses in the permanent bureaucratic state. That meme where it shows Iron Dome going up and it says funded by American taxpayer dollars.

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And then it shows the rockets coming from Gaza and says somehow also funded by American taxpayer dollars. And then it's the tunnels underneath. Is this somehow also my taxpayer dollars? Yep. That is what the government is filled with. That sort of crap that needs to be wiped out. And people don't like it.

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And if Democrats wish to go out on a limb and suggest that Americans are somehow going to object to cuts to this, good luck with that. Samantha Power, one of the worst foreign policy officials of my lifetime, She's supposedly the anti-genocide activist who fully stood aside while Joe Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban. She's just awful, Samantha Power, in every possible way.

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She was on CNN to decry the cuts to USAID.

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So she's ridiculous. The Biden administration was ridiculous. The Obama administration was ridiculous. You guys built it. I'm sorry that you wasted all of our money on actual terrorist projects in many ways. Now it's all going away. Joe Rogan, I think, speaks for Americans when he says, yeah, no, what we're really cutting here, what Trump and Musk are doing here is just cutting stupid nonsense.

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So CNN covered this in, I think, the most hysterical possible way yesterday. They were very, very upset. First of all, the chyron... It's just wonderful. Quote, Wired, Doge Dean, known online as Big Balls, now a government expert.

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I think this is pretty commonsensical from Joe.

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That is right. That, of course, is exactly right. Well, speaking of the Department of Government Efficiency, joining us on the line is Luke Rosiak. He's an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire and our brand new Doge reporter over at the White House. Luke, thanks so much for joining the program. Thanks for having me, Ben.

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So, Luke, let's talk about your recent article about how sort of the groundwork was set for Doge. Democrats are trying to claim over and over that something unprecedented is being done with the Department of Government Efficiency, that you have a bunch of unelected people who are worming their way into government and making cuts. What's the actual origin of the powers that preexisted Doge?

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So first of all, government expertise, according to the left, is you went to George Washington University after majoring in African-American history, and now we call you a State Department expert. That is the way that you get appointed an expert, according to CNN. But because this young technologist, who apparently is kind of a genius, jokingly called himself Big Balls online,

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Those people are tools of the Democratic Party. They are tools of the left. The left does not wish to generate young people who are self-sufficient, who create things, who are innovative, who are trying to build for the future. Those young people are kind of bad. They're part of the system. What they want are young people that they can use as batons to wield against the system.

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Yeah, and this is one of the things that I find so hilarious about the entire Democratic take on Doge. What they're very upset about is the idea that a quote-unquote unelected bureaucrat who is unaccountable to, say, the legislative branch is now going through their giant unelected bureaucracy that they created as essentially a permanent –

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taxpayer money funded scam to send cash out the door to a variety of their own friends in sort of blue non-governmental organizations across the world. They set up essentially a permanent funding pipeline from places like USAID to all of their friends, run by all of their friends. And now they're upset that somebody is coming in and cutting all of that.

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And they're claiming that somehow this is opposition to the American people. Well, actually, no, you guys, as you say, set up the rake and now you've stepped on it.

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the Democrats are very upset, like very upset. Understand, Democrats only like big balls when they are on a purported woman. In any case, here are the CNN anchors just beside themselves over this revelation.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Well, these are the this this is your local. H-O-A, telling you that you're not allowed to put an American flag on your lawn on July 4th because it might be offensive to others. The media just losing it over big balls. It's just so terrible. How could they? Just the worst. And Joy Reid, too, was deeply upset about big balls. Here was Joy Reid. And again, another very censorious.

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So meanwhile, President Trump is going to do the Super Bowl interview. Famously, Joe Biden did not last year, mainly because he was not alive at the time, unfortunately. And so he was not capable of doing the Super Bowl interview. Now, President Trump has been everywhere. He's extraordinarily high energy.

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I mean, the man's nearly 80 and he is just I mean, he's doing a presser and basically every single day. He put out a truth saying, quote, two great quarterbacks in this game, also an unbelievable running back and the absolute best tight end in football ever. Incredible coaching.

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Remember, the things that are very offensive and upsetting to the left do not include, for example, men who get boob jobs and jiggle their bare breasts at the White House on the lawn. That is not offensive to the left. Or, you know, gay guys having sex in the actual Senate chambers. Not offensive to the left. That's freedom of expression.

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If they would only get rid of that really weird looking new kickoff deal, which actually makes football more dangerous, they'd be doing everybody, especially the fans, a big favor. Anyway, it will be a great game. I'll be doing the interview before the game at 3 p.m. There hasn't been one in four years. Gee, I wonder why. So what are you expecting from the president of the United States?

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You know, the fact that the entire sort of pop culture world has decided that it's acceptable to now say that you like President Trump or you're at least lukewarm toward President Trump is an amazing, amazing shift. Well, you mentioned Kelsey, which means, of course, the over under on how many times Taylor Swift will be shown live is currently at six and a half. You're my betting advisor.

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Do we take the over or the under on six and a half for live shots of Taylor Swift reacting to the game?

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All righty. And final, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey related question. Are we going to see some sort of live proposal on the field after the game if the Chiefs win? That was the speculation last year. It didn't end up happening. They're still dating, which is a shock, frankly. But listen, it either ends in a marriage or it ends in an album.

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So either way, I suppose the American people win since they seem to like Taylor Swift. So which side of that bet do you take? Does Kelsey propose to Taylor Swift on the field?

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But a young technologist who called himself big balls on LinkedIn, that is just so far beyond the pale. We cannot have any of that. This is a well-respected government. A well-respected government that funds the transing of the children in Guatemala via the U.S. Agency for International Development. Take us seriously.

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Wow, that is a sad end to our time together. That's Emily Austin. You can go check out all of her work over on X and also at YouTube. Emily, really appreciate the insight into the big game. Hope you have a great Sunday.

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Well, meanwhile, Kanye West is back at it, and he is over on Twitter doing things again. Now, a wise man once said about Kanye West, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye. That wise man was me, and that was in 2018. There are some who decided that, in fact, Kanye was a deeply wise and trustworthy individual and, in fact, should be a hero to people on the right.

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Now, there are two things that are possible to say about Kanye West. One is that he's mentally ill, and he clearly is mentally ill. He clearly is bipolar. He's manic depressive. He now says that he's not manic depressive, that he's actually autistic. Okay, sure. Autism is now being used as a catch-all term for pretty much any strange behavior out there, like all of it.

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I'd love to see a medical diagnosis, but... If there's a mental problem, then he is not totally responsible for his actions, which might explain why he does evil things, but it's not responsible for those. The other possibility is that actually he's not mentally ill and that he ought to be taken seriously, which is an argument made by many people on the right.

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Okay, if he's not mentally ill and we ought to take him seriously, then he's evil. And he's an evil person because I don't know what else to make of a person who trots his wife out stark naked in front of the cameras, has suggested starting a pornography company, shows pornographic pictures to people who work with him. and proclaims himself a Nazi. Those seem like not amazing behaviors.

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Well, he took to X again today and was manically tweeting over and over and over. Everything from tweets about Bianca Sansori, his nude wife, to Adolf Hitler. Quote, Hitler was so fresh, according to Ye. He undoubtedly would have been murdered by Hitler. Quote, call me Adolf Hitler, and your still wants to F. It's this sort of genius that made him world famous, obviously.

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I'm going to normalize talking about Hitler the way they talking about killing N-words has been normalized. When was kill? I'm just confused when it was normalized to talk about killing N-words. By whom and why? Quote. I'm cold when I feel an ounce of feelings. O-N-C-E. A once of feelings. I assume it means ounce.

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I stand still and hold my eyes open like a psychopath till that feeling of feeling anything goes away. I have no heartstrings. People, pull out your heartstrings to control. People, use your feelings against you. I can say Jew as much as I want. I can say Hitler as much as I want. Matter of fact, I do say it when I want.

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Well, I mean, I think we all have the capacity to say both Hitler and Jew as many times as we want. But, yeah, I think it's kind of what you say. By the way, he's now come out in favor of P. Diddy. So just in case if you're wondering if there are any evil people he's not siding with, the alleged rapist, he's apparently in on that one. Quote, Puff, get one call a morning. All right. Free Puff.

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Honestly, the entire Democratic approach to politics seems to be the meme from Arrested Development of Job Bluth with his magician friends holding up a sign that says, we demand to be taken seriously. But they need to be taken seriously, folks.

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Okay. Okay. Very strong stuff from Kanye West this morning. At least he's saying the obvious part. Quote, I channeled Andrew Tate on a few of these tweets. Yeah, we know, my bro. We know. We know. So, good times. And he did have some commentary about his naked wife defending her being naked. Quote, anyone who's called my wife's Grammy look a stunt is dumb and lame.

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Well, I mean, what else would you call it? The best characterization of it is a stunt. If she did it sincerely, then she has a screw loose. People don't walk around naked in public if they don't have a screw loose. Anyone who called my wife's Grammy look a stunt is dumb and lame, says Kanye West. Yes, you. She's been dressing naked for two years.

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Okay, first of all, I want to logic out what it means to dress naked. I feel like that's oxymoronic. She's been dressing naked for two years. That's, that's strange. Those are the op. Anyway, now all of a sudden it's a stunt. Every single on the planet wish they had her bravery, body, platform, and access to money and a husband that supported they personal expression.

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There are a lot of things that had to converge for this moment to happen. Actually. It turns out that to be naked requires no things to converge. People do it all the time. It's crazy. From showering to babies having their diapers changed. It happens literally all the time without anything's converging.

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In fact, the fewest things in all of human history have to converge in order for people to be naked. The Bible opens with people being naked in a garden. Like it turns out you don't need any preconditions whatsoever to be naked. It takes a civilization in order to get dressed. Yeah. Okay, why is this important?

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The reason this is important is because a bunch of people took this guy seriously for years, for years. And when you sign up for the ride, you take the whole ride with the whole ticket. So perhaps people ought to be a little bit more discriminating about whom they choose to emulate as heroes. Transgressivism, violation of the norms.

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These folks at MSNBC, Joy Reid is a serious person, and she will not brook the idea of a young man who called himself online, big balls, cutting governmental waste programs. Here we go.

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Sometimes that can be useful if the norm is bad, but that does not mean that all transgressive behavior is normal or decent because it really, really is not. So solid stuff there from Ye. And we look forward to his new collab with Diddy, I suppose. Or at least some people will. All righty.

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Meanwhile, I've been informed that we need to do an analysis of the biggest hit on Amazon, Mr. Beast's show over on Amazon. So this is kind of fascinating. It's called Beast Games. And full disclosure, I know some of the people associated with making the show. Beast Games is, I will say it's got like a 13% critics rating. It is highly watchable, like really watchable.

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It's kind of real life Squid Games. And there are a bunch of various sort of cultural analyses that have been done of Beast Games. The most common one that I've seen is that it's a critique of capitalism. First of all, let me explain. It is absolutely not a critique of capitalism. In fact, the setup for the show is the opposite of capitalism.

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For the setup is that 1,000 contestants compete in physical, mental, and social challenges for a chance to win a $5 million cash prize, a $1.8 million private island, and more. And so that's not capitalism because it's definitionally a zero-sum game. Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. Capitalism is the opposite of a zero-sum game.

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It's also not like capitalism in that it is not an iterative game, meaning you're in or you're out. The thing about capitalism is if you cheat somebody in a capitalist system, you can cheat one guy, but you really can't cheat like five. Because if you keep cheating people over and over, they stop doing business with you. It's one of the greatest incentives to cheat people under capitalism.

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This is a point that's been made by Adam Smith, is that capitalism as practiced actually makes you more ethical in business because you need to give somebody a product that they want and it can't malfunction. Because if it malfunctions, they're not going to buy from you again. So there are a bunch of distinctions between what you're watching here and capitalism.

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The left likes to think that capitalism is a zero-sum game, that it's a bunch of people competing for a bag of cash. That's not what capitalism is. In fact, capitalism makes everybody richer. This is much more like communism, where you have a bag of cash, and then the question is just how that cash gets divided up.

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And predictably, when it comes to a bag of cash and how it gets divided up, it turns out that the people who are the most scurrilous and underhanded are the people who are going to be the most likely to have the Dasha on the water, and everybody else is going to get victimized by those people.

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It turns out that human nature is to maximize the return to you at the cost of somebody else, unless all boats are rising. That is just human nature. You're going to defend yourself and your family before you defend other people. That is just the way of human nature. Greed is a universal human phenomenon. Pretending it away doesn't make it go away.

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The great lie of communism is that if you have a grab bag of cash, magically greed will just disappear if you force everybody to take the same amount. And it's a lie and it never works because human nature is still human nature. The only thing that can get past human greed is mutual dependence, which is what capitalism creates. Free trade, mutual dependence, free exchange.

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That's the sort of stuff that creates better behavior and creates an incentive structure that leads you to channel your particular greed toward actually helping somebody else because you're not going to get what you want unless you give somebody else what they want. I've described capitalism as effectively forced altruism, and that's correct.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So I'm putting that out there because there have been a bunch of articles that are basically suggesting that the Beast Games are a sort of critique of capitalism. That's only if you really, really don't understand capitalism. If you understand that this isn't capitalism, it's a grab bag of cash, then basically all of beast games can be reduced to a repeated iteration of the prisoner's dilemma.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So let's talk about what this game looks like. It's the prisoner's dilemma. So for those of you who don't know some game theory, basic game theory, game theory is basically an attempt to quantify how decisions get made based on available possible outcomes. So The perfect example of a sort of game theory is prisoner's dilemma.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So prisoner's dilemma is a situation where you have two guys who commit a crime together. One of them is brought into one room by the cops. The other is brought into another room by the cops. And they are given a series of options, okay? They're each told, you can confess or you can stay quiet. Now, if you stay quiet, and your partner confesses, that is the worst case outcome for you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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You refuse to talk to the cops and your partner confesses, then you are going to get 10 years in prison and your partner gets zero because he gets the benefit. He flipped on you, but you didn't flip on anybody. So you get the maximum sentence. You get the 10 year sentence. If you both stay quiet, then you both go to jail for a year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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If you both confess, then you're both going to jail for six years. So the question is, where are you going to end up? And the answer is, it depends on how much you trust your partner. So here is that drawn out, right? You have player one over here. He has two options, to confess or to stay quiet. Player two also has two options, to confess or to stay quiet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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If they both confess, they both get six years. If they both stay quiet, they both get one year in prison. If you confess and the other guy stays quiet, then you get zero years and he gets 10 years. And the precise opposite is true if your partner does that to you. So the most obvious outcome typically is that everybody sort of loses because you don't want the 10-year sentence.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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If you don't trust your partner a lot that he's going to shut up, if he ain't your brother or something, you are immediately going to confess, and so will he, and then you're going to end up in this box. That is the equilibrium. That's where everybody's going to end up, typically speaking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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The reason that I bring this up is because when you look at sort of the outcome of these various games, they match that sort of human behavior. So much of this show is kind of fascinating just because it is a way of assessing, in real life, sort of Bayesian risk calculations. I want to go through some of them because, again, I think people are reading the show wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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They're reading it as sort of critique of culture, and there is some of that in here. They have a bunch of Gen Z morons who somehow are of the opinion that they're best friends with everybody, and so they keep getting screwed, like over and over and over. They keep doing the thing where they stay quiet, and then the Gen Xer He's like, I don't even know you, bro. I don't even know you, bro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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And so the player who ends up staying quiet, the Gen Z-er, ends up here in sort of the quiet box and ends up getting 10 years in prison. And meanwhile, the Gen X-er is like, I don't know you, bro. I'm going to confess. And he ends up getting the benefit of that particular bargain.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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The young people who are bad are the people who are actually good at things. Those young people who might be, you know, engineers, who might be building companies, who might be innovating. Those young people... They're too weird. We can't allow them anywhere near the levers of power.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So the answer there is Gen Z-ers are naive about the world and they've been misinformed as to how humanity actually works. Okay, but... There are some other sort of interesting Bayesian situations that arise here, risk calculation situations that arise here. So let's go through some of them. The first episode involves the sacrifice of a team member. Okay, so this is the first challenge.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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The contestants are teamed up by row. One player from each row has to eliminate or sacrifice themselves so the rest of their row can move on. The last three rows standing that have not eliminated someone are all eliminated. Okay, so if everyone refuses to sacrifice themselves, then the entire row is eliminated. One person has to throw themselves on the grenade, for example.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Now, as you'll see, many of the rows end up being eliminated. Three of the rows end up being eliminated because nobody sacrifices themselves because why would you? Your expected outcome then is zero. And so here's what it looked like.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Everybody's yelling at other people. But why would you sacrifice yourself for the team? The reason, again, that people aren't doing it is because of the prisoner's dilemma. You don't want to be the guy. This is a clear case where you take the hit and you go to jail and everybody else gets to stay. Why would you possibly do that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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There's no upside for you other than maybe a couple of seconds on camera as the supposed hero. So again, is that an expose of capitalism? This has nothing to do with capitalism. This has to do with basic human motivation. Meanwhile, next episode, episode two. There is a challenge in which team leaders are given an opportunity. They get to receive a million dollars.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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And if they take the million dollars, their team goes home or do not take the million dollars and their team remains. Now, remember, the big prize is five million bucks. I'm just going to put it out here. If you were a team leader here and you didn't take the million dollars, you're a moron. This is a competitive game. There will be one person who wins and many people who lose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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You're a stupid person if you don't take the million dollars. You don't know these people. It is a competitive game. It doesn't make you self-sacrificial. It doesn't make you a saint. It doesn't make you a martyr. It is the nature of the constructed game as it is. Your expected value, if you do not take the million dollars, is you divided by the entire corpus of people who are left in the game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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They're like 500 people left in the game. So your expected value of the $5 million for 500 people is 1 500th of $5 million. Okay, so that is 5 million divided by 500. In other words, 10 grand. Okay, so you are giving up a million dollars for a 10 grand expected value. So you're an adult if you don't take the million dollars. Here's the clip.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Okay, so people are not taking the million dollars to eliminate their team. Why won't they just take the money? Just take the money, dude.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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They're just so self-sacrificial or they're being stupid about the nature of the game. If you go to this game in the first place, you should be taking the million dollars. You're the winner. People don't understand expected value calculations. Or they think the social sanction is so strong that they can't take the million dollars. Take the million dollars and run, my man. That is quite foolish.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Okay, as a person who's relatively famous for not reading full obscene lyrics on the air, I promise that Joy Reid has said words way worse than balls on her show before. This is amazing, amazing stuff. They're offended, guys. They're so offended. But here's the thing. What are they really offended by? Are they offended that some teenager who is apparently a brilliant technologist

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Quite foolish. OK, so another sort of social experiment that was that was played was episode eight. In this particular episode. There was a bag of cash and contestants were asked sequentially to take money from the bag of cash. How much money are you going to take? Is it a million dollars in the bag?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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And there are 10 people on each team or there's 10 contestants left at this point in the whole game. And how much money do you take? Now, again, the amount of money that you take is going to determine whether you get eliminated or not. If you just go and grab all the cash, presumably everybody then votes to eliminate you because you took all of the cash. This is a basic expected risk.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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This is a basic expected value calculation here. There are 10 players left, correct? Okay, so there are 10 players left. There's a million dollars in the bag. So you currently have a one in 10 shot at winning $5 million. Your expected value becomes $500,000. This is fun. I get to teach basic statistics to folks. Fun. Okay. So your expected value is now $500,000. Okay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Or if you walk in and you take anything more than $500,000, it's guaranteed. This means you're a fool not to take more than $500,000 from the bag. Because your expected value is now higher than $500,000. Only one person was smart enough to do this, and then he was crying about it. Why are you crying about it, dude? It's a competitive game. That's the nature of the game. It'd make you a bad person.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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I would have taken the money. I would have taken the money. Because these people are not on your team. They will all be eliminated. Again, this is not like capitalism, and it's not like your church. It's not like your family. You don't know these people. The bizarre attempt by the producers to sort of create this, oh, you're part of a community now. You have a stake in these people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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You love them and they love you. So only one dude played this game correctly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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See, that's the schmucky part. Don't pretend that they're like your daughters. They're not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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It's a competition show. See, people are going to watch me and my take on this, and they're going to be like, how dare you be so cruel? It's a competition show. This is like saying that Patrick Mahomes should deliberately throw interceptions to achieve fairness in the Super Bowl. It is a competition show. There are winners and there are losers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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If you don't buy into the premise of the show, don't go on the show. If you went on the show to make friends, you need to have a better life. That's all. The latest episode of Beast Game, episode number nine, player 566 was sent home in this episode.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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used an obscene meme online. Are they really upset about? No, what they're really upset about is because the only kids that they want to succeed are the theater kids. The ones who actually build things, who are good at things, who have a skillset. Those ones are the bad ones. So David Hogg is like the perfect example of this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So there are six players left and Mr. Beast gave the final six contestants a chance to flip a coin to double the money available, making it $10 million available to the pool as opposed to $5 million. If you flip wrong, you're eliminated. And the episode ends with somebody flipping the coin, but you don't see what happens.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Okay, now, again, it is perfectly rational to both flip the coin and not flip the coin. Either decision is perfectly rational. Basic expected return calculation here. You have a one in six chance of winning $5 million, or you have a one in 12 chance of winning $10 million. Okay, that's the same expected value. So whether you flip the coin or whether you don't flip the coin,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Just in terms of risk assessment, it's irrelevant. Your expected value at the end is exactly the same. So there's no moral component to that. There's nothing that makes you better or worse for flipping the coin or not flipping the coin or even makes you smarter or not as smart for not flipping the coin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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A Hollywood reporter reports that professional TV reviewers have called this a sad reflection of our modern times. One of the most undignified spectacles ever shown on TV. A deafening, joyless cash dash. I don't know. If you see it as a sort of social experiment that just reveals preferences, then it's kind of interesting that way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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The only thing that would make it joyless is if you expect that all these people are not in a competition show and really it's like you battling members of your family. But it ain't. It isn't. It'd be a joyless competition show if this was like you doing this to your own kids, not some random people who you're in a stated competition show with. All righty. That's the analysis of Beast Games.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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All righty, guys. Coming up, we're going to go through a couple of big trailers released this week. After all, it's a Friday. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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David Hogg, or Stickman Hogg, as I will call him from now on, since he is both a stick figure of a person when it comes to his physical stature, as well as his intellectual representation of left-wing ideas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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So David Hogg tweeted out, he's now the vice chair of the DNC, by the way, at the age of 24, based on his varied accomplishments, which include getting into Harvard with a low SAT score because he went to a school where a school shooting took place, not running a failed pillow company,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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and tweeting inane nonsense for years while claiming that he was sort of immune from any criticism because, again, a school shooting took place at a school that he went to when he was in high school. He tweeted out, quote, yeah, let's let a 19-year-old who goes by Big Balls handle the situation. Very confidence-inspiring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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He's 24, and he's never done anything in his entire life, anything of value in his entire life, and he's somehow the vice chair of the DNC. I will point out at this point, by the way, that the relative youth of technologists is in fact a hallmark of successful technologists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Charlie Cook, who is one of the editors over at National Review, he points out that Page and Brin created Google at 24, Zuckerberg launched Facebook at 19, Steve Jobs started Apple at 21. It's kind of a hallmark of genius that it starts to be productive very, very early in life. It is a hallmark of democratic children, their child heroes, that they are not productive.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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This has come to a head today because the left has decided that the worst young people in existence work for Elon Musk's doge. And this has specifically become a central feature of the democratic angst because there is one young person in particular, a young technologist. who is being targeted by Wired Magazine and now the entire unified left. Why?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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They don't do anything useful except yell at the adults. All they are are cuter versions of older Democrats at your HOA, which is why David Hogg became famous in the first place. Remember, he became famous for yelling at the adults to do something, to do something about gun violence. He didn't have any solutions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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He didn't have anything of value to say, but he was a young person who was yelling all the things Democrats wanted to hear. Here was David Hogg back in the day, and this is the reason why he is currently the vice chair, Stickman Hogg. He's currently the vice chair of the DNC.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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He did not, in fact, change the world. Isn't that a fascist salute right there? Why is he making a fascist salute at the March for Our Lives in 2019? A fascist is now apparently the vice chair of the DNC. Remember, he was celebrated. He was made into a national hero. He's put on the cover of Time magazine with his friends from Parkland, many of whom, by the way, do not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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I know some of the former Parkland kids who are now adults, many of them not real fans of David Hogg. In any case, that guy is now the vice chair of the DNC. He was championed by the left specifically because he was young and he never did anything. He just yelled the things they wanted to hear. This is why Greta Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Prize.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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That moronic Swedish now woman who I can make fun of because she's over the age of 18. The rule is that you can't make fun of anybody under 18. She's well over 18, even if she dresses like she's under 18. and still wears around the pigtails and the braid and pretends that she is, you know, a child still. She's the oldest child.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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She's going to be 80 years old walking around pretending she's a 16-year-old while shouting at the evil adults for ruining the world. Greta wasn't a big one for freedom, but this country was founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy overpriced tea, then tried blockading us when we dumped their stupid tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, England?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

674.733

Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just $45 a month, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

690.185

Unlimited talk, text, 25 gigs of data, and mobile hotspot at a fraction of the price of the big guys. And so if I trust Pure Talk for my calls... You should as well. The clarity is excellent. The price is great. Go check them out. PureTalk.com slash PureUnclaimed, your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from PureTalk, America's wireless company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

727.983

Also, during tax season, your sensitive information travels through countless hands and systems, from payroll to tax preparers to data centers, before it reaches the IRS. Every stop is a potential vulnerability. Your W-2 contains exactly what identity thieves need to wreak havoc on your life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

74.172

Because this young technologist is known online as Big Balls. Yes, that's a meme. It turns out that many of the people who are in sort of online meme world, which is Elon Musk's domain. Elon is the king of meme world. That if you are in that world, you tend to throw out silly memes, foolish names for yourself, silly nicknames.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

742.274

It's no surprise the IRS reported a 20% spike in tax-related identity theft last year, and this is where LifeLock comes in. Their advanced system monitors millions of data points every second, catching threats that you might miss on your own. And if the worst happens, LifeLock's US-based restoration specialists have your back, supported by their million-dollar protection package.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

759.309

They'll fix your stolen identity, guaranteed, or you get your money back. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock. She's emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing that the experts are always monitoring her sensitive information for suspicious activity. Don't let identity thieves turn your tax season into their payday. Instead, get the protection you need with LifeLock.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

776.602

Join right now. Save up to 40% off your very first year of membership. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and mention promo code Ben or visit LifeLock.com slash Ben and save up to 40% today. Terms apply again. LifeLock.com slash Ben to save 40% today. Meanwhile, this person whose politics are absolutely disgusting, I mean, ranging from shut down capitalism, destroy it utterly to root for Hamas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

801.598

They nominated her for a Nobel Prize and told us she was a moral clarion voice because she yelled at the adults. These are the kinds of young people the Democrats want. Young people who yell at the adults without ever attempting to actually do anything productive.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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The productive kids who are out in the back room, you know, actually coding and figuring out how things work and then using those powers in order to go through government waste and fraud if they call themselves big balls online. Whoa, whoa, stop it all. Shut it down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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If you are a 16-year-old Swedish child who drops out of high school to travel around yelling at adults about why capitalism is bad, then we give you the Nobel Prize, according to the left. Here's a flashback to Greta, how dare you? Thunberg.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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I just want to point out, you worshipped this person. This bluster bag filled with nonsense and emotive stupidity. You worshipped this. You said this person is worthy of listening to with no skill set other than lecturing adults. So, yeah, I'm going to take it with a grain of salt. And when I say a grain, I mean like an ocean filled, like a dead sea filled with salt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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I'm going to take with your recommendation that because a dude called himself big balls in a meme online, that that somehow makes him unable to go through government waste and fraud. Now, in the end, the truth is what Democrats really want is not just young people who are theater kids. They want that lifestyle extended over the entire course of adult life. They want permanent Greta Thunberg.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

934.217

They want permanent David Hogg. That's what they want. They want people who never build anything, who never do anything useful. What they want is people who are perennially 16 and complaining about the world. And by the way, ruining their own lives in the process. A perfect example of this sort of person is a representative from Michigan. named Lori Pohutsky. Lori Pohutsky is not a young person.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Lori Pohutsky is 36, which in the old days would have put you squarely in sort of the lower middle-aged category. Lori Pohutsky announced yesterday that she had undergone surgery to ensure that you'd never have to navigate a pregnancy in Donald Trump's America and thus had sterilized herself. Perennial childhood, perennial lack of responsibility, and then blaming the system for it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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Now, you might say to yourself, wait, hold up. You know, there are many things that human beings can do, it turns out, to avoid getting pregnant. I mean, that is just a fact. You might say to yourself that Michigan abortion law is actually quite permissive, that actually the Michigan Constitution guarantees a right to an abortion. Yeah, but that's not the point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

99.466

And meanwhile, you're using AI technology to decode thousands of years old memes. encrypted Greek texts, basically. So you're doing genius things, but also you're doing super stupid things by calling yourself big balls on LinkedIn. Apparently, Wired is very angry about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

999.168

The point is yelling at the system and then harming yourself in the process is heroism on the left. It is Greta Thunberg forever. It is 80-year-old Greta Thunberg filling the Democratic Party. So yeah, I'm not going to take you seriously that you're very, very upset over big balls going through the budget at the transportation department for waste and fraud. The answer is no.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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Well, folks, it's drinking from a fire hose. Tons of news on the economy. We'll get to all of it momentarily. Remember, Daily Wire Plus is the place you are going to get people telling you the unvarnished truth. Here, we are a facts-based company. We try to do things that are facts-based. If you are facts-based, if you just want. the unvarnished truth, then join us here at Daily Wire Plus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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And trade deficits are not, again, a good substitute for an explanation of why that's bad for the United States. Trade deficits finance virtually our entire debt load. Because let's say that we are buying more from another country than they are buying from us. They take those dollars. Those dollars are used as the world's reserve currency.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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And those dollars are very often traded for the American bonds that finance our debt. And then the talking points, again, these are the talking points distributed by the White House to allies in Congress. Gone are the days of America being taken advantage of. There's a new sheriff in town and trade is a core issue in restoring American strength on the global stage. Again, that's nice rhetoric.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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I don't know what it means. President Trump is correcting longstanding trade imbalances caused by non-reciprocal trade relations by imposing tariffs to level the playing field. Again, if we're talking reciprocal, fine, but it's not clear what reciprocality means at this point other than other countries need to buy more of our goods even if they don't have tariffs on us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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So it's kind of a mishmash of various rationales. Now, to steel man what's going on here, there is the sort of Scott Besson theory of the case, the Treasury Secretary, who, again, knows economics really well. Besson is an excellent Treasury Secretary. The case that he has been making is a more sophisticated case, and it's laid out well by a policy analyst named Tanvi Ratna.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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Tanvi Ratna is quoted by the investor extraordinaire Bill Ackman. Here's what she writes today. Trump's new tariffs aren't a trade tweak. They're the first move in a full spectrum reset. $9.2 trillion in debt matures in 2025. Inflation lingers. Alliances are shifting. One announcement just set a dozen wheels in motion. Here's what really is happening. Start with the debt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

1119.231

$9.2 trillion must be refinanced in 2025. If rolled into 10-year bonds, every one basis point drop in rates saves approximately $1 billion a year. So a 0.5% drop would save $500 billion over a decade. Lower yields for a fiscal room. Without them, core spending gets crowded out. So the basic idea here is that what we need to do is drop bond yields. So scare the crap out of people in the markets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

1141.6

They move their money into what they think are more secure bonds. And in doing so, they decrease the bond yields. meaning that the demand for bonds goes up. When the demand for bonds goes up, it means that you can basically refinance the American debt. People are going to buy American debt at lower interest rates.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

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And that means that when we pay off those interest rates, it will cost us less money. So as she says, how to push yields down with sticky inflation and a cautious Fed? Manufacture uncertainty. You sweep in with tariffs. You spook the markets. You trigger a risk-off. Money exits stocks, floods into long-term treasuries, a deliberate detox to cool the economy and cut refinancing costs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2173 - FALLOUT: Stock Market Drops, Trump Pushes On

117.591

market suffered its steepest decline since 2020 on fears that President Trump's new tariff plans would trigger a global trade war and drag the United States economy into a recession, according to the Wall Street Journal. Major stock indices dropped as much as 6% on Thursday. Stocks lost roughly $3.1 trillion in market value. That is their largest one-day decline since March 2020.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And then you have to cut the deficit, and this is where Elon Musk and Doge are coming in. With these savings, says Tanviratna, the big economic pillar to successfully deliver on Secretary Besson's 3-3-3 plan is to get growth up. Tariffs come in as a trigger for domestic industrial revival. The thing is, by making imports expensive, you create room for U.S. producers to step in.

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But here is the problem. It takes a while for American factories to scale up overnight. In the meantime, they're offering near-term relief, like, for example, tax cuts or currency devaluation. And the idea is the tariffs might bring in additional revenue. But as Ratna points out, this approach is not without risks.

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If domestic supply chains can't catch up or if global retaliation kicks in, inflation could start rising again. If that happens, then the Fed actually raises rates, which blows a hole in the low-yield plan. That's the tightrope. And not only that, tariffs could serve as leverage to renegotiate terms in terms of military deals with other countries, bilateral deals.

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This is sort of, again, the strong case for the tariffs is that this is the beginning of a much more sophisticated strategy designed to essentially lower yields on bonds that we don't have to pay back as much in interest on our national debt and set the stage for reciprocal trade deals that are going to lower tariffs on both sides. If that's the plan, somebody ought to spell it out.

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Again, one of the big problems here is that they're not spelling out exactly what they want to do, what President Trump's plan is. Ratna sums this up well. She says, if it works, it's a defining success. That is more under control. Manufacturing reborn. Global leverage restored. Trump is vindicated in 2026. If it fails, you get inflation, retaliation, lost midterms, and strategic drift.

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So that seems like a pretty good analysis of the case. Which one do you think is more likely? And the problem, of course, is that with total uncertainty, the chances of things like inflation go up. With other countries retaliating, other countries have a say here in how this goes. If those other countries come on bended knee to President Trump and offer him a bunch of concessions, then okay.

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But the administration isn't really being clear what it is looking for right now. So the administration is sending some mixed signals. On the one hand, President Trump is now suggesting that this is all prelude to negotiations, which, OK, fine. I mean, hopefully he has some amazing negotiations out of this. There's some early indicators that maybe you will.

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Javier Mele is already attempting to make a deal with President Trump. Bibi Netanyahu in Israel is attempting to make a deal with President Trump, pretty obviously. Here's President Trump saying everybody's calling him.

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And of course, March 2020, was COVID. And this is not being inflicted by an external shock, like, for example, COVID. This is being inflicted by a deliberate choice by the Trump administration. In a little while, I'm going to try and steel man the Trump administration's position. What's sort of the best case scenario for the thing that they are shooting for with these tariffs?

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So maybe this is dealmaking, prelude to dealmaking, which is kind of what I suggested yesterday. That's the probable path that this is on. So it's not going to be quite as bad as advertised unless they just keep sticking with it. But meanwhile, again, the market does not like mixed signals. Peter Navarro, the president's trade advisor, was saying no negotiations. It's not a negotiation.

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Guys, get on message.

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So it's not a negotiation, but maybe it is a negotiation. Well, how are countries to know? Because if they think that it's not a negotiation, they're immediately going to reshift their trade relationships toward, wait for it, China. And the mixed signals are part of the problem. The messaging is part of the problem. President Trump is usually pretty open about what exactly he is looking for.

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And so far, he has not been saying that he is looking for off-ramps with all of these countries. His negotiation is possible, but countries that have already offered an off-ramp Again, I use Israel as the key example here because they actually did it. They literally just said zero tariffs and then they got hit with a 17% tariff.

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Well, a lot remains unclear, but there is something that should be clear to you. You need better sleep quality. There's something deeply satisfying about a good spring refresh while decluttering and storing away winter items makes a difference. Refreshing your bed might be the most rewarding change of all.

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Bull & Branch Signature Sheets, crafted from the finest 100% organic cotton, offer a buttery soft, breathable foundation. Pair them with Bull & Branch's airy blankets, duvets, and quilts for the perfect seasonal upgrade. Bolan Branch's 100% organic cotton sheets were pivotal in my sleep quality. From the first night, I could feel the difference. They're not just any sheets.

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They really do have an incredible softness that puts you in instant relaxation mode. What really impressed me is how they get softer with every single wash. I didn't think that was possible, but after a few months, they felt even more luxurious than when I first got them. Believe me, I've tried other premium sheets before. These are just way better.

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In fact, we got rid of all of our other sheets in the house. We only have a bowl and branch. The best part, they're woven with the finest 100% organic cotton on earth with designs and colors for every mattress size and bedroom style so you can find the perfect fit this spring. Upgrade your sleep during Bowl & Branch's annual spring event. For a limited time, get 20% off at bowlandbranch.com.

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That's bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com. Take 20% off site-wide for a limited time. Exclusions apply. See site for details. Also, You know what's funny? Well, when I started Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the awesome content. It turns out the actual pain in the butt is the hiring, HR policies, employee issues, the behind-the-scenes stuff.

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That's what eats up your time. I know I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable. So don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time-sucking payroll issues and HR infractions. Focus on what matters most. running your business with help from Bambi. Here's what makes Bambi different.

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The market this morning, again, opened down very steeply. Investors obviously are not sanguine about the situation. There was a good jobs report that came out for March. The employment report came out at 228,000 jobs added in March, which was more than forecast. Of course, that is a backward looking report.

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They give you access to your very own dedicated HR manager at a fraction of what it costs to employ someone full-time. And get this, Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month, but you have 10, 75, and 100 employees. If I had Bambi when I was first building this team, it would have saved me a lot of time, a lot of headaches.

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Instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance issues, we could have focused on growing the show, connecting with the audience even more than we did. With Bambi's HR Autopilot, you'll never have to waste your valuable time getting into the weeds of HR policies, onboarding, or terminations again. Plus, Bambi is month-to-month, no hidden fees. You can cancel anytime.

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Right now, get one month of Bambi for just $1. Go to Bambi.com, type in Ben Shapiro under Podcast to schedule your first call with an HR manager right now. That's one month of Bambi for just $1 at B-A-M-B-E.com. Ben Shapiro Podcast. Well, the administration, again, is I think trying to, let's put it this way. They're drawing on heavy political capital here. They're basically saying, trust us.

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It's trust us. Well, markets are not in the business of trust us. Markets are in the business of trying to take in the best available information and then spit out what people think is going to happen next. President Trump, he says that he is confident the markets are going to boom. The question is when, right? If it's not soon, that's going to be a problem.

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Okay, well, okay, that's the case. And then that is the case that Caroline Lovett was making yesterday at the White House. She said that there was not going to be pain incurred. Again, you're getting mixed signals here. Here's Caroline Lovett saying no pain, right? So there are two messages.

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You need pain in order to get long-term gain, and then there will be no pain message, and they're kind of in conflict. This won't be painful at all for American people and consumers, Caroline? No.

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OK, meanwhile, J.D. Vance is saying we're not going to be able to fix things overnight. Obviously, by the way, American workers are also American consumers. They're the same. You have a job and you also consume things. Here's the vice president.

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So it didn't have a massive impact on the markets today because people are saying, well, yeah, I mean, the economy was doing fine. And then Donald Trump decided to take a giant stick and stick it right in the bicycle spokes. That is what the market is saying right now. Now, again, that data came as a bit of a surprise because economists were expecting it to be a little bit slower.

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Okay, well, this is a pretty big gamble here. I mean, not immediate. American politics works in terms of immediacy. The stock market continued to tank today. People are looking at that and they are not sanguine about it. Is hiring going to be up this month based on these sort of expectations of what could come next or fear of what's going to come next?

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And politicians, by the way, work on two year cycles. They work on 18 month cycles increasingly. A multiplicity of Republican senators have now come out and said, listen, we don't like this very much. It has not been spelled out to us why this is necessary. The strategy has not been explained to us. What's the deal?

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So Senator Rand Paul, who, of course, is a free market libertarian on this sort of stuff, he said this is clearly a tax.

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Okay, but you say, well, you know, Rand Paul is always taking this sort of contra position whenever it comes to government action. He's sort of out there on his own, except he's not. So, for example, Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas has been a pretty solid Trump ally. Here he was saying this is a risky thing that is happening here.

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Senator Ted Cruz, who has been a really solid Trump ally ever since he lost the primaries in 2016 to President Trump. He's been on the Trump bandwagon since then, basically. Here's Ted Cruz saying, well, actually, this is a tax on consumers because it is.

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This came amid a federal jobs decline. So normally this would be like a point of giant celebration for the Trump administration. Jobs increase, federal jobs go down. But the problem, of course, is that policy just radically changed. So looking at the jobs report based on a time when there were not these sorts of tariffs, that is not comparable to what is going to happen next.

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Okay, so again, I think that's everybody's hope in the Senate. What's actually going to happen in Congress? So the Senate's a different story. Senators, they can say what they want because they've already moved to basically put limitations. Chuck Grassley put forward a bill that says if there's no congressional renewal of this in 60 days, this stuff should just go away.

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Daily Wire Plus members get ad-free access to all of our shows. You can live chat with me, my producers, thousands of people who actually think like you, investigative journalism that exposes what the corporate press refuses to touch, and premium entertainment films and documentaries that break the box office, shift the culture, and say the things other people won't.

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But the House of Representatives would have to sign on. There's a massive misalignment of incentives in the House of Representatives. Let's say that this tariff regime does not go particularly well. And let's say that President Trump is willing because he's not up for reelect. Let's say that he's willing to do the thing. House Republicans are going to be split.

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Many House Republicans are going to say, listen, I'm going to lose my seat in the next election cycle because of this deliberately created tariff policy. So I don't like this very much. But if Speaker Johnson were to step in and try to stop the tariff policy, there would undoubtedly be a Trumpist insurrection inside the Republican caucus to overthrow him. And you'd get another speaker fight.

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So basically, Trump better be right is what I got to say here. Like either they better move off of this pretty quickly with bilateral trade deals or he better be right. The problem here, the real problem here is that other countries have a say. And many of those other countries not only don't like President Trump, they are not particularly fond of the United States these days.

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And that does not just mean China. China, of course, was going to retaliate. China has now put forward sanctions. a 34% tariff on American products, a direct response to President Trump's 34% tariff on China. And listen, I have no problem with tariffing China.

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I think that a trade war with China, so long as we are broadening and opening our trade relationships with everybody else, isolating China, economically speaking, is actually not a terrible thing. But the reason that China is doing that is because China is now stepping into the breach with our allies. This is why we should not be treating Canada the way we treat China.

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We should not be treating the EU the way we treat China. Some of these places are allies of the United States and some of these places are enemies of the United States. But... In a lot of these countries that are led by people who don't like President Trump very much, they are perfectly willing to make time with the Chinese. I take, for example, Canada.

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It is of great annoyance to me that Pierre Poliev, who's a terrific candidate for the Conservative Party, is now lagging in the polls thanks to this trade war that President Trump declared on Canada. And Mark Carney, who is the definition of a global elite, he's the definition of a globalist elite, this guy who was put in place by Justin Trudeau's party,

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He's out there excited as all hell about the trade war. Why? Because now he gets to reorient Canada away from the United States and toward China. So here is Mark Carney, who could not be more celebratory about this.

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So investors are freaking out. The Wall Street Journal quotes a man named Rob Citrone, a 60-year-old hedge fund manager, watching from his Orlando, Florida home as President Trump announced his plans. He says, I should have sold more.

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So, is Canada going to change direction? Or does Mark Carney actually like the tariff war because the tariff war is keeping him in competition with Pierre Poliev? How about the UK? Do we think that Keir Starmer is going to come on bended knee to President Trump? If so, why would he?

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Because again, the sort of internationalization of the populist movement means that people like Keir Starmer are going to oppose that no matter what, even if it means economic damage to his own country. Here's Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK.

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Meanwhile, by the way, Emmanuel Macron in France, he is urging everybody not to cut bilateral deals with the Trump administration because the Trump administration has taken the side of Marine Le Pen, who's his chief opposition. And so he is hoping that actually the trade war will escalate. Other countries have a say in how the trade war goes.

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And so there is this idea that no one will stand up to the United States and our economic power. And that's a gamble because there are a lot of places that don't like the United States very much. Ursula von der Leyen, who's the leader of the EU, she was saying that the global economy is going to suffer.

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So let's say that this doesn't result in other countries lowering their tariffs immediately. It results in other countries increasing their tariffs. You're likely to actually get price inflation.

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The interest rates that President Trump would like to drop, those interest rates presumably actually stick or go higher, which undermines the thing that he's trying to do with the national debt, presumably. It's a, what's happening right now is a major gamble at best. The best way to characterize it is a major gamble by the Trump administration.

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Across Wall Street, money managers, brokers, bankers were reeling from what many described as an unprecedented shock, fearing it marked an end to the market's post-COVID rally. They might have lived through a bigger market swing, but this one, induced by a U.S.

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Now, maybe the gamble pays off, but what that's gonna rely upon is President Trump making deals now. Now it's deal maker time.

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Because if it just continues to be confusion, or if this administration is just, has a vested interest in the idea that tariffs themselves enrich countries, and it's totally unclear what the case here is, or whether there is a good feedback loop that would allow President Trump to adjust, Again, I think President Trump lives in reality. I think if the headlines are bad, he adjusts.

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We just don't know. And uncertainty is, again, its own form of economic risk. And investors know that.

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So again, to sort of explain the steel man theory of what President Trump is doing right here, I asked my friend, perplexity AI sponsor of the show, how much would the cost of America's debt service drop over the next year if the yields on the 10-year treasuries drop from 4.75%, which is what they were in January or so, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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president bent on establishing a new paradigm for global trade at the expense of both rivals and allies, felt incomparable because of the result of deliberate policy. And this is the part, again, that is freaking out markets. Markets can price in external shocks pretty quickly.

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Thank you.

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But if the question is you don't know what's going to happen next from the White House, people pull out their money in fear at what's going to happen next. So one strategy is hold on for your life. And let's be clear, I'm not giving investment strategy because I'm not legally capable of doing so. However, a long-term investment strategy says leave your money where it is over the long haul.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Don't sell during a dip is a pretty good piece of advice. How long and prolonged that dip is, is another question. But if you have the ability to hold for long periods of time, then obviously that is a better investment strategy than selling as the prices decline.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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As far as the idea that this was going to have a salutary impact on job creation in the United States, the early indicators are at best mixed. Stellantis, for example, has now temporarily laid off 900 workers in the United States. This of course led to criticism from the UAW. The UAW is very happy about the tariffs until precisely the moment the economic effects of the tariffs are felt.

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,,,,,,, in P P P P P P P P P實 ac la , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , sol a Everybody started talking about, hey, maybe we shouldn't actually do all these environmental reviews before we rebuild all the housing in Pacific Palisades and all this kind of thing.

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But the problem is that just as a general matter, the conservative argument would be when you have a giant grab bag of cash that becomes the government and power that becomes the government, people are going to lobby for that cash and that regulatory power. And the people who are elected, are going to be answerable to a lot of those people.

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If you're looking at labor regulations, for example, many of the labor regulations are being effectively indirectly written by unions that contribute to the members of Congress or to the governor or state senator to whom they're contributing.

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I think that the conservative argument would be the reason to minimize government in the areas where you don't have to have it would be because it is almost an inevitability, unless you're going to declare an emergency into what you're talking about, which starts to verge on possible tyranny.

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Now, remember, this sort of economic policy High tariffs, big trade wars. Unless there is some sort of ancillary rationale for them, they are on their face not good.

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Because, I mean, again, one of the things that happens here is the more public input there is, the more you get everything on the bagel, the less public input, the less you get everything on the bagel. And so you start to run into some pretty dicey questions about the power, the singular power of government. How do you divest the people from having a say?

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And by the people, I mean various lobbying groups and various industry groups. And then is the best way to do that just to deprive the government of the cash and base yourself more on market-based solutions?

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Thomas Sowell, who is the best economist of our time and a man who deserves plaudits for being sort of the heir to Frederick Hayek and the entire Vienna School of Economics, here he was yesterday, the wisest man in America, explaining what he thought about President Trump's tariff regime.

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So let's talk briefly about the two parties. Obviously, I agree with a lot of your characterization of what you just discussed. I think there is a much heavier tendency in the Republican Party and has historically been toward supply-side-ism, toward the idea that you need to increase supply.

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And this is true everywhere in sort of the right-wing focus on how do doctors get paid to how do we get rid of regulation. It seems like the left – What wing is left of the Democratic Party at this point that you would say is rich in abundance liberalism? I can spot abundance conservatives everywhere. Some of them are in hiding. Some of them are being pretty quiet right now.

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But I think that if you poll the vast majority of people who voted for Republicans, they would actually agree with – a sort of abundant supply side conservatism because that is kind of in the bones of the Reagan. The Reagan bones are still part of the skeleton of the Republican Party.

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The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left in a lot of different ways that it feels like it's going to be a while in the wilderness before Democrats realize they have to engage with the sort of arguments that you're making.

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So he shouted. every book out ever written in his 25 hours.

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The fight for the country is happening right now. Be a part of it at dailywireplus.com slash subscribe. As I suggest, tons of economics news breaking. Yesterday, of course, was a horrifying day in the stock market. And people who are attempting to play this game where they say, well, you know, the stock market taking a massive dump. That's okay.

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That's the last point, and I know you – I know we have to run here, but I think that's the last point. The coalition of the Democratic Party is not conducive yet to the kind of change that you're talking about.

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The Biden administration, even if you assume what you're assuming here, which is that they wanted to build things between the environmentalist side of their coalition and the DEI side of their coalition and the sort of generalized... you know, interest group nature of the Democratic coalition.

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It made it nearly impossible for them to do any of these things without stacking up the kinds of regulation, even in the Build Back Better bill, for example, that they would need to ignore in order to actually get done the things they were saying they wanted to get done.

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Okay, and of course, Sowell would know better than anyone else, and he happens to be correct. There's also the problem that while the Trump administration can maintain that America is not just about the cheap and plentiful products, it turns out that Americans actually do like affordable and plentiful products. And Jimmy Carter tried this routine as well during his malaise speech.

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Well, the book is Abundance. Ezra Klein is the co-author, along with Derek Thompson. Ezra, really appreciate the time. Congrats on the book.

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Meanwhile, in other weird news from the White House, apparently President Trump had Laura Loomer in. You remember Laura Loomer? She was actually kicked off Air Force One on 9-11 because she was flying with the president. There were a lot of his aides who were really kind of upset about it. It wasn't Air Force One, it was Trump Force One. He wasn't elected yet.

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And people were upset that Loomer was traveling with the president. They were saying that she was saying kind of wild things to the president. There's a lot of speculation about the kind of advice she was giving the president. And of course, she had some tweets about 9-11 that were bad tweets. And and so the president sort of said, well, she doesn't need to be on the plane anymore.

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Well, she was welcome back to the White House where she proceeded to apparently unfurl a list of people in the National Security Council that she, Laura Loomer, believed were not loyal to President Trump. And he promptly fired a bunch of them. That seems to be the best read on this story.

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There's an all-purpose term that is used by people who try to oust people inside the Trump circle, and that is neocon. And so she basically just apparently labeled a bunch of people neocons who are not in fact neocons. Neocon is a specific designation for people who were Democrats in the 1960s and 70s. And then they became conservative, hence neocon. They were new conservatives.

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Liberals were mugged by reality, used to be the description of neocons. And then during the Bush administration, the neocons were associated with the sort of Wilsonian view of American foreign policy, where we needed to transform Iraq into a democracy where America was a nation-building country. And that wing of the Republican Party is just gone. It does not exist anymore.

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No one in the Republican Party, no one believes in nation-building by the United States. that the United States needs 100-year occupations of places and full-scale nation-building. It's a much more pragmatic Republican party. The term neocon is just thrown around now to mean people that President Trump shouldn't like.

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And it's usually thrown around by people who very often don't even agree with President Trump's foreign policy because they would term it neocon because it's too peace through strength, quote unquote, interventionist.

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In any case, Laura Loomer apparently labeled a bunch of people disloyal to President Trump inside the National Security Infrastructure and four National Security Council aides were then fired overnight. Two other National Security Council aides were let go on Sunday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Those staffers worked on a series of portfolios, including intelligence, India, congressional affairs, and the impact of technology security. Two people added this was the latest round of firings. There will be at least 10 people ousted from the NSC by the end of the second round. And during a Wednesday meeting in the Oval Office, Loomer told the president she had concerns about some of his staff.

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And President Trump then said she makes recommendations, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations. Let's just say, I hope the staffing protocols at the White House are stronger than single recommendations by Laura Loomer. I think that that is probably not the best way to staff an administration. Let's just leave it at that. And meanwhile, in lighter news, in cultural news,

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You know, I understand. The markets are putting me in a bad mood. Also, I want President Trump's plans to succeed. As I've said a thousand times here on the show, President Trump is doing too much important work for all of it to be waylaid by bad things happening. And so I'm in a bit of a bad mood. I'll be honest with you.

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Well, Americans need to spiritually buck up, even if things are worse for them economically. It turns out this is not a popular selling point. Here is Harry Anton on CNN explaining.

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But I decided to do something that put me in even a worse mood, and that was I watched the new preview for Superman that was put out by James Gunn. Now, as you all know, not a huge James Gunn fan. Fine in Guardians of the Galaxy when it's all sort of like ridiculous humor, kind of gonzo humor. People unsurfaced his old tweets that were kind of jokey, ugly tweets in early days of Twitter.

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James Gunn, based on those old tweets, was actually fired by Marvel. And I will say that I publicly supported the idea that he should be rehired because you shouldn't cancel people based on jokes that they made back when Twitter was a jokier place. And now he's directing the new Superman movie. And we can watch this preview together. It sucks. It's bad. I hate to break it to you.

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It's just, it's terrible. Here we go. So for those who can't see, Superman is wounded and he is lying on the snow. The original preview, it just showed at this point Crypto the dog arriving, but this preview is much longer. Here comes Crypto. He whistles for Crypto, the super dog. So Crypto arrives and then Crypto proceeds to, for well over a minute, beat the living hell out of Superman.

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He's screaming in pain as Crypto jumps on him. and continues to nudge him, bite him. Okay, I don't see the purpose of this.

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So this is not dramatic, it's just silly and ridiculous. And then finally Crypto figures out that he needs to take Superman back to the Fortress of Solitude. Every James Gunn joke is a Monty Python joke, just lasts three times too long. So now Crypto is dragging Superman's prone body through the snow back toward the Fortress of Solitude, which arises from the Arctic.

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And it's a cool-looking Fortress of Solitude, I'll give you that. But don't worry, it gets worse. Once Superman is brought inside, a team of robots, presumably of Kryptonian origin, then starts to handle him, and they have one of the most nonsensical exchanges in any James Gunn movie, which is to say pretty nonsensical. Here come the robots. They pick him up and they're carrying him.

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Okay, and then they're gonna hit Superman with magnifying glass. All right. And now he's painfully absorbing the sun, which apparently was not available before. So the sun, which, as we all know, illuminates the Earth, which is the planet we are currently spinning on. Apparently, only the magnifying glass could make Superman better.

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We will notice the obvious incongruity of one robot explaining that the robots have no feelings, and then the female robot being giggly, like a little girl at Superman. The entire attitude here is wrong. The entire attitude is wrong. Okay, the gold standard for Superman movies remains the original Superman in the late 70s by Richard Donner. By far the best Superman movie, not close.

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Better than Man of Steel, significantly better. Because it gets right the idea that there is a solemnity to Superman, that he is supposed to be the embodiment of America. And then the second half of the movie shifts into a more comic book humorous mode. And it's very, the color palette is very rich. and very bright. Man of Steel, they basically desaturate the entire film.

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So the entire color palette is grayscale and kind of ugly and dark, and the entire character of Superman is much darker. The... Attitude here is totally wrong. It's just Guardians of the Galaxy and a Superman suit. And that ticks me off. It really does. Because as a lifelong fan of the Superman brand, let me just say that it's not that hard to get Superman right.

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He's supposed to be the embodiment of everything cool and heroic about America. And of course, he's supposed to be charming as well. That's the whole shtick. So you don't need full-scale James Gunn. He's the same character as essentially Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy. And all the jokes are the same as a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It's silly and stupid and bad. Do not like.

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Two thumbs down. Very disappointed. Ugh. Angry. Okay, so I was going to be put in a better mood by that, and then I was just put in a worse mood by that. In other news, Wicked for Good, which is the second part of Wicked, the footage has now been presented to attendees at CinemaCon in Las Vegas by Universal. So, as I said, I liked Wicked Part 1.

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I'm sure Wicked Part 2 will be good, although I assume they filmed these things at the same time. I would hope so, because unfortunately, both leading actresses seem to be starving themselves into submission. I mean, they really look rough out there. Meanwhile, Spider-Man 4 has been... The release of it has been announced July 31st, 2026.

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That is one week after Christopher Nolan's new film, The Odyssey, which again, I'm up for anything Christopher Nolan. John Wick 5 has been announced. And I'm hoping that the John Wick 5 is better than John Wick 4. As you know, I was a little disappointed in John Wick 4. You can go back and see my YouTube review of it. Obviously, he wasn't dead at the end of John Wick 4. That was obviously clear.

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There was a joke going around, however. He was supposed to be dead. They're at his grave. And so John Wick 5, John Wick in Hell, was, I thought, a pretty funny pitch. There's a Naked Gun reboot that is coming. Now, again, I think it's kind of sad that the Zucker brothers weren't involved in the Naked Gun reboot. They're the ones who are responsible for the first Naked Gun.

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There's one funny joke in the Naked Gun reboot, and it's about O.J. Simpson. It's a pretty good joke.

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And that joke put me in a better mood. It did. And then I found out that Greta Gerwig's Netflix adaptation of The Magician's Nephew, which is the first book in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, The person who they are thinking about casting as Aslan, who is supposed to be very obviously a metaphor for Jesus. There's no question. It's clear in the books.

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And that is going to be only more true if the economy actually declines on the back of all of this, the stock market, and then more broadly, the economy, employment, investment opportunity, problems with mortgages. One of the big problems here is that, of course, there's a lot of corporate debt in America. Companies operate on marginal growth.

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I mean, down to the resurrection of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The voice is now going to be Meryl Streep, which makes no sense at all on a character level. It makes no sense at all on a metaphorical level. It's one of the dumbest things you could possibly do. If you want to alienate the entire C.S. Lewis audience, this is the thing you should do.

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Meanwhile, Charlie XCX is apparently in talks for the role of the White Witch. But why? But why are you doing this? Just adapt it straight. It's not that difficult. It's a good book. Just adapt it straight. This is the same as that ridiculous suggestion a while back that Cynthia Erivo was going to be cast in Jesus Christ Superstar as Jesus. Stop with this stuff. Stop it. Just stop.

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It's stupid and it's insulting and it's gross. And you would never do this with any other religion. You wouldn't. It's ridiculous and annoying and just demonstrative of how Hollywood spits on people who don't believe the things they believe. And then takes classic intellectual property from those spaces and uses it against them. unpleasant, bad, do not like.

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Well, you know, the markets were down today. It's been a rough couple of days, but I did want to leave you with a bit of a picker-upper before the weekend. I sat down with Senator Dave McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, the authors of a brand new book titled Who Believed in You? How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World. It is out right now in bookstores.

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Here's what our conversation sounded like. Joining us on the line are my friends, Dave McCormick and Dina Powell McCormick. Dave, of course, is Senator from Pennsylvania. And Dina is a senior business executive and former government official who worked in the Trump administration and serves in several leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. Guys, thanks so much for joining the show.

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Really appreciate it.

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You have a brand new book out that's coming out on April 1st called Who Believed in You? How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World. So, Senator, let's start with you. Why was this book necessary? What do you think makes this book good for this time?

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And if that marginal growth goes away and that corporate debt get called in, you got a problem on your hands. And again, this is being created by the Trump administration As I mentioned yesterday, I mean, I know business people who import products. These are domestic American businesses with American employees, and they have to import their inputs to their products.

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So, Dino, you've worked a lot in the private sector, obviously, and the public sector, and you've created a lot of jobs all around the world. How much does mentorship mean with regard to entrepreneurialism?

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So, Senator, you went to West Point, you served in the Army during the first Gulf War, and the military is imbued with the sense that the mentorship has to be a part of it.

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Maybe you want to talk about that a little bit, because you can actually see a shift in the way people are thinking about serving in the military, thanks to the sort of new recapitulation of the military's image under the Trump administration.

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And they're getting smashed by these tariffs. So President Trump, one of the big problems here also is the level of uncertainty. There's a huge level of uncertainty as to what exactly. President Trump is trying to accomplish.

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So Dina, obviously the story, the book, Who Believed in You is filled with tremendous stories. What's your favorite story from the book?

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The uncertainty is its own form of risk, because if the markets don't know what President Trump is doing, if they don't have a perspective on how long this is going to last, what the end goal looks like, people start pulling their money.

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So Senator McCormick, and there are a lot of young people who don't know how to take the first step toward finding a mentor. For many of us, a mentor is sort of natural. For me, my father is a mentor. My mom's a mentor. I have lots of people around me. And those of us who are lucky, we have that sort of naturally. But mentorship, you can luck into it.

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But for people who are actively seeking a mentor, what's the best way to take a first step?

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People say, listen, I know I'm not supposed to sell into a dip, but I'd rather sell into a dip and have at least some dry powder in the back room than ride this thing out. So President Trump, the White House, they have put out a set of talking points to their allies that was obtained by Politico. And here are their talking points.

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Well, the book again is Who Believed in You? How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World. Available April 1st. Senator McCormick, Dina, great to see both of you and congrats on the book. Thank you.

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All right, guys, coming up, we'll jump into the mailbag. Remember that you can only actually hear my answers to these questions or ask me a question yourself if you are a member at Daily Wire Plus. Do it right now. Become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months for annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And again, the problem with some of the talking points is that they're mutually exclusive. President Trump is revolutionizing the global trade order to put the American economy, the American worker, and our national security first. Okay, so again, I don't know what revolutionizing the trade order looks like. What is the end goal of the trade order?

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I mean, that doesn't affect... 50% of Americans have stocks. Maybe because they have 401ks. This notion that Main Street is totally disconnected from Wall Street, that it's just a few people at the top of the food chain who are playing with the money, that is not actually true in any way, shape, or form. And, obviously, the stock market...

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If the end goal is everybody goes to zero on their tariffs and non-tariff barriers, sounds great. but totally unclear if that's the case at this point, because again, there are countries that have extraordinarily low tariffs with the United States who just got smashed by these tariff rates.

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The White House continues, foreign trade and economic practice have created a national emergency and President Trump's order imposes responsive tariffs to strengthen the international economic position of the United States and protect American workers.

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Now, again, it is not true that foreign trade has created a quote-unquote national emergency by any technical terminology with regard to a national emergency. You can say you don't like the trade balance. You can say that you don't like that certain industries have been offshored and you want to reshore them for national security reasons or whatever. It is not a national emergency.

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The United States economy remains the most powerful economic engine on planet Earth by a long shot. It is not particularly close still. China has bulk, but the United States has actual power. Bulk and power, similar, but they're cousins. They're not exactly the same.

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The idea that these are reciprocal tariffs or responsive tariffs, the problem there, again, is if I thought these were responsive tariffs, and I think if the market thought that, it'd be a lot more sanguine because the question is what comes next. Is President Trump going to try to cut bilateral deals with various countries to lower the tariffs back down to zero?

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Or is he doing this because he just doesn't like trade deficits? This is the problem I was pointing out yesterday. That giant poster board that he was holding up that showed, quote unquote, tariff rates for various countries on our goods. It's not true. Those were not tariff rates. They had nothing to do with tariffs. Those were trade deficits divided by imports.

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Meaning the only way to get those numbers down to zero would be for those other countries to just buy more American products, regardless of whether they are poor or whether they even have tariffs on American products in the first place. It is the equivalent of you saying that you are running a deficit with your grocery store.

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You're running a trade deficit with your grocery store because you gave them money and they gave you goods. And the only way that you're going to achieve parity is by getting the grocery store to buy fan belts from your factory. Well, listen, all of this creates uncertainty. There's a lot, a lot of uncertainty.

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And in these uncertain economic times, with tariff tensions, recession worries, stubborn inflation, it's no surprise gold prices keep breaking records. Rather than watching from the sidelines during market volatility, consider taking proactive steps to protect your savings. That's why many Americans are connecting with Birch Gold Group.

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They've helped thousands of people convert existing retirement accounts into physical gold IRAs. Wondering if gold might be a smart hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty for you? To learn about owning physical gold in a tax-advantaged account, text BEN to 989898. Birch Gold will send you a free information kit with no obligation.

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Their A-plus Better Business Bureau rating and numerous five-star reviews reflect why I recommend Birch Gold to help protect your savings through gold investments. The economic challenges we're facing, it took a

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long time to develop the real questions are how long will recovery take what's going to cost along the way how much uncertainty will there be again gold has always been a hedge against uncertainty there's a lot of uncertainty right now text men to 98 98 98 98 98 98 and connect with birch gold group today the people i trust with my own gold investments text men to 98 98 98 today

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as a sort of gauge of investor confidence, makes a large-scale difference in availability of liquidity for startups and being able to raise money to, for example, hire new people. If the stock market tanks by half, that's a pretty good indicator, for example, that bad things are happening.

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Also, let's talk about that car that you own, but you don't use. You know, the one that's like rusting in front of your house, but you pay to keep it registered and insured. It's taking up space. It's doing no one any good. Well, let me tell you what you could do with that thing, what you should do. You should give cars for kids a call and have them take care of it for you. That's right.

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Just give them the info and they will come to you as soon as the next day and take that car off your hands at no cost to you. Even better. We'll be right back.

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cars4kids.org slash ben remember that's cars with a k no reason for you to keep paying insurance on that old vehicle you ain't doing anything with instead why not give it away get the tax write-off help kids at the same time cars4kids.org slash ben that's cars with a k cars4kids.org slash ben the talking points go on for decades the trade status quo has allowed countries to use unfair trade practices to get ahead at the expense of hard-working americans

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And again, you want to label things that want to get rid of them. I'm using tariffs as leverage. Good tariffs without leverage simply as a way of quote unquote rejiggering the global order. I don't know what you're going for. Neither do the markets. And that's why they're freaking out. The distorted trading system has caused the offshoring of our manufacturing base.

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The reality is our manufacturing productivity has gone up significantly since the beginning of NAFTA in 1997. It has risen from about $1.7 trillion to $2.4 trillion, something in that neighborhood. The manufacturing base in the United States in terms of jobs has actually been harmed, not predominantly by offshoring, but by automation.

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If you're talking about jobs in factories, why those are going away, the answer is robots. The answer is machinery. That's why you don't see giant assembly lines of humans doing this stuff anymore. You see robots doing this stuff. And here's the thing. Howard Lutnick, who's a big proponent of the tariff strategy over at the Commerce Department, he is saying as much.

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He was asked last night on Jesse Waters about reshoring manufacturing from places like Vietnam, which makes T-shirts. And here is Lutnick's answer.

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And if the stock market continues to gain steadily, that's an indicator that maybe some good things are happening. And this isn't too tough. It's not too sophisticated. It doesn't mean that every time there's a little bit of a sell-off, it's the end of the world. And it doesn't mean that every time there's a run-up, that means that amazing things are in the brewing.

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Okay, let's just be clear about this. The robotics are one of the chief reasons for the decline in employment in the manufacturing sector. So if the idea is we bring the factories back here and then robots replace the foreign workers, you might incrementally gain jobs. You're not going to massively gain jobs because most of the work is going to be done by the robots.

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Again, there are a bunch of different sort of priorities that are in argument with each other. Because if you don't do that, then the prices on all of those goods and services rise dramatically. If you just do it with American union labor, it's going to be way more expensive for American consumers. OK, other elements of the White House press release, the undermining of critical supply chains.

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That one I agree with. Again, there's good and there's bad in some of the tariff policy, but it's unclear what the rationale is. If we are talking about reshoring critical supply chains, OK, fine. But then you get elimination of export market access. The people are eliminating our ability to export to them.

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Okay, well, they are likely to raise their tariffs on us right now, and we are starting to see that already, as we'll get to in a moment. They say that this has sold out the American middle class. I showed you yesterday the American middle class has not, in fact, been sold out. Most of the American middle class turned into the upper middle class.

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The decline of small towns across America, the truth, again, is that there are certain towns across America that have declined, and there are other towns across America that have risen. This is a constant throughout American history. Population movement is as old as de Tocqueville.

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De Tocqueville talked routinely about the idea that people would go to a place, build a town, the town would then go defunct, people would move to the next town. And that is not a wonderful thing. It's not an amazing thing. It is a reality of an economy that does not just subsidize you in the place where you are. The White House talking points continue.

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What it does mean is that ignoring data is not, in fact, a good form of analysis. The stock market does provide data. And in fact, we have lots of it. investors have been shaken by President Trump's tariff regime. They're not sure what to expect. They're not sure what comes next. There are a lot of conflicting messages coming out of the White House. So yesterday, the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Under the Biden administration's watch, our trade deficit soared to $1.2 trillion in 2024. This status quo cannot continue. Okay, well, I mean, if we were just gonna look at the US trade deficit by year, What you will see is that the United States trade deficit was actually quite high during the Trump administration as well. So it wasn't as though it got solved under the Trump administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

Questions continue to abound in this horrifying tragedy outside Reagan National Airport where an American Airlines flight coming from Wichita, Kansas was struck by a Blackhawk helicopter. By the way, Blackhawk helicopters are not small helicopters. I'm not talking about like a news helicopter. This is a big helicopter. It is a transport helicopter. It typically carries... VIP guests and such.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So we'll have to see again what exactly is the cause of this particular plane crash. It is certainly the case that the procedures have to change, which is why yesterday President Trump took executive action on aviation DEI, signing a memorandum to end DEI practices in the aviation sector and to assess aviation safety, as well as an executive order to appoint a new head of the FAA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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That is according to The Hill. Trump's new executive actions come in the wake of that deadly midair collision near Ronald Reagan National Airport. The memorandum on DEI orders for newly minted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and newly appointed Acting FAA Commissioner Christopher Rochelleau to ensure the undue practices that may have been in place during the Biden administration around hiring.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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He said, in other words, competence, what President Trump had to say. So. You know, those procedures do have to change regardless of exactly what led to this crash. And again, we'll bring you all the information as it emerges on what did lead to the crash, what all the procedures were, who did what wrong, because obviously something went very, very wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Well, meanwhile, speaking of President Trump's nominees, three of them were on the Hill yesterday in contentious hearings. All three of them had significantly contentious hearings. RFK Jr. 's hearings continued yesterday. And those hearings, again, went pretty well for RFK Jr. There's one particular exchange that he had with Bernie Sanders in which Sanders was going after RFK Jr. And RFK Jr.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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was like, listen, you've been taking a lot of pharma money, I've noticed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Air traffic control promptly warned the helicopter pilot to stay clear. Redfern said he used evasive maneuvers to avoid it and avert a potential disaster. That was in daytime when visibility was clearer. And it's almost unthinkable that this happened considering how sophisticated the machinery is, how sophisticated our ability to see planes in the air even at night is now. But

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Honestly, these hearings are so non-illuminating. They're basically just an opportunity for various senators to grandstand. We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, this country was founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy overpriced tea, then tried blockading us. We dumped their stupid tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Great Britain?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just $45 a month, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company. I'm using Pure Talk myself. For years at this point, all of my very, very important business and family phone calls are thanks to PeerTalk. You should do the same. PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro and get that special deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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PeerTalk is America's wireless company. Again, PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro to claim that new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase. Also, did you know that someone becomes a victim of identity theft every three seconds? As we recognize Identity Theft Awareness Week, which is a thing apparently, I want to talk about protecting your identity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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In today's digital world, your personal information passes through countless hands at medical offices, retailers, and online services. With data breaches becoming increasingly common, it's more important than ever to stay protected. That's why Trust Life Locked monitor hundreds of millions of data points each second, alerting you instantly to suspicious uses of your information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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If identity theft does occur, you're in good hands. LifeLock's professional restoration specialists have years of experience and the expertise to resolve any identity theft issues guaranteed or your money back. Their most comprehensive plan includes the million-dollar protection package offering up to $3 million in coverage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Plus, their monitoring services work around the clock to help protect your credit cards, bank accounts, and personal information from being misused. One of my producers, Jess, currently uses LifeLock and has emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing their experts are always monitoring her sensitive information for any suspicious activity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So right now, save up to 40% off your first year at LifeLock.com slash Ben. That's LifeLock.com slash Ben. Save up to 40%. Terms apply. LifeLock. For the threats you can't control. RFK Jr. was pushed on his theories about vaccines, particularly his theory that vaccines and autism are linked. Again, the evidence suggests that autism and vaccination are not, in fact, linked. And many of the sort of

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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To attribute it to anything other than accident at this point would be to move beyond the available evidence for sure. A collision on Wednesday night between the Blackhawk military helicopter and American Airlines subsidiary CRJ700 regional jet has stirred haunting memories for Redfern and other pilots who have faced challenges at landing at Washington Airport.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Fact that RFK Jr. will attempt to marshal with regard to such a linkage has to do with a type of mercury that is no longer found in vaccines at all. It stopped being used decades ago. In any case, the studies that link autism with vaccines have been debunked. At least the major one that originally suggested it was completely withdrawn eventually. Bernie Sanders questioned RFK Jr. about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Now, the reason this could actually be a problem for RFK Jr., for Bobby Kennedy, is not because of Bernie Sanders. Bernie was going to vote against RFK Jr. anyway because he's a Trump nominee. This could be a problem for Senator Bill Cassidy, who's a physician and chairman of the committee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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And he points out that a 2014 meta-analysis of 1.2 million children concluded no link between autism and vaccines. And Kennedy then responded, you show me those scientific studies, you and I can meet about it. There are other studies as well. I'd love to show those to you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Cassidy was troubled by that because he suggested, well, I mean, the overwhelming evidence is what the overwhelming evidence is. Cassidy said, can a 71-year-old man who spent decades criticizing vaccines, who's financially vested in finding fault with vaccines, can he change his attitudes and approach now that he'll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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I've got to figure that out for my vote. And that is, in fact, a fair question from Senator Cassidy. That is not, in fact, a crazy question or an oppositional question. Cassidy is a strong supporter of President Trump. And, you know, herein lies one of the sort of issues with some of the Trump nominees. And again, I support Bobby Kennedy for HHS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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One of the problems is there are vulnerabilities for some of these nominees and many of the things that they've said in the past that could cause the Senate to use its advice and consent procedures to find fault with the nominees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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For example, Tim Kaine, Democrat senator from Virginia, long forgotten former vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton, he asked Bobby Kennedy about conspiracy theories about 9-11.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Apparently, planes approaching the airport must navigate a precise and narrow flight path to avoid restricted airspace around the nearby White House and Pentagon. That turn from the eastern side along the river to turn into runway 33 is very, very tight, said Redfern. It is unclear what caused the crash.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Okay, so again, I think Bobby Kennedy gets confirmed, but... There is a difference between, let's say, the less controversial nominees on the Republican side and the more controversial nominees. Now, that distinction is not always clear from the Democratic reaction to that nominee. So let me give you a couple of examples. There are two other Trump nominees who are up in the hearings yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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One is Tulsi Gabbard, who is up for the position of director of national intelligence. And the other was Kash Patel. Kash Patel is up for the head of the FBI. Kash Patel is wildly controversial on the left because Kash Patel has been a Trump supporter for a long time. And he has made comments around January 6th that people on left don't particularly like.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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But Kash Patel is wildly qualified, like super well qualified. And in fact, in his hearing, just ran circles around Democrats over and over and over again. He is obviously extraordinarily intelligent. He's very combative. He was not willing to take any prisoners in this hearing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Apparently, the black boxes have indeed been recovered, so we'll have a better window into what was going on aboard the two aircraft before they collided. Seven pilots told Reuters the landing at Reagan Airport is unique due to the congested space, along with the inability to communicate directly with military aircraft, which actually operate on different radio frequencies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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In this hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, they tried to go after him about past comments, praising people who were there January 6th of 2021, or his promise to go after current and former DOJ and FBI officials that he put on a list of corrupt actors. But again, the reason he's being put in this position is to clear out the FBI of any of those corrupt actors.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So here was Kash Patel in his opening statement saying due process matters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Now, again, all of that should be wildly uncontroversial. And Patel points out that he's been a victim of weaponized government, which, of course, is true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So Patel was tapped in 2017 by then House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes to join the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. That was the Trump-Russia investigation. And in the process of that happening, he himself was dragged into Crossfire Hurricane.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So he himself, his records were secretly subpoenaed, apparently, in this process. And so he was targeted. And that is what he refers to when he says he doesn't want that to happen to anybody else. Again, Grassley, Senator Chuck Grassley, who's amazing, he's 91 years old and he is still with it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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The airport also has shorter runways, including Runway 33, that is generally reserved for smaller aircraft. That means traversing narrow airspace because planes can't cross the eastern shoreline of the Potomac because that airport is also regularly used by the military for training. So, again, this is a horrifying accident. That appears to be the story at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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He says, this has affected you personally, you along with even members of my staff were the victims of FBI overreach when they secretly subpoenaed your records during the investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, which of course is right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Now, Kash Patel vowed that he would also find out who inside the intelligence community was targeting parents during, for example, the assault on parents' rights in Virginia in the run-up to the 2020 elections.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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And apparently the helicopter was swirling at possibly above 200 feet, which is usually the limit where they are testing in terms of the height and struck basically in the side. This American Airlines flight killing everyone aboard 67 dead. A horrifying scenario, obviously. Flight 5342, a Bombardier CRJ700, had 60 passengers and four crew members on board.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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And there, of course, he's talking about the targeting of Loudoun County parents in 2021 and all the rest of it. Now, Democrats, of course, were very upset with Kash Patel. But here's the thing. Kash Patel is really good at this. He's really good at this. Listen, Kash Patel is really smart. But I need to tell you about something else that is smart.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Between work, family, everything else life throws at us, meal planning can feel like a full-time job, especially when you're trying to eat healthier. That's why I'm excited to tell you about CookUnity.com, where award-winning chefs craft restaurant-quality meals that are delivered fresh to your door. What makes CookUnity different is their incredible roster of chefs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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We're talking about Food Network alums, James Beard Award winners, creating small batch meals just for you. Producer Justin is a huge fan of CookUnity. Chef Cedric Nicholas cooked him an awesome meal, rustic style, French beef ragout. Justin couldn't stop raving about how delicious and fresh the meal was. They use local in-season ingredients. Everything is delivered fresh, not frozen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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You can browse hundreds of different options. There's no prep work needed. Just heat and enjoy in as little as five minutes. Plus, with new chefs joining and weekly menu updates, your taste buds will never get bored. Reset your routine with convenient mouthwatering meals crafted with local ingredients by award-winning chefs. Go to cookunity.com slash Ben or enter code Ben before checkout.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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for 50% off your very first week. That's 50% off your first week. Use code Ben or go to cookunity.com slash Ben. That's cookunity.com slash Ben. Also, start each day off right. Black Rifle Coffee helps you wake up every morning feeling dialed in, ready to make the most of your day so you can make the best of your year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Now's your chance to get 20% off your purchase with code dailywire at blackriflecoffee.com. Black Rifle Coffee's coffees are roasted right here in the United States by a veteran-led team of expert roasters who take pride in serving coffee and culture to people who love the country. Every purchase you make helps them further their mission to support veteran and first responder causes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Everything from getting funding and equipment to first responders to helping veterans get medical care. Black Rifle Coffee has a huge selection of dark roast, light roast, everything in between. Take the coffee quiz on their website, get matched with a blend perfectly tailored to your specific taste.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Again, a portion of every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee goes towards supporting veteran and first responder causes. Your money goes a long way toward giving back to those who serve our nation. Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com right now. Use code DailyWire for 20% off America's coffee. That's BlackRifleCoffee.com. Code DailyWire, gotta be honest with you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Basically, Black Rifle Coffee is keeping me alive at this point. It's been a rough couple of weeks. Go check them out right now. BlackRifleCoffee.com. Use code DailyWire for 20% off America's coffee. Kash Patel, again, is incredibly smart.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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And here he was when Amy Klobuchar was trying to get him on a comment that he made about closing FBI headquarters and instead building a monument to FBI overreach, which, of course, is a bit of rhetoric. And she's trying to get him on this. And Kash Patel is just not going to play. He's just not going to play.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Now, air traffic control was perfectly aware that these aircraft were in proximity with one another. We know this because there are recordings of an air traffic controller heard asking the Army helicopter to pass behind the regional jet. Commercial aircraft use very high-frequency radios to communicate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Again, this is not a great look for Amy Klobuchar. It also is not a good look for Sheldon Whitehouse, who is, again, one of the dumber members of the United States Senate. He went after Kash Patel, and it didn't go well for him either.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Again, correct. Patel also did something smart. He was asked by Democratic senators about President Trump's pardons of some of the people who attacked cops on January 6th. And Patel, who is in fact like a Trump loyalist, a Trump loyalist, totally loyal to the MAGA agenda for sure. Cash Patel said, listen, if it were me, I wouldn't have done it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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I don't think that we should pardon people who attack cops.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Military aircraft operate on ultra-high-frequency channels, so they can't actually directly communicate. But Army Secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll said during a Senate hearing the crash may prompt the military to reconsider conducting training operations near the Washington, D.C. airspace. Well, yes, that would seem to be the obvious solution to all of this. Just a horrifying scenario.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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So again, Kash Patel, I think really, really outshone yesterday. I thought he was terrific yesterday in his Senate Judiciary hearing. Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard, of course, is the other major controversial nominees. There were three controversial nominees. RFK, I thought, performed admirably, although there are still open questions about his positions on everything from vaccines to abortion.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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There's an entire family that was wiped out in this plane crash. Obviously, everybody who's involved is innocent. It's horrifying on every possible level.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Brad Bowman, military analyst with the Foundation for Defensive Democracies and a former Black Hawk pilot, said, quote, initial indications suggest this may have been a checkride or periodic evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot. pilot. A checkride, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates some unique dynamics in the cockpit.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In a checkride, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager to not make mistakes, while the instructor pilot is watching to see how other pilot responds to different developments. Sometimes, an instructor pilot will test the less experienced aviator to see how they respond, but such a technique would have been unusual and inadvisable in that location, given the reduced margin for error.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Apparently, the instructor pilot had 1,000 hours of flight time. That's considered high. The co-pilot had 500 hours, according to NPR, which is considered average, although there have been some accusations that 500 hours in the air is actually considered sort of below average. Apparently, it was a male pilot and a female co-pilot

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Everyone on stage, raise your hand if you believe that Kamala Harris lost because of racism and misogyny. Now, a normie might be like, no, she lost because she was a bad candidate. And guess what? If Joe Biden had been the candidate, he also would have lost, which is why they substituted the black lady for the old white man. But nope, this is not a normal party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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The Pentagon has not yet released the names of those who are on board. They are still apparently notifying next of kin. Officials tell NPR the Black Hawk was supposed to be flying at a maximum of 200 feet. Sources say it was flying at least 100 feet higher. So at the very least, what you're looking at here is significant pilot error.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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You have to keep going in the intersectional direction. You have to keep claiming the American people are sexist and racist. So literally every person on the stage, the vast bulk of whom are white, raises their hand when asked if... Kamala Harris lost because of racism and sexism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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I mean, Capehart, wow, wow, wow. And that remark right there, that very last remark is the one that matters, right? Very good. You all pass. That's the litmus test. The litmus test for Democrats always and forever is if we lose, it's because the American public are racist and sexist. Keep doing this, guys. If that's your litmus test, seriously, keep doing it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2129 - Did DEI Cause the DC Crash?!

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Meanwhile, reality keeps clocking the DEI movement directly in the head. I have to say, the downfall of Ibram X. Kendi is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. So Ibram X. Kendi is one of the great grifters in all of human history. He wrote this bestseller called How to Be an Antiracist, which is legitimately one of the stupidest things ever written. The man cannot even define the word racism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He was asked this on stage at one point. And his answer was so nonsensical as to be self-defeating. He then was given $10 million to found an institution at Boston University called the Ibram X. Kendi Center on Anti-Racism, in which he was going to do research on anti-racism. $10 million later, there was zero, zero research that had emerged from the Center for Anti-Racist Research.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Boston University has now confirmed that Kendi will be departing and said the Center for Anti-Racist Research would close June 30th. The Center and Kendi came under scrutiny in 2023 for alleged financial mismanagement

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Gloria Waters, the university's provost and chief academic officer, said, quote, we thank Dr. Kendi and the center's staff and affiliated faculty for their contributions in advancing scholarship, teaching, and policymaking. The university wishes Dr. Kendi well on his next chapter.

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Well, he then promptly fell into a feather bed over at Howard University, which, of course, is the same university, historically black college university, that accepted the excreble Nicole Hannah-Jones when she fell out of favor at the University of North Carolina.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So Kendi is going to start at Howard this summer as a history professor and director of the tentatively named Howard University Institute for Advanced Research, who also bring with him The Emancipator, a digital magazine focused on racial inequity that was founded with the Boston Globe, but has since gone independent. And nobody has ever seen, heard from, read anything remotely like that. So bye.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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All sorts of controversy broke out yesterday when President came forward to do a press conference on this particular issue. And he blamed the crash, at least in part, on the Biden administration and diversity, equity and inclusion procedures, particularly at the FAA.

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I just, you know what? Good for him. Honestly, if you're a grifter and you can take all of these pathetic fools who believe that Affirmative action and racial consciousness and all this ought to be at the top of the list of American priorities as opposed to being counterproductive and truly racist in their essence. If you can take all those people for a ride, more power to you, Ibram.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And good luck over at Howard University. Speaking of the demise of DEI, joining us on the line is Christopher Ruffo. There is no activist who's had more impact on America in terms of crazy radical gender ideology or fighting DEI than Chris Ruffo.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Chris, I have to say, you know, as probably the most successful activist of our generation in terms of actually fostering political change in places like Florida on DEI or pushing government cuts, what do you make of the Trump administration really, I would say, taking your advice, moving fast and breaking things here?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, Chris, when we look at the stuff that they are doing right now, you know, executive orders can be done and undone. But some of the things that they are doing right now, ripping out, for example, affirmative action by the roots, ripping out DEI. By the way, this has been a longtime crusade of yours. Obviously, when it comes to trans politics and trans ideology, that's something the Daily Wire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I mean, we've been fighting this thing since the initiation of our company in 2015. You say it's the culmination. It really is. But. You know, it takes more than that. It takes systemic know-how. And this is something where you have been really an indispensable force. It's one thing to fight the ideology. It's another thing to know which buttons to push to actually end it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So, Chris, one of the things that you've talked about for a long time and that obviously the administration has taken to heart is the idea that the policy is the personnel and the personnel is the policy. And the Trump administration, one, had no idea about this. They came in. There are a huge number of people in the executive branch.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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They just figured those are, you know, apolitical people who are just going to do their jobs when they're told to do their jobs. Obviously, they learned the hard way that wasn't true during not only Trump won, but also during the Biden administration, when many of those people were activated against Trump, even when he was out of office.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And now they are coming in and they're recognizing that a huge number of the people that they've called deep staters need to go. And so some of the moves that they are making right now, for example, offering a buyout to anybody who basically doesn't want to participate in the changing of the country under the sort of MAGA emblem. These are bold and audacious moves. What do you make of it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So of course, one of the issues that seems to be rearing its ugly head is what people have called malicious compliance, which is people who are embedded in the executive branch who have decided that the way to quote unquote apply President Trump's executive orders is to do things that earn him bad headlines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So the best example of this that I've seen over the course of the past couple of weeks is Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense, promulgates an order to the Department of Defense to get rid of DEI in the Department of Defense. And some schmuck lower down says, well, this means that now we can no longer teach about the Tuskegee Airmen. And Hegseth immediately says, well,

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Obviously, that's not true. And so we are going to make sure that people are still taught about the Tuskegee Airmen. But this is constantly a reminder that, again, the personnel are the policy. I think one thing that people have to keep in mind is that when you actually go in, you change policy in the way that Trump is doing right now. There are going to it's a trial and error process.

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Things are going to break and then you have to fix them in the same way that when Elon came in, a bunch of things broke at Twitter and then they had to get fixed on the fly.

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So, Chris, you obviously have been at the forefront of fighting things like critical race theory, which has become just poison to the public mind, or radical gender ideology, which, again, has now been sort of ripped out by the roots. What is the next big battlefront? Because it seems like Democrats are in retreat in a lot of areas, but they always come back.

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What is the next thing that you've got your eye on?

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Okay, now, was this crash related to DEI? It's unclear at this point. We simply don't have enough information to know who even the pilots were. What exactly were the procedures that led to this horrifying accident? What exactly happened? I mean, all those details are unclear.

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Well, that's Christopher Rufo. No one in America has done more to push forward the conservative agenda in truly active ways than Chris. Chris, really appreciate the time. Thanks for all your hard work as always. Thank you so much. All right, folks.

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Well, it's been a long time since I did things I like, but it's the end of January and I was doing a lot of travel, which meant I got to actually enjoy some culture on the airplanes. And so I want to recommend a couple of things that I like. I want to make this a regular feature of the show again.

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So I'm going to save some of these for next week because there are actually a fair number of things that I like. I'm going to pick two. One is sort of against the grain and one of them is not. So My against the grain pick for things that I like. Gladiator 2. Now, I know a lot of people were very down on Gladiator 2. I know, I know. But it's fun.

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Okay, it's not as good as Gladiator 1 by any stretch of the imagination. But I don't really understand the extraordinary anger directed at Gladiator 2.

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gladiators sure there weren't actual sharks in the coliseum but there were giant water battles in the coliseum that's an actual thing that actually happened and sure it's not historically accurate or anything but it's denzel at his most denzel it's basically training day denzel so you now have kind of a couple of modes of denzel washington who's really the star of the show here you have the mode of denzel washington where he's a much more serious actor he's doing things like macbeth which by the way i enjoyed the uh the cone brothers version

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And there's the over-the-top Denzel Washington, lay out all the stops, just go for it. And that's this Denzel. The battle scenes are pretty good. It obviously misses Russell Crowe in a very serious way. But Russell Crowe died in Gladiator 1. Spoiler alert. So he was not coming back. And of course, it was never going to be Gladiator 1. Because how could it be? With that said, it's enjoyable.

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And I really don't understand the critical hate for this film. So here's some of the preview. I was owned.

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Okay, so super historically inaccurate in terms of the actual emperors, the Roman emperors, right? There were emperors with the names of these people, and there was another emperor who did take over for them, but that's pretty much all that's historically accurate in this piece. The end of the movie is basically, the Roman Empire is restored under the great democratic power of Lucius.

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It is, however, true that the FAA in particular, the Federal Aviation Administration, has been direly affected by DEI protocols and procedures over the course of the last decade. I mean, truly in negative and horrifying ways.

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Yeah, that never happened, but it's fun anyway. Denzel is extremely Denzel. Like, audacious and loud and all the rest. Pedro Pascal plays himself. Basically, he's the same in all things. And I enjoy Pedro Pascal, but he is exactly the same actor in every single piece. And so he is in this as well. Connie Nielsen makes her comeback. She obviously reappears from number one. I enjoyed it.

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And it's like 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, 82% with the audience, did about $461 million at the box office. So not a massive hit, but also not a giant miss from Ridley Scott. More enjoyable than much of Ridley Scott's work, to be fair. Okay, other things that I like. So here is one that is pretty widely accepted as good TV. That is the season two of Severance. So I really enjoy Severance.

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I think Severance is a really clever TV show. It's on Apple TV for those who have not seen it. The severance, the basic premise of it is that there is a company that has somehow created a procedure whereby they sever your work life from the rest of your life.

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So when you go into this office, it's almost this bizarre alternative world where you only live at the office and you have no connection with the outside world. You don't know anybody from the outside world. You have a different identity. And then in the outside world, you have your own life. So complete severance between your work life and your home life.

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Now, that sounds like it would just be sort of a normal sitcom or something. It isn't. It's a very weird show with all sorts of Lost-type mysteries. It's one of those shows where you really have to trust the writers. And I have to admit, I've been burned by this before. I was a huge fan of the show Lost that was on ABC for six seasons, and I got burned beyond belief by Lost. I was super into it.

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I watched all the mysteries. I went and interviewed Carlson Cuse. I was a Damon Lindelof guy. And they absolutely burned it to the ground in the last season. So that could happen with Severance. It could be they're setting up all these mysteries and they have no actual solves for the mysteries and the whole thing just falls apart.

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I always hope when a writer takes me a place where I'm not expecting that they know where they're going. Because I want to be along for the ride. I've seen so much TV and so many movies at this point that it is very difficult for me not to predict the ending of pretty much every show or movie within the first 15 minutes of the movie. That is not the case with The Severance. It's very weird.

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According to the Washington Times, years before Wednesday's fatal collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, critics warned that the Obama and Biden administrations had jeopardized safety by prioritizing DEI at the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, the suggestion of such, of course, has made Democrats insane.

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It's clever. It's got some really good performances across the board. The kind of homages to 1970s paranoia film are pretty obvious. Things like the parallax view, the theme to this show, like the musical theme to the show is very obviously ripped off from a fantastic Francis Ford Coppola movie called The Conversation, which if you haven't seen it is great.

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Gene Hackman celebrated his 95th birthday this week and The Conversation is one of his best movies. super creepy and kind of terrifying. The theme to this is pretty obviously ripped off from that, if not consciously and certainly unconsciously. In any case, it is well worth the watch. Super clever. Again, I'm hoping that it goes somewhere interesting. Here's a little bit of the preview.

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I'm tightening the leash.

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It's super weird. It's bizarre. It's not even possible for me to explain what's going on in this preview unless you've seen season one. And it's like deliberately weird, deliberately strange, right? They're walking through office rooms filled with goats and they, and there are watermelon carve outs of the person who's supposed to be like the godlike figure at the head of the corporation.

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It's very strange. It's done by Ben Stiller. Ben Stiller is the producer on it. And Adam Scott is the star. Well-produced, really good across the board. So totally worth the watch. Severance, season two. Okay, and I will give one book recommendation as well since we're at the end of the month. So I spent some time on the audiobook app. I do that when I'm exercising, for example.

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I'm very excited, by the way, that the Apple audiobook app now turns all the way up to three times speed. So I go all the way up to the maximum, and that means I can churn out an 18-hour book in six hours, which is awesome. It's just great. Well, I recently got through Tom Holland's Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. And the book is really quite fantastic.

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The three troops on board the helicopter were apparently conducting a training flight and likely wore night vision goggles. That may be relevant because if you're wearing night vision goggles, this could mean that perhaps you're... Vision to the sides is not nearly as good. Was this an air traffic control problem? Was this a pilot error issue? All of that is still very much up in the air.

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So I will say I do enjoy Tom Holland's history podcast. The rest is history. Tom Holland and I, we have some conflicting politics, I would assume. He's a really, really good writer, like a terrific writer, very evocative. He takes seriously religious claims, not that to the truth of like the actual seriousness with which religious people take religious claims.

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He doesn't mock them, which would be the easy way out for so many historians. So by writing about Judaism or Christianity, what Tom Holland does instead is he tries to view history through the lens of the people who are living it. such that they actually take seriously the claims of miracles in Tours, for example, or take seriously the claims of Jesus' miracles in Dominion.

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So basically the entire premise of the book is that pretty much everything in our lives is shaped by the Christian world, which of course is absolutely true. I make much the same claim in my own book about the history of Western philosophy, The Right Side of History, which came out a few years ago. Dominion is specifically about Christian philosophy and it is a history of church, right?

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It's a history of the church going all the way back to the time of Jesus and forward through The so-called Dark Ages, which were not actually Dark Ages, forward into the medieval era through the Reformation and all the rest. Fascinatingly well-written. It's, I think, a great reminder to people who are secular of exactly how little their own values spring from the ether.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he said, it's one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories. It's another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation, even as victims are still being recovered and families are still being notified. So is the criticism of Trump's timing or is the criticism of Trump's content? Those are two different things.

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There's this weird perception. I've said this a thousand times in debates, whether it's with atheists like Alex O'Connor or whether it is with people who are sort of just secular liberals. I've said a thousand times, the values that the left perceives, that the secular left perceives to be their values, are values that are rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition.

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I say Judeo-Christian because, of course, half of the Bible is the Old Testament, which is Jewish in origin. And again, even Christians have rejected the Marcion heresy, which suggests, of course, a complete divide between Jesus and Judaism. In any case...

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Christianity is the single greatest shaping factor in the history of the world in terms of how the world has been shaped politically, morally, theologically. That's just a fact. There's no way around it. Islam is a reaction to Christianity, right? The way that markets are done in China is a reaction to Christianity. Marxism is a reaction to Christianity, right?

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So many things that we take for granted as sort of just secular ideals or secular ideas. So many of those things are either reactions to or perversions of or quiet adoptions of Christian principles. And this is the point that Holland makes.

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So he goes through the history of the 20th century, and really the only anti-Christian movement that he notes is the Nazi movement, which was overtly directed against Christianity.

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He says that the Soviet Union was, of course, anti-Christian as well, but the point that he makes is that many of the roots of Marxism actually lie in sort of early church writings, meaning that Marxism ends up being a rejection of religion while trying to embody a sort of utopian viewpoint on what the world should look like in the best of all possible world. I think he takes the argument too far.

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Sometimes I, for example, think that communism is an outright rejection of Christianity as opposed to a perversion of it. But those are sort of arguable sentiments. What is really fascinating about Dominion is tracing these lines of argument all the way through Christian history.

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And so that's why the book has become very popular in Christian circles, even though Tom Holland isn't by any stretch of the imagination, like a right-wing Christian or anything like that. So check out the book, Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, came out in 2019. Well, meanwhile, time for some things I hate. Yes, it's come back. Things I hate.

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All right, so the worst song in probably human history has now been released. It is titled, I kid you not, Fat, Juicy, and Wet. It is not, in fact, about a solid hamburger. It is, in fact, about what you would think that it would be about because it's a perverse rap slash pop song by Bruno Mars. There has to be some excuse for why he would deign to do a number with sexy red.

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You can make the case that President Trump shouldn't be talking about DEI and the FAA until we have more details in. But I think what Schumer's actually objecting to is the idea that DEI is bad inside the FAA at all. He thinks DEI is good, diversity, equity, and inclusion, affirmative action protocols. systems designed to put people who are unqualified in positions of high authority.

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She of the twice chlamydia. who has on offer the lyrical genius of the colors of her anus. I'm not kidding. That's how she got famous. And that right there is a near rhyme that must at some point appear in one of her songs, Anus and Famous. In any case, sexy red leads this number. Bruno Mars decides to go along with all of this.

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So instead of the sort of soft romance that Bruno Mars is more typically known for, Instead, the collab features some of the worst lyrics in human history that I would not even deign to actually explain. There are also surprising celebrity cameos from K-pop star Rosé and also Lady Gaga. And it's not sexual innuendo. It's just graphic descriptions of pornographic sexual activity. That's all it is.

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There's no subtlety to it. There's no innuendo. It's just an almost biological description of pornography. It also happens to be terrible musically. So there's nothing redeeming about this song at all. I'm going to play you like 10 seconds of it just so that you understand how bad it is. Because this is what our pop culture has come to.

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From the Gershwin brothers to sexy Red and Bruno Mars in just a couple of generations. I don't, so I've been asked by a producer to explain how much worse they can get. I don't, like, can it? I mean, I suppose they could make it more violent. That would make it worse. But aside from that, I don't think it can get worse than this. I mean, the music is awful. Sexy Yee Yee Red has no flow.

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She's truly an awful rapper. I speak as a chart-topping rapper myself. She has no flow at all. She has no talent whatsoever, none, zero talent, like negative talent, like active antipathy to talent in Sexy Yee Yee Red. But it just demonstrates that if you are a woman willing to sexualize yourself for money, then apparently the money's just waiting for you, and so is fame around the corner.

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I can't imagine why our culture is in such serious trouble. I swear to God, I cannot even read you these lyrics. It's not possible to read you these lyrics. They make Penthouse Forum look like Pilgrim's Progress. That's how bad these lyrics are. Oh my God, this makes Cardi B's WAP sound like baby, it's cold outside. It's so bad. It's so horrifyingly terrible.

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Like not, by the way, not even like sexy and transgressive. Just kind of off-putting and insane. It's, what in the, what in the, I wish I could read you a single line from it, but there's literally not a single line you can read from it other than do it sexy, do it sexy, do it. Which is the outro. That's literally the only, that is the only thing that you can read from this. Wow.

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Democrats tend to think that sort of stuff is good. Of course, it pervaded every aspect of the Biden administration, according to Joe Biden. Critics warned, according to the Washington Times, that the FDA's focus on DEI diverted time and resources from air travel safety.

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And believe you me, I know how viral it would be if I read these lyrics. But I cannot bring myself to read you these lyrics. Wow. You know what? The flood is coming. Get ready. God will not be mocked in this way. Oh, boy. That's some horrifying, horrifying stuff. And Bruno Mars, man.

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Alrighty, coming up, it turns out that there's only one type of religious blasphemy that is actually not allowed anymore. We'll get to that in a moment. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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It hobbled the agency as it grappled with air traffic controller shortages, antiquated monitoring equipment, and an increase in near misses on crowded airport runways. An unidentified source told the Associated Press on Thursday, the air traffic controller in charge of monitoring the airspace at the time of the fatal collision was performing the work of two people.

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So in other words, because they couldn't get enough quote unquote diverse members of the FAA, they were simply under hiring for the FAA. And that meant that they were short-staffed during critical times.

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Air safety concerns, according to the Washington Times, prompted 11 Republican attorneys general to write the FAA administrator, Michael Whitaker last year to question the administration's hiring practices and priorities. They said, quote, unfortunately, the Biden FAA under your administration appears to prioritize virtue signaling diversity efforts over aviation experience.

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And this calls into question the agency's commitment to safety. And again, that is not wrong. It is true that the Obama and Biden administrations prioritized DEI over safety. The Biden era FAA website said, quote, quote, the FAA's mission involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense the workforce responsible for that mission reflect the nation.

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In 2022, the FAA pledged to diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices. Administration officials assigned long-term goals to amplify diversity, accessibility, and LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues.

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A 2022 performance target required the agency, quote, host a national symposium with internal and external stakeholders to socialize efforts on the use of gender-neutral language at the FAA. In 2013, under Barack Obama, the FAA started using a biographical assessment to increase the hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers.

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The assessment asked applicants about their participation in school sports. In fact, some of the documents from the FAA, according to one reporter named Trace Woodgrains, one of the documents that was asked, one of the questionnaires that was put forward by the FAA, and this was revealed in a lawsuit, a class action lawsuit called Brigida versus Buttigieg,

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Apparently, the questionnaire awarded points for factors like lowest grade in high school is science, which is psychotic. If a questionnaire awards points for you're bad at science, and therefore you've got some sort of affirmative action appointment at the FAA, it seems to me you want the people who are explicitly good at science at the FAA. Call me crazy, but that's insane.

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There have been near misses in the past. And the first question I think that a lot of people are asking is, why the hell are Black Hawk helicopters operating at night in an area where passenger jets are coming in? That's totally insane, obviously.

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Well, President Trump, for precisely that reason, slammed Pete Buttigieg on his handling of the Department of Transportation.

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Well, he is not wrong about any of that. That is for certain. Well, the president was asked, well, how do you know this had anything to do with DEI? And here was the president of the United States answering that question.

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And there are some strange oddities about this particular flight path because it turns out that normally, apparently, runway one is the one that is typically used to accept incoming flights into Reagan National. Air Traffic Control had called this flight, the CRJ, and told them that you should instead take runway 33, which brought them across the Potomac.

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As Steve Hilton points out, Pete Buttigieg's FAA got a scathing inspector general report just in June of 2023. Quote, 77% of critical facilities are staffed below threshold. Quote, lacks a plan to address staffing challenges, posing a risk to continuity of air traffic operations. Quote, FAA cannot ensure it will successfully train enough controllers in the short term.

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So again, the details are still emerging. We don't know exactly what led to this crash. There is a lot of heartburn on the left because Trump is suggesting the DEI had something to do with this. Unfortunately, this is the way that politics now operates.

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And I can't name the number of times that Joe Biden came forth after some sort of school shooting before any of the evidence was available to discuss how gun control was obviously the solution. He didn't have to wait for where the gun came from or who had sold it or who operated it or what the psychological status of the person who actually did the shooting was.

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Any of that, he'd just come forth and immediately declare that his sort of all-purpose solution was the one in question. Now, here is the thing. It is very clear that the FAA is run like sh**. That is for sure. The FAA has been run along DEI lines for a very long time.

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And regardless as to whether this crash was a result of DEI or whether it wasn't a result of DEI, there is a reason why the blowback is coming in that form. President Trump was pushed on this by Caitlin Collins of CNN, and he didn't have a lot of time for it.

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Well, then Trump was asked a smarter question by our own Mary Margaret Olihan, which was, it seems kind of important, given the fact that so many of these agencies are short-staffed, to actually get confirmed the nominees, like just confirm the nominees. Here's President Trump on that.

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And then the helicopter struck them as they were coming across the Potomac. But apparently near misses of this sort tend to happen a lot more often than expected. According to Reuters, U.S. commercial pilot Rick Redfern was preparing to land at Reagan Washington National Airport about a decade ago when he spotted a bright red Coast Guard helicopter hovering about 50 feet above the Potomac River.

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Well, I mean, he's not wrong about that. Well, J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, he was also talking about air traffic control and DEI standards. Here's what the vice president of the United States had to say.

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Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So this is a great question, and it goes to the heart of what government can actually do in concert with religious institutions. Because the truth is that religious institutions are what we would call intermediary institutions in life, right? You have like you and your family, and then you have the government, which you vote for, but you have no actual relationship.

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We can see it in the push for an ever-growing domination of a powerful governmental infrastructure, crowding out familial bonds, crowding out church in favor of a faceless state that offers money rather than virtue. We can see it in that crusade against churches that refuse to jettison their values in favor of moral relativism flying rainbow flags.

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But then you have these sort of intermediate institutions that you deal with society, these informal societal institutions where you really form all of your social bonds. The question is, what can government do to prop those up and strengthen them?

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And, by the way, I totally agree with you that everybody who's looking for reindustrialization to fill the God-shaped hole, again, the only thing that fills the God-shaped hole is God, not a factory job. And so if you're trying to actually fill that God-shaped hole with God again, then what you actually need to do is foster, for example, school choice, religious school choice.

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That's something that we in the state of Florida, in Florida we do this. We actually have stipends for everybody who wants to go to private school, and religious schools are really filling the gap. We have huge vouchers for every... Every kid in the state of Florida, and my kids, for example, are recipients. They go to a Jewish day school.

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A lot of friends go to Christian schools specifically because of this. That is a big one, obviously. We also need to get government out of the business of crowding out churches. So it used to be that many of the social services that were provided in your community were provided by your church. So in my community, for example, I'll take mine as an example just because I know it the best.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If somebody loses their job, the first move is to go to members of the community and say, does anybody know who has a job for this person? How do we help this person get a job? If there needs to be a meal train, right, everybody needs to get together and help fund this person to get through hard times, people in the community do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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When government fulfills that role, when government comes in and just hands you a check, It breaks the bonds that you actually have with the people in your church and in your society. That level of mutual dependence that exists at the intermediate level that comes along with spiritual obligations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Because if you want to be part of that social club that represents my synagogue, that comes along with certain duties to God. You have to keep Sabbath. You have to send your kids to Jewish day school probably. You have to keep kosher. And that was true for literally all churches for all of time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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To be part of the social club, there were obligations that attached as well, which is also how you knew that your neighbor wasn't mooching off of you. You knew that your neighbor wasn't just taking money out of your pocket because they had to fulfill religious obligations and show skin in the game.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The increase in the size and scope of government has crowded out a lot of the social functions of churches and intermediate institutions. I would, number one, suggest that government does have an active role to play in building allowing people to send their kids to more expensive religious schools in the United States, for example, because that's good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But I also think that the government should get out of a lot of these realms and allow that social gap to be filled by what it used to be filled by, namely the people that you live next to and with, and with whom you share a religious belief system. We'll get to more on that in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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What are these forces that have mobilized against our civilization? Well, the key force is the force of Western postmodern leftism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So the question is about the shift in American foreign policy and what it represents right now. I will say that I think there are multiple strains of foreign policy that are currently playing out simultaneously inside the Trump administration, and the result is a lot of uncertainty.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Sure, we can look at the radical Islamists who have invaded Europe, who support terrorism, who use Western governments to impose effective fatwas against Westerners who speak out against them, people who target Jews and Christians, who openly chant for the downfall of the civilization that they leech upon. But the question really isn't radical Islamists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I'm not sure that anyone has sort of a solid read on what the next move from the Trump administration will be in, say, Ukraine. Or with regard to Israel, with regard to Iran, with regard to China. There are a bunch of strains that are competing. So the speech that you mentioned, J.D.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Vance's speech at the Naval Academy, what he was rejecting was, I think, a straw man that's been burned 20 years ago, essentially. He's saying that we will no longer engage in the sort of interventionist Wilsonian philosophy that led to the war in Iraq. I'm not sure how many Americans at this point raise their hand when you say, if you know then what you know now, would you go to war in Iraq?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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How many hands go up? The answer is probably zero. So he's fighting against an impulse that no longer exists in the American body politic. The question is, what does he mean practically? And so I've always believed that President Trump understands peace through strength, which was sort of Trump 1.0, which was we don't have interests in every conflict all along the globe.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

14.42

Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. It is amazing to be here in Budapest. I want to talk today about the battle for the heart of Western civilization. But to do that, we have to start with a definition of what Western civilization actually is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We don't have to get involved in every conflict. But where we do have interests, we have to muscularly defend those interests. And the only thing in some cases that defends those interests is the credible threat of use of force. And that's why, for example, when it comes to Ukraine, I've taken the position that President Trump is right that he wants to get to an off-ramp.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I've been calling for an off-ramp in Ukraine since August of 2022. But if you actually want to get Vladimir Putin to an off-ramp, you actually need to up the pressure on Putin because Zelensky right now is actually giving Trump everything he wants. He gave him a 30-day ceasefire. He's giving him the rare earth minerals deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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he's giving him the possibility of a face-to-face negotiation with Putin, no preconditions. And Putin, meanwhile, is doing none of those things. And so the only way to get Putin to the table, presumably, is to up the ante on the pressure with an eye toward an off-ramp. Now, is that something that J.D. Vance wants? I have no idea. I have no idea what J.D. wants.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I'm not sure what the president's foreign policy is. With regard to Ukraine, it seems to shift fairly frequently. And again, there's something to strategic ambiguity, but there's a point where strategic ambiguity, like you don't know what he's going to do next, so don't screw with this guy. There's a point where strategic ambiguity shifts over into just pure uncertainty.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And America's enemies can take uncertainty as a sign of weakness, and that's one of my concerns.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So I do think that woke culture is on kind of its last legs in the United States. By this I mean that 10 years ago, when I was saying that boys are not girls, I was nearly kicked off of every social media platform. Now that is actual government policy from the White House on down.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And I think that there's been a very harsh reaction to the woke philosophy, which essentially suggests, in essence, that every disparity in outcome is due to discrimination. That if one group does worse than another group, it must be because the system is designed in order to harm that group. I think the American people are tired of that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I think that's why some of the most popular stuff that President Trump has done is taking on, for example, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is just wokeness, or taking on the trans agenda in the United States, which, again, is really unpopular in the United States. I think that wokeness has a real problem on its hands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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They, after all, are doing just what they have always done, invading and conquering. The question is why the West allowed them in. And the answer is that the West, thanks to that postmodern left, bears a peculiar and self-defeating blood guilt, a guilt that says that because the West is too successful, it owes it to the rest of the world to destroy itself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Now, the thing that I'm fearful of is that all the good that President Trump is doing How long does it last? Is there a reversion back to woke in the aftermath of President Trump? And the answer there is going to be determined by how successful President Trump is on sort of the baseline governance things. If the economy remains very strong, I think wokeness is in serious trouble for the long haul.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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If the economy were to tank, and now it's a package deal where you get a sort of left-wing populism that surges along with the wokeness, you could get a package deal where wokeness rears its ugly head all over again. So I don't think you can wipe out wokeness in a single moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I think the attempt to do so is laudable, but I think that a movement that took decades to build is usually not destroyed inside of a couple of years. It's going to take a more long-term... vision of how to keep that at bay. But I do think the American people are very, very tired of it. So let's put it this way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I'm significantly more optimistic about the death of wokeness than I was, say, three years ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I think that's a great question. I frequently say, facts don't care about your feelings, but the response very frequently is, feelings don't care about your facts, which is very often true. People are making emotional arguments, you cite a fact at them, they ignore the fact because they feel a particular way about a particular issue. Should we be making more emotionally-laden arguments?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I mean, the answer is absolutely sometimes. I mean, my hope would be that the emotional argument comes atop a layer of facts. It's sort of a pie in which the crust of the pie, the base of the pie, is going to be the facts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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do have to put in some emotional content that appeals to the heartstrings if you hope to actually foster a positive agenda sometimes because of course people are emotional creatures and ignoring that would be a strategic mistake so i agree with that i think that when the emotions substitute for the facts that's where i start to lose it and and i again i'm not sure that that's only a left-wing phenomenon i think it's a universal human phenomenon you sometimes see this on the right

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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which is why the right will drift into sort of conspiracy theories. They'll say, I don't care about the facts. There must be somebody who's attempting to screw me. It's probably the small cadre of people. And if there's no facts to back that, I'm very uninterested in that take. If there are facts to back it, now you're talking about something completely different. So again, I think you're right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The foundation has to be facts. But yeah, sure, you're going to have to build some sort of emotional superstructure atop that if you hope to be convincing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So, first of all, I'm not a huge fan of the term woke right because I think that it obscures more than it illuminates. And so I'll try to be very specific about who I think you're talking about and you tell me if I'm wrong. I think that the philosophy of the people that you are referring to essentially says that there is, just like the left, a group of people who are put upon

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Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Maybe the most colorful champion of this philosophy was the Marxist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1961, a Francophone rebel named Frantz Fanon wrote a shockingly violent book titled The Wretched of the Earth, in which he posited that colonized peoples had a moral duty to kill their colonizers, that they ought to unleash, in his words, red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And that group of people who are put upon are put upon by an elite cadre of people. Here they're often name-checked Jews or Israelis or Israeli foreign aid. And that's what's making their life bad. In the same way that the left will argue that every disparity is in fact discrimination, that every... thing that is unequal between two parties must be because someone is harming the other party.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The right is doing some of that same stuff, but their victim group is different. So the left might say that it's blacks in America. The right might say that it's white Appalachian people in America. But the similarity is in the idea that there is a victim group and a victimizer group, and success is an indicator of victimizer status. And so is that a problem on the right? Absolutely.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I mean, you can see sort of a populist right that edges toward that and veers directly into it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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more than more than a little these days i don't like that you know along any lines i think that it's very bad i how popular is it i think some of it is being bolstered frankly by by algorithmic problems at places like tiktok which is a chinese spy app uh or like at um certainly x x is being gamed by by malign actors there's no question that's the case um so how popular is it in reality uh

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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not particularly popular with the American people generally. It is increasingly popular with young people who are being told, after years and years of being lied to by the elites, that the elites can never be trusted, and the only people you can trust are people who posit conspiracy theories. The logic goes something like, the elitists told us something was false, and they were lying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And I told you the truth because I said they were lying. That means I'm telling you the truth about literally everything, and there's a conspiracy behind everything that I'm also uncovering. That sort of conspiracy theorizing that just asking questions that I've criticized so frequently, the purpose of a question should be to elicit an answer. The purpose of a question should be to elicit a fact.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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If you're just asking questions because what you actually hope to do is seed doubt about people in the minds of other people, not based on fact, but based on sort of a malignant hatred, then yeah, I'm obviously very much worried about that. I think you see it very often.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I mean, I spoke about this at length last week, actually, when people suggest that Israel is committing a genocide, for example, in the Gaza Strip, which is an absurdity on every level. There is literally no definition of a genocide that fits what's going on in the Gaza Strip right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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There has never been a genocide in which the supposedly genocidal party somehow increases the population of the group that it's genociding. That has never happened. It has not fed that group to the tune of hundreds of trucks per day while that group is holding hostages. It makes no sense. If you're participating in that lie, there must be some sort of ulterior motive that is not factually driven.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I think that, as we've been talking about, the cornerstone of any transatlantic conservative alliance will actually have to be shared traditional values, which is amazing, because 20 years ago, the right was totally disunified about traditional values. And I think that's why you had the subsequent 20 years. If you went back to the year 2000 and you said, what unifies the right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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What you would say is there's actually a lot of social debate over everything from sort of abortion to same-sex marriage. But there's pretty good coincidence on foreign policy and on economics. And now it's kind of the opposite. If you were to talk about the things that unite the right, the thing that unites the right

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Frantz Fanon expressed that the colonized man was right to want to rape the wife of his colonizer, to murder him, to take what he had. And Sartre, just a Western leftist, agreed. The West, Sartre said, was an inherent colonizer. Its very success in the world, whether through war or through markets, was a sign of its uniquely rapacious and exploitative nature.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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is opposition to wokeness, so opposition to transgender philosophy, for example, opposition to the idea that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was a genius move. There's actually pretty wide consensus across the entire right on those particular issues. And what I really mean here is that in the fundamentals, Church, religion, God. I mean, we keep coming back to that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But if you're going to build from anything, that's the most solid basis from which human beings have ever built anything. So that seems like the best basis from which to build. Everything else can be argued. People can make arguments on either side with regard to the free market. I think the arguments stack up very strongly in favor of the free market.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But you can hear people who will suggest particular governmental interventions that they think are more salutary or not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But when it comes to actually building a civilization, the only fundamental basis of a civilization that has ever truly lasted the test of time is one that is built on the notion that there is a right and there is a wrong and that that is divine in origin and that human beings are made in the image of God, given both rights and duties because they're freely choosing creatures that God put on Earth to serve him.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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That seems like a pretty good basis for a shared civilization.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Well, I mean, I think that the first thing that people on the right and generally in Western civilization should understand are that the people that Israel are fighting are fighting the entire West. I mean, that's something that this country actually really understands, which is why they closed their borders to migrants who are coming from especially those areas.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And the notion that Hamas has a has a hatred for Jews, but they love Christians. It's insane. I mean, it's patently insane. The notion that Hamas, they really, all the people shouting from the river to the sea and wearing on the one hand a rainbow flag and on the other a Hamas armband, like these people are friends to the sort of

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Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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traditional people of Western civilization, they're not friends, they're enemies. There's a reason why the enemies of Israel are constantly talking about how they wish to not only kill Jews, but also to free Al-Andalus, which is Spain. This bizarre notion that all of the hatred of the radical Islamic world is directed against Jews is so historically ignorant.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The reality is that for about a thousand years there, for significantly more than a thousand years, the main target of radical Islamists was Christians. I mean, Istanbul used to be called Constantinople. Lebanon used to be a Christian country. Coptic Christians used to be a major demographic group in Egypt.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Actually, I was talking, as I got off the plane today, with a nun from Syria, and she was talking to me about the threats that now exist to Christians in Syria and Lebanon, have existed there for a while, and she was pointing out the solidarity between Jews and Christians along these lines.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The absolute willingness to ignore that in favor of bizarre conspiracy theories about Jewish power, I wish I could say that I understand it beyond the simple conspiratorial desire for somebody to blame for your own problems. But again, this seems to be a perfectly clear civilizational conflict.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Thus, Sartre argued, Europeans had to die at the hands of their victims. He said, quote, to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time. Then there remains a dead man and a free man. In other words, Sartre advocated civilizational suicide. And the West largely complied. But why did the West comply?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And pretending otherwise is a great way to commit societal suicide, as we're finding out from France and the UK right now.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I mean, so, I've said this for a long time. I think my entire career. The proper response, very often, you know, I'll go to a campus, somebody will call me racist, or I'm on a show when somebody calls you a racist. The proper response to, you're a racist, is not, let me explain to you 10 reasons why I'm not a racist. That's a losing argument. The proper response is,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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That's the actual proper response. If somebody calls you a racist, the proper response is to flip them the bird or to tell them to F off. And the reason for that is because what they are doing there is maligning it. That's not an argument. That's a character assassination. And you can't fight back against a character assassination by legitimizing the person who's actually making the argument.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The minute that you start defending yourself, oh, I'm not a racist, and let me tell you all the reasons why I'm not a racist, what you're actually saying is, you're a reasonable person who's calling me a racist, which means that it's reasonable for you to call me a racist or to think that I'm a racist which means that maybe I'm a racist. There's no reason to even humor the argument.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So I think the first thing that the West has to do when it comes to many of these arguments is to throw the bird and say, you have no evidence of this. Not only do you have no evidence of this, it makes you a schmuck to actually make this argument and to character assassinate people that you know nothing about and against all available fact patterns.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It is okay to simply reject out of, you do not have to make a logical retort to an insult. In fact, a logical retort to an insult is typically ineffective. The only actual appropriate response to an insult is to take umbrage and to either walk away or to engage on the same level that somebody's insulting you. All right, one more question.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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I mean, obviously, it's not good for Israel that so many of the European powers have decided that basically they are fine with Hamas regaining control of the Gaza Strip. And I'd recommend to the chancellor that if he has a good plan for Gaza, he should table it right now, because I've heard zero plans from anyone that are actually practical or practicable in the Gaza Strip.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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There's a reason that no country in the region will take the Palestinians. There is a reason for that, and it is because the Palestinian population, by polling data, by literally all polling data, is heavily terror supportive. And many countries don't want that in their country, and I think rightly so.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The notion that Israel is supposed to sort of leave and then leave Hamas as the governing power in the Gaza Strip is insane. Obviously, no one is positing any other solutions, including the chancellor. So my response to that is always the same.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The minute that you posit an actual practical plan that doesn't involve Hamas actually running the place again, redeveloping all of its terror tunnels, firing rockets into Israel, attacking its neighbors, and oppressing its own people while, by the way, still holding Israeli hostages, the minute you come up with that plan, I'm happy to hear it. Otherwise, you should shut up. All right, bye.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Everybody, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Now, part of the answer to that lies in the West's pathological and religiously based adherence to the reality of sin and the necessity of repentance. Our culture, Western culture, is a guilt culture, a culture that focuses on the reality of absolute morality and says that when we fail, we are guilty. This means that we feel bad when we sin. That's actually one of our virtues.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But there are lots of other cultures, shame cultures, like, say, the Islamic cultures, or pre-World War II culture of Imperial Japan, or, say, the modern left, that focuses not on any absolute standard of morality, or conscience, but on the evil of being humiliated. For these folks, admitting fault is the weakness.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Well, because we in the West reflexively look to our own sins before those of others, we fall prey to civilizationally suicidal impulses. Our enemies don't. They're happy to blame us for their problems, and unfortunately, we're all too happy to blame ourselves.

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Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Western civilization rooted in man's individual liberty and his collective duty, in his freedom of speech and in his duty to act virtuously, in his property rights and in his familial obligations. In the right to the equal application of the law, Western civilization is unique. It is the wellspring of virtually all human prosperity and all human progress.

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Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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As the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner writes, quote, the duty to repent forbids the Western bloc, which is eternally guilty, to judge or combat other systems, other states, other religions. Our past crimes command us to keep our mouths closed. Our only right is to remain silent. But why should we feel uniquely guilty?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The West seems to bear a unique amount of guilt because we have come to believe a giant lie, a great giant lie about ourselves. And that lie is that we, the West, are uniquely evil. And we hear this lie all the time. Just a couple of days ago, for example, King Charles visited Canada, a country with a parliament, only because it was once a dominion of the British crown.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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and then read a land acknowledgement to the Algonquin Indians, as though the British Empire ought to repent its establishment of the country of Canada. The very concept is ridiculous. Watching King Charles sit there in all of his royal regalia, lamenting his own empire, is insane. And yet this kind of nonsense is imitated at nearly every college event across the West.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But that's the lie, that the West is uniquely evil. and that lie gained an enormous amount of credibility due to the horrors of the 20th century. We were told, often by Marxists like Sartre, that imperialism was a uniquely Western phenomenon, despite the fact that human beings have conquered other people for as long as human beings have existed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We were told that the Nazis and their allies were natural outgrowths of Western civilization rather than perversions of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We were told that if we abandon biblical values in favor of a sort of namby-pamby secularism, we could avoid all the terrible atrocities of the past, even though it was the pagan dogmas of the Nazis and the Soviets, the secular dogmas of the Nazis and the Soviets, not their biblical adherents, that led to their assault on humanity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We were told that if we mitigated our cultural honor, if we discarded it, we could then expunge our sins, even though it was craving cowardice in the face of transnational left-wing movements like Nazism and Communism that led to their domination of the European continent and proud, resurgent patriotism that stopped it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We were told that if we abandoned our borders, we could alleviate our guilt, even though, obviously, the Nazis and the Soviets had no respect for borders and sought to obliterate them themselves. It was not Western civilization. It was not adherence to biblical values, rule of law, free speech, and private property rights that led to the tragedies and horrors of the 20th century.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It was rejection of the West's core values that led to those horrors. But too many in the West believed the lie that the horrors were the result of Western civilization rather than a perversion of it. And in believing that lie, we surrendered our own civilization to people who would destroy it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We turned over our nations to consortiums of international elitists who sought to rule us from above and from without. We opened our nations to groups that sought to destroy our history and our unity. Well, now it is time to reverse that process. We have to, in all humility, recognize that Western civilization, like all civilizations, has, of course, committed sordid wrongs and egregious evils.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But the truth, the real truth, something we have known for a very long time, like since the Garden of Eden, is that all human beings have a capacity for evil. Human evil is a universal truth. But the glories of Western civilization are not universal. They come from a particular philosophy, a particular history, a particular culture. Western civilization isn't uniquely evil.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Western civilization is uniquely good. Slavery was a human universal. It was Western civilization that ended it. Poverty is a human universal. It was Western civilization that has exponentially mitigated it. War is a human universal. Western civilization has wildly reduced it. And the secular postmodern leftists who refuse to admit this, they are engaging in evil of their own.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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This country, the very country these secular postmodern leftists seem to despise, a country they label Nazi-esque, is the only country in Europe, perhaps, that is not currently overrun by Islamic radicals. This supposedly Nazi-esque country is the only country in Europe where I, an Orthodox Jew, can walk in safety and comfort down the street wearing a yarmulke.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And Western civilization did not come from nowhere. It came from biblical wisdom, the wisdom of thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition. It came from the Bible's admonition that we ought to seek truth through the light of reason. When we cut ourselves off from the sources of our own civilization, our civilization decays. And make no mistake, our civilization is now in the midst of decay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It is a country where children don't actually have to fear that their innocence will be robbed by a perverse anti-biblical left seeking the spiritual destruction of those children. Hungary, like the rest of the West, isn't perfect because no country is. But Hungarians are trying to stand up for their civilization, our shared Western heritage and civilization.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And that is a thing that is worth fighting for. And if we fight for it, we will emerge victorious against the forces that seek to destroy our civilization from outside and inside as well. Thanks so much. Happy to take your questions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We've got Flag Day, the U.S. Army birthday on June 14th, National PTSD Awareness Day, Independence Day. Just switch your cell phone service over to Pure Talk this month. A portion of every single sale goes to providing these high-quality flags to deserving veterans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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With plans from just $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data, you can enjoy America's most dependable 5G network while cutting your cell phone bill in half. The average family saves over $1,000 a year. I've been using Pure Talk again for years. My coverage is excellent, and I'm spending less money. You got nothing to lose.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Just go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk, if it's good enough for my very important phone calls. It's good enough for you as well. It's awesome. Go check them out, puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It's a great question. I mean, I think number one, one place where Hungary clearly has led Europe is in reasserting its national identity, specifically with regard to rejecting mass migration from areas that absolutely reject Western civilization as a whole.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And you guys are paying, I believe, something like a million euros a day for the privilege right now, thanks to the predations of the European Union. I think that you are starting to see a rising tide that is going to reject mass migration. That rising tide is happening in France. It's obviously happening in Germany.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It's actually happened in Denmark, where a left-wing party has radically restricted immigration. So I think that the era of open migration is over. This is one area where the prime minister He was ahead of his time. He took an enormous amount of flak for doing what Hungary did. And time has proved him right.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And nations that refuse to protect their own border are nations that are going to suffer for it. And the populations of those nations know it. Now, obviously, there are people in a variety of powerful roles who are attempting to stop democracy from actually working in many of these countries. You'll see an upsurge in...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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right-wing or conservative or anti-mass immigration sentiment, and then it will sort of be shoveled off to the side because no one really wants to talk about it, but you can only suppress that for so long. That situation for supposedly center-right or center-left parties that are siding with the radical left on these issues

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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eventually the lid is going to blow off of that jar, and what's going to come out is going to be the sentiment of Europeans that they do not actually wish to have their cultures discarded in favor of a failed multiculturalism that has destroyed every state it's touched.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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We can see that decay in the anarchic marchers in the streets, chanting on behalf of radical Islamic terror groups by the hundreds of thousands. We can see it in the push by intellectual elitists for a bizarre alternative morality that suggests the fundamental free-flowing nature of sexual identity, where boys can be girls and behavior ought to be separated utterly from the realm of morality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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So the answer is that Western civilization cannot survive full-scale secularism and godlessness, and that's what we've been watching. And the restoration of church is the fundamental basis of a restoration of the West. I say this as a Jew. Everybody who grew up in a Christian household and whose grandparents were Christian needs to go to church. Everyone.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It is deeply, deeply important that they go to church and re-engage with their religious heritage and re-engage with God and re-engage with an absolute morality that suggests that there is a right and that there is a wrong. Because again, all the things that I just talked about spring from those biblical values. And there is no substitute for it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And I think that's why you're seeing actually in the United States an increase in religious adherence among young people. For the first time in my lifetime, it was going in one direction. It was going down into the right. And now it's moving up again. And the reason is because it turns out that a life that's filled with secularism, eventually becomes hollow.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And not for everybody, there are some people who can lead fulfilled lives of their own making, but the reality is that for a broad population, finding meaning in a meaningless universe is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. And for a civilization, it's actually just impossible. Because to slide from secularism to nihilism is not much of a slide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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But if you actually want to, for example, have a civilization that has children, I mean, this is what every statistic shows. Religious adherence and having lots of kids go hand in hand. You are not going to restore natalism in the West without having people go to church. It's just not going to happen. You have to have a national mission. You have to have a godly mission.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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It's why the only country actually in the West that currently has above replacement rates of population growth is Israel, because it's a country that is largely religious, even the secular people in Israel have some semblance of religion, and also because they're surrounded by enemies on all sides, and that means that they feel the actual patriotic necessity to have kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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That sort of thing can be restored, but you have to have civilizational pride, and that civilizational pride is rooted in a belief in a higher power that demands something of you. Also, the success of Western civilization rests on a very simple principle, which is, if you fail, it's probably your own fault.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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Every failed civilization is rooted in the opposite, that if you fail, it's somebody else's fault. But successes in life and successful civilizations say that freedom exists so that if you fail, you're the one to blame. That's what religion says. What the Bible says, all over the Bible, is if you fail, that's not God's fault, that's your fault. You did it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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And that means you need to take responsibility for your life and make it better. And without that, it's very easy to slide into the morass. So I think there's a reason why people are going back to church, thank God. I think that there's a God-shaped hole in people's hearts that was opened up by secularism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

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People have tried to fill that hole with everything from pornography to chatbots to just the Internet itself or to rage and political polarization. None of that fills the God-shaped hole. The only thing that fills the God-shaped hole is God.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

Well, folks, we had a lot of interviews, a lot of sit-downs with a wide variety of picks for President Trump's cabinet. And today, we're going to go through some of the best moments from The Ben Shapiro Show, the Sunday special on The Search, featuring leaders of the next Trump administration. Here's some of what it sounds like. Here's some of my conversation with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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and they were kids in World War II. My grandma's older siblings and her father were in the Navy. My grandfather didn't fight in the war. He just missed the sort of age cutoff. I think he was 16 when the war ended. They would get teary-eyed. It was this incredibly proud moment of American history, and that moment was important to them as people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Now take a listen to a bit of my conversation with FDA Commissioner nominee, Dr. Marty McCary.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Let's move on to two great conversations I previously had with Vaik Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency co-lead at Nominee. So what does Americanism look like definitionally from where you sit?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Their identity as Americans who felt that their country was good was really important to them. And of course, there are all kinds of things that America has done wrong. You sort of have to issue that caveat. But people like, you know, they recognize that there are a lot of things wrong with their family. They still love their family. They still think things are good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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I think that, you know, there's a phrase that's been used on sort of the post-libertarian right that, you know, I don't agree with them on a lot of things, but I think the phrase is correct. You have to know what time it is. I mean, the fact is that people on the right very often refuse to acknowledge what time it is and the forces that have been arrayed against them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And so they get very nervous about the... Listen, I'm nervous about the idea of the government utilizing power on behalf of quote-unquote right-wing interests as well. Because again, my congenital belief is that the government should stay out of these things. But...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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If the only ability, if the two choices are we lose or we fight it back to a standstill with the hope that eventually we get back to the libertarian agreement, I'm going to pick the second every single time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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The American nation is, in a lot of sense, a sort of extended family for a lot of people. They care about its history. They're proud of its history.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And if your operating assumption as a potential leader of American politics is not that America's made some mistakes but America's fundamentally terrible, then a lot of people are gonna feel personally insulted because America is something they actually care about. It's not just fake.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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But this is the conversation we need to have. Now take a listen to parts of a stimulating conversation I had with Elon Musk, the co-lead nominee for the Department of Governmental Efficiency. What do you see as the obstacles to companies being successful increasingly in the West, if there are obstacles to that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And I actually think that this is, it sort of reveals the cynicism of a lot of our sort of leadership class in the country. is I don't think that they were, well, they were caught off guard by the reaction that a lot of people had to this because they really don't think that patriotism is something that folks actually feel, right? They think it's all manufactured.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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I really think that Trump's major appeal more than anything else is something that he has said many times, which is they don't hate you because they hate me. They hate me because they hate you. And I think that's right for so many Americans.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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One of the things that has been suggested is a book called The Sovereign Individual written in the late 90s that basically suggested that we are entering the era of avoidance, that people are going to be able to be sovereigns. You talked about sovereign authority. You're not king of something, but you are the head of your companies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And so in the future, people will just be able to move money around, locate to where the regulations are the friendliest. And so the United States right now thinks that we have the advantage because we historically have. But that doesn't mean that that's how it's going to go in the future. You're seeing more and more companies, for example,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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going to Singapore or going elsewhere just to, you know, move away from those regulations. So avoidance, which wasn't a strategy in 17th century France, where are you going to go exactly, is now a very real set of possibilities for a lot of entrepreneurs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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So given all those things, do you think that there's going to be a backlash to regulation in America, or do you think that the West is sort of, America being a stand-in for that, sliding into this morass of regulation based on, honestly, it looks like, to a certain extent, jealousy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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It looks like trying to tear down success in the name of fairness, as opposed to... I mean, it's two different things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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They think it's all like, you know, Koch brothers or somebody else's propaganda to make people feel good about America. But a lot of people actually just feel good about America because they care about it and it's theirs and they love it. And if that feeling is genuine, it's very often, I think, foreign to a

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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I think there's the fundamental distinction between innovators and business people and people in the free market and the political class. The political class operates almost solely on the basis that the pie is fixed. Because if the pie is fixed, then the way that you get elected is by promising more of that pie to such and such a person.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Or you promise that by seizing money from the private sector, you're personally going to grow the pie. Yes. that the first mark of a politician you shouldn't listen to is, I can fix all of your problems.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And that basically rules out nearly everybody, because it seems like everyone in the political class is into the, I can fix all of your problems, when it seems like what I actually need is people who are entrepreneurial and innovative to solve this problem in front of me so that we can then move on to the next problem that's in front of them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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I'm trying not to, but yes. Last but not least, here's a listen to a recent conversation I had with Representative Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for National Security Advisor.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Now take a listen to a bit of my conversation with Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem. The broader mission, which is to fight an overwhelming left change in the country, that's not relegated to President Trump. And I think you made that clear in your speech.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Well, folks, those are all people that President Trump has picked for his new administration. Can't wait to see what they do in office.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Yeah, I think that's very smart. And it extends further. It's not just about criticism of them personally, which I do think a lot of people feel to their core. It's also about the things that they hold dear, right? This wasn't true when Bill Clinton was running for political office. It wasn't true, by the way, when Barack Obama was running for political office.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Here's a previous discussion I had with Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Actually, one of my favorite lines to give in speeches is that I give a paraphrased line from a Barack Obama speech in 2007 or 2008 when he was running for president, where it's basically, you know, the quote goes something like, you know, I really don't like it when people bring non-American flags to protest in America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Moving on to a conversation I had with Trump's UN ambassador nominee, Elise Stefanik.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Now take a listen to a bit of my discussion with Harmey Dillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights nominee. In your opinion, what is the state of election law in the various states across the country? How much should we be worried on the one side about voter suppression, which is what Democrats claim it on?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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On the other side, how much should we be deeply worried about heavy levels of voter fraud? Not occasional voter fraud, which of course is going to occur in a country with hundreds of millions of voters, but really heavy election shifting voter fraud.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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When I see a guy waving a Mexican flag in American protest, I get a flash of resentment. And, you know, you give that speech to college-educated audiences in 2017, 2018, and you see people shift in their chairs. They're like, oh, where is this going? This guy's a little uncomfortable. And then you say, well, Barack Obama said that like, you know, eight years ago, 10 years ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, in an uncertain economic landscape, smart investors are paying attention to the signs. With increased tariffs reshaping our trade relationships and sweeping changes to taxes and regulations, there's just one investment vehicle that tends to stand the test of time, gold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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That's why I'm excited to tell you about a groundbreaking resource from my trusted partner, Birch Gold Group. They've now released the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era, featuring an exclusive forward by Donald Trump Jr. The numbers don't lie. Our national debt keeps climbing, and with it, the interest payments that burden our economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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In these challenging times, gold is still your hedge against a weakened dollar, and Birch Gold is still the company I trust to help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold. Text Ben to 989898 for your free copy of the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era. There's no obligation, only information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, thousands of happy customers, you too can trust Birch Gold. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898. Today, I've obviously been working with Birch Gold for years. I own precious metals because of Birch Gold. Check them right now. Text my name, Ben, to the number 989898.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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Ask all of your questions and then diversify at least a little bit into precious metals. Moving on to an insightful conversation I had with RFK Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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And they're like, oh, wow, that's surprising. And it just goes to show how different it is that people are talking about these issues. But to go back to this sort of people feel insulted personally, but they also feel insulted, I think, about core parts of their identity. So my grandparents, again, classic blue dog Democrats, but when you talk to them about World War II,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Trump’s Team: Best Ben Shapiro Show Moments

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I wanted to ask you about what your solutions are to that because we can talk about the defense budget, but the reality is two-thirds of the American budget is entitlement programs that nobody wants to touch.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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Folks, there is a ton going on in the news. A brand new initiation of a brand new trade war. Everything going on with Doge. Just tons going on. First, America is on the comeback. The fight for truth is far from over. While the left tries desperately to keep its grip on media education in the courts, Daily Wire continues to lead the charge for...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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Sean Fain actually spoke at the DNC, but then was sort of like half warm toward president. So maybe it's a payoff to the unions. Caroline Lovett said this is a big deal for auto workers and the nation. Again, this is a subsidy for one segment of the economy at the expense of the rest of the American economy. I do not think that this is going to pay off well in the markets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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The reason I'm critical of this is not just because I think it's bad policy. I do. But also because if the economy goes down, if President Trump experiences a significant market correction, it is going to impact the rest of his agenda. Here's the White House press secretary, Caroline Lovett, celebrating the 25 percent tariffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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Population movement from north to south, from blue states to red states, electoral votes that will follow, Democratic failures to find any sort of leadership class in the aftermath of the Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders octogenarian triumvirate. However, Politics changes quickly. Things happen. And there are warning signs on the horizon.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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OK, that last part, more products made in the United States means more money in the pocket of the American people. Actually, autarky does not necessarily mean more pocket, more money in the pocket of the American people. You can manufacture literally everything on Earth in the United States if you are willing to radically increase the price on consumers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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So it's a thing that sounds good in theory and doesn't actually work particularly well in practice. And you're going to see the stock market react to this if President Trump continues to stick with it. One of the things that President Trump is doing with the tariffs is he's actually now doing a thing I remember from the Obama administration.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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He's calling business people on the carpet and he's telling them they can't do the thing that is the natural economic consequence of the thing that he is doing. So back during the Obama administration, when Obamacare first broke and he brought in all the health insurers and he said, you're not allowed to raise prices. And if you raise prices because you're bad and you're mean and you're terrible,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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And all the health insurers went, well, hold up a second. You just increased our cost structure. Of course we have to raise prices. What are you even talking about? And Democrats were screaming to the heavens because businesses were raising their price based on their increased healthcare costs, for example. And then they say, well, that's unpatriotic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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Joe Biden, who was the vice president at the time, actually said that. It's ridiculous on its face. When you force people to pay more money for things, they are going to raise their prices on the things that they produce. Well, President Trump is doing that now, apparently with regards to some of these car companies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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According to the Wall Street Journal, when President Trump convened CEOs of some of the country's top automakers for a call earlier this month, he issued a warning. They better not raise car prices because of tariffs. He said that the White House would look unfavorably on such a move, leaving some of them rattled and worried they would face punishment if they increased prices.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, I'm sorry, but that is how economics works. That is how economics works. This bizarre notion that you can radically increase the cost structure for a state's Stellantis and they're not going to increase their prices. What do you expect them to do, go bankrupt? I understand that President Trump did something amazing by getting rid of the electric vehicle mandate. I totally agree with that.

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I think it's great. But the laws of the economy do not randomly shape themselves around the whim of any president. Meanwhile, this tariff program is actually propping up in Canada, which is the country that we are largely targeting, the worst person in Canadian politics right now, who's the current prime minister, Mark Carney. So Justin Trudeau, handsome Bernie Sanders, he is gone.

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He was replaced by Mark Carney, who's a Green New Deal type, a net zero type, and a person who's totally fine with reorienting trade away from the United States and toward China, which is the predictable result of tariff wars between the United States and Canada.

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Canada will start reorienting its economy toward China, which is precisely the opposite of the result I think that the Trump administration would like to see. Mark Carney is perfectly happy with all of this. See, here's the thing.

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When there was no trade war, when President Trump had just won, what we saw in the Canadian polling was that Pierre Poliev, who was the head of the Canadian Conservative Party, was destroying the Liberal Party, just destroying it. This is why Justin Trudeau had to step out. He stepped out because he had basically become dead man walking, politically speaking.

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There was no shot that he was going to be the next prime minister of Canada. He replaced himself with Mark Carney. The Liberal Party put Mark Carney in place. And simultaneously... the talks about the tariff war and the trade war broke out and Pierre Poliev started to slide.

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The biggest one is that President Trump's popularity is not, in fact, transferable to every single other Republican candidate. You cannot just take President Trump, stamp him on a thing, and then hope that thing is going to be a winner. That is not how it works. Barack Obama tried the same thing. It doesn't work that way either. Every politician has to build their own coalition.

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And the reason he started to slide is because Mark Carney and the Liberal Party accused the Conservative Party of being in cahoots with President Trump on all of this. While President Trump was making jokes or perhaps half serious remarks about Canada becoming the 51st state in territorial contiguity and all the rest of it, While that was happening, Mark Carney was gaining in the polls.

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Right now, Mark Carney has called a snap election that is set to take place in about one month. In that snap election, he is now running dead even with the conservative party and gaining momentum. So he is perfectly happy to increase the trade war. He wants the trade war. Number one, he's fine with a bigger relationship with China.

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Number two, he hates President Trump and is perfectly fine with using his opposition to Trump to jack his poll ratings up in Canada. None of this is salutary for the United States.

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We'd be much better off with Pierre Poliev as the prime minister of Canada, a significantly friendlier government, a government that will be tougher on immigration, tougher on fentanyl, better on economics, better on social policy. Mark Carney is the happiest man in the world that this trade war is happening right now.

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Okay, so he is super excited about this. So the worst people in Canadian politics are really excited about this. That should be a bad sign. And meanwhile, again, right now, Americans are giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt, as they should. He's doing a lot of great things, which we'll get to in a moment, particularly with regard to Doge. However...

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This is having an impact on President Trump's approval ratings, particularly on the economy. And as I've said before, the way that people's relationship with politicians works in terms of public approval rating is sort of like a marriage. If the marriage is good, it's people doing little things for each other. It's people with a shared sense of values that carries out over time.

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If things go bad, typically there are a bunch of things that are small and that eat away at the back of your mind that are bad. And then suddenly the bottom goes out. And right now, if the bottom goes out on the economy, it will take the rest of President Trump's agenda with it.

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CNN's Harry Enten was analyzing the polls with regard to the economy, and they are not where they should be for President Trump.

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Every politician has to have their own group of people who follow them for their own personal reasons. And so this bizarre idea that everyone in politics seems to have on right and left, that you can take a very popular politician and then you can kind of smear that over the bread of the normie politicians or any other politicians and it will taste exactly the same. That is not the truth.

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over the last two months and change. Okay, so again, President Trump is still riding pretty high, but all of that is predicated on no serious economic downturn. And there's no reason for this because the rest of Trump's agenda is highly popular with the American people. So yesterday, there was a fantastic interview on Fox News between Brett Baier and the Doge team. It was really tremendous.

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And it's particularly tremendous because the left is absolutely bewildered by the fact that they've created all these obstacles to efficacy, both in the governmental sphere and in the private sphere. On that note, yesterday, Ezra Klein, who has a brand new book out called Abundance with Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. He went on Jon Stewart's show. Here is Jon Stewart with Ezra Klein.

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Ezra Klein explaining all the steps that you need to go through in order to achieve a grant or a contract under Build Back Better. This clip is cut down because this isn't remotely the actual full process.

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That is not how it works. The reason I'm warning about this is because this is why President Trump's administration must be successful. President Trump is doing very important work. He's doing important work on everything from getting rid of DEI to completely restructuring education in the country to changing how we do spending and waste, fraud, and abuse.

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I'm speechless. Why are you shocked? Why are you speechless? You built it. This is the thing you wanted. You wanted a government that was so large and intrusive and also ridden with bureaucratic corruption. This is what you wanted. Please name all of the steps you wish were removed from that process and who would be damaged from them. Please. Well, here's the thing.

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That's exactly what Elon's team is trying to do. They're trying to go through these regulatory structures, through these spending structures. You want to know why that's popular? The reason it's popular is because of all the things Ezra Klein just said. It's hilarious to watch some of these people discover conservatism in real time.

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Oh, you mean the giant bureaucratic snafu that you have created that spends $7 trillion a year is bad at things and takes too much money and time? That's unbelievable. By the way, this is the reason why Democrats are constantly attempting to declare wars on things.

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Because once they've declared a war on poverty or a war on housing shortages, then they can cut out all of the steps and simply ram down what they want to do, which is the thing they really wish they could do. But it turns out that in a democratic polity, there are a lot of people who have... They're, they're piece of the game and they want to know what's going on.

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So when we are talking here about the wild growth in government that apparently Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein are lamenting, let's be real about this. The left was responsible for this. I asked our friends at Perplexity, which of course is a sponsor of the show, how much of both the number and complexity of federal regulations increased from say 1950 to 2025. And here's Perplexity's answer.

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In 1950, the Code of Federal Regulations contained approximately 9,562 pages. By 2020, the Code of Federal Regulations had grown to 87,351 pages. That is almost a tenfold increase. The number of restrictive words, meaning words that restrict action, in the Code of Federal Regulations grew from about 400,000 in 1970 to over 1 million by the late 2010s.

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As far as complexity, in 1970, it would have taken just under a year for a person to read all the federal regulations, assuming that they read 250 words per minute, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. By 2016, it would have required three years, 177 days, and 10 hours to read through all the federal regulations.

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The total word count of the Code of Federal Regulations increased from 35.4 million words in 1970 to 104.6 million words in 2016. This means complexity, regulatory incomprehensibility, and all the sort of stuff that you're seeing Jon Stewart lament. But who do you think did it, guys? Obviously, Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, it's taken them a while to get with it. But here is the reality.

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On foreign policy, he's restoring a sense of American military power and deterrence. He's actually doing peace through strength. He's looking with fresh eyes at situations like the Middle East or the Far East. These are very important things that President Trump is doing. And that means no mistakes. No mistakes should be the byword inside the Trump administration. And the warning signs are there.

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Research has demonstrated Colostrum does more than just strengthen performance. It enhances your body's ability to absorb essential nutrients, supports the development of lean muscle mass, and improves endurance. At the same time, it works at cellular level to accelerate repair and regeneration, helping it bounce back faster after intense physical exertion.

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You don't have to take my word for it. Thousands of satisfied customers have left five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. No matter what stage of life you're in, Policy Genius helps you find the perfect coverage for your specific situation. Secure your families tomorrow, so have peace of mind today.

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Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description, get your free life insurance quotes, see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. In any case, this is why Doge is inherently popular. And I wish that the Doge team had done this interview with Brett Baer that they did last night a little bit earlier, but it was really good.

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Last night, as I mentioned, Doge team sat with Brett Baier. Tyler Hassan, who's a member of the Doge team, he was talking about the Interior Department and the fact that there was basically zero oversight of spending initiatives at the Interior Department during Biden.

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And here is Elon Musk explaining that the federal government has spent a billion dollars on a survey that would cost 10 grand on SurveyMonkey.

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Pretending they're not is simply whistling past the graveyard. I know that Republicans, listen, we're all very happy. And we want to tell ourselves that President Trump won an extraordinarily broad ranging victory in his race against Kamala Harris. The truth is that that election result was actually far closer than people would like to acknowledge.

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Musk was joined by the Airbnb co-founder, Joe Gebbia, who's working with Doge to digitize the government's antiquated retirement process. You remember that crazy story a few weeks ago where it turns out that the government retirement process is run from like a salt mine. It's run from a cave with like actual physical files that have to go up and down an elevator.

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Here was Joe Gebbia talking about modernizing that.

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Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems. Okay, now remember, these are the people you were told were going in with the chainsaw and it was a bunch of 18-year-old kids named Big Balls who are actually just willy-nilly chopping people out of the government. Is that what it sounds like to you? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And the reason I'm saying this is not as a rip on President Trump by any measure. It's because a narrow win means that a few votes shift and suddenly things are different. And that could happen. And pretending that it can't happen is a fool's errand.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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I mean, in the end, President Trump won 77.3 million votes and Kamala Harris, a horrendous candidate running on the back of a dead candidate, won 75 million votes. President Trump won 49.8% of the vote and Kamala Harris won 48.3% of the vote. That is a solid electoral victory. It is not by any stretch of the imagination, a giant blowout, which is why I'm saying Republicans need to be careful.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And you're starting to see some early indicators of the fact that a Democratic electorate could revive itself. One of those sort of warning signs came courtesy of this special election shocker in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County, which went for President Trump last year by 16 points. Democrats flipped a state Senate seat, this is in Pennsylvania, that the GOP had occupied for literally decades.

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Thank you.

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Democrats, of course, are suggesting that this is a reaction to President Trump. Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said tonight in Lancaster County, Pennsylvanians rejected a candidate who embraced the extremism and division coming out of D.C.

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The party's new national chair, Ken Martin, said Democrats will continue to overperform as voters join us in fighting back against the Trump-Musk agenda. Now, the reality is that in special election races, it's very hard to generalize from those races because they tend to have lower turnout.

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No, I mean, I think to start with that first point, it is not racist to suggest that a character who is described in the original as skin white as snow, that is literally how the character is described in the original. That's a character description in the same way that, as you mentioned in Moana, presumably the character is supposed to be Hawaiian in some way.

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And it would be bizarre to recast that in Mulan. If you cast a white lady like this is very weird that Mulan is white, considering that we are now in, you know, feudal China. This is this is sort of strange. And so this this bizarre fixation. with race shifting everything, but only in one direction by Disney, obviously is quite strange. That is the least of the concerns, though.

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I want to get to the sexual politics of it, because obviously this is a big thing for Rachel Zegler, the star of the film. It was a big thing for all the left wingers who made the movie. We have this clip that I want to play for you of Rachel Zegler talking about the love story in Snow White and how it has changed. There was Rachel Zegler talking about this.

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And so what you get is opposition turning out at a higher rate and the kind of home party turning out at a lower rate, believing that there's not going to be any sort of competitive election. But as The Wall Street Journal points out, Republicans might want to take the surprise loss in MAGA country as a warning. And that is not wrong. That is not wrong. That's also true because yesterday,

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Michael, your take.

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So obviously these changes were made deliberately. Rachel Lindsay, the host of some podcast or another, she was talking about this movie when it was first being made. She said it should never have been remade at all. They should have just dumped the story. The story is just, it's too dated. Here's Rachel Lindsay talking about this.

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Elise Stefanik, President Trump's excellent nominee for the UN ambassador post, her nomination was withdrawn by President Trump, not because he doesn't like Elise Stefanik, he thinks that she's terrific. The reason he is doing that is because the margin in the Congress of the United States is simply too narrow.

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I mean, that is such a, it's such an amazing point because the reality is that if you watch the original Snow White, it is a story between her and the dwarves about her actually civilizing the men. She comes in and she cleans the house, but there's a whole number about how they haven't taken a bath in like a year.

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And she's going to force them to go and bathe so that they can then come in the house and eat while she makes the dinner. And this, by the way, is a trope in Hollywood films that stretches for a few decades from the 30s to the 50s. where one of the ways that women affect men is by civilizing them, by requiring certain behavior of them. The movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers comes to mind here.

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But that is no longer something that we're allowed to talk about, which, of course, is ridiculous because men require civilization and women have to sacrifice. And so do men in order for there to be a relationship between women and men and for both of them to become better.

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But the idea in feminism is that there's nothing wrong with anyone the way that they are, except for men who are naturally pigs, obviously.

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President Trump had made a bunch of moves to take representatives from particular districts and put them in his cabinet. That includes the National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, that was going to include Elise Stefanik, There were three or four different Congress people who'd been pulled into the administration, leaving their districts open for an election.

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I mean, in the original, my grandmother saw the original in the theaters, obviously. And I remember she told us that when people watched it originally in 1937 in the theaters, it was an amazing experience because for most people, it was the first color movie. And so, first of all, there was the visual of it.

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But second of all, people had so connected emotionally with the character of Snow White that when she eats from the apple and she dies, people were literally weeping in the theater because they liked the character of Snow White so much. It seems like it's difficult to imagine a situation in which anyone was weeping in the theater an apple.

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Well, Michael Knowles, I appreciate you undertaking true sacrifice by going to the theater. It sounds like you were one of the only ones there, just like Rachel Zegler, as it turns out. And we part with this video of Rachel Zegler alone in a theater watching herself. One of the most unlikable humans.

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Michael Knowles, go enjoy your show. I'm sure I won't. I'll catch you in a little bit. See you later. Alrighty, coming up, there is a brand new book and it claims the Democrats actually had a plan to pull Joe Biden as early as 2023. We'll get to that plus the mailbag in a moment. Remember, you can only watch my responses to your questions and even ask those questions when you become a member.

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Join Daily Wire Plus right now. If you're not a member, now's the time. When you become a member and use code ShapiroCheka, you get two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And President Trump is basically signaling here that the House of Representatives is on a knife's edge and you can't pull good Congress people from their districts to serve in other aspects of the executive branch for fear that you might lose the district. Speaker Johnson put out a statement saying he would immediately invite Elise Stefanik to return to the leadership table immediately.

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Quote, it's well-known Republicans have a razor-thin House majority. Elise's agreement to withdraw her nomination will allow us to keep one of the toughest, most resolute members of our conference in place to help drive forward President Trump's America First policies. And again, this is being openly acknowledged.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, he said that Stefanik's withdrawal was just a result of the political realities they're grappling with in the House right now. Every vote counts. For this, you can thank some Congress people like Thomas Massey of Kentucky, whose reliable no vote on every contentious vote in the House of Representatives, meaning that the majority shrinks by one every single time.

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But you can also point out that there is concern in other districts that there really should not be concern about. So for example, Florida's sixth congressional district, which is Mike Waltz's old seat, that is now a special election seat. And it's really competitive. Democrats are pouring money into that particular race. That race is far too close.

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Right now, Randy Fine, it's Randy Fine who's running for that seat. Fine has been a state senator in Florida for a while. President Trump has phoned in teletown halls in a district that he won by 30 points. This should not be a competitive district. Democrats are pouring money in. Josh Weil, who is Fine's Democratic opponent, has raised $10 million for his campaign.

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One of the things that I'm always warning folks against in politics is the belief that anything that happens is eternal, that the change is eternal, that there will never be another loss in the future.

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Meanwhile, a super PAC tied to Elon is getting involved by spending 20 grand to support both Fine and a guy named Jimmy Petronas, who is the Florida chief financial officer. The seat, again, is vacant because Mike Walz is now the National Security Advisor. One poll from St. Pete Poll suggests the race is within the margin of error, despite the fact that Trump won that race by 30 points.

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Now, again, I expect that Republicans will hold the seat. I do not think that Republicans are going to lose that seat. The fact that it's even competitive signals that any sort of sort of overweening confidence that Republicans have is misguided. You got to act like every possession matters.

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You can't act like you're up 30 points when you're up two and there's a couple minutes left in the ballgame. You can't do that. This is the reason that I think that what President Trump is doing with tariffs right now could be a massive mistake. Now, again, I've said a thousand times, there are many good reasons to do tariffs.

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You can do tariffs because you want to protect a national security-laden industry. So there are certain parts that you need manufactured in the United States because in case of war, you don't want the supply chain broken, and then you can't manufacture the parts in the United States. So you need to have a subsidized domestic industry for those parts, for example.

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That's a good reason to have a protective tariff around a particular industry. You can use a tariff as a punishment for another country. The country is doing something you don't like, so you use tariffs as a form of economic sanctions against that country. That's another good reason. You can use tariffs as a way of leveraging down other tariffs.

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I'm old enough to remember in 2004, after George W. Bush won reelection and secured the Congress of the United States, that there were Republicans who thought that Republicans would never lose again. This was the initiation of a brand new era. And then, of course, by 2006, Democrats had taken the Congress, and by 2008, they had taken the presidency.

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This is something that William McKinley famously attempted to do. So President Trump likes to see himself in the mold of President William McKinley, of course, was president in the late 19th century. McKinley's tariffs were designed in order to get other places to lower their tariffs. He openly said so. So if that's the agenda, other countries have higher tariffs on us than we have on them.

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And so the idea is that we are going to increase our tariffs as a lever to force them to lower their tariffs. That's just a piece of leveraging. I'm hopeful that President Trump is doing that. However, it seems more and more like President Trump is not doing that, like he has an actual ideological predilection for tariffs.

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The reason I say that is because yesterday, President Trump announced 25% tariffs on all cars, quote, not made in the United States. This is a massive tariff. This is a very, very large and powerful tariff that President Trump is placing on the importation of automobiles.

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And that's going to affect American companies because an enormous number of American cars from American companies are actually finished in Mexico or Canada before they're shipped down into the United States. It's very difficult to tell what is even American made anymore. I remember when I was growing up, there's a big focus on buying Americans. My family always bought Ford, for example.

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And I remember over time, that taboo sort of went away. Why? Well, because it turns out that Honda was making like three quarters of its car in the United States. And meanwhile, companies like Ford were making a bunch of their car abroad. There are just too many parts in the car. So how do you determine whether it's an American car or a not American car?

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A bunch of a Toyota is made in Georgia, for example. Like this sort of stuff is quite real. But it's difficult to tell what parts of what car are actually made in America. And it's also difficult to do things like trust your internet service provider. There's good reason not to. Depending on where you live, internet service providers may be required to keep logs of your online activity.

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In the United States, it's even worse. ISPs can legally sell your browsing history. So what can you do about it? The solution is to get a VPN. The one I use is ExpressVPN. It's an app that reroutes my online traffic through encrypted servers, so my ISP can't access it. Neither can data brokers or other third parties. You also have to trust your VPN.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Any reliable VPN receives data requests from law enforcement and government entities. ExpressVPN received over 300 of these requests in the past year alone. None of them resulted in any customer data being exposed. You simply can't hand over what you don't have. ExpressVPN does not keep any customer activity logs, thanks to specially engineered servers that run on volatile memory.

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Nothing is ever saved to disk. It's private by design. I use ExpressVPN all the time on the road, whenever I'm in an airport, whenever I'm at a hotel. Public Wi-Fi means that my data could be exposed. I don't want it to do that, so ExpressVPN is my choice. It works on all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets. It's really easy to use. Tap one button and you're now connected.

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So if you want the VPN I trust to protect my online privacy, get ExpressVPN. In fact, you can get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free with my special link. Go to expressvpn.com slash Ben. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. Get four extra months for free. News breaks all the time. Having the flexibility to manage my time effectively is not a luxury.

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I'm also old enough to remember when the Democrats proclaimed in the aftermath of Barack Obama's 2012 victory that they would never lose again. They had a brand new coalition, an undefeatable coalition that would just continue to grow, and Republicans would be in the minority for literally ever. And within four years, Republicans had taken the presidency with Donald Trump.

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It's essential for delivering the news people need to hear, which is why I appreciate tools that let me handle business tasks on my own schedule, not somebody else's. Take Stamps.com. It's revolutionized how you and your business can handle all mailing and shipping needs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2168 - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Stamps.com's rate advisor takes all the guesswork out of the shipping costs. It automatically calculates the best shipping rates and shows you options you're not going to find anywhere else, including up to 88% off USPS and UPS services. All you need is a computer and printer. They'll even send you a free scale to get started. Have more flexibility in your life with Stamps.com. Sign up.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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At Stamps.com, use code Shapiro for a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and free digital scale. No long-term commitments, no contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, code Shapiro. That's Stamps.com, code Shapiro. So what are these tariffs designed to do? Well, President Trump announced this tariff yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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He said he would impose 25% tariffs on all cars not made in the United States. He said there would be absolutely no tariff for cars that are built in the United States. These tariffs are going to go into effect on April 2nd. He said we start collecting April 3rd. Trump White House aide Will Scharf said the new tariffs apply to foreign-made cars and light trucks.

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These come in addition to duties that are already in place. Scharf said that the tariffs will result in over $100 billion of new annual revenue to the United States. Now, let's be clear.

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When they say that these tariffs are going to result in new annual revenue to the United States government, they mean you are going to pay a higher price for your Hyundai and the government is going to take a piece of that. That's what they mean. Because it's not just the companies pay tariffs. They then increase their prices.

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President Trump said there will be very strong policing on which parts of a car are hit with tariffs. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen quickly criticized the new U.S. tariffs and vowed the EU will continue to seek negotiated solutions while safeguarding its own economic interests. Auto stocks fell in after-hours trading.

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By the way, this includes major American motor vehicle companies. On March 5th, President Trump gave three automakers, General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor, a one-month exemption from his 25% tariffs, but those could absolutely go away, and those will presumably go away. The only company that really is unaffected by this is apparently Tesla.

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which is manufactured almost wholly in the United States at this point. The two companies, in fact, that are assembled most in the United States are Rivian, which is an electric car company that makes vehicles that are, in my opinion, too expensive, and Tesla, which, again, is a great car company. But Tesla and Rivian represent a very small segment of the American car market.

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Most people who are buying a car in the United States are not buying a Rivian or buying a Tesla. For Ford, only 78% of Fords are assembled in the United States. So that means that 22% of all Ford vehicles are going to hit with a 25% tax. Honda, 64% are assembled in the United States.

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As I said, foreign-owned car companies are still very often assembled in the United States or parts are manufactured in the United States, which is why this is also confusing. Honda is 64% assembled in the United States. Stellantis is an American company, 57%. Subaru, 56%. Nissan, 53%. GM, an American car company, like a classic, 52%. Toyota, 48%. BMW, 48%. Mercedes, 43%. Mazda 19 Volvo.

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And so now, when I hear Republicans who seem triumphalist about the idea that Democrats can never win again, that Democrats will never take power again, that all the trends are against them. It's true, the trends are against Democrats right now, and that's a wonderful thing. That's a good thing.

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Volvo hardest hit. The problems with this are that when it comes to your price when you're buying a new vehicle, it is going to go up. Period. End of story. It will. That is what tariffs are designed to do. They are designed to make foreign imports more expensive. And that allows more room for domestic manufacturers to increase their own prices. About 45% of all U.S.

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sold vehicles are imported, with the largest percentage coming from Mexico and Canada. So what exactly is the purpose of this? Well, some of it is surely a payoff to some of the auto workers unions who supported President Trump. UAW President Sean Fain said he's ecstatic, I'm sure he is, because this is an artificial subsidy to his union.

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So this idea, by the way, that American car companies have suffered because of foreign competition, the real reason that American car companies have suffered, historically speaking, is because of extraordinarily overpaid union contracts. That is the actual reason. The UAW is the reason why American cars for decades were uncompetitive with foreign competitors. So there's a payoff to the UAW.

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Folks, we have a jam-packed show for you here today. Vivek Ramaswamy will be joining us later to talk about his Ohio gubernatorial run. We're going to do like a full breakdown of the Oscars. I made a full breakdown. I actually slogged through virtually all of the Best Picture nominees on your behalf. So we'll go through all of those and we'll get to everything related to Ukraine and Doge.

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So let's talk for a second about the sort of action that happened after that. So the binders are given to you guys. Some people walk out, they're sort of holding them up triumphantly, which again, I'm not sure it's an amazing optic, but that happens. And then the revelation comes out that the binders themselves don't contain much new information.

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And right after that, Pam Bondi then releases a letter publicly calling on Kash Patel to investigate SDNY for not releasing the documents. I mean, I guess my question is, why didn't you just release that letter in the first place? Why the whole sort of, rigmarole with the binders as opposed to just say publicly, we found out from an informant inside SDNY that things are being destroyed.

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Cash, go investigate it and go do this. I'm not sure what the point of the binders was.

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Well, Emily, really appreciate you coming on and clarifying what happened. Thanks so much for your time.

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Well, speaking of distractions that people don't need, Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan arrived in the United States yesterday. They, of course, are American citizens. They're dual citizens, or in the case of Andrew Tate, I believe he has seven citizenships. And he showed up in the United States.

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The reporting was the Trump administration had put significant pressure on the Romanian government to allow them out of their house arrest in Romania so they could come to the United States. As I said yesterday on the show, I don't know the legalities here. I don't know whether it is in the interest of Romania to do that.

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And so these sorts of shiny object distractions that don't materialize into anything, I think that they are a problem. And I think that, again, they lend credence to the opponents of the Trump administration, which I don't want to happen. Well, yesterday was kind of a bleep show, frankly, when it came to the Epstein file. Basically, it is now Friday.

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I don't know that it was American pressure that actually secured their release. All I can say is anyone who is celebrating their arrival in America has a screw loose because these are some of the worst people in the world. They are not good people by their own admission, just by their own stated comments. These are not people you would want to have anywhere near your wives, daughters, or families.

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unless you're an insane person. Well, President Trump was in fact asked about the arrival of the Tates and all of the talk about how the Trump administration had pressured for their release. And here was President Trump yesterday saying, no, I don't know anything about this and don't want any part of it. So good for President Trump.

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So, again, I think President Trump saying I have no interest in this particular topic is the right approach. And anybody in his administration who decided to make this top priority, I'm confused why that was a top priority at all. Unless you have evidence that they were being mistreated in some deep and abiding way by the Romanian justice system, as well as the British justice system.

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Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was asked about this. He said, well, no, I don't really want them here in Florida. We don't like alleged sex traffickers in the state of Florida.

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Again, this is a pretty large split that's now emerging inside the right wing of the party between people who really don't want anything to do with, you know, self-professed pornographers, self-described misogynists. People who are Muslim converts who proclaim that Islam should actually dominate the UK, who stand for Yahya Sinwar and Hamas.

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For some reason, there is a part of the party that seems warm toward this stuff simply because it's oppositional in some way to left-wing agenda items. Although, again, the solutions seem to foment, actually, a lot of left-wing agenda items, such as, for example, sexual promiscuity. And then there's part of the party which is like, nope, not interested in any part of this.

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And it seems as though President Trump actually is on the same page here as Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida. And obviously, you can hear Governor DeSantis saying, listen, we're going to look at the legal authorities. If there's prosecutions that need to be brought in the state of Florida, we will look at them.

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On Wednesday, Pam Bondi, the attorney general of the United States, had announced that she would be releasing some new Epstein files, that there would be new files showing names that we hadn't seen before, materials that we hadn't seen before. Here she was explaining.

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But as far as whether the state of Florida is excited to have them here, the answer is absolutely not. That is the proper response to this. Well, it's good to know that there are some good people in our government because there are also bad people in our government at the IRS. And they are after you. The IRS is going to ramp up its enforcement efforts in 2025 with April 15th approaching.

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Time is now running out. If you're facing back taxes or unfiled returns, delaying action only compounds the problem. Every day you wait makes your tax situation more difficult to resolve. Do not let another tax deadline pass you by. While taking immediate action is crucial, attempting to deal with the IRS alone could be a costly mistake.

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And this is where Tax Network USA's expertise becomes invaluable. What sets them apart? Well, unlike other tax resolution firms, Tax Network USA maintains privileged access to the IRS through their preferred direct channels. This means they know exactly which agents can resolve your case effectively.

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Whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million bucks, their team of attorneys and negotiators brings proven strategies to settle your tax issues favorably. With over $1 billion in tax debt already resolved, they have the experience and expertise to handle your situation. Talk with one of their strategists today. It's free. Stop the threatening letters. Stop looking over your shoulder.

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Protect yourselves from property seizures and bank levies. Do not let the IRS control your future. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro. April 15th is just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first. Also, victory is in the air. So is the scent of renewal. Behold, this is George Washington on a candle. Look, it smells great.

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Trump's first joint session of Congress since his historic reelection is almost here. America is again winning. Celebrate the triumphs of a new era from Doge's major cuts to protecting America's borders to major cabinet confirmations and more with a candle. the Smells Like Victory candle from the Candle Club. Again, it's the Washington. It's George Washington on a candle representing victory.

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If you love America, you need it. It's that simple. Capture the essence of America with a fresh invigorating scent, a burning reminder with strong leadership, our best days still lie ahead. I'm going to blow out this candle now. But do not let them blow out the candle on liberty. Don't wait. Right now, you can get 20% off when you order by Friday. Bask in the smell of victory.

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Order right now at thecandleclub.com slash ben. Once again, that's thecandleclub.com slash ben. That is the proper human response to this on the part of the right. Good for Trump. Good for DeSantis. Again, these are not distractions that are necessary in a time where actual heavy work has to get done. Speaking of which...

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Today, Vladimir Zelensky is heading to the White House to sign an agreement handing over rare mineral rights to the United States. President Trump is very excited to secure that deal. Yesterday, he hosted Keira Starmer, the left wing prime minister of the UK. And President Trump, again, he's great with people and he's very friendly with humans.

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And so here he was with Keira Starmer praising his accent, which is a pretty classic Trump right here.

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Keir Starmer's job was to sort of warm President Trump up to the idea that the United States would help to provide security guarantees in Ukraine. It turns out that the best way to warm President Trump up to security guarantees in Ukraine actually is to sign economic deals with President Trump.

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That seems to be one of President Trump's key levers, is that if you are willing to allow the United States to make money, then obviously we have more interest in helping to defend you, which seems perfectly rational. Keir Starmer? pushed the idea at this joint press conference that any peace in Ukraine has to be directed at being a lasting peace.

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You don't want something temporary, which would seem to be obvious.

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And again, by the way, Trump is sitting here nodding and President Trump then reiterates that idea. He's like, yeah, the whole point of a deal is that the deal holds. You don't want a deal where we sign an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, including the EU, and two weeks from now, Russia's invading again. That's not something anybody wants.

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Now, one of the things that was hilarious is that in this press conference, Trump was asked in front of Starmer about his comments last week that Zelensky was a dictator. I just want to point out here that all the people on the right who felt the necessity to go out of their way to defend those comments were making a rather large tactical error.

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Again, President Trump says many things off the cuff. I've said this for literally a decade about President Trump is that on his tombstone after 120 years, President Trump's tombstone is going to read 45th and 47th presidents of the United States. He said a lot of bleep. A lot of the stuff that President Trump says is meant for effect. Some of it is meant as bargaining position.

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Some of it you just blurts. So the entire Republican Party infrastructure shaped itself around him calling Vladimir Zelensky a dictator when Vladimir Zelensky is actually not a dictator. He's the elected leader of Ukraine. He can't hold another election in the middle of a massive war in which millions of your citizens are now living abroad.

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Hundreds of thousands of your young men are on the front lines and hundreds, thousands of more Ukrainians are living in Russian occupied areas in Donbass and Crimea. The Constitution does not actually allow it. That is a unified governmental position and non-governmental position in Ukraine, by the way. The opposition parties, who don't even like Zelensky, say he's not a dictator.

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And it was totally fine to say that even last week, even after Trump had said that he was a dictator. It was totally fine to say that's not actually true. It didn't undermine Trump, didn't undermine any peace efforts. And yet you saw an enormous number of people on the right who started kind of shaping their opinions to meet what was an off-the-cuff comment by President Trump.

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How do I know it was off-the-cuff? Because yesterday he said so. So in this press conference, he's asked, what about the told Zelensky's a dictator thing? And Trump's like, me? Was it really? Here we go.

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He's kind of like giving a little smirk there. He knows he said it, but he's like, you know, what are you going to do about it? So herein lies the point. For people who are in my position, you don't always just have to mirror the thing that President Trump is saying to understand what he is attempting to do. You don't have to buy into the idea.

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that Ukraine, quote unquote, started the war in order to suggest that the proper solution to the war is an off-ramp that everybody agrees has to happen, in which Russia basically maintains control of Donbass and Crimea, security guarantees are given to Ukraine, and economic redevelopment happens in Ukraine that the United States makes money off of.

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All of that is fine and dandy, and you don't have to repeat sillinesses that are untrue in order to achieve any of that. Well, yesterday during this Keir Starmer meeting, there was also a rather amusing moment where President Trump called on J.D. Vance to basically just shellac Keir Starmer over speech restrictions in the UK. And this is like, when you call J.D. on this stuff, it's like J.D.

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from the top rope. Here we go.

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Again, you can see how much J.D. is enjoying that sort of stuff and has been using the vice president in this way. He'll be in press conferences and be like, J.D., say something mean. And J.D. will be like, OK, man, it's go time. And then he'll just go for it. And I will say it is a pretty effective use of the vice president of the United States.

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Speaking of which, I'd be remiss if I did not comment on the vice president that we narrowly avoided. So Tim Walz is still out there being a giant inflatable at a used Carlotte weirdo with his strange hands and odd motions and all the rest of it. It is still amazing to me that Kamala Harris decided this of all the humans on earth had to be her VP pick. Just incredible.

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OK, so in that clip, she says there will be new Epstein information released by her office tomorrow. And she says it's on my desk. That's what the attorney general of the United States says. So everybody all day long is waiting for the release of this information, like literally all day long.

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So he was on a show yesterday and he suggested that the country has now been stolen by fascists and Nazis. Now this is someone who loves America.

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Okay, keep going with this. Seriously, that guy almost was vice president of the United States. He was like this close. America really dodged a bullet, not just literally as in President Trump dodged a bullet, but really dodged a bullet here in not having these clowns at the top of the American political hierarchy. Seriously. Amazing. Really, truly, good job, America.

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Good job, because we almost had that thing. We almost had it. All right, folks, coming up is a very stacked show today. Vivek Ramaswamy is going to be stopping by. He, of course, has announced his run for Ohio governor. Also, we are going to do our full review of the Oscars, which are happening on Sunday. I know you didn't watch the movies, but sadly for me, I did. But first, it all goes down.

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Tuesday night, 9 p.m. Eastern, President Trump addresses Congress, laying out his America First agenda on immigration, the economy, and national security. You already know we're going all in. Kick things off with Backstage Live, 8.30 p.m. Eastern time, where the entire crew breaks down what's at stake and sets the stage for President Trump's speech.

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But we begin today with... Basically what appeared to be some sort of Geraldo Rivera reveal of the Epstein files. Y'all remember that episode of Geraldo Rivera in which he tried to open Al Capone's vault and then he did and there was nothing inside? Well, it was basically that. And this has led to a bunch of speculation that secretly somewhere the Epstein files are still there.

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Then we watch the full speech together, live on Daily Wire Plus. No spin, no nonsense. And when Trump is done, we're just getting started. The gang is back for real on filtered analysis you're not going to get anywhere else. This is history in the making. Do not sit on the sidelines. Watch it all live Tuesday night, on Daily Wire Plus. Subscribe now at dailywire.com.

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Well, earlier today, I had the opportunity to sit down with Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, of course, friend of the show, ran for president last time around, was part of Doge briefly, and now he's declared his running for the Ohio governorship. We had a chance to sit down together. Here's what it sounded like.

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Joining me on the line is Vivek Ramaswamy, who has now declared his run for the governorship of Ohio. Vivek, welcome to the show. It's good to see you, Ben. So let's talk about why you decided to run for governor of Ohio. There's a lot of things you could have done. You decided that you want to remain in the sort of public service area and you want to run for governor of Ohio.

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Right now, you are prohibitively ahead of the rest of the field in the polling of the endorsement of President Trump, Elon Musk as well. What made you want to do this?

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And then sometime yesterday morning, pictures start being released of a bunch of social media influencers who are holding up binders that supposedly contain new Epstein information. And these social media influencers, many of these people are people with whom I'm friendly. People like Liz Wheeler, who's just great. I think Liz is terrific.

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So Vivek, the state of Ohio has been moving significantly to the right over the course of the last several election cycles. I'm old enough to remember when it was a bellwether state. Now it is a fairly solidly red state. What are some of the biggest problems that are facing the state of Ohio that you'd want to cure and focus in on as governor of the state?

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It was handed to Libs of TikTok and Jack Posobiec and a bunch of other people, right? It was a big binder. It said the Epstein files, phase one. And people were holding them up kind of like trophies, which, you know, frankly, I think is sort of a bad look.

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Vic, one thing that's distinguished you from a lot of other Republicans is your focus on economic dynamism, on innovation. That's a really important thing for the Republican Party. It's also a really important thing for the Midwest. There's sort of been this model that's been applied by really a lot of sort of blue governors in the Midwest that's regulate and subsidize, regulate and subsidize.

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When you are talking about the release of criminally oriented documents about the abuse of minors, I don't think it's an amazing look to walk out holding this up as though you just won an Olympic medal. But in any case, We then were like, okay, fine. It's an odd way to release it, but can we see what's in it?

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You heavily regulate and then you subsidize all of your political friends with taxpayer dollars. And somehow this is supposed to bring jobs back or spur particular friendly industries. And what you're talking about is something different, which is take the shackles off of American industry in places like Ohio, and you will get naturally an incredible level of growth.

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And then it turns out over the course of the day that the answer was there was basically nothing in it. The binder was filled with stuff that we already knew. And there's effectively nothing new in the binders. And this became clear pretty quickly, actually.

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That's Vivek Ramaswamy running for governor of Ohio. I'm sure that he is well positioned in this primary. Vivek, if people want to give to your campaign or help out, where should they go?

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That's Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, good luck in the race. I'm sure we'll check back in. Thank you, man. All righty, folks. So, of course, the Oscars are this weekend and we're going to go through the various categories. I'm going to handicap the Oscars for you. I have actually seen virtually all of the Best Picture films at this point. I know I suffer so that you don't have to.

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I'm be joined in this journey by producer Phil, who's sort of our in-house film expert. And actually, Phil is quite good at this. How many of these films have you actually seen that are nominated for Best Picture, Phil?

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Okay. So this is good because our crossover here is not super high. The only ones that I've actually not seen are A Complete Unknown. I haven't seen Conclave. I've read the book. So I figured I didn't need to see the movie. And I haven't seen I'm Still Here. All the others I've seen. So this should be a good crossover.

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I think the only one that neither of us have seen here is probably I'm Still Here. Yeah. So, okay. Between the two of us, I think we can do this. So...

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What's bizarre about this Oscars is how many nominations... First of all, Emilia Perez racked up. Emilia Perez racked up an enormous number of nominations, 13 nominations. The Brutalist racked up 10, and Wicked racked up 10.

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And Emilia Perez started off, this happens now almost every year at the Oscars, where Emilia Perez was the frontrunner, and then there was woke blowback, and then Emilia Perez was not the frontrunner. We've seen this so many times. We saw this with Green Room. We saw this with La La Land. This sort of stuff tends to happen a lot.

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What's bizarre about the anti-woke blowback on Emilia Perez is that it is the wokest, most horrible film ever, perhaps. And yet somehow there's an anti-woke blowback because the person who was nominated for Best Actress, a dude, had a bunch of bad old tweets that apparently mean the entire film now has to be thrown out entirely.

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Now, the film should have been thrown out entirely in the first place because it sucks, but that blowback has now led to a sort of race for who is going to replace him. Emilia Perez is the frontrunner. Right now, my understanding, Phil, is that the frontrunner is Enora. Is that right? Yes, it is.

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So Anna Paulina Luna, who's leading up a task force in Congress to review the Epstein documents, put out a tweet at 210 yesterday, quote, I nor the task force were given or reviewed the Epstein documents being released today. A New York Post story just revealed that the documents will simply be Epstein's phone book. This is not what we or the American people asked for.

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So I want to go through each of these, and we'll do some capsule reviews of these particular films. So Enora, as we say, is now the frontrunner. It's directed by Sean Baker. Sean Baker did The Florida Project, which actually I kind of liked. And also did Red Rocket, which I did not like, and Tangerine, which I did not like.

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And Sean Baker is kind of this auteur director who apparently has no capacity to write because Nora is truly an awful film, like truly a very, very bad film. The plot of the film is sex worker, meaning a prostitute, meets Russian oligarch's son. Russian oligarch's son really likes this girl that he is paying to have sex with him routinely while he plays video games.

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and marries her almost on a whim. And then Russian family is like, this isn't happening. Nothing happens for about an hour, and then they kind of chase him around town. He disappears. They chase him around town. Finally, they uncover him. She realizes, as she should have from the beginning, that he's a douchebag, and they give her a little bit of money to go away.

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She takes the money to go away, and she flirts with one of the henchmen who's been sent to separate them. I think that's a fair summation of the plot.

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That's Hysterical. First of all, again, it is amazing. These movies are terrible. I mean, this is a truly awful film. It offers no character development. I think my favorite part of the film is there's a scene where Anora, who's the prostitute, is being confronted by the henchmen of the Russian oligarch's parents, the Russian oligarch parents.

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And the henchmen call her a prostitute in front of her, and she can speak Russian. And she starts screaming at them. And all I could think of is, well, you are. I don't understand your objection. Literally, the whole movie is supposed to be an almost unapologetic look at sex work, meaning like girls love it. It's super fun. There's nothing wrong with it.

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It doesn't damage your soul or you in any serious way, even though, again, sort of the underlying thematic is that what she's actually looking for is to be a married woman. in a normal relationship. And then she can't have that because she is, you know, a prostitute. And so the film is in conflict with itself. On the one hand, it wants to glorify sex work.

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On the other hand, the thing that she actually is looking for is to not be a sex worker, but to actually be, you know, like a traditional housewife who is taken care of, which is kind of hilarious. And I think perhaps the most fascinating part about this film is that it's been characterized as a Cinderella story. The problem is

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You can't have a Cinderella story where Cinderella is utterly unsympathetic. Right. I mean, Cinderella in this particular film is, again, a sex worker who basically takes advantage of what appears to be a 70 IQ, 18 year old kid. in order to get to his money. And somehow this makes her a heroine of the story and a victim of the evils of a society that won't accept the sex workers.

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So that was my take. It's 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and then 90% from the audience. I don't know what the audience is thinking other than their OnlyFans login was lost or something. So The Brutalist has also been nominated for 10 Academy Awards. I have many, many thoughts on The Brutalist, actually. I will say it's at least interesting. There's some things that are going on.

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Get us the information we asked for instead of leaking old info to the press. Okay, so nothing new here. And so then the question became, well, what a bleep show. I mean, you said there was going to be sort of a big reveal. We're going to get some new information. By the way, this is the second time this has happened.

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I don't like the political take of the film. I think there is one move that is made near the end of the film. And again, spoiler alerts all over, guys. If we're going through the films, you're going to have to actually deal with it. The Brutalist is beautifully shot. It's really well-directed. The acting is across the board excellent. Guy Pearce particularly is terrific in this film.

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It makes no political sense at all. So the entire basis of The Brutalist, for those who haven't seen it, is a Holocaust refugee arrives in the United States. It turns out that he is a sort of master architect from the Bauhaus school, and he ends up doing the library for a very rich family. played by Guy Pearce. Guy Pearce originally doesn't appreciate it and yells at him and doesn't pay him.

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And then Adrian Brody's character, who is this Hungarian artist, eventually he finds the Hungarian artist, tracks him down and says, I realized what you did here is a masterpiece and I want to commission you to make a giant community center in honor of my mother. And so the whole movie is about the conflict between these two characters where Guy Pearce is trying to get this thing built.

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He's not, he respects the talent of the Hungarian, but he doesn't like the Hungarian, but he kind of loves the Hungarian. It's like this bizarre love-hate relationship that he has with the Adrian Brody character. And the whole kind of thematic of the film is America is xenophobic. There's sort of a weird, badly done Zionist plot in The Brutalist.

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The big problem is that, number one, the case for Zionism is not only that the Jews need a place to go because everybody is constantly persecuting the Jews, which is true. But the case for Zionism is also, I mean, just as a Zionist, the case for Zionism is that there is a biblical basis to it. The Judaism actually believes that there is a holy land promised by God to the Jewish people.

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That's never dealt with in the film. And so what you end up with is Israel as sort of repository of almost anti-American hatred, that basically what Israel is a place for people to run away from America. Now, if you're going to set it up that way, then what you have to do is basically show that Adrian Brody and his entire family are deeply mistreated by America.

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And so from the very outset, this is the director, Brady Corbett's job, is to show that America is not all that it's cracked up to be.

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We were told that the JFK files were going to be released and that was going to explode everything. And that never happened because guess what, guys? We kind of know all there is to know about the JFK assassination. It's been more than half a century. There have been many, many, many reports on it and lots of documents revealed.

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From literally the first shot in the film, which is this big shot where you see the Statue of Liberty coming upside down, and you see Adrian Brody scramble up to the surface of the ship that's taking him from Europe to the United States, and then the camera swivels upside down, and so you get the upside-down Statue of Liberty.

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You know right from the outset, this is going to be an America sucks movie. And by the end, you also have a cross upside down. So it turns out that America is rooted in Christianity and Christianity sucks, which is why Jews apparently are victims or something. The problem is,

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Adrian Brody is not a victim in this movie until about three quarters of the way through the movie, meaning that Guy Pearce treats him badly at first.

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And then there's a read on this movie where Guy Pearce is actually, for most of the movie, the hero of the film, meaning he is a very rich person who finds an impoverished European immigrant, recognizes his talent, pays him an enormous sum of money to make him a monument on a hill that serves no purpose other than the charitable and in honor of his mother.

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brings, like hires a Jewish lawyer to bring his family from Europe and get them out of a DP camp in Austria, have them live on his property, right? These are not the actions of like a typical movie villain. And so the entire movie is based around the idea that Guy Pearce is a villain, but then the first three quarters of the movie don't set that up. So what do they do?

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They add in a rape scene in which Guy Pearce literally rapes Adrian Brody's character. Now, by this point in the film, Guy Pearce is supposed to be probably 60 and Adrian Brody is supposed to be probably 50 in the film. At this point, and it's just it's absolutely bizarre, except that they had to do it because otherwise Guy Pearce can't be portrayed as the villain.

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And so they're making flesh the implication of the movie, which is that basically America rapes its immigrant population for its talents and then treats them badly so much so that they want to leave. The politics are really perverse and disgusting.

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It's a very well-directed film, but because the politics are so perverse and because, again, the vast majority of the plot does not support the conclusion, all of this feels very shoehorned in the last quarter of the movie is kind of my take on it.

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This kind of conspiratorial angle that the right seems to have fallen in love with, that unanswered questions must be answered in the most perverse possible way. And if the evidence isn't there, then we just keep saying that there is a lack of evidence and lack of evidence is actually proof of evidence. Again, I'm willing to follow this evidence wherever it leads.

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And again, I think that Brady Corbett had to do that. The question becomes, why did they even do that? And I think the reason he had to do that is because otherwise the setup is Adrian Brody's being really, really oversensitive here, right? He's like, okay, fine. So the guy doesn't like you. How many people like their boss? How many people like the people who pay?

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I mean, aside from obviously all of our employees, like Phil loves me, but aside from that, I mean, clearly, I mean, it's not that we pay him to say that. He actually does. But, you know, most people don't feel like that they have to love the person who is paying them to do a thing. And so the problem is that unless you set up that Adrian Brody is literally a physical victim.

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Then you cannot actually set up the rest of the sort of moral of the film, which is, again, made perfectly obvious in the last part of the film because they fast forward to 1980, and now there's a big tribute scene to Adrian Brody's character, and they explicate that when he created this bizarre monument on the top of a hill in Pennsylvania…

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that actually it was supposed to be taking elements from Dachau and Birkenau. So the idea was there's some sort of continuity between Nazism and American industrial capitalism, which is just, I'm sorry, sick and perverse in every way that is possible to be sick and perverse. And anybody who takes away from...

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from, you know, world history, that there is a similarity between people shoving you into a gas chamber and murdering you and your entire family, and people commissioning you to build a tower on a hill in Pennsylvania. I don't know how far you have to have your head up your ass to come to that conclusion, but apparently that's about as far as Brady Corbett has his head up his ass. Okay, Conclave.

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I read the book, and so I could not put myself through the movie. The book was interminable enough, and I say that as a fan of Robert Harris, the guy who who wrote the book. I've read a bunch of his books. So for those who missed it, I did like a little capsule review of Conclave, the book as well, before the movie even came out, telling you what it was going to be.

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And indeed it is that thing because the movie is the book. Basically, Pope dies, time to appoint a new Pope, College of Cardinals all get together, winner, spoiler alert, intersex person.

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Because it turns out that all the cardinals who find this out after the person is made pope, it turns out they all decide that it's important to violate all the vows they've ever taken in order to maintain the fiction that this person is actually just a genetic male as opposed to an intersex person who's actually female. So you have a lady pope. It's sort of the idea of this film.

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Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think like the reason and so this is the the Catholic Church is mean and too conservative and needs to liberalize movie.

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Yeah, well, I mean, that's true in the book. Also, there's like a brief kind of internal monologue that the main character is played by Ralph Fiennes in the movie does where the main character is like, well, you know, I could say something, but I really shouldn't say something. OK, I guess I won't say something.

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I want the answers the same as you. And unlike the JFK assassination, where, by the way, it was Lee Harvey Oswald, unlike the JFK assassination, where there's a plethora of video, forensic, and documentary evidence available, in the Epstein case, we really don't know what the hell happened. We still don't know any of the key questions. Who was running him if he was an op?

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And it's it which is really stupid because really the entire debate theoretically should be about that thing. Right. You should have a whole movie about them debating. We just appointed a poet. What do we do now? you know, there's like the legality. Can you, like, I don't know any of those procedures. Is that, is that revocable? How does it, how exactly does that work in this way?

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The, the sort of surprise ending conclave is very much like nickel boys. So nickel boys is a movie about a school. It's based on a, an actual real school in Florida, uh, that was a reform school in which apparently students were abused for decades, uh, Some of them were killed and apparently buried in a field and like bodies have actually been found.

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There have been reparations that have been paid to some of the families in the state of Florida over all of this. There's some controversy over whether this was just a generalized evil reform school that basically victimized all the people who went there or whether it was particularly racist.

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As one of the controversies over the Florida school, Nickel Boy's novelization by Colson Whitehead that turned into a movie. And the movie is fine, but it's not particularly revelatory. The kind of

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The reason I'm comparing it to Conclave is because the twist ending is that the character you think you've been watching the whole time who's kind of in the future in the late 1980s who's deciding whether or not to go and reveal what happened at the school, that character you think is one character the whole time, and it turns out it's another character.

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The character you think it is was actually killed earlier in the film, and this person took that person's name and lived out his life basically. That doesn't change anything fundamentally in the film. This is one of my problems with some twist endings in films. At least in Conclave, you can make the case that that actually has some impact.

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In Nickel Boys, it really wouldn't have mattered at all whether the switch ever took place. If one of the boys had been killed and the other boy had lived, that would have made no difference to the actual plot of the film. I think it's more of an explanation for why the kid didn't come forward because he was actually, you know, inhabiting somebody else's life. Maybe that's the explanation.

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But there's nothing particularly that changes what happened during the story that one character lived and the other died. You could easily have just left it alone. And I think the shock value of the Switch is supposed to be like the big revelation and just didn't do anything for me. As far as it being directed well, yeah, I mean, I think it's directed fine.

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I think it's interestingly directed, Nickel Boys, because it kind of takes various perspectives. It's done from first person. So you see the camera in the place of the person for one character, and then you see it switch, and you see the same scene from the character of the other person. And so, you know, it's kind of a cool directorial trick.

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But we've also seen that with things like, for example, 1917. So I don't think there was anything particularly new about that per se. It's fine. I don't think it's an amazing film by any stretch of the imagination. The substance. Okay, so I did not hate the substance as much as I thought I would hate the substance. I don't think it's... anything special. I think it's a body horror film.

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I think that it's being given all sorts of plot. It's just because Demi Moore gets naked. And the entire plot of The Substance is Demi Moore is an aging actress and she's fired from her job by close-ups of Dennis Quaid eating shrimp. And then at a certain point, She is she's given notice, but she gets in a car crash at the hospital.

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What exactly he was doing? Who are the people on the island? What kind of tapes he had? All those are unanswered. So I understand why there is so much dyspepsia over the Epstein case. But if you're going to do a reveal, that means you better have some goods, right? Something better come out. And it didn't come out yesterday. And I think people are right to be angry about it.

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Somebody gives her notice of a thing called the substance that allows her basically to separate into two beings. One of them is a young version of Demi Moore, like a young, hot Margaret Qualley version of Demi Moore. And one is older Demi Moore. And they have to switch off week to week. So the basic idea is that her soul or brain, whatever she is.

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inhabits one body and then inhabits the other body week to week. And then, of course, there starts to be tension because she wants to stay in the younger body. But then every time she goes back to the older body, her older body is more depleted because the younger body has essentially been drawing life force from that.

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The end of it is, of course, as with most horror films, you know, some sort of sick horror explosion involving lots of blood. The movie kind of peters out around an hour 15 and then for 45 minutes just kind of hovers there. Nothing really happens between an hour 15 and kind of two hours. This movie at an hour and a half would have been a nice little horror flick at two hours.

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It's really, really overlong.

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Yeah, Vanity Fair is high on their own supply. And that was, of course, by a person I believe named Emily St. John or something who is a trans person. St. James, yeah. St. James. Emily St. John is the novelist. Emily St. James is a trans person who believes that every movie is about him. And The Substance is absolutely not a trans allegory.

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It is about women aging in Hollywood and how they feel a lack of self because they are aging and because everybody is mean to them because they're older. which is clearly not true of Demi Moore, who's getting more work now than she's had in 20 years, by the way.

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The thing that works in Late Night with the Devil doesn't work for me here in the substance, just thematically, is that the very basis of the substance is that fulfillment is to be found in sort of youth and beauty for women. And so when she goes back to being Margaret Qualley, and now she's young, instead of utilizing her youth and beauty to actually do productive and interesting things,

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She basically Fs around. I mean, that's essentially what she does as a young woman, right? She parties and she has sex. The idea that like what a woman wants most out of life, the fulfilling thing that is going to cause her to want to relive her life is to essentially, you know, act like a teenager is really, really stupid. And so I don't think the movie flows in that way.

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And you know what would have been useful actually is if she'd gone back and said, I want to relive my life. You know what actually worked? If she'd gone back and said, I want to relive my life as a young woman. I want to get married and have kids.

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That would have actually created some real dramatic tension because then you would have had sympathy for the idea that she wants to stay a young woman and not be an old woman again. She has to relive her life because she made some bad choices, but it's none of that because, of course, Hollywood could never possibly think that a young woman would want to get married and have kids.

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That sounds like a Daily Wire plus original. It does. It does. So we're scripting it in real time. And finally, there's Wicked. If you want to see my review of that, then you can. Obviously, that did a lot of traffic because I liked Wicked. So of these pictures, the best picture, the only one that people are going to be watching 10 years from now is June Part 2. The rest of these—

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

370.136

I think that it is bizarre to release it to social media influencers as opposed to releasing it to many journalists. I'm not talking about journalists on the left. I'm talking about journalists on the right. I mean, the Washington Free Beacon has a bunch of excellent investigative journalists. We at The Daily Wire have investigative journalists.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

3700.977

The rest of these kind of suck. Wicked is fine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Yes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

3708.943

I think, given the momentum, I think Enora will probably win. I think there's too much controversy with the others. And somehow, the movie about prostitution and sex work with enormous amounts of pornography is the least controversial nominee on this list. But it just shows you where Hollywood is, right? Enora is the America is evil because it doesn't like sex work.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

3725.616

The Brutalist is America's xenophobic. A Complete Unknown has just walked the line. Conclave is the Catholic Church is transphobic. Amelia Perez is society is transphobic. Nickel Boys is America is racist. The Substance is America is sexist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

3747.747

I mean, I think all three are bad. And again, I'm speaking out of turn here because I haven't seen Conclave. I've only read the book. But my assumption is that the most interesting of those three is The Brutalist, which is at least attempting to do something thematically and at least is well-directed and well-acted. Well, folks, there is your rundown on everything Oscars related.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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I know it's a bit lengthy, but there are a lot of films there. And we'll give you, I'm sure, our full review of the Oscars themselves on Monday. Alrighty, coming up, there's a new patriotic documentary that is coming out called Brothers After War, all about what happens to American soldiers after war. We're going to talk with the director of that film.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Speaking of which, you actually should come subscribe at Daily Wire Plus because we have tons of amazing stuff that is happening. We've got... All of our movies, obviously. The Matt Walsh stuff. Am I racist? What is a woman? We've got All Access Live, which we did yesterday, in which I answered your questions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

3794.897

We also have episodes of The Search with people like Elon Musk and Megyn Kelly and Vivek. If you're not a member, you need to become a member today. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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We have like people who we hire, who we pay to actually go through documents at a legal granular level to do this sort of stuff. Or you could just release all of it online and have us all peruse it. I mean, that would be the best way to do this is so that we could all see it. The kind of release strategy was weird. And then when it turned out there was nothing in it, then the repercussions began.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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And that actually the lack of justification for more material being out there is demonstrated by the lack of material. This sort of stuff is annoying. I want all the Epstein files out there. Every single bit of it. All of it. As much unredacted as humanly possible. The only parts, theoretically, that should be redacted are things to protect the victims.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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So the repercussions began with a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi to Kash Patel over at the FBI. And now Pambandi is claiming that Kash Patel is essentially having the wool pulled over his eyes by underlings who may be getting rid of documents. Again, I'd love to see the evidence of this. If that's true, that's a criminal offense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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I mean, destroying relevant criminal documents would be a criminal offense and people should go to jail for it. So if we're going to make those sorts of allegations, you shouldn't just throw them out there. Short a letter saying, quote, Dear Director Patel, before you came into office, I requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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In response to this request, I received approximately 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein's list of contacts, and a list of victims' names and phone numbers. I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI we'd received the full set of documents.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Late yesterday, I learned from a source the FBI field office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files. When you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn this new information.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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So this is her saying, someone, someone out there in FBI land is covering things up. It's not your fault, Cash. It's not my fault, AG Pambondi. It is the fault of these unspecified members of the New York office of the FBI who are destroying documents or hiding things, which again, Criminal offense. People should go to jail if that is true.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Quote, This is her kind of blaming Kash Patel, but letting him off the hook. Okay, so first of all, her issuing that letter publicly... is a way of shifting blame. I mean, there are a couple ways of reading it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

528.746

One, this is totally true, that actually there's somebody in the FBI offices who is scurrilously hiding away thousands of pages of documents that we have never seen and shredding them in the back room. Okay, again, if that's the case, that should not just be a matter of the records show up at the offices of the DOJ.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

543.614

That should be a matter of people who are doing that thing should not only be fired, but prosecuted. Okay, so that's a very serious allegation. Or the other way you can read this is, this is pretty humiliating, that Pam Bondi thought that she had new stuff. Nobody in her office bothered to check whether it was new stuff.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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They released it to a bunch of social media influencers in order to get clicks. And then it turned out there was nothing in the files. Okay, those are the possibilities. So Liz Wheeler, who again, is excellent. Love Liz as a human being. She put out a statement, quote, President Trump and AG Pambani committed to releasing the Epstein files. The FBI was told to deliver the files to Bondi.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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They did, about 200 pages. Bondi smelled a rat because there was nothing juicy in the 200 pages, just flight logs and Rolodex and phone numbers, no smoking gun. Still, Bondi promised to release the documents, so she prepared a binder of them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

58.612

Certainly nothing to protect the allegations against perpetrators. I want to know exactly who Jeffrey Epstein was, who was opping him, because the question of how he made his money is a serious question, and why he was basically allowed by law enforcement to gallivant around performing atrocities against young women on behalf of powerful men.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

589.69

Then last night, a whistleblower contacted Bondi and revealed the SDNY was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files to find Bondi's order to give them all to her. We're talking recordings, evidence, et cetera, the juicy stuff names. These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Cash, and you. Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be because the evil deep state lied to your face.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

606.32

The binder is powerful because it's tangible physical evidence of the disgusting stunt the SDNY tried to pull. Okay, the binder is not powerful. The binder is empty. It is. And if Pam Bondi wanted to say this, she could have just said this without the reveal of the binder. Again, this looks like a low-level bureaucratic screw-up, and now people who are backfilling the story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

621.737

I'm just going to give you the honest story. That's what it appears to be. I wish I didn't have to say that. But again, the American people deserve answers to these questions, not either obfuscation or silliness. And if it turns out, by the way, that there are no thousands of pages of documents... And then they're not revealed because they don't exist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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And this, of course, is only going to feed the fire of, well, you know, absence of evidence is actually evidence, right? If it's not there, it must be because it once was there and we never got it. You want to feed conspiracy theorists? This is the way to do it. Again, I want full release of everything forthwith. And the Trump administration is in charge, both the FBI and now the AG's office.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

660.47

So there are no excuses left. Either reveal it all or say it has already been revealed or prosecute the people who actually got rid of the documents. Those are your three choices. There are no other choices. Don't blame everybody else. Like do the thing. Give us the stuff. And if the stuff ain't there, tell us that the stuff ain't there and tell us why the stuff ain't there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Well, listen, we deserve to see the Epstein documents obviously, obviously. And we also deserve our freedom. Because this country was founded on freedom. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. How'd that work out for you, Great Britain?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

695.402

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

712.694

Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

730.978

Visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. And, you know, I take my calls pretty seriously. So if I trust Pure Talk, you should as well. Go check them out right now. PureTalk.com slash Shapiro for that special deal. That's PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

745.166

Also, with two entire months of the new year already behind us, man, that moved fast, I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with the busy work schedule. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on pure conservative willpower and caffeine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

757.634

I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies. That's why I'm so thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. That sounds miserable, time-consuming.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

770.339

With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

78.396

with his girlfriend, Paramore, and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and all the rest of this. But that did not happen yesterday. And I got to say, I think that these distractions are really not great for the Trump administration. They're really not. The Trump administration has very serious work. I keep saying this because it's important.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

781.247

You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body, you know, uses them for all the best stuff. And it's kosher, which means I can use it when I pop it into the protein smoothie every day so that I look ripped and jacked the way nature intended. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

796.786

Plus, get that free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com. Promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and that free bottle of fiber and spice. So again, why am I upset about this? I'm upset about this because number one, we deserve answers to the Epstein questions. The whole case is insane and ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

818.707

And the fact that we don't have answers at this point in time is just disgusting. Two. I'm annoyed because if the Trump administration is going to make a big deal out of this sort of stuff, you have to be professional about how you do it. These are serious issues. And by the way, this also applies to the House Judiciary Committee. And again, I love the people on the House Judiciary Committee.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

835.672

I'm friends with many of them. You don't do what you did yesterday. Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee put out a link and they said, this is the link to the new FBI files. And then it was a Rick roll. I'm sorry, it's not a joke. The mass rape of underage girls and sex trafficking of underage girls to prominent men. That is not a subject for jocularity. Take it seriously.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

856.706

I mean this across the board. Seriousness of purpose is going to mean seriousness of result. And if it's unserious, then all you're going to end up doing is distracting people with shiny objects over here, not getting the job you need to get done over here with the other hand. And that's just not what you're looking for here. It's not what you're looking for.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

875.497

The level of distraction has to come down. It does because there are serious things to be done. Trump has appointed an amazing cabinet. His cabinet is filled with stars. he's got a big agenda, things to do, a short time to do them. These sorts of distractions, either put up or shut up. We're now joined on the line by journalist and TV host, Emily Austin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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She left the White House yesterday with, again, that binder of the Epstein files. I want to get the inside story on how that went down. Emily, thanks so much for joining the show. So why don't you tell us what happened yesterday? Obviously, a lot of controversy online about the release of the Epstein binders, which didn't really contain much that was new, apparently.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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Why don't you tell us what actually went down at the White House?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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I want the Trump administration to be highly successful, and there are important things to do. We need to rebuild the American economy and unleash its dynamism. We need to get our debt under control. We need to cleanse DEI from all aspects of the federal government. We need to reshape America's foreign policy around rising threats like China. There's tons to do and not a lot of time to do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

982.05

I mean, one of the things that is kind of sort of bizarre about the whole situation is it sounds like there was not an actual plan to simply handle the social media influencers, these binders, but the binders were there and then they were handed to you guys. It sounds like it was kind of sprung on a lot of the social media influencers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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You had no intention of going there and being the kind of source of revelations about the Epstein documents when you went there.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

Just a few weeks ago, my quasi-friend, Matt Walsh, had a whole list of movies he said were overrated. And, frankly, he's wrong on nearly all of them. He made a video about how wrong he was on many of those picks. I mean, he said, like, The Dark Knight was overrated. It's just ridiculous.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

130.099

And they are all under the thumb of the evil military industrial complex character, Michael Shannon, who is apparently impotent and has also got rotting fingers to symbolize his impotence. Again, predicated on the basic idea that conservatives are evil and everybody who sides against the conservatives in a circle of the marginalized is good. And also the lady should fish.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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That's it. Smaller, invisible, disfranchised characters. Yeah. that come together to save the ultimate other.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

156.549

I cannot express my hatred for this movie in strong enough terms. It's just awful. It has a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating from the critics and a 73% Rotten Tomatoes rating from audiences. Everyone who thinks this movie is good, y'all stupid. You stupid. Hey, other massively overrated films. Avatar. The Avatar program is a bad joke.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

17.615

It's great by Batman movie standards, but it's not great as a piece of cinema.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

173.849

Which was, at the time, the single highest grossing movie in film history. Look at all that cheddar. Audience score 82% from Rotten Tomatoes, 81% critics score. Avatar is beautiful to look at and absolutely vacuous. It's one of these movies where everyone saw it and no one remembered. It is Alien Fern Gully. It's dances with wolves with blue aliens.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

192.959

It's the Kevin Costner character who takes the side of the natives against the evil, rapacious capitalists who are searching for, I kid you not, this is in the script, Unobtainium. Unobtainium. I remember being signally offended by the fact that James Cameron thinks you are so stupid, apparently y'all are, that he could call a substance unobtainium. Unobtainium. Because, you get it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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Now we're going to make a real list as to overrated films. So here's my standard for overrated. And Matt's standard makes no sense. Matt's standard for overrated is like a movie is like an eight out of 10, but people think it's a 10 out of 10. That's stupid. That's a bad standard. As I said in my video about Matt's dumb video.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

212.11

It's not obtainable. It's rare. It's unobtainium. Unobtainium. And apparently... Apparently... The U.S. military is some sort of rapacious blood-for-oil force on foreign planets.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

225.704

Somehow you've been able to cross galaxies, but the only way you can obtain the unobtainium is to tear down trees. I'd say diplomacy has failed. I don't understand why the military couldn't have just developed unobtainium fracking. Just drill sideways, my dude. It's not that hard. Trees!

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

240.27

I remember watching this with my wife in the theater, and we both burst out laughing at the end when the Sam Worthington character, who is now back in his normal body, is being cradled by the giant blue lady. And I was like, this is a very weird coupling. I see you. Don't look at me! More James Cameron on this list. Titanic.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

255.282

James Cameron. Great with visuals, bad with plot. The best James Cameron film, by the way, by far, a truly great film, is Terminator 2. Terminator 2 is by far the best James Cameron film. There are no close competitors. But Titanic is a truly not good film.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

269.284

It revolves around two of the most shallow, narcissistic, and ridiculous characters in the history of American film, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

286.243

They're just sort of pastiches. They're just pasteboard characters who are stuck on the Titanic. Like, if you actually want to make an interesting movie about the Titanic, you'd focus on some of the actual people who are on the Titanic without the kind of fake romance story.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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For example, there are people who legitimately let their spouses leave the Titanic and survive and instead decided to die in order so that they could save lives. Like, there's actual heroism on the Titanic. And of course, this is not ripping on the visuals. Visuals are amazing. But the two biggest failures of a Titanic all happen in the last few minutes of the film.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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One, move over on the f***ing door, lady.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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I know there have been full-scale physics studies that people have attempted to do as to whether it could have carried both their weight. I mean, at least give it a shot. Ah! And if it doesn't work, climb back on. What's the problem? So he ends up dying. And then the single worst moment in any movie ever.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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So my mom, when she first watched Titanic, she literally picked up an object and threw it at the end of Titanic because the old stupid lady takes a priceless diamond and instead of bequeathing it to her heirs, you know, like the people who took care of her in her dotage, she throws it in the water. That makes no sense. She's a crazy, selfish old lady. And she was a crazy, selfish young lady.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

349.531

We'll get back to this in just one second. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans, taxes. That October 15th deadline has now passed. Are you prepared for what's coming next? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

362.455

Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement and the IRS does not play around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. There is good news. There's still hope. Tax Network USA has been in the game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burdens. So don't let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network USA.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

39.109

And the actual standard for overrated is people think it's a 10 and it's a zero. It's the delta between what people think a movie is and what the movie actually is. I'm going to measure it by not only the critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, but also the audience score. Everyone has to be wrong in order for this thing to be truly overrated.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

391.074

Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. So here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

409.65

Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. Again, that's Tax Network USA. Give them a call 1-800-958-1000. Other overrated films. The English Patient.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

418.917

You can't kill me. I died years ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

424.557

It won nine Academy Awards in 1997, including Best Picture. And gotta tell you, it sucks. It's just terrible. The English patient is nine million hours long. I'm still here just to suffer. It revolves around characters who are entirely annoying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

439.345

A French-Canadian, World War II, Royal Canadian Army medical... I have to remind myself of the plot because I just remember wanting to go comatose while watching this film. It is about this nurse who decides to settle in a bombed-out monastery with her patient... And then it's this very, very long and non-plot filled story and euthanasia. So that's great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

457.058

I honestly don't remember that much about this film. I just remember hating it, like dramatically hating it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

463.559

That year, what was up for Best Picture? The English patient, Fargo. A far better film. Jerry Maguire. A far better film. Sling Blade was made that year. Great fried potatoes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

472.626

What should have won, obviously, was a film that received no nominations, basically, which was the adaptation of Hamlet by Kenneth Branagh, which is legitimately an amazing adaptation and maybe one of the great pieces of filmmaking ever made.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

485.875

So the Academy went nay on The Hamlet, yay on The English Patient, which no one has seen since. Other radically overrated films. Get Out from Jordan Peele in 2017. 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, 86% audience score. Unlike some of these other movies, I don't think Get Out's like a zero. Shape of Water's a zero. Avatar is like a three. Titanic is like a three. The English Patient, zero.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

510.953

Get Out is like a four. The metaphor is so obvious and also so obnoxious.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

520.478

I understand that people love the social satire, the commentary of Get Out, that black people and white people can never get along. Periskin has been in favor for the past, what, couple of hundreds of years. And that white people secretly want to turn black people into white people and take them to the sunken place. Now you're in the sunken place. I find that so insulting and ugly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

538.996

I also just don't think it works very well in terms of a film. It's a horror film, but it was made out to be much more than a horror film. So again, I think this one's like a four out of 10. So it's better than these other films for sure. But the amount of just massive, massive approval that was poured on Get Out as a piece of social commentary, I think is really dumb.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

54.696

Let us begin with the single most overrated film of all time, bar none, no question, The Shape of Water. If I told you about her, what would I say? She's a super freak, super freak! This came out in 2017 and it won Best Picture, and it's just sh**. It's the worst movie ever made. I'm not even joking about that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

554.3

And I understand there were some conservatives who were fine with it because it was really making fun of left-wingers. Left-wing white people who are like, I voted for Obama, therefore I can't be a racist.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

567.409

I get it. I get the joke. But don't believe that Jordan Peele thinks that you, as a conservative white person, are any different. He thinks you're way worse than those people. Other movies that are on my list. And again, I have like an almost endless list of overrated films because I've seen so many films. So many. Black Swan. 85% critic approval rating, 84% audience rating.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

588.509

I get that there are some people who want to freeze frame some of the scenes between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman, but let's get real about this. The movie sucks. The movie's just about a lady having a mental breakdown and then she commits suicide. Boom, done. What did you do?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

602.383

What? And it's pretentious, and it's obnoxious, and it doesn't give you enough of a backstory for the ballerina for you to actually care about her. It's not even a good study of sort of perfectionism in art, which is, I think, what it's supposed to be. But that's because Darren Aronofsky is trash. Darren Aronofsky is the worst director of my lifetime. I hate Darren Aronofsky.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

616.949

I hate him with a passion of a thousand fiery suns. Terrible director. Awful in every possible way. Pretentious. Try mother. Incoherent. Try pie. Nonsensical. Arrogant. Ugly. Try Noah. The whale. Okay, I understand it got a lot of acclaim because Brendan Fraser is fat and gay, but, like, can we get over it? The Fountain makes no sense. Requiem for a Dream. Overrated.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

637.076

I know there's some people who like The Wrestler. You're wrong. It's bad.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

644.178

Yes, I've seen a lot of bad Darren Aronofsky films. Okay, in my overrated films list.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

650.759

Barbie from Greta Gerwig. Of course, of course, of course.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

659.69

And if you want like a full hour-long take on why Barbie is a piece of sh**, go check out my YouTube video on it. 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, 83% from the audience. It makes no sense plot-wise.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

668.212

The minute that Barbie disappears from the scene, the men, who are supposedly subservient and terrible at everything, it turns out all the women like them when they're powerful and paternalistic and they take over society in literally one second flat.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

683.596

Hey dudes, maybe we should be dudes. Hey, you know what? We like dudes. Honestly, the only thing anyone remembers is that Ryan Gosling is hilarious in the film.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

698.115

Like, it's the only thing. Five years from now, ten years from now, nobody's going to be like, God, you remember Margot Robbie? It's all Ryan Gosling, right? What did she say? Okay, other overrated films. I mean, all of these are sort of heresy, but this one's really heresy. Fornication and heresy. I think Avengers Endgame is wildly overrated.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

715.848

94% Rotten Tomatoes, 90% from the audience. The villain is not well-drawn in Avengers Endgame.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

722.873

I am inevitable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

727.571

Listen, I appreciate the ambition of bringing together 20 movies or whatever it was. At the same time, it's so overstuffed and it's so tired and it's so long and the stakes are so low. And you know, if Disney Marvel get in trouble, they're just going to resurrect some of these characters. If they find themselves in a box canyon, which I think they will, Robert Downey Jr.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

743.617

will just come back as Iron Man. They'll just find a way to clone him or go to a different universe and get him. I'm gonna need you to come with me. This is part of the problem with all of these movies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

754.362

Other major disappointments. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

758.544

This movie had 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, 79% from the audience. It is repetitive. It is annoying. It is stupid. It is repetitive. After the first 15 minutes, which is charming, it is repetitive. It's just a repetitive music video. It's like watching MTV in 2007. I understand that some people are into the visuals, but it's so ADD. It's just ADD filmmaking all the way through.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

77.25

I'm not even a Guillermo del Toro hater. There are other Guillermo del Toro movies that I kind of like. For example, I can appreciate Pan's Labyrinth and Nightmare Alley. I was okay with that, but I'm just telling you, The Shape of Water, it's got a horrible script. Oh, you didn't like that, huh?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

793.335

The underlying ethos of the film is ridiculous, which is that all pain can be traced to you being mean to your lesbian daughter or something. The pain of having you as my mother. Can we get over it? And I'm sorry, but like people walking around with hot dog fingers is not my idea of a great movie. Okay, other overrated films on my list. Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

814.445

Hey, try to solve the murder mystery if you can. 91% from the critics, 92% from the audience. Y'all dumb.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

822.592

That movie is a cheat. The movie's a cheat. As I mentioned at the time, I understand. I don't understand. Okay, this take is perfectly good. I don't want to toot my own horn, but it's pretty next level. If you're going to do a mystery movie, you have to give the audience enough clues that they could solve the mystery. That's how a mystery movie works.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

839.069

That way, when at the end of the movie you do the big reveal, you go, oh man, I should have thought of that all along. Now, the first knives out there actually did give enough clues that you could theoretically have figured it out given the fact pattern presented by the film. A donut hole in a donut's hole. In Glass Onion, Rian Johnson, who just sucks. I hate Rian Johnson. The Last Jedi.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

858.237

Ryan Johnson literally introduces a character halfway through the film that didn't exist for the first half of the film. My twin sister committed suicide.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

869.759

You could watch the first half of the film and it's made completely irrelevant by the introduction of the twin character halfway through. And that's the laziest twist ever. Twins is like a lazy, lazy. It's not even a good twin twist like you would have in, for example, The Prestige, where again, All the clues are there, right? All the clues are in the prestige.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

884.284

They show you all the way through that there are two separate Christian Bales. You see his hands. You see him acting in two different ways. You have other characters saying, you don't seem like this other person.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

897.838

So bad. Ugh. Ugh.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

902.438

It's insulting. It's insulting. And the fact that it was treated as a clever mystery is an insult to the intellect. You want to make fun of these people and throw poop at them. Okay, finally, cult classic Napoleon Dynamite.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

916.885

Rotten Tomatoes, 72%. Audience score, 74%. I hate this film. I hate it. I wish you'd get out of my life and shut up. It's stupid. It's annoying. It's not funny. There are no jokes worth laughing at.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

92.218

The performances are universally terrible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

937.472

It's the kind of film I feel like Matt Walsh would like. Again, I can do an almost endless list of movies, I think, that are wildly overrated. But I think that that's plenty. And so now, I wish to issue my challenge to Matt Walsh. That's an actual great list of overrated films. It's way better than your sh**ty list. So I want to hear your takes on why I'm wrong.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

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And actually, some of these films are great.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro’s Most OVERRATED Films

99.102

Except for my friend, Nick Searcy. Our universe will have a hole in it with your outline. and you will have moved on. It makes no sense. It's politically ridiculous. The entire movie is about a woman a fish. It's just a collection of idiotic cliches. It's a deaf woman who can't get along with the rest of humanity, so she a fish, and among her friends are a gay guy,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

Well, folks, we'll get to all the news plus the second part of my interview with President Zelensky in just one moment. First, a big question that I've been getting since we released the trailer for that interview with President Zelensky is why actually go to a nation in the middle of a war? And the answer is simple, because getting the facts matters. The truth matters.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

103.143

and not even getting great security guarantees from the United States or from Europe in the process. That is the proposal that was put on the table by supposed master negotiator Steve Vutkoff, who has yet to actually negotiate a successful deal in any real sense. Well, President Trump was asked about what exactly is Vladimir Putin putting on the table. Here's President Trump's response.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1259.066

The point that you're making, you mentioned here, and I think it's very important, the coalition that's forming around Russia with regard to Ukraine. You've seen Iranian drones in the field in eastern Ukraine. You've seen Chinese soldiers on the field. You've seen North Koreans on the field. The coalition is drawing together via this war.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1275.413

And so when you talk about the formation of an anti-American coalition, that anti-American coalition is coming together in the field. Maybe you can talk about that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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I was always surprised

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

137.429

President Trump then went on to suggest that the big concession from Moscow is that they're not trying to conquer the rest of Ukraine, which is currently untrue. They are trying to conquer the rest of Ukraine. Also, that's not a concession. That's because the Ukrainians are fighting them. That's because over 50,000 Ukrainians have died fighting against the Russians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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We have an information that

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And you, our Daily Wire members, deserve the truth. You deserve answers. This is the kind of journalism your support makes possible. This is the community that actually fights for your values. Join us right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Well, a couple of days ago, right after we left Ukraine, the Russians launched one of the biggest salvos of the war all across Ukraine, drones, missiles.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

154.819

It is not that Vladimir Putin decided to be a nice guy and not try to take Kyiv or Lviv. It is that Vladimir Putin has been stopped in his tracks by the Ukrainian military. Yes, with American financial support, material aid from Europe, as well as the United States. Why does all of this matter?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And Ukraine...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Well, you know, President Trump is a savvy negotiator. I believe that he will, in the end, get to a solution that is peace through strength based. And if not, then the war will just continue because without peace through strength, there is no answer. It's true. President Zelensky, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1656.53

First, FBI data shows most break-ins happen during daylight, not at night. As summer days get longer and you're out more, your empty home becomes an easier target. SimplySafe's proactive security stops threats before they happen, protecting your home while you enjoy those sunny days.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1669.961

Millions of Americans trust SimplySafe as their new standard in home security, giving them peace of mind whenever they arm the system. Unlike traditional systems that only react after somebody's already broken in, SimpliSafe's ActiveGuard outdoor protection prevents break-ins before they happen in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1682.869

Their AI-powered cameras with live monitoring agents detect suspicious activity, speak directly to potential intruders, activate spotlights, and can even call police, all before anyone gets inside your home. SimpliSafe also boasts battery backup to ensure your home is still protected even during power outages. I'm on the road right now, but...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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I am having a SimpliSafe system set up at the studio to make sure that even when we're gone, we're still protected. Plus, there's no long-term contracts or cancellation fees. Monitoring starts at just a buck a day. Everything comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. Visit simplisafe.com slash Shapiro to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan. Get your first month for free.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

171.726

Well, it matters because if the United States were to simply withdraw from all of this, which is the threat, the threat right now that the Trump administration is putting forward is the threat that they will walk away from the negotiation table and also possibly cut all aid to Ukraine, including everything up to and including intelligence sharing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1717.864

That's simplisafe.com slash Shapiro. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Also, tax day may have passed already, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just beginning. If you miss that April 15th deadline or you still owe back taxes, the IRS is ramping up enforcement. Every day you wait, it only makes things worse.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Well, with over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years. Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast. The good news, there's still time for Tax Network USA to help. Self-employed? Business owner? Even if your books are a mess, they've got it covered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track fast. Even after the deadline, it's not too late to regain control. Your consultation is completely free. Acting now could stop penalties, threatening letters, and surprise levies before they escalate. Call 1-800- Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1769.561

You may have missed April 15th, but you haven't run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help before the IRS makes its next move. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. So some of my big takeaways from the interview with President Zelensky. Did I get all of my questions answered in the way that I wanted?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1787.546

I mean, I can't say that all the questions were answered to my full satisfaction. I don't know where every dollar is going in Ukraine. I don't know that all my questions were answered with regard to, say, electoral problems in Ukraine or corruption problems in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1801.641

When it comes to the United States and our allies, one of the sort of great failures of American foreign policy over the course of the last 80 years, since the end of World War II, is this bizarre idea in the United States that if our allies are imperfect, somehow it makes sense to abandon them. This is what we did in Vietnam.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1818.953

Our allies were imperfect, so we abandoned them, and then the Viet Cong took over. The same thing happened in Afghanistan. Our allies were seriously imperfect. And when I say imperfect, I mean there were a lot of terrible people involved in the Northern Alliance and then in the government in Afghanistan. Tremendous corruption.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1834.822

And also, it turns out that the people on the other side were significantly worse. And so in determining what's happening in Russia, Ukraine, and what should happen next... The question is less whether Ukraine is perfect. It certainly is not. And the question is much more, what exactly does Russia want? What is in America's interest?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And I can tell you this, what is not in America's interest is a growing, more powerful Russia. Because in determining how to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war that originally broke out in 2014 with the Russian takeover of Donbass and Crimea,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

186.992

If that happens, the possibility becomes very strong that Vladimir Putin does, in fact, succeed in his invasion of Ukraine and take the rest of Ukraine. The Europeans are ramping up their spend. The problem is, on a material war-making level, a lot of the weaponry that the Ukrainians are using is American-made, requires American parts.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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and then was reignited by the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, it's not enough to try to figure out what the quote-unquote rational middle ground looks like. That feels like what the Trump administration is trying to do. Find a solution. Well, I mean, you can find a solution, but unless you have a way to actually implement the solution, any solution that you propose is meaningless.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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No matter how hard you try, you cannot impose this solution from the outside in the way that the United States would if, for example, we had boots on the ground. And we don't want to have boots on the ground. And that means somehow you have to get the Russians to the table. Both sides need to be at the table. The Ukrainians are at the table. The Russians are not at the table.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1901.739

Now, we are not the dominant force in the region, nor do we want to be. However... The Ukrainians being at the table means that it's now time for the Russians to come to the table. So how do you get them to the table? Vladimir Zelensky, as he talked about in this interview, he's already agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire. The Russians have not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1919.485

He's already agreed to a rare earth minerals deal with the United States that is heavily, heavily slanted toward the United States. We already know what the Ukrainians want. They want the Russians to stop the war. The Ukrainians did not, in fact, start this war. They did not cross a Russian border. They want security guarantees.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1937.27

more durable security guarantees than the ones they gave in 1994 to give up their nuclear weapons. The Ukrainians want security guarantees that are material realities, not just promises. Again, the Ukrainians have already figured out that European and American promises tend to fade over time.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1953.831

They gave up their own nuclear weapons for a promise that the US and UK would respect Ukrainian territorial sovereignty, and it didn't work out for them very well. The Ukrainians want the freedom to pursue a closer relationship with the EU and NATO. Again, that makes sense because, again, the Russians continue to press, so the Ukrainians want to press back the other way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1972.386

What Vladimir Zelensky basically wants here is what happened at the end of the Korean War. An armistice. In 1953, South Korea and North Korea, the two sides, they drew a demilitarized zone. They agreed to cessation of hostilities and repatriation of POWs. And then the war ended. Now, officially, the war is still happening.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

1988.36

But in practice, the war ended because North Korea understands that if it walks over the South Korean border, it will be obliterated. Partially, by the way, because American troops are stationed on that border. Now, the Ukrainians are not asking for American troops stationed on their border. They want security guarantees. They want probably some European force. We know what the Ukrainians want.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2006.646

We know what they want. They're ready for an armistice today. They're at the table. The real question in all of this, the question that people do not want to ask because they don't like the answer, is what exactly do the Russians want? What would get the Russians to the table? Well, here's the thing. We actually know what the Russians want.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2021.67

According to a speech that Vladimir Putin made last June, he wants one – No NATO membership for Ukraine. Ever. Two, Ukrainian recognition of Crimea and Donbass as Russian territory. Three, Ukraine's demilitarization and what he calls denazification. What he really means is he wants the installation of a puppet regime in Kyiv. And four, the lifting of all anti-Russia sanctions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And so it takes a while to shift over from that sort of weaponry to European-made, European parts. And so that delay could actually cost the Ukrainians the entirety of the war. As you know, I actually traveled into Ukraine a couple of days ago, and I sat down with President Vladimir Zelensky to discuss all of this. We played the first part of our interview yesterday on the show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2043.868

I mean, that is just called surrender. Now, Ukraine can't surrender her entire government and autonomy and live at the whim of Vladimir Putin, who has killed literally tens of thousands of Ukrainians in an aggressive war and kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children into Russia. So again, I ask, what would get Russia to the table?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2061.313

Now, Steve Witkoff, this supposedly magical negotiator that President Trump has deployed to Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, seems to think that either Ukraine is the problem or that Russia can be wheedled into dropping its core demands. that if you tweet hard enough at them, suddenly Vladimir Putin becomes friendly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2076.507

Now, he and the administration are threatening to walk away from negotiations if the two sides don't come together. This misses the entire point. Russia would love for that to happen. They want the war to continue because what Russia is saying... is they want negotiation. And that's code. They don't actually want negotiation. They want a continuation.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2095.672

What they want is to either take giant chunks out of Ukraine until they eat the whole thing over time, or they want the war to continue until the West gives way. Why? Because Ukraine is extraordinarily key to Russia's entire vision of itself as an empire. And that empire is geared in absolutely irremediable fashion against the United States of America.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2115.939

You see, Vladimir Putin sees the West as irredeemably decadent, directed at containing the aspirations of the Russian people. So in November 2024, he gave a speech at the Validai Club in Moscow. And there he said, quote, The peril lies in the imposition of totalitarian ideologies and making them the norm, as exemplified by the current state of Western liberalism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2134.919

This modern Western liberalism, in my view, has degenerated into extreme intolerance and aggression towards any alternative or sovereign and independent thought. Russia's role is certainly not limited to protecting and preserving itself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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It may sound a bit grand, but Russia's very existence guarantees that the world will retain its wide color gamut diversity and complexity, which is the key to successful development. That's a direct quote from Putin. Now, That sounds pretty hypocritical coming from Putin, talking about the tyranny of Western liberalism and his desire for a thousand flowers to bloom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2162.551

He's one of the most repressive dictators on planet Earth. He's a man who has launched aggressive war against multiple neighbors and supports terrorist regimes across the globe. And Putin's take on Ukraine in the same speech sounds like the absolute photo negative of reality. Here's what he said in that speech. Again, this is just last year.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Quote, today they have been using Ukraine and its people as a tool by cynically pitching them against Russians and turning them into cannon fodder, all while perorating about a European choice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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We are committed to creating conditions for a long-term resolution so that Ukraine can ultimately become an independent sovereign state, not a tool in the hands of third countries that is used for their interests. He's accusing the West of using Ukraine as a tool against Russia. But it's Putin who has repeatedly invaded Ukraine, not the West. He wishes Ukraine to be a permanent tool in his hands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2205.664

This all sounds like fantasy. It doesn't make a lot of sense on its face. What he's saying, however, does make a sort of perverse sense if you understand its philosophical underpinning. To understand what exactly Putin is saying, you actually have to examine the work of the man known as Vladimir Putin's brain, this guy named Alexander Dugin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2221.467

I spent a fair bit of time reading Dugin's work because you can't actually understand your geopolitical enemies until you study them. And there's no question that Dugin is an enemy of the United States. He openly says as much. Dugin got his start as the co-founder of the National Bolshevik Party. This is a party that started in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

223.533

Here's the second part of our interview with Vladimir Zelensky. So there have been a couple of different arguments that have been made by Vladimir Putin that have now been picked up by some people in the United States about the nature of Ukraine. Obviously, Putin has suggested that Ukraine is a Nazi regime, that there ought to be denazification.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2238.414

It was essentially a fascist party calling for a restored Russian empire and centralized economics. The flag of the party was literally a mashup of the Soviet flag and the Nazi flag. While Dugin was working with the NBP in 1997, he wrote a seminal book called Foundations of Geopolitics. That book was then apparently used as a textbook at the Russian General Staff Academy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2256.405

So Dugin's theory is essentially this. He says the world is split between what he terms teleurocracy, which is land power, and thalassocracy, which is maritime power. Teleurocracies are characterized, quote, at the civilizational level by collectivism and hierarchy. Thalassocracies are characterized by nomadism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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He says, quote, the individual as the most mobile part of the collective is elevated to the highest value, while ethical and legal norms become diluted relative in mobile. In short, teleurocracy, land power, Russia, as we'll see, is about faith, land, and the collective. Thalassocracy is about secularism, globalism, the individual. This is all Dugin's theory.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2295.515

These powers correspond to the power of what he calls Eurasia, centered around Russia, and Atlanticist power centered around America. According to Dugin, the Atlanticist power, predominantly the United States in the aftermath of World War II, has sought to expand its hegemony in the quote-unquote rimlands.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

2310.764

The rimlands are the areas that surround Russia so as to create a new mondialist new world order. Now, we should pause here for a moment to point out that this is nonsense. America is not, in fact, some sort of secular leftist entity on the world stage. America has very much been characterized throughout its history by both religious belief and meritocracy, which is a form of earned hierarchy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Furthermore, it was American hegemony in the aftermath of World War II that prevented the collapse of the Western world into the absolute secular barbarity of Soviet communism. The Soviets were secularists. But for Dugin to explain why America has to be confronted, he has to strawman America and completely rewrite global history.

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America must instead now become the evil imperialist power hell-bent on global domination. American hegemony must be treated as some sort of effort by left-minded globalists to flatten religion and export left-wing social values.

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In order to rewrite history, then, Dugin has to unspool a theory containing references to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. It's a theory that would make Alex Jones blush.

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Meanwhile, Russia, a spiritual being, not a country, that's what he calls it, is what he calls the axis of history because, quote, only Russia can speak on behalf of heartland with full geopolitical foundation. Russia acts as a sort of spiritual force in the world, according to Alexander Dugin, Vladimir Putin's brain. Quote, the Russian people, i.e.

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Russia, are endowed with a particular type of religiosity and culture, which differs sharply from the Catholic Protestant West. By the way, we should make a note there. Many of the people who are religious in the Catholic Protestant West seem to believe they have common cause with the Russians. Dugin is saying no.

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He is saying that Russia differs sharply from the Catholic Protestant West and from the post-Christian civilization that has developed there. Russia's cultural and geopolitical antithesis should be taken to be the West as a whole and not just one of its constituent countries.

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Quote, it is not a question of an infinite expansion of the Russian living space, but the establishment of a special Russian type of worldview, which is accentuated eschatologically and claims to be the last word in earthly history. This is the supreme supremacy of the nation as a God-bearing people.

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Consequently, theoretically, there is no people, culture, or territory on the planet whose fate and path would be indifferent to the Russian consciousness. This manifests itself in the unshakable belief of Russians in the final triumph of truth, spirit, and justice, not only within the Russian state, but everywhere.

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To deprive the Russians of this eschatological faith is tantamount to their spiritual scoping. Okay, now if that sounds crazily messianic, that's because it is. What does this mean? In practical terms, it means, according to Dugin, Russia is an empire with global aspirations, and it must be an empire.

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Simultaneously, he has suggested that Ukraine is a wild hotbed of social leftism, very big on transgenderism, same-sex marriage, abortion. How do you respond to those two varying accusations about Ukraine itself?

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As Dugin states, quote, Russia is the geographical axis of history, which simply cannot fail to fulfill its geopolitical destiny, regardless of external and transitory factors.

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He says the Russian people are so connected with geopolitical reality that space itself, its experience, its awareness, its spiritual perception have shaped the psychology of the people, becoming one of the most important definitions of its identity, of its essence. Unlike Rome, the first Rome, Moscow and Russia have in their imperial impulse a deep teleological eschatological meaning.

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Eschatological means like the end of times. The status of regional power, according to Dugin, denies Russia its aspirations. It's not enough to say, Russia, you know what? You can exist in your own sphere of power and that's it. According to Dugin, that's not enough. That would be, quote unquote, tantamount to suicide for the Russian nation.

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If we were to relegate Russia to the status of regional power, that would reverse, quote, the vector of Russian history. Russia as a regional power would represent a repudiation of that deep impulse of the nation, which lies at the heart of its highest and deepest identity. The loss of imperial scale for Russians means the end and failure of their participation in civilization.

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the defeat of their spiritual and cultural system of values, the fall of their universalist and messianic aspirations, the devaluation and debunking of the entire national ideology that animated many generations of the Russian people and gave strength and energy for exploits, creation, struggle, and overcoming adversity. Again, according to Dugin, if Russia is not an empire, it's nothing.

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And what is the big Russian enemy? You know what it is. Atlanticism. So what exactly should Russia be doing? Well, they should be engaging in, quote, the rejection of U.S. strategic control and the rejection of the supremacy of economic market liberal values. Instead, Dugin calls for the building of a new empire, an anti-American coalition.

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That anti-American coalition is directed against America, which he calls, quote, unquote, the common enemy America, the common enemy in his terminology, will be the glue that holds together the Russian-led world. And this is the Russian mission, according to Dugin. Again, Dugin is the philosopher who most reflects Putin. Quote, Eurasia is predestined to be geographically and strategically united.

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Eurasia, by the way, is all of Europe and all of Asia. This, he says, is a strictly scientific geopolitical fact. He says, Russia must inevitably be at the center of such unification. The driving force of unification must inevitably be the Russian people. What exactly are the borders? All of Europe. He calls for the eventual Finlandization of all of Europe.

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Finland, of course, was a titularly neutral power during the Cold War that was not neutral at all. It was effectively run by the Soviets. The main scapegoat, he says it over and over, of the planetary new empire will be the United States.

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Quote, the undermining of whose power up to the complete destruction of this geopolitical structure will be carried out systematically and uncompromisingly by all participants in the new empire. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful with it as you are.

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You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with LifeLock, you can help protect it. Producer Jess, she uses LifeLock. She's emphasized the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their experts are always monitoring her information to ensure that it's not being hacked. Act right now. Save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK. Use promo code Ben.

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So what exactly does Russia require in order to do this, in order to fulfill its messianic mission? Well, first off, Dugin argues the destruction of NATO. He argues that NATO represents the Atlanticist mission, meaning the American mission, in platonic form. NATO needs to be broken. He says Moscow's task is to wrest Europe away from U.S.-NATO control.

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At the very least, Russia has to retain military parity with NATO. Meanwhile, the United States itself should be undermined from within. Again, Dugin is arguing this in 1997, using means ranging from sectarian and racial conflict to support for domestic isolationism.

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Quote, the West, as America, is Russia's total geopolitical adversary, the pole of the direct opposite trend to Eurasia, the headquarters and center of Atlanticism. It is necessary to counteract US Atlanticist geopolitics at all levels and in all regions of the world, trying to weaken, demoralize, deceive, and ultimately defeat the enemy as much as possible.

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It is especially important to bring geopolitical turmoil into the US domestic reality by encouraging all kinds of separatism, various ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements of extremist, racist, and sectarian groups that destabilize internal political processes in the United States.

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At the same time, it makes sense to support isolationist tendencies in U.S. politics, the theses of those often right-wing Republican circles that believe the U.S. should confine itself to its domestic problems. This state of affairs, and I'm quoting Dugan here, is highly advantageous to Russia, even if isolationism is carried out within the original Monroe Doctrine wording, i.e. if the U.S.

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limits its influences to Americas. This does not mean Eurasia should give up on destabilizing the Latin American world by seeking to remove certain regions from U.S. control. all levels of geopolitical pressure on the U.S. must be engaged simultaneously. And as Alexander Dugan writing in 1997, Putin's brain, hey, does some of that sound like things that are happening right now?

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Does some of it sound like it? Then there's the question of territory. So Dugin posits that Russia should use economic power, political power, and when necessary, military power to achieve the restoration of its heartland empire, an empire that's supposed to stretch all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

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Because according to Dugin, the Soviet empire, which was in effect a manifestation of Russian spiritual ambitions, was rooted in landlocked status and that locked them in and boxed them in. Dugan says friendly puppet states in European countries would do the job well. Quote, in the West, Russia should have maritime borders.

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This is a strategic imperative for the geopolitical development of Eurasia. It was the absence of such borders and the presence, instead of them, of a landline crossing Europe in the middle, artificially and forcibly, that ultimately led to the geopolitical loss of the USSR.

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By the way, worth noting here, this is why when Vladimir Putin has said that the destruction of the USSR was a geopolitical catastrophe, he does not mean that he's a communist. He means that the Soviet Union was simply the latest, greatest manifestation of Russian imperial ambitions. And the failure of the USSR was a failure of territorial holding.

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Well, now we can see the importance of Ukraine in the Russian scheme. Ukraine as an independent entity represents a complete rejection of Alexander Dugin and Vladimir Putin's entire theory, from Russian identity to the messianic dream to the geopolitical desire for control of the Rimlands, Ukraine being a Rimland. Dugin argues, remember, this is all the way back in 1997.

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This is almost three decades ago. Quote, Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical sense. It has no special cultural heritage, no geographical uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness. The historical meaning of Ukraine is reflected in its very name, Ukraine, i.e. outskirts, border territories.

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Ukraine, according to Dugin, has been relegated to the status of a protective cordon against Russia and ought to be abolished. Quote, for this reason, the independent existence of Ukraine, especially within its current borders, can only make sense as a cordon sanitaire, as opposing elements in geopolitical orientation will not allow the country to fully join either the eastern or western bloc.

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All this dooms Ukraine to a puppet existence and geopolitical service to the thalasocratic strategy in Europe. The existence of Ukraine in its current borders and with current status of a sovereign state is tantamount to a monstrous blow to Russia's geopolitical security, tantamount to an invasion of its territory. The continued existence of a unitary Ukraine is unacceptable.

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Now, that sounds exactly like Vladimir Putin last year. Exactly like it, right? Ukraine is a threat by the very virtue of existing. Ukraine, says Vladimir Putin, has been weaponized by the West against Russia. They were saying this back in 1997, long before Euromaidan. At the time, 1997, Russia had no capacity to simply retake Ukraine.

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And so at the time, Dugin recommended that Ukraine essentially be eaten piecemeal, which is exactly what Russia has done. He said that the East should be turned into a puppet regime. That's what happened in the Donbass. Crimea should be placed under direct strategic control from Moscow. That's what's happened. Central Ukraine, he was hoping, would gradually be turned into a puppet regime.

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The West would essentially be incorporated into Alexander Dugin's fantasy German-led unified pro-Russian Europe. This is one of his theories, is that eventually Europe would unify under a sort of Russia-friendly Germany, thus extending Russia's strategic frontier, according to him, at least to the Western extremity of Central Europe, and at best, across the Atlantic.

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Now, Dugin wrote all of this 30 years ago, and now we understand just what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine. He's attempting to reconstitute Russian empire, to restore the Russian soul through its messianic mission, to break NATO. When Putin said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of his lifetime, again, he did not mean communism had to rule.

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He meant Russian ambitions have always been imperial, territorial, that the regionalization of Russia is a fundamental assault on the Russian identity itself. So now you can see the actual Russian goal. You either have to subjugate or fully incorporate Ukraine. The only way Russia will ever accept a deal will be if it leaves open every possibility of re-invading and then completing its plans.

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This is not a border dispute. This is not a border dispute. It is a dispute over whether Ukraine should exist. Ukraine wishes to exist. Putin wishes for it not to exist. Now, by the way, Alexander Dugan makes that absolutely clear. Like today, he's still alive and he's still writing.

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In a new book released just this month entitled The Trump Revolution, Dugan makes the case that President Trump's election represents a surprise realization of his goals. At first, he suggests that perhaps Trumpism being in opposition to leftist social politics of blue America could coexist.

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with a Russian dream, quote, objectively, Trump could become the catalyst for a multipolar world order in which the US would still play an important role, but not a dominant one. In this new world, America will be great again, not as a globalist hegemon, but as a sovereign nation state. which is still a reduction of America's role in the world, but at least sounds passable.

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But then the mask slips. It turns out Dugan is not celebrating the end of USAID transgender propaganda or the rise of a heartland American empire, but the end of American power per se, because America, according to Dugan, is evil. Quote, We say that Russia is governed by God because its very existence defies explanation. But America too has a mystery.

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How can a nation with such foundations, such people, and such mental disorders become the world's leading superpower? This suggests someone far more serious and invisible is in control. And it does not appear to be God. Okay, so who do you think he's talking about there? He's essentially accusing America of being satanic.

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Not only is America evil, the only path forward for Russia is multipolarity, meaning that America retreats from the world and Russia takes more power. And Dugan hopes that President Trump will usher that in. Quote, paradoxically, the new post-liberal world order that Trump is building is leading objectively to multipolarity.

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So do you think he's an adequate person? Seems like a nice rabbi to me. I've met many rabbis.

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By declaring his ambition to make America a great power, Trump has inadvertently opened the door for others to do the same. All of that begins with the destruction of Ukraine, a state that Dugin calls, quote, an aggressive anti-Russia artificially created on our borders and within our united Russian world intended to prevent the formation of a multipolar world, unquote.

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Ukraine, says Dugin, is the cataclysmic ultimate conflict. Quote, we must win the war in Ukraine, liberate the entire territory of this former country from the Nazi regime, regardless of Trump's victory or anything else. This imperative remains unchanged. Just as the ancient Roman consul Cato the Elder used to say, quote, Carthage must be destroyed. In our case, Kiev must be taken.

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So Dugin's strategy and Putin's strategy is simple. Don't stop the war. According to Dugin, Trump is going to cave. Quote, hypothetically, Trump might present Moscow with a harsh ultimatum, demanding we immediately halt the special military operation. That's the Russian term for the attack on Ukraine.

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However, this is highly unlikely because as a realist and a pragmatist, he fully understands Putin will not comply. And what would happen then? Trump promised to stop the war, but he'd failed to do so. Therefore, it would be better to set aside such promises, at least until our victory is secured, according to Dugin. After Ukraine, the Russian ambitions don't end.

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They will utilize the strategies Alexander Dugin has laid forth to threaten other rimlands, ranging from the Baltics to the Middle East. They will ally themselves with enemies of the United States everywhere. In Foundations of Geopolitics, Alexander Dugin makes special reference to alliance with Iran. In his new book, he speaks highly of a coalitional relationship with China.

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Russia, in short, is not a regional power simply reacting to the supposed aggression of the Atlanticists. a la Jeffrey Sachs or John Mearsheimer, that is mere excuse making. Russia under Vladimir Putin is an ambitious regime that sees itself as a civilizational power with a messianic mission cleverly planned and steadfastly pursued.

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In this battle, once again, Dugin counts, he said this in 97, on the help of the very isolationists, he said that Russia should foster in that book foundations of geopolitics. Among the people that he name checks in his new book are Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, his ideological allies. And Tucker is Dugan's ally here. I mean, there's just no question about this.

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Tucker literally had on Dugan last year on his show and praised him and then refused to ask him a single question about Russia or Russian ambitions because that might burst the viewer's bubble.

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So I've asked you no questions about Russia or Russian politics, and I'm not going to, because I think it's so interesting to see your perspective on countries that you don't live in, because we do gain insight, I think, from the view of outsiders.

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So what does all this mean for the current Ukraine negotiations? Well, it means that America cannot trust Russian promises, especially absent security guarantees. Security guarantees are a must. Acknowledgement of territorial gain by the Ukrainians does literally nothing to guarantee the safety of the rest of Ukraine.

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The best that can be hoped for in this deal is an armistice that hardens into a permanent cold peace. And that requires a different strategy than yelling at Vladimir Zelensky or Vladimir Putin. It is not a strategy of carrots to Vladimir Putin. Carrots are not going to satisfy his appetite. It's a strategy of carrots combined with intransigence, total intransigence, a Cold War strategy.

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America stood down the Russians for half a century at far greater expenditure and cost than what we've spent in Ukraine. That doesn't mean the United States should shoulder the main burden of what's happening. Europe should, obviously. And it certainly doesn't mean U.S. boots on the ground. That's unnecessary, and the Ukrainians aren't asking for it.

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But in an era of rising power in China, rising aggressiveness in Russia, rising nuclearization in Iran, America cannot afford a weak approach that withdraws from the world, decouples from allies, shrugs its shoulders as the world is carved up by our geopolitical opposition. A multipolar world sounds nice and happy and less burdensome in theory.

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In practice, it looks like impoverishment, interminable war, because a multipolar world is a world constantly at war and endless opportunity for America's enemies. Alexander Dugin knows that, and Vladimir Putin knows that, and we ought to understand that as well. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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You can choose to handle the measurements and installation yourself or have their local pros take care of everything. There's no showroom markup. Installation is just one low cost, regardless of how many windows you are covering. We've used Blinds.com ourselves at home. And they have beautiful stuff. They make it really user-friendly.

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Get up to 45% off for a limited time at Blinds.com. When you check out online, don't forget to tell them you heard about Blinds.com from The Ben Shapiro Show. Rules and restrictions may apply. Go check them out right now. Blinds.com. And again, make sure that you get that discount with Blinds.com and let them know that you got it from The Ben Shapiro Show.

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Okay, meanwhile, speaking of multipolarity, you see the trouble with multipolarity in exactly what China is doing in its own trade war on the United States. So recognize that in the trade war declared by President Trump on China, China has in turn declared its own trade war on the United States. President Trump is trying to find an off-ramp here. The Chinese are not.

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The Chinese see this as an opportunity to draw closer to all of the countries that were alienated by President Trump's original Liberation Day announcement that slammed the rest of the world with tariffs. And China is flexing its muscles with regard to all of its allies like Russia and Iran. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the weeks since the U.S.

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president first slapped sky-high tariffs on China, Beijing has responded with defiance. A spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry posted on X footage from 1953 of Mao Zedong promising to fight to the end against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War. We are Chinese, she wrote. We won't back down.

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The Mao post and other messages from Beijing highlight what China sees as one of its core advantages against the United States. While Trump and his Republican backers are vulnerable to the whims of American voters, the party Mao built is deeply entrenched, having maintained power for more than seven decades despite war, famine, political upheaval, and financial crises.

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Xi continues to strengthen his grip on his country. He continues... to make overtures to third parties. The White House still has not said what actually it's looking for in an off-ramp with China. And Xi himself is in no rush to solve this crisis because he believes it's a political crisis for President Trump.

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One of those missiles struck an apartment complex in Kiev. It killed at least 12 people. This prompted President Trump to take to Truth Social and issue a statement, quote, not necessary and very bad timing. Vladimir, stop. 5,000 soldiers a week are dying. Let's get the peace deal done. He said, I'm not happy with the Russian strikes on Kyiv. Okay, well, that is not going to get it done.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal today, President Trump's apparent softening on tariffs against China in recent days has buoyed markets. But for Chinese leaders, it only strengthens their resolve that Trump will eventually cave if they simply wait him out. A Chinese foreign ministry dismissed any suggestion the two sides are even negotiating as fake news.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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So Trump is saying we're having great talks. It's all going well. And China's like, no, we're not. We're not talking at all. Now, question, why would China do that? If China wants the off ramp, why aren't they looking for it? The answer is because they believe that Trump is going to cave on this because it was poorly thought out in the first place.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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It was the Leroy Jenkins of trade policy just charging into a room without any actual plan. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Xikun said Thursday, quote, this tariff war was launched by the United States. The Chinese side's position has always been clear and consistent. Quote, if we fight, we'll fight to the end. If we talk, the door is wide open.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Any dialogue or negotiation must be based on equality, respect and mutual benefit. A spokesman for the Commerce Ministry of China demanded that Trump should completely eliminate tariffs against China if he's serious about resolving trade disputes through dialogue. So China is in no rush here. And why would they be? Why would they be? Right now, they feel like they have all the leverage.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Meanwhile, by the way, they've put significant curbs on the export of rare earth minerals, which we need for our own national defense. And this is why I say that if you're going to launch a trade war against China, you actually have to do all of the groundwork, the preconditional groundwork first.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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According to the Washington Post, senior administration officials are scrambling to stem economic damage from China's restrictions on rare earth exports, as President Trump's trade war risks cutting key industries and defense contractors off from supplies of metals crucial to production, according to three people familiar with internal deliberations.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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While companies search for alternative suppliers and urge the White House to cut a deal, the Trump administration is finding no easy solutions. Instead, again, they continue to push forward the Chinese export curbs on materials that we need.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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So when we talk about China being able to really constrict supply of rare earth minerals, I went to our friends and sponsors at Perplexity and I asked, what percentage of rare earth minerals used in military production in the United States come from China? And the answer is a lot.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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According to Perplexity, the United States military is heavily dependent on rare earth elements that are either mined or processed in China. Between 2020 and 2023, the U.S. relied on China for approximately 70% of its imports of all rare earth compounds and metals, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China controls about 70% of global rare earth extraction and 85 to 90%

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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of rare earth processing capacity. Even the rare earths that are mined outside of China are often sent there for processing before they are used in U.S. manufacturing and military applications. Apparently, 78% of all U.S. military weapons systems rely on materials sourced from or processed in China. And that includes antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten, tellurium.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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All of those are essential for advanced defense technologies. So this is why you really have to set up alternative chains of supply for these materials before you launch a giant trade war with China. China knows that, which is why they are now attempting to basically batter President Trump by doing nothing. Our geopolitical enemies are on the march. They are.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And President Trump is right to try to contain China. But that means an actual, well-thought-out strategy. It cannot be impulsive. It cannot be wild. It has to be perfectly planned and perfectly executed. Because by the way, even if we boxed in China economically, even if all the terrorism worked, we would still face down the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be full-scale disastrous for the world economy and for the United States military because the sophisticated semiconductors that we use in our military equipment come from Taiwan. China doesn't have to capture that and then use it for its own purposes. They just have to destroy it. If China were to destroy TSMC,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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In Taiwan, China has ramped up its material capacity to manufacture secondary order microchips, like not quite as good as the top level, but kind of close to as good. They're outproducing us in that way. And so if they feel boxed in, they just go for it. Again, it's a dangerous world, and a dangerous world requires strong and determined American leadership.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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By the way, this also holds true in Iran. Steve Witkoff continues to claim that progress is being made in a deal with Iran. What that looks like, nobody really knows at this point. Again, Witkoff has demonstrated, to my mind, pretty much zero actual negotiation chops. It seems like he goes over to Qatar and then repeats their talking points.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And then he goes over to Russia and seems to repeat Vladimir Putin's talking points after, quote unquote, developing a friendship with him. I just don't know what Steve Witkoff does for a living, honest to God. We need better envoys. Well, President Trump set a two-month deadline for negotiations with Iran. And he has threatened the possibility of a strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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However, Witkoff continues to say that maybe an interim deal is possible. The Iranians said that they wanted an interim deal. And Witkoff said, we're not going to do that. But then he also said he doesn't want to discuss an interim deal right now.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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He said, quote, this is according to Axios, if both parties think significantly more time is needed as the 60-day deadline approaches, they can revisit the idea of an interim deal. What kind of negotiation is that? We're not going to take your interim deal, but don't worry. We might do it later. What the hell? A senior U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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official said that Witkoff and Arahi, who is the envoy for Iran, made very good progress during talks in Rome. Oman's foreign ministry said in a statement after the talks, the parties agreed to enter into the next phase of the negotiations.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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According to the Omani statement, Iran and the United States agreed to work, quote, on a fair, enduring and binding deal, which will ensure Iran is completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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OK, well, if that's the deal, forget it, man, because the idea that Iran is developing peaceful nuclear energy around is one of the most oil rich nations literally on the planet. For what purpose would Iran need a nuclear facility other than to develop a nuclear weapon? Notice the language there that's being put forth by Oman.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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It would ensure Iran is free of nuclear weapons, but they'd have nuclear facilities. Okay, well, that's what we call the Obama deal. That's the JCPOA, a deal that Donald Trump, back during his first term, called literally the worst deal ever signed. How about we don't do that?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Now, a piece of news that is sort of interesting is that the State Department has announced that Policy Planning Chief Michael Anton is going to lead the U.S. team when it comes to uranium enrichment. And Anton is an expert. He does know a lot about nuclear materials and fissile development and all the rest of it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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But if the idea is that some sort of interim deal with Iran is going to take place or a deal with Iran that relieves sanctions… I mean, again, the signal achievement of the Trump administration, aside from the Abraham Accords, was maximum pressure on Iran during his first term.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Abandoning that, abandoning that in favor of allowing Iran a quote-unquote civilian nuclear program, which seems to be the tack that the administration is now taking. Iran is lying about that, and everybody knows Iran is lying about all that.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And if you relieve the sanctions, all that money goes immediately to fostering the very terror network that we are currently fighting, the United States, in Yemen with the Houthis, for example, like directly. President Trump yesterday was asked about this. He said, don't worry, we're going to make a very, very good deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Well, how about this? How about we wait to see the content of the deal and we'll see then if it's a very good deal or if it is not a very good deal at all. I have a feeling that any deal that is cut with Iran is likely to be a not particularly good deal. Okay, let's jump into some culture because this has been very serious and it is indeed a Friday. So a lot to talk about in the cultural sphere.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And here I have to thank producer Jess, who is, this is her last interview. week helping me with the culture segment. She's moving on to greener pastures, doing more culture for other people. Don't worry. We'll still do cultural segments. But Jess has been invaluable here. So a shout out to Jess here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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She keeps an eye on this stuff because I'll be honest with you, like the chances that I'm going to follow Jojo Siwa's transformation from lesbian to queer is the chances were zero. But now I know about it. And so you know about it, too. Apparently, Jojo Siwa has now revealed that she no longer identifies as a lesbian at all. She is now queer.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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She says that she feels most similar to non-binary people. She isn't ready to label herself beyond queer. Oh, these terms mean nothing. Honest to God. She's just making up things now. Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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You are a queue, honey.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And you know what British people love more than anything is the queue.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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What the living, what in the, what? Okay, can I just say that the West is a deeply unserious place now? Like deeply, deeply unserious. There are actual real things happening in the West, and we're worrying about whether Jojo Siwa identifies as a lesbian, i.e. a woman who wants to have sexual relations with other women, or a queer, i.e.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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a woman who wants to have sexual relations with other women and maybe others. Like, whoop-de-frickin'-do. She added that non-binary people are the people she feels most like, which, how can she feel like that? Does she feel like a chicken today or a penguin? Like, what? Here we go.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Oh, wow. She's like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. And she's also, wasn't she like a Nickelodeon star? It is amazing how many of these child stars end up absolutely screwed up at every possible level. Meanwhile, Pedro Pascal, who is the star of the Mandalorians, who is not booted for making Holocaust comparisons, because the way that it works is that if you're Gina Carano,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And you say people should treat each other more nicely because otherwise terrible things happen with a picture of, you know, people chasing Jews during the Holocaust. You get fired from Disney. But if you're Pedro Pascal and you compare the plight of illegal immigrants held in detention facilities to concentration camps, that's totally fine. Well, now he's out there promoting transgender rights.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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He wore a shirt called Protect the Dolls at the UK premiere of Marvel's Thunderbolts. Apparently, dolls is an affectionate term within the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign community, referring to transgender women. He wore the shirt shortly after the UK Supreme Court said, oh yeah, by the way, men are not women and women are not men. He also then attacked J.K.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Rowling, which is always the mark of a complete dolt on this particular issue. He has a brother who came out as a sister in February 2021. And so that is one of the things that presumably is driving Pedro Pascal. He's also the star of The Last of Us, which is about gay zombies or something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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I tried to watch the first season of The Last of Us, and I have to say that it was well-made and also just randomly the gayest series in human history. There are, in the original video game, lesbians and gay people and trans people and all the rest of it. But in the series, there's literally an episode that's just a cutaway to a gay romance for an hour with no zombies. Yeah, man.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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Alrighty, folks, coming up, we'll get to the Democratic Party. As much trouble as the Trump administration has created for itself with the trade war, The Democrats are even in more trouble. We're going to get into their presidential candidate list because there's only one soaring above all the others. But remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

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Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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How do you respond to the counter-accusation, which is that Ukraine is actually just a repository of Western decadence, that it's a decadent country that's liberal and that is embracing all these socially leftist causes, and therefore conservatives in the United States, for example, should not care about Ukraine because really Russia is more religious conservative power?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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I'm sorry, but yelling at Vladimir Putin over Truth Social is not the thing that is going to get it done. President Trump has been very successful at successfully pressuring the Ukrainians to come to the table. He's gotten Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a 30-day ceasefire. However, when it comes to the actual pressure on the Russians, so far that seems to have been largely in abeyance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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So now I want to talk about negotiations and Russia's ambitions here. So you've already accepted an immediate 30-day ceasefire. The Russians refused to accept a 30-day ceasefire or even a one-day ceasefire. They put together a fake one-day ceasefire for Easter, and then they proceeded to send drones all over the eastern part Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Russian ambitions here, how do you interpret those ambitions? I mean, Vladimir Putin has suggested that Ukraine is a fake state, that it needs to be removed from the map, it needs to be completely taken over.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2186 - Investigating “Putin’s Brain” + Zelensky Part II

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And he's talked about how the Soviet empire, the great geopolitical disaster was the destruction of the Soviet empire, not because he's a Soviet, but because he believes that sort of the Russian imperial spirit requires empire and Ukraine is the big sort of moat in his eye. He can't get over it. Given that position from

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from President Putin, do you believe that he will be satisfied with a ceasefire that solidified the lines currently where they are? Or do you think that he's looking for more?

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Let's be pragmatic.

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In fact, President Trump yesterday was asked directly about this.

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He was doing a presser in the Oval Office, and he was asked about what concessions Putin had made thus far, because the United States is asking some pretty large concessions from the Ukrainians, ranging from acknowledgement of Russian ownership over eastern Ukraine and Crimea to the possibility of banning themselves from NATO, essentially.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

Well, President Trump's victory tour continues. And this is it, your final weekend to get 47% off new DailyWire Plus annual memberships. Get unlimited access to uncensored ad-free daily shows, groundbreaking documentaries, movies, and series, and more. Use code 47 at dailywire.com slash subscribe. All right, so President Trump's victory tour continues.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Okay, so here is the question for President Trump. As I've been saying, we're three days in and President Trump is doing an enormous number of phenomenal things. We're gonna get to more of them today. The big question for President Trump is are you gonna focus on the future or are you going to focus on the past?

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Well, now, realistically speaking, is there a lot left that has not been revealed? So, there was a release of many of the JFK files in 2022. According to the National Archives and Records Administration, 97% of the roughly 5 million pages in its collection related to the assassination were already public.

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The president promised during his first administration he would release the remaining JFK files. That included some 3,000 documents that had never been made public and 30,000 that had been previously released with redactions. But it turns out he didn't do that. Now, in 1992, Congress had mandated that all assassination documents were supposed to be released within 25 years.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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But you're going to put that number at 2017. Do I think there's going to be a lot in here? So I think in the end, you're going to get some sort of great revelation with regards to JFK, RFK, or MLK. I really doubt it.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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I really doubt it because, again, the forensic data tends to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole shooter of JFK, that RFK was killed by an assassin named Sirhan Sirhan, and that MLK was shot by James Earl Ray. That tends to be what the evidence shows. Could there be some sort of bombshell lurking? It's possible. I do think that this is probably more like Geraldo's vault than anything else.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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I don't think there's gonna be a lot of there there, but why exactly would you not release this stuff? It's good for more to be in the public arena. Meanwhile, on immigration, President Trump is charging ahead the press secretary. She says that the president took historic action, 10 executive orders to secure our homeland. Here she was.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Are you gonna focus on the things that matter or are you gonna get distracted by things that really don't? I think this is gonna be a very focused administration. He's come in and he is moving with alacrity. He's moving fast. He's breaking things. And all of that is to the good. That focus, I think, is necessary because when you win, it is very easy to get distracted by the high of being on top.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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That is Carolyn Leavitt, the White House press secretary, explaining Congress, for its part, has now cleared the Lake and Riley Act. And things have shifted so dramatically here that 46 Democrats supported it in the House. That's how dramatically things have shifted on illegal immigration, and that is solely due to Joe Biden.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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It's not even due to President Trump, because Trump was making the same case in 2015. What happened is that Joe Biden did the exact obverse. He did the opposite. He let the borders be wide open, and Americans were like, nope, don't like that at all. And that's how the Lake and Riley Act happened.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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The measure directs federal immigration enforcement to detain and deport those without legal status charged with minor theft or shoplifting. Representative Randy Feenstra of Iowa praised the legislation in a speech on the floor of the House ahead of the vote.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Feenstra said, I look forward to President Trump signing this bill into law to let immigrants who break our laws know that they are held accountable for their crimes. The Senate, by the way, passed the bill 6435, which is an overwhelming number. It is beyond filibuster. That's a big number. Those are big numbers.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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And again, that is because Democrats recognize it is politically toxic to oppose common sense alternatives with regard to illegal immigration. The first images, by the way, of ICE mass deportations show arrests of MS-13 gang members, murder suspects, That is not a giant shock because, of course, if you are the administration, the first people you're going to deport are the criminals.

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Those are the people you're going to focus in on. You're going to wait to deport the nanny until you've gotten through everybody else because maybe she can make a case for why she ought to be in the country. But when it comes to MS-13 members, there is no reason in anyone's mind why those people should be in the country. This led to one of the unbelievable clips of the day.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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This one was out of ICE Boston. An illegal immigrant from Haiti with 17 convictions was filmed being taken away. And here's what he had to say.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Yep. Yep. Well, saying this quiet part out loud right there. Thank Obama for everything he did for me. Thank Obama for everything. Thank you, Joe Biden. Yep. Well, I think we know maybe now why Joe Biden wanted an open border. Maybe. It turns out that if you wish to craft an entirely new body politic, a great way of doing that is opening the border and then amnestying as many people as possible.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Turns out that is an excellent way of doing it. And that guy just said the quiet part out loud. Well, if our prior immigration system seems kind of sick, You don't need to be sick this year. You need to make sure that you're maintaining your health. That's what I'm doing. Hitting the gym, spending time with my family, even with my busy work schedule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on pure conservative willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly peak performance requires peak nutrition, which means eating enough veggies. Well, I don't like veggies, so I'm very thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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That sounds miserable and time consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, which means I can pop that right into the protein smoothie and keep this rockin' bod going strong. But at balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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But right now, he does have the Democrats down for the count. And all he has to do are the 80-20 issues. That's all he has to do. All he has to do are the common sense things that people elected him to do. Well, the good news is I think President Trump knows this. He says, listen, the Democrats right now, when it comes to immigration, why are they doing this?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. They've been helping me get through a season where everyone around me seems to be getting pretty sick all the time. Well, not I, because balanceofnature.com has been making it happen for me. Balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Also, have you ever heard of Rose Sparks?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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To get 15 bucks off your first order and find out if Prescription Rose Sparks are right for you, connect with the provider at ro.co slash ben. That's ro.co slash ben for $15 off your first order. Compounded drugs are permitted to be prescribed under federal law, but are not FDA approved and do not undergo FDA safety, effectiveness, or manufacturing review.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Only available if prescribed after an online consultation with a provider. Go check them out right now. See if Rose Sparks are correct for you. Connect with the provider, ro.co slash ben. That's ro.co slash ben for $15 off your first order. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, who of course has been a longtime immigration hawk, he's the deputy chief of staff for policy and an advisor to Homeland Security.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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He said, we are going to see a massive scale up in enforcement activities.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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He then continued, he suggested, listen, if you try to shelter criminal illegal immigrants, then we are going to charge you criminally, which of course, this is all common sense. It's all common sense.

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Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Well, there's not really a good excuse, is there?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2124 - Trump WRECKS Davos!

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Now, the Trump administration is apparently weighing sending 10,000 troops to the border and using bases to hold illegal immigrants. That's according to CBS News. Again, on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Carolyn Leavitt, told reporters the president had signed another executive order to deploy 1,500 troops to the southern border. There are already 2,500 troops down there.

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But an internal CBP memo dated January 21st indicates a plan to dispatch about 10,000 soldiers to help the agency's mission at the southern border. Bottom line is... This administration is taking illegal immigration incredibly seriously. Now, meanwhile, a judge, a federal judge, has temporarily blocked President Trump's executive order aiming at ending birthright citizenship.

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Now, as we discussed a little bit earlier in the week when Trump signed this, this was exactly what was going to happen. This is always going to end up at the Supreme Court level. The president does not really have the ultimate capacity to simply determine whether who is a citizen and who is not under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

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Now, I think that Trump's interpretation is correct, by the way. I think that when it says, in the 14th Amendment, born, naturalized, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, subject to the jurisdiction thereof means you're not subject to your foreign citizenship jurisdiction. If you're here illegally, for example, and you have a baby, the baby, if you are a Mexican citizen, you're here illegally.

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For example, the baby's a Mexican citizen. That means not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The baby should not be an American citizen simply because the baby was born here. However, that was always going to end up in the Supreme Court. In a written ruling issued on Thursday, U.S.

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District Judge John Conauer entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Trump administration from implementing the executive order until he can hear arguments over its legality. The federal government has long recognized a birthright citizenship.

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The court ruling is one of the first legal hurdles Trump faces as he seeks to deliver on his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration. Now, listen, this, I think, smacks of a Trump political win, even if he loses, meaning if this goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules the other way, Trump can say he tried to do what he could.

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And no act of Congress would have been able to trump the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution without another constitutional amendment. But as I say, this was always going to end up being adjudicated inside the judiciary. It was never going to be decided by simple EO. That was never going to happen.

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Now, meanwhile, in a further list of good news, President Trump is doing things for the pro-life movement. That began yesterday. and our own senior White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan. She was on scene at the White House reporting this. Mary, great to talk to you.

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So tell me about what you've learned about pardons for pro-lifers wrongly imprisoned under Joe Biden's Justice Department. You knew about this a little bit early.

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Now, Mary Margaret, you've also learned some important news regarding Vice President J.D. Vance and the March for Life. I spoke at the March for Life a few years ago. Apparently, J.D. Vance is going to be doing the same.

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Mary Margaret, really appreciate the reporting.

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Now, meanwhile, President Trump is making moves on the foreign front as well. Some I think are good and some are a little bit more mixed. We'll get to all that in just one moment. First, it's the final weekend to get 47% off your new DailyWire Plus annual membership. 47% because of course we are celebrating Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.

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Our celebration will continue, but the deal ends Sunday. All you need to do is head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code 47. You'll lock in 47% off for an entire year of DailyWire Plus. The Daily Shows, our original groundbreaking entertainment, including the number one documentary of the decade, Am I Racist? And so much more.

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Every buck you spend goes directly back into the fight to bring you the facts and reshape culture. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe, use code 47 to check out, and let's build the future together. Okay, meanwhile, President Trump is making some interesting moves in the Middle East. It's hard to sort of read the tea leaves on what exactly he's expecting there.

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On the one hand, on the good side, President Trump made his very first call as president to any foreign leader to Mohammed bin Salman, who of course is the essentially leader of Saudi Arabia. MBS is famously somebody who wants to join the Abraham Accords, wants to modernize his nation. He has also pledged a $600 billion investment into the United States, the crown prince.

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According to the Associated Press, he said on Thursday, the kingdom wants to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years. Comments that came after President Trump earlier put a price tag on returning to the kingdom as his first foreign trip.

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The comments reported early Thursday by the state-run Saudi press agency came in a phone call with President Trump that marked Trump's first phone call with a foreign leader since his inauguration on Monday. The reason that that is positive is because when it comes to the Middle East, basically, you now have four forces that are shaping the Middle East.

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One is Iran, which has been thoroughly beaten over the course of the last year in terms of all of its proxies. Its proxy forces from Hezbollah to the Houthis to Hamas have basically been downgraded or wiped out. And then you have the Turks. The Turks have been really flexing their muscles in Syria. The takeover of Syria by a terrorist offshoot of Al-Qaeda and ISIS is That really was Turkish.

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That was Erdogan in Turkey who basically turned a client of his, a terror client of his, into the leaders of the new Syria. Then you have the Israelis. The Israelis obviously have defended themselves quite capably over the course of the last year and a half, destroying most of the battalions of Hamas, destroying thoroughly Hezbollah's military capacity.

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hitting Hezbollah so hard, actually, that Syria fell because Syria was deeply reliant on Hezbollah, striking Iran directly, taking out its air defenses. And then finally, you have the Saudis. And the Saudis have been basically attempting to forge an alliance with the Israelis. And that's always been just beyond the horizon.

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If Donald Trump had been reelected the first time, then that would have been cleared. After October 7th in 2023, after the war in Gaza, Saudi has been wanting to get into the Abraham Accords, particularly because, again, Iran is still out there, which is a threat to Saudi Arabia. And Turkey is a threat to Saudi Arabia because Turkey likes to sponsor the Muslim Brotherhood.

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And the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to the Saudi monarchy. So President Trump reaching out to the Saudis is quite a good thing. That is a very, very good move. And being able to secure a massive investment from the Saudis in America is definitely a good thing. He is also demanding that Saudi Arabia and OPEC lower the oil prices. He was at Davos doing just that. Here he was explaining.

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You're going to end that war. Now, that's kind of a fascinating take because, again, President Trump was portrayed as somebody who didn't care what happened in Ukraine. Bringing down the oil prices undercuts the Russian market. That's kind of the idea here. Russia is making its money by selling oil at bargain basement prices and then shipping it through third parties to places, including Europe.

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The United States has filled in a lot of that gap. If Saudi were to start pumping at a serious rate, then they would be undercutting the Russian oil prices as well. And then Russia would basically be strangled in terms of its own economy. So it's fascinating. He wants more money from Saudi, but lower oil prices. At the same time, he is reaching out to the Saudis. Well, in later news, the Oscars

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Now, again, it's hard to argue with that. What exactly would be the third excuse for why you want the borders open? And President Trump, again, honed in with Sean Hannity on the issues that Democrats are getting wrong on the common sense issues, like, for example, boys are not girls.

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are upon us. The nominations are out and they are as absurd as you might believe they were. They are just ridiculous. So first of all, they will be hosted by Conan. Now, listen, I think Conan used to be one of the funniest people in America. I'm not so sure he's still got it. I haven't seen anything funny from Conan for years and years and years.

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He's a safer choice than somebody like a Ricky Gervais, for example. But will he be better than Jimmy Kimmel? Listen, anybody would be better than Jimmy Kimmel. A bag of flaming dog crap would be better than Jimmy Kimmel at this point. Then there are the actual nominations. And man, are they woking up the joint. Whoa! Whoa.

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These nominations are the wokest Hollywood nominations for Oscars I have seen since... like last year, like this is wild, but, but actually really, really, really like insanely woke. So the number one movie in terms of nominations and close to leading in the all time nominee list is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life. It is called Amelia Perez.

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It is legitimately a bottom five film. I have seen thousands of films at this point in my life. Amelia Perez is one of the five worst movies I have ever seen. Now, ironically, another Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water, is also in that list. But Emilia Perez is, if anything, worse than Shape of Water.

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If you wish to see a full-scale, 20-minute review of Emilia Perez, head on over to our YouTube page, where I actually reviewed it soup to nuts, went through all the numbers. It's horrifying. It's a musical, for those who don't know, about a transgender Mexican drug cartel leader who contacts a lawyer played by Zoe Saldana, to help him transition into her.

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And then ends up in a bizarre familial situation with his ex-wife, Selena Gomez, who's having an affair with another guy. Well, I mean, she doesn't know she's having an affair because as far as she knows, her husband's dead. It turns out that her husband isn't dead. He just chopped off the appendages. And it's a musical. It's awful, awful, awful.

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Now, it's not just that this has received 13 nominations, almost as many nominations as All About Eve, one of the great films of all time, with 14 nominations. It came in, basically, it's tied for second for the most nominations in Academy Awards history. History, which is just absurd on every level. One of the nominees is a person named Carla Sofia Gascon.

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Now, Carla Sofia Gascon is a dude and is nominated for Best Actress. Best Actress. This person is a man. This person is a man. This man started transitioning in, I kid you not, 2008. In 2018, this person completed most of quote unquote her gender transition. This person is 52 years old. So this person started becoming a woman in quote unquote her 40s and now is defeated.

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Yesterday, he was on Sean Hannity's show in a long discussion with Hannity, explaining how he gets things done, why he doesn't doubt himself. Here he was yesterday.

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Listen, ladies, if you want to demonstrate your first, your full scale inferiority, it seems to me that nominating a man to win best actress is a pretty good way of doing that. By the way, Can't sing. Not a particularly good actor. Carlos Sofia Gascon. Didn't do anything in the role, really.

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In fact, the only time Carlos Sofia Gascon is actually convincing is when, quote unquote, she is playing a man at the beginning. Because guess what? Dude. That would be a dude. The song El Mal is nominated for best original song, which is ridiculous because it's not a good song at all. It's a terrible film. And of course, the only reason it's being nominated is because it's everything, right?

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It's everything having to do with Trump. This is all just an anti-Trump Hollywood bleep fit. That's all this is. It's a story about Mexico, which of course Trump thinks is terrible. And it's a story about a man who believes that he is a woman. The movie's so bad. I mean, honestly, I don't want to do a re-review of the movie. Go check out my review at YouTube.

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All I will say is that the entire movie glorifies a man who decides to mutilate himself, abandon his family, and is a drug cartel leader. And that's the hero of the film. So, yeah. Also, the music is just... It sounds... The music sounds as though a deaf and dumb rapper wrote it. That's what it sounds like. Meanwhile, other prominent nominations...

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Sebastian Stan has been nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for The Apprentice, which, of course, is a movie about Donald Trump. That movie failed at the box office. Nobody really wanted to see it. I haven't seen it myself because, frankly, I didn't find it all that interesting. First of all, if you're going to do a movie about Donald Trump as a young man, it can't be a drama.

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It sort of has to be a comedy. We all remember Donald Trump as a young man, at least those of us who are older than the age of 20. Donald Trump's been part of our public life since the 1970s. So... I don't know. So he gets nominated. That, of course, is just a way of slapping Donald Trump, of course.

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The other nominees for Best Picture are Anora, a charming story about a prostitute who falls in love with a Russian gangland leader's son. That's Anora. The Brutalist, which I have not yet seen, but I'm interested to see, which is about a Jewish refugee who comes to the United States and is apparently an amazing architect and his experiences with American capitalism.

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I'm not sure I'm going to love the thematic of it, but it is Adrian Brody and Guy Pearce and seems at least somewhat interesting. A Complete Unknown, which is the Bob Dylan movie. Conclave, which is a horrifying piece of trash. Conclave, as I talked about, I didn't even see the movie. I just read the book.

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When I read the book, I was like, there's no way you're going to put me through seeing this movie. No way. Spoiler alert. The twist ending in Conclave is that the whole thing is about the Pope dies and it's the College of Cardinals figuring out who's the new Pope. Spoiler alert. It's the trans lady from Amelia Perez. It's actually an intersex person.

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And it turns out that some of the Cardinals know this and go along with it because it's too late to reverse it, which do you even Catholic bro? That is not a thing. The Dune part two is nominated, but certainly will not win because it's the best movie of the year. So we can't have that. We can't have nice things. So we'll not, I mean, nobody's even mentioned dude in part two as a possible winner.

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Nobody's even like it's, I believe except for wicked, the highest, the highest box office on this list. And nobody's even mentioned it. Amelia Perez, I already mentioned a movie called I'm still here, which is a foreign film about a person who was disappeared by the Brazilian government in the 1970s, a movie called nickel boys, which I'm not sure did anything at the box office.

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Again, all of this is common sense. He says the same thing with regard to taxes. He says, listen, people do not want high taxes. Democrats want to raise their taxes. These are the common sense middle of the road positions. And these are not conservative positions.

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And is it's sort of the, the Academy stop to covering race this year. So again, it's an issue movie based on the Colson Whitehead book about a boy's school, a racist boy's school in the South in the 1960s.

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A movie called The Substance, which is a body horror film starring Demi Moore as an aging actress who decides to do terrible things in order to assure that basically a doppelganger of her, a young doppelganger of her can become a star and Wicked. So, terrible list of films. Truly bad list. I mean, really, really, really bad. And to be fair, I've seen four of these films, I believe.

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Dune II is by far the best of these films, and it will certainly not win. For Best Director, Emilia Perez's director won a Best Director slot, which I don't understand at all. And then you have the directors of Nora, The Brutalist, The Substance, and A Complete Unknown. Actor in a leading role, you have Adrian Brody for The Brutalist. He's supposed to be terrific.

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Timothee Chalamet for A Complete Unknown. He's supposed to be terrific. I'm not a big Chalamet fan, but he's supposed to be really, really good in this film. Coleman Domingo, as in the movie called Sing Sing, which I've never even heard that movie. I don't know what that is. Ralph Fiennes in Conclave, meh. And Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice.

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So again, you have a couple of heavy hitters going up against one another. in that particular category. Actress in a leading role, the only thing that matters here is that you have a dude who's in this category. First of all, I just want to know, why does the Academy insist on having separate actor and actress? Because obviously these categories mean nothing.

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You could just combine them, especially since in Hollywood, we're now supposed to say that actresses are actors. You're not supposed to say actress in normal conversation. When you go to Hollywood and you meet an actress, you're supposed to call her an actor because she might be a man or something. because it's a sexist category.

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If you think boys are not girls is a conservative position or we need borders is a conservative position or higher taxes are unpopular is a conservative position. I urge you to see a mental health specialist. Here's President Trump talking about tax policy.

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So I'm not sure why the Oscars continue with this, except as a form of affirmative action to, I would say biological women, but it's no longer even relegated to that.

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Other nominees include Cynthia Erivo, who I think was terrific in Wiccan, Mikey Madison in Nora, which I haven't seen to me more, who's supposed to be good in the substance, and Fernanda Torres in I'm Still Here, which I have not seen. When it comes to documentary feature film,

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The only other issue here is that No Other Land, which is a wildly anti-Israel piece of propaganda, agitprop, was nominated. Am I Racist, the number one documentary of the last decade, did not receive a nomination from the Oscars. But again, I don't think that is a complete shock.

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So there you are, a bunch of trash movies nominated for the highest awards in Hollywood, because that's how all of this works. All right, coming up, we'll be getting into the media and their failed response to President Trump's Winning again. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Now, again, because the left has lost it, they continue to oppose this agenda. And this is ushering in a sea change, not just nationally, but internationally. So President Trump spoke yesterday at Davos, right? Davos is the World Economic Forum. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump and his allies used the World Economic Forum to offer the global elite a warning.

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He intends to follow through on his America First campaign promises, spurning allies in the process if necessary. He addressed the World Economic Forum virtually, and he did not hold back. He was introduced by WF president and CEO, a guy named Borja Brende, who thanked Trump for joining three days into the presidency.

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Again, things have changed just a little bit around the world with President Trump's victory.

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Thank you. What exactly did President Trump have to say? Well, he led off by demolishing the failed Biden administration in front of a room full of people who pretended to like Joe Biden for several years. When I say pretended to like, I mean, if you ever watched any of the international events where Joe Biden appeared next to other international leaders, they could not stand him.

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They did not want to be around him. He was wandering off into the woods randomly during photo shoots And when it came to President Trump, they may not have liked President Trump, but at least they respected President Trump. Here's President Trump demolishing Joe Biden in front of the international community.

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Now, President Trump talked a lot about American domestic policy at the WEF, but all of that was merely the precursor to him turning to international politics. He started talking about the American economy. He said, listen, America is open for business now. You should invest in the United States of America because we are no longer attempting

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to exclude people from entering the American marketplace if they want to invest in the American marketplace.

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Well, President Trump continued by suggesting he went through four years of hell and he won. Again, this he's entitled to this. He was put through legitimate hell. over the course of this presidential run. He was indicted a bevy of times on spurious charges. He was nearly shot to death on camera. And then he was nearly shot to death again. He's gone through the ringer.

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Well, then he turned to the economy and here he starts making his threats. He says, listen, you want to invest in the United States, we'd love to have your investments in the United States. And if you don't want to work with us, then get ready for some tariffs.

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Now, again, President Trump has a love for tariffs that I think is unjustified by economic knowledge when it comes to how to bring down prices, for example, or make products more innovative. It turns out that comparative advantage is one of the great benefits of living on a planet with a huge number of people who all have a diverse skill set.

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If you actually pursue President Trump's policy here to its logical endpoint, which is either invest in the United States or we are going to terrify you, you end up with autarky. Autarky is not a particularly useful economic system. It tends to lead to economic stagnation, to incredibly high prices. See, it's one thing. You don't actually have to threaten people to invest in the United States.

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It turns out the United States receives extraordinary amounts of investment. Why? Because we're a friendly business environment here in the United States, as opposed to so many other countries around the world. If you invest in the United States, we have a robust legal system. We protect private property. You know that your money isn't just going to get stolen. It's not going to disappear.

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The government isn't just going to nationalize your industry. Our tax rates are very competitive. They need to be made more competitive. And President Trump is focused on that. Our labor regulations are not nearly as onerous as, for example, Europe. Those are all great reasons for people to invest in the United States.

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If the idea is we're going to make all those things worse and then we're going to tariff you, if you don't actually come into the United States, you're just going to end up with more high prices in the United States. Do I think that Trump means this in that way? I don't. I think that what he's really just saying is, look,

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If you guys have not come into the United States because you have a misimpression that we're going to be pushed around on the international stage by you, wrong you are. It's not going to work that way. President Trump uses tariffs historically as leverage. He used them historically as leverage. Listen, President Trump loves leverage when it comes to the economy. The problem is, so does big tech.

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Big tech, the so-called free services, they aren't really free at all. You pay for them by letting these huge tech companies record your activity and sell it to advertisers. If you don't want to be a product that's bought and sold, you need to start protecting your privacy online. The way I do that is with ExpressVPN.

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If you don't protect your online privacy, your internet service provider can see every website you visit. Third-party data brokers can collect logs from apps and websites, tracking your activity, through your IP address to build an incredibly detailed profile of you. But because I use ExpressVPN, 100% of my online activity is rerouted through secure encrypted servers.

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That means my ISP has no record of my activity and nothing to sell. ExpressVPN also hides my IP address so data brokers can't track me or assemble any profiles about me. Just like that, I'm no longer a product to be sold. You don't have to be a tech expert to use it. Just one click and you're connected. And tech experts at CNET and the Verge agree, ExpressVPN is the number one VPN.

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I partnered with ExpressVPN because I want all my viewers to have access to this important privacy protection. Right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you go to expressvpn.com. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com. Get an extra four months totally free. Also, you know what's frustrating about running a business?

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He's entitled to the victory tour.

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The endless hours you spend chasing down receipts, managing expenses, trying to keep track of who's spending what. If you're like most business owners, you're probably juggling multiple financial tools and you still don't have a clear picture of your spending. That's why I'm excited to talk to you about Ramp.

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Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Think of Ramp as your financial guardian. It builds spending policies right into your corporate cards. You set the rules and limits, giving your team the freedom to make necessary purchases while maintaining control. No more surprise expenses or policy violations.

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What's even better? Ramp automates the entire expense reporting process. Those tedious hours spent organizing receipts, categorizing expenses, gone. Ramp's intelligent system handles it all in real time, letting you close your books eight times faster than before. Here's what makes Ramp truly special. It brings everything under one roof.

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From card expenses and reimbursements to vendor payments and accounting automation, you get complete visibility of your business spending in one seamless platform. And now, get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro. RAMP.com slash Shapiro, R-A-M-P.com slash Shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions do apply.

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Again, there's an ideological commitment to tariffs, which suggests autarky, labor regulations being stricter in the United States, artificial restrictions on innovation. artificial restrictions on wages and prices, right? That sort of stuff. And then a threat that if you don't actually do what we want you to do, then we'll tariff you, right? That I think is bad economic policy.

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I don't think that's what President Trump is talking about. Again, historically, that is not what he's talked about. What he's talked about instead is the idea that he's going to tariff you if you don't make concessions with regard to some of your own trade barriers or your own subsidies or your own regulatory frameworks.

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Then he turned to foreign policy and he said, listen, I'm going to ask the NATO members to increase the defense spending.

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Now, again, he is right about this as well. Rick Grinnell was a foreign policy advisor to the president. He actually piped in to the WEF and he appeared on screen to slam the former Dutch prime minister's stance with regard to Ukraine joining NATO. Mark Rutte had said that the NATO bloc should ensure that Russia never attacks Ukraine again by allowing Ukraine into NATO.

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And Grinnell said, hold up, you don't get to do that. You don't get to push the burden on us as the biggest sponsor of NATO unless you also increase your funding of NATO. Quote, I think you're going to run into a big buzzsaw in America if we have the NATO Secretary General talking about adding Ukraine to NATO, said Grinnell.

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You can't ask the American people to expand the umbrella of NATO when the current members aren't paying their fair share. And that includes the Dutch who need to step up. Now, again, Grinnell isn't wrong about that. He's not wrong about that.

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One of the big problems with regards to Ukraine historically has been the West writing checks they weren't willing to cash, saying to Ukraine, you should try to join the EU. You should try to join NATO. You should join the West. And then being unwilling to actually undergo the sacrifice necessary for that to happen.

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which tends to invite aggression from the Russians, which is precisely what the Russians did. Now, Russia, for its part, has responded to President Trump's threat of sanctions on them if they don't come to the table by saying nothing. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media, quote, we do not see any particular new elements here.

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Peskov added that Trump liked sanctions and used them often during his first presidential term. Peskov said Russia is ready for an equal and careful dialogue with the United States, which we had during Trump's first term. We're waiting for signals that have not yet been received. Now, we'll have to see what signals they exactly are looking for.

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If they're looking for President Trump to surrender on these issues, I really doubt that is going to happen. Meanwhile, in other big moves, President Trump yesterday signed an order to declassify files with regard to JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations. Here is President Trump signing that executive order.

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All right, folks, tons to get to on today's show. We'll get into the big, beautiful bill passing the House. But what does it mean for our looming debt crisis? Plus, fallout from the terror attack against a couple of Israelis in Washington, D.C. And Patricia Heaton stops by. But first, before you head into Memorial Day weekend, do not miss this. It's our DailyWire Plus Memorial Day sale.

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She tweeted out, absolutely nothing justifies the murder of innocents. I am devastated by the killing of two people outside an American Jewish Committee global event here in Washington. Our prayers are with the victims, families, and loved ones of all impacted. As we await more details, we must be clear that hatred has no home here. Anti-Semitism is a threat to all we hold dear as a society.

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It must be confronted and rooted out everywhere. So she's going to root out anti-Semitism, says Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she of the best friendship with Ilhan Omar. Mm-hmm. Bernie Sanders put out his own statement. I'm appalled by the killing of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington last night and grateful for the quick response from law enforcement. We must all condemn this heinous act.

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Violence must have no place in politics. I mean, it turns out a lot of radical leftists who like Bernie Sanders don't feel the same way. There was a sort of fascinating tweet from the Bronx Anti-War Coalition, which called the terrorist attack on these two innocent people in D.C., at least one of whom was a Christian.

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This is arguably the most significant piece of legislation that will ever be signed in the history of our country.

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They tweeted what the shooter did, and again, I don't do shooter names on the show, is the highest expression of anti-Zionism. So why do I point that out? The reason that I'm not using the term anti-Semitism is because it seems to have lost any impact or definition, truly. It has been deliberately obfuscated, obscured, turned into an empty vessel. And that's had a couple of pretty dire effects.

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One, actual Jew hatred goes by the wayside. And number two, a bunch of stuff that is cover for actual violence is then ignored. Permission structures are ignored. The problem here is the definition of anti-Semitism clearly.

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When you can have people who clearly, clearly have created permission structures for the free, free Palestine, globalize the Intifada crowd, claiming that they're fighting anti-Semitism, Definitions become a problem. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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The bill includes massive tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, tax deductions when you purchase an American-made vehicle, along with strong border security measures, pay raises for our ICE and Border Patrol agents, funding for the Golden Dome, Trump savings account for newborn babies, and much more.

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Army birthday are coming up June 14th. Independence Day, of course, comes up July 4th. Just switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk this month, and a portion of every sale will go to provide these high-quality flags to deserving veterans.

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With plans from just $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data, you can enjoy America's most dependable 5G network while cutting your cell phone bill in half. The average family saves over $1,000 a year. I'm constantly using my Pure Talk coverage, business calls, family calls.

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everything phone related, just head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Again, it's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. You're not going to regret it. You're going to save money, get better coverage. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com.

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They make it really simple to sign up and start credit building. You can sign up in minutes right from your phone. No credit check required. Cancel any time. No hidden fees. No interest. Users with credit under 600 grew an average of 84 points in their very first year. Their convenient auto-pay feature helps you build credit and never worry about missing a payment in the process.

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Plus, with over 1 million users and hundreds of thousands of positive reviews, there's a reason why Kickoff is the number one credit builder on the App Store. Producer Jake, he's excited to build his credit. Jake is financially savvy. He understands that actually the credit score matters. an awful lot. He just got his set up. He says it's easy to use. Start building your credit with Kickoff today.

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You can get your first month for as little as $1. That's 80% off the normal price when you go to getkickoff.com slash Shapiro today. That's Kickoff without the C. Get K-I-K-O-F-F dot com slash Shapiro. Must sign up via getkickoff.com slash Shapiro to activate offer. Offer applies to new kickoff customers first month only. Subject to approval. Offer subject to change.

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Average first year credit score impact of plus 84 points. Vantage score 3.0 between January 2023 and January 2024 for kickoff credit account users who started with the score below 600, who paid on time, and who had no delinquencies or collections added to their credit profile during the period. Late payments may negatively impact your credit score. Individual results may vary.

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Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson and the House leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted yes on this historic bill. Now it's time for our friends in the U.S. Senate to get to work and send this bill to my desk as soon as possible, writes President Trump. There is no time to waste.

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So what exactly is antisemitism? Well, as I've said before, antisemitism is essentially a conspiracy theory about the threat and power of Jews. That is why antisemitism, unlike most other isms that are targeted at a group, takes an enormous number of different forms. Usually, racism suggests the innate inferiority of a particular group. That's not antisemitism.

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Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about a group. And it takes a bunch of different forms, many of which oppose one another. So you will hear from a variety of people that Jews are cliquish and keep to themselves, and therefore they're a threat to the generalized body politic.

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And the same people will then claim the Jews are actually infiltrating interlopers and they are diluting the body politic. You'll hear from people that Jews are aggressively nationalistic and therefore separatists. And also the Jews are actually globalists and actually deracinating. You hear the Jews are communists and therefore they are anti-capitalism and anti-Marcus.

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And also the Jews are capitalists and therefore they are selfish and anti-religious. You hear the Jews are weaklings and thereby weaken everybody or the Jews are too powerful and thereby exploit everybody, right? It takes all sorts of forms. It's a shapeshifter. But when people hear the term anti-Semitism, they think that anti-Semitism is just another type of racism. It's just racism against Jews.

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So basically it's hatred against Jews specifically for being ethnically Jewish. But as we've seen, that's actually incomplete because you can claim all of the things anti-Semites actually claim. Jews are cliquish or globalist or at the same time both or whatever without technically hating Jews. And that's the game that is being played right now. This is why you see people

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who fall under an actual real definition of antisemitism, as I've laid it out, who get away with saying that they're fighting antisemitism. Ilhan Omar will say this sort of thing. So these overbroad terms used by politicians actually become counterproductive. So, for example, you can say that Israel is the fond head of all evil without technically hating Jews. You could say that, right?

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The Democrats have lost control of themselves and are aimlessly wandering around showing no confidence, grit or determination. They've forgotten their landslide loss in the presidential election and are warped in the past, hoping someday to revive open borders for the world's criminals to be able to pour into our country, men to be able to play in women's sports and transgender for everybody.

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You can even say you have a Jewish friend. That might not really be true, but you can say it or you can find some Jewish person who actually has no connection with Judaism. And that person can be your standard. And this is the excuse that you'll hear from many of the people who say just this kind of stuff. And here's the problem with what Muriel Bowser and AOC and all these people are saying.

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It leaves open the possibility that so long as you talk about hatred of Israel and that results in people getting killed, it's totally fine. And that's the cover that many people who actually do hate Jews use because it is in fact an easy cover. Say, oh, it's not about hatred of Jews. It's not about anti-Semitism. It's just about hatred of Israel. That's the game.

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So instead of focusing on whether people are doing and saying things because they hate Jews, what they feel inside, here's what we should do. We should instead have this conversation in the context of lies. We should be condemning lies. Now, it is quite possible that many of the lies that you're hearing, Israel's committing a genocide, are rooted in actual hatred of Jews.

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Or maybe it's rooted in some other philosophy. In some cases, we can probably read what people feel on their insides, but sometimes that's not the case, and often it's not even useful. Because people who actually hate Jews often just aren't going to come out and say it. And there are some who will. I point to Nick Fuentes for honesty, but most people don't actually say it, or Kanye West.

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At least they're honest. Most people may tweet pretty obvious Jew-hating garbage and then delete it. But they can always claim their perspective isn't rooted in hatred of Jews, per se. And all of that offers an easy off-ramp for those who actually build a permission structure for actual evil and murder.

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Instead of talking about antisemitism then, what we actually should do is we should talk about lies and the liars who tell those lies. Like, for example, it is a lie, as we discussed yesterday on the show, that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. It is just a lie. There's not only no data to back it, there's significant data to disprove it.

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Now, maybe some people are too ignorant to know that it's a lie and they're just repeating what they hear. Maybe they're just using the word genocide as a stand-in for a bad thing. Or maybe they're just dumb. But for those who do know, it's a lie. It was a lie that the Palestinian cause is about a two-state solution. That's always been a lie. The Palestinians will tell you it's a lie.

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Now, again, maybe some people who are pushing it are too ignorant or hopeful to know that it's a lie, but it is a lie. And lies are bad. And the more they are told, the more dangerous they become. And that's why I think it's actually kind of useless at this point for politicians to talk about anti-Semitism and never the actual lies that matter.

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They don't realize that these things and so many more like them will never happen again. Okay, so President Trump obviously and correctly happy about the passage of the big, beautiful bill in the House of Representatives. Now, as to the content of the big, beautiful bill, here is the reality. The American people are not in touch with reality when it comes to just fiscal reality.

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Because if we actually had an honest conversation about what actually drove the feelings of shootings like this, lies and lies and more lies, then Muriel Bowser might have to call out the lies of her own side. And perhaps AOC wouldn't just be able to invoke antisemitism and get off scot-free while simultaneously making room for Ilhan Omar.

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She might actually have to call out the lies of her own side. And that's the thing they will never do. At a certain point, invocation of terms like antisemitism, It actually becomes counterproductive because, again, if that doesn't do the job of stopping people from lying about Jews, then what exactly is the point of the thing?

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Instead, if we are going to talk about the permission structure that led to the murder of these two young people in Washington, D.C., we have to talk about the actual lies and the people who tell those lies and what their worldview is. That's the thing that actually allows us clarity. That allows us to see who is pushing what and why.

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And again, that's not me saying that none of the people who are pushing the lies hate Jews. Many of them, I'm sure, are not particularly fond of Jews or Judaism or anything like it. But it's a lot easier and more specific and more clarifying and more useful to talk about the lies themselves as opposed to

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A term like anti-Semitism, which again, at this point in time, has now become so semantically overloaded that people are able to escape the implications of their own lies. So, for example, the New York Times will go out there and they will say they don't know the motivation of the person who committed the shooting. That's a lie. That's a lie.

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He was literally shouting free, free Palestine right after murdering two people. He was also, in January of 2024, tweeting out, death to America, America KKKA. So we know exactly why this person did what this person did. We know exactly what the worldview was. Now, if you just say that's anti-Semitism, it doesn't actually go to the heart of the matter.

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It's not just about irrational Jew hatred in the same way that racism is about irrational hatred of blacks or Asians or whomever else. There is a broader worldview that is deeply damaging to Western society that lies at the root of all this. There's one on the right. There's one on the left. Listen to yesterday's show. I talk about it at length.

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This, by the way, is how the New York Times can make light of Mahmoud Khalil. Pretending that Mahmoud Khalil is totally fine. And this, of course, would be the student who was detained from Columbia University as a graduate. And he was detained for deportation. And he had an immigration court hearing to try and determine whether he would be deported or not.

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And the New York Times is a very sympathetic piece talking about what a wonderful person he is, the picture of his wife and his kid, completely ignoring the fact that Mahmoud Khalil was a chief member of a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest. That group cheered the October 7th pogrom. They also lavish praise on Ismail Khania of Hamas, Hassan Asrala of Hezbollah.

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The leadership of that group originally condemned a student who suggests Zionists don't deserve to live, but then thought better of it and issued an apology to the person they had condemned. So that's what Mahmoud Khalil believes. Is that a permission structure for the kind of thing we saw? Of course it is. Of course it is. When you are not, specificity is the friend of truth.

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So yes, it is good that taxes did not massively increase. And yes, we do need funding for border security. But if you are worried about the fiscal health of America, and if you're worried about the economic health of America, we need to explode many of the myths that currently surround the American economy. Myths like the idea that there's no American middle class. Not true.

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Specificity is the friend of truth and clarity. And vagary is the friend of lies. If there is a rubric under which Ilhan Omar can somehow portray herself as an opponent of antisemitism, which is what she tried to do after suggesting the other, Ilhan Omar was literally asked, it's amazing. She was literally asked about the shooting on the street and she walked away. She said nothing to say about it.

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Then she finally tweeted later in the day, I'm appalled by the deadly shooting at the Capitol Jewish Museum last night, holding the victims, their families and loved ones. And my thoughts and prayers, violence should have no place in our country.

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OK, if you let people off the hook just for saying violence is bad or anti-Semitism is bad, but you never ask specific questions about the belief systems that drive people to do evil things, then you're not doing your job. And that is why it is incumbent on, yes, Jewish organizations to actually get specific about the philosophies that result in things like we saw in Washington, D.C.

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That's the thing I'm calling for. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, when we started Daily Wire, it felt like we had to figure everything out with minimal help. Editorial guidelines, studio setup, production schedule, branding. It was overwhelming. New decisions were necessary literally daily.

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Finding the one tool that simplifies everything when starting a business becomes a game changer and a lifesaver for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States.

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We even use it for our own daily wire shop to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently so you can get the goods. You might be asking, what if I can't design a website? Or I'm worried people haven't heard of my brand. Not a problem.

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Plus, their award-winning customer support is available 24-7 to share advice if you ever get stuck. Turn those dreams into... and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash Shapiro. Head on over to Shopify.com slash Shapiro. Shopify.com slash Shapiro. I bet you know that Cars for Kids jingle.

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In fact, I'd be a little bit surprised if you didn't.

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Cars for Kids is not just an awesome and catchy jingle. This amazing organization will come to you free of charge at your convenience and tow away any old vehicle you've got sitting around and turn it into charity funds for kids.

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They take care of all the paperwork and logistics, and you walk away with a tax-deductible receipt for the sale price of the car, a vacation voucher, and space in your driveway for your new car. Don't wait. Call 1-877-CARS4KIDS or go to Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. That's Cars with a K, the number four to donate now. It takes just two minutes to give them your information.

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Misfliked the idea that manufacturing productivity has gone down in the United States. It has not. Misfliked the idea promoted by both parties that labor unions in the United States are the good guys as opposed to businesses that hire people who are sort of the bad guys. According to a brand new poll, Axios reporting, the Liberal Economic Policy Institute shows that the

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They take it over from there. They've done this over a million times. They can help you as well. Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Remember, that's Cars with a K. Cars4Kids.org slash Ben. Why not get rid of that old vehicle? Get the tax write-off. It's totally worth it. They make it simple.

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Cars4Kids.org slash Ben takes just a couple of minutes to give them your information, and then they do the rest of the process. That's Cars4Kids.org slash Ben, cars with a K. Well, meanwhile, the Trump administration is taking yet another measure against Harvard University.

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On Thursday, they announced that they were halting Harvard's ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a critical funding source for Harvard. Now, Harvard doesn't just bring students in because they're quote-unquote the best and the brightest from abroad. They also bring people in who are likely to pay full tuition, like 60 grand a year.

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There are about 6,800 international students attending Harvard this year. That's more than a quarter of the student body. The Trump administration is using this as leverage to get Harvard to actually obey the Civil Rights Act.

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According to the letter sent by Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary to Harvard, quote, I'm writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University's student and exchange visitor program certification is revoked. A spokesperson for Harvard called the administration's action unlawful.

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In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security said, quote, this means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status. Now, as a method of getting Harvard to actually obey civil rights law, fine with me. However, this is actually not a Harvard specific problem. This is an immigration problem.

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This is something the Secretary of State Rubio has been very clear on. The problem here is we should not be giving student visas to people who hate America, hate American values, sympathize with terror groups and all the like. You don't have free speech rights just because you want to come here. That is not the way that it works. Rights do not attach to you.

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You don't have a right to enter the United States believing any terrible thing that you want. That has never been the way any self-respecting country treats itself.

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And so what I would recommend is that it not just be targeted at students at Harvard, but that actually the immigration system that President Trump is taking control of take a much more solid and long-lasting look at how we give out student visas in the first place in general. It's not enough to shift some of these terrible people from Harvard University to Columbia or whatever.

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Many of them just shouldn't be in the country at all. And meanwhile, if you are worried, about actual attacks on Jews, then probably you should worry internationally about making room for Iran. So Iran continues to signal that it wants no deal with the Trump administration that would deny them the ability to enrich uranium. I don't know how many times the Iranians can say it.

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They've said it over and over and over and over. They are not going to give up their ability to enrich uranium, which is to say to build a nuclear weapon. Nonetheless, the negotiations continue apace. The Trump administration is apparently going to deploy Steve Witkoff once again, our special envoy, to negotiate with the Iranians, this time in Rome.

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Now, again, the Iranians keep saying it over and over, like the quiet part out loud. They're basically just calling the Trump administration's bluff. They're saying, we're not going to give you anything you want. Are you still going to try and sign a deal? Awas Arachi, Iran's foreign minister, said, quote, we are witnessing completely unreasonable and illogical positions from the Americans.

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Ayatollah Khomeini said the United States should not try to talk nonsense and called it a big mistake for President Trump to demand an end to Iran's enrichment of uranium. Khomeini himself said, I don't think nuclear talks with the United States will bring results. So, again, totally unclear at this point whether the Trump administration stands tall. Obviously, they should.

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labor unions are now significantly more popular than so-called big business. Labor unions have a popularity rating of about 60% as opposed to big business, which is below 50% at this point. The reason that's not good is because what that leads to is a populist economic policy.

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because the Iranians absolutely agree with the shooter of these two Israelis in Washington, D.C. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they would treat it the same way this shooter treated his gun. And meanwhile, speaking of the Trump administration Department of Justice, they're doing an amazing thing.

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Our friend, Harmeet Dhillon, who actually served as a lawyer for The Daily Wire when we were suing the Biden administration, She's over at the Civil Rights Division of DOJ now, and she is walking back a Biden era DOJ policy targeting police departments. She joins us on the line yesterday. Harmeet, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Happy to be here, Ben.

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So let's talk about the DOJ and what you guys are now doing in the Civil Rights Division to actually allow the police to do their job. You're taking a very different position than the last administration, obviously.

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And now you get to argue between whether you want a government that spends a lot of money and has lower taxes or a government that spends even more money and has higher taxes. Those are the two options for the parties. And that's why you got a bill that looks like this. And let's be clear, this bill, it's a mess. There's some good stuff in it. The tax cuts, the border security stuff.

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So, Harmeet, when people kind of colloquially hear about a consent decree, they tend to think, well, you know, that's a police department getting together with the federal government and figuring out a better way to do policing. What are the sorts of things that are in these consent decrees that really hamstring the police and prevent them from doing their jobs?

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And why do police departments accept that it's consent decrees in the first place if they're so bad for policing?

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And were I in Congress, I would have voted for it because the crap sandwich is still better than a massive tax increase in the middle of what is right now a pretty rocky economy. And there's still some economic problems out there.

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You know, Harmeet, I think one of the things that is so astonishing to members of the left about what the Trump administration is doing is that they look at things like the Civil Rights Division of the USDOJ, which for as long as I've been alive, has been used as a tool to foster anti-police sentiment, to go after institutions that are actually charged with keeping the peace.

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With that said, the reason we can't have nice things in this country is because the American people are fundamentally opposed to the things it would take for us to have actual nice things like good government policy. So, for example, President Trump made sure that there were no significant restructurings of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. The Medicaid changes were on work requirements.

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I mean, that was true in the Obama administration. It was certainly true in the Biden administration. as well. And the Trump administration, very differently than other Republican administrations of the past, is not pandering to that sort of history. Instead, you're using the tools at your disposal to actually protect the actual civil rights of citizens, namely the civil right to be free of crime.

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Well, that is Harmeet Dhillon. She, of course, is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. DOJ. Harmeet, thanks so much for your hard work and thanks so much for taking the time.

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I'm gonna get to more on this in a moment. First, we gotta change gears for a minute and talk about Israel. Obviously, the attack in Washington, D.C., a couple of days ago, killing a couple of Israelis. The fight continues against people who hate the state of Israel, who hate Jews. It is May now, exactly 80 years ago this month,

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The horrors of the Holocaust, the final solution, finally came to an end. But did you know that half of all Holocaust survivors actually live in Israel? Think about that for a moment. These elderly survivors, who already endured unimaginable trauma decades ago, are now facing renewed pain from the October 7th attacks and the troubling rise of anti-Semitism we've been seeing worldwide.

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What makes this even more heartbreaking is that thousands of elderly Jewish survivors in Israel are living below the poverty line. There's simply not enough of a safety net for them. And that's why I'm so passionate about supporting the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

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The fellowship provides a real lifeline to these precious individuals through hot meals and boxes filled with nutritious food. For just 25 bucks, about the cost of a nice lunch out, you can help provide a food box for someone who desperately needs it. Or if you're able to give more generously, 335 bucks provides hot meals for an entire year. If you're moved to help, it's easy to make a difference.

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Just head on over to benforthefellowship.org. That's all one word. Your contribution will directly impact the lives of these survivors who've already been through so much. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org to make a donation today.

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Meanwhile, members of the media are very perturbed with President Trump for calling out the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a couple of days ago in the Oval Office. There's a piece in the New York Times by a journalist and filmmaker named Richard Poplak complaining about President Trump's treatment of Ramaphosa. Why?

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Well, because according to this journalist, it is totally fine to racially discriminate with regard to land ownership in response to the apartheid past of the country of South Africa. Quote, to this day, the bulk of South Africa's private wealth remains in white hands. And while life is demonstrably better for the black majority, South Africa is by many measures the most unequal society on earth.

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Those will not cut in until December of 2026. No changes in Medicare, no changes in Social Security, the systemic drivers of America's debt. And the reason for that is because President Trump realizes a political reality. Again, President Trump is good at reality. The political reality is that there is no desire from the American people to restructure entitlements.

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The white minority is the major beneficiary of this arrangement, but there is a caveat. Even within this cohort, wealth distribution is lumpy. The decline of the middle class is a global phenomenon, but in South Africa, it takes on unambiguously racial characteristics.

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There is no question that many rural South Africans, like many urban South Africans, have experienced almost wartime levels of violence. South Africa's gruesome rates of inequality almost ensure this. The police are often useless or worse. Organized gangsterism and industrial-scale stock theft reduce rural areas to occasional battlefields.

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But to allege government complicity in the murder of white farmers, let alone genocide, is a falsehood that verges on full-scale rewrite of South Africa's history. So what is the point of this column? The point is that you should ignore all the problems in South Africa because after all, the whites kind of deserve whatever they get. Quote, South Africa helped define and perfect white supremacy.

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So take it from an expert. This is an effort to flip the narrative of apartheid and cast former oppressors as victims. You see the idea here? The idea here is that if white farmers are about to have their land expropriated, that's okay because they're actually former oppressors.

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It's an attempt to invalidate the end of legislated white minority rule in South Africa and render white Afrikaners as victims of reverse racism to say nothing of targeted mass murder. It's about spreading the global white replacement conspiracy theory. Well, hold up a second.

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If there are 141 laws in South Africa that target white people, apparently, and if the Land Appropriation Act in South Africa is designed to actually expropriate land from white people, which it appears to be, then I'm confused as to how the people victimized by that law are not in fact the victims.

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This columnist says, make no mistake, democratic South Africa is in many respects a failed, violent, and corrupt state. But the forgiveness extended to the white minority at the end of apartheid is one of the most exceptionally human and humane moments of our species' bloody history.

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By turning their backs on this, by accepting refugee status and claiming the mantle of exceptional victimhood, right-wing Afrikaners have become bit players in MAGA's noisy but empty scam. They leave nothing behind them except their home. Well, so you admit that the state is complete fail. But as long as apartheid was bad, that means that everything that's happening now is justified.

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Seems to be the logic here, which is absurd on its face and the essence of a sort of DEI-driven immorality. A turnabout is somehow fair play. Meanwhile, in other news, the Supreme Court yesterday deadlocked on the question of whether public religious charter schools violate the separation of church and state.

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Plus, unlock our full entertainment library, including an all-new episode of Ben After Dark tonight and the premiere of Parenting, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's powerful new series dropping this Sunday exclusively at Daily Wire Plus. Join right now. Save 40% on all annual memberships at dailywireplus.com with code DW40. Plus, tonight, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, only at Daily Wire Plus.

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So in the state of Oklahoma, there was a Catholic virtual school that filed for charter status, public charter status. And the Supreme Court was supposed to decide on this. A ruling in favor of St.

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Isidore would have allowed for the first time, according to the Washington Post, direct and complete taxpayer funding to establish a faith-based charter school, legalizing government sponsorship of a curriculum that calls for students to adhere to Catholic beliefs and the church's religious mission. Instead, the current landscape of government funding for religious schools remains intact.

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And so in order to avoid the sort of blowback from the Democrats, President Trump decided not to touch any of that stuff. This is why, for example, Claire McCaskill, when she says that millions of people are going to lose health care coverage, They actually will not.

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Now, a lot of people are all over Amy Coney Barrett because she recused herself in this case. That's not her fault. Okay, Amy Coney Barrett accused herself in this particular case because of her ties to Notre Dame Law School and its Religious Liberties Legal Clinic, which represented the school in this particular case. So she accused herself.

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She, again, did not vote against the religious charter school. Obviously, the religious charter school should be funded.

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The idea of separation of church and state was never meant to say that no dollar can flow to a religious institution from the state, especially if the state is basically taking the view that it can flow to both secular and religious institutions and religious institutions of every form and fashion. It says that the state cannot prefer one religion above all the other religions.

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That is what the separation of church and state suggests. But if you are making the funding available to all of these various public charter schools, what exactly is the problem? Now, it's unclear exactly how people voted. The court split four to four. And because Coney Barrett recused herself, there's no actual outcome in the case.

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However, I think it is probably fair to say that you would imagine that it was Chief Justice Roberts who voted the wrong way on this. Hard to imagine that it was Kavanaugh or even Gorsuch who voted this way on this particular decision. It's not the end of the story.

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There will be another case, I'm sure, that's brought by an institution unaffiliated with Amy Coney Barrett, at which point she will indeed rule. And meanwhile, President Trump had a dinner at his golf club in Virginia. for investors in his meme coin. And again, this sort of stuff is not going to redound to his benefit. It's just not. It isn't. It's hard to see the political upside to this.

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According to the New York Times, a group of 220 cryptocurrency enthusiasts who wanted dinner with President Trump gathered at his golf course in Virginia. Mr. Trump and his business partners in the venture announced the event last month, calling it the most exclusive invitation in the world.

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They're not going to lose health care coverage specifically because President Trump went out of his way to push what is by all measures a very high spending and lower tax bill.

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They framed it as a contest in which the top 220 buyers of the coin would dine with the president at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, while the top 25 would join him at a more intimate cocktail reception and go on a tour of the White House the very next day. There was a leaderboard that was put up on the website. This, of course, would be the dollar sign Trump crypto.

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It allowed investors to see how much they needed to purchase to move up the rankings and win a spot. And again, the claim has been made that this is effectively an emolument. They can have foreign powers that invest in the crypto coin in order to curry favor with the Trump administration, with President Trump.

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Apparently, the final list includes investors from Singapore, Australia, and the United States. Some of those investors have even said they hope to use the dinner as an opportunity to press Mr. Trump on crypto policy. So again, not a good look, not a good look. Forget about the morality or even allegations of corruption, whatever there is there.

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It is not a smart look for the president of the United States to appear to be involved in influence brokering like this. And all of this stuff is fun and games so long as the economy continues to function, so long as things are sailing along.

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The minute that they are not, or the minute the Democrats take the Congress in 2026, all this stuff comes to a crashing halt and it is used as a club to wield against the Republican Party writ large. Meanwhile, the questions continue to mount over Joe Biden and the insane conspiracy to try to ensure that he remained president despite the fact that he did not have a functional brain.

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interview between Sally Quinn, the Washington Post columnist and longtime Washington, D.C. insider, and Tara Palmieri, in which Sally Quinn accuses Joe Biden of elder abuse.

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Sally Quinn is sort of an ultimate D.C. insider. She spent years kind of hanging out with the hoi polloi inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway. She said everybody thought he shouldn't run. People were just distraught that he was running and thought it was terrible for the party. I think everybody was horrified. He was put in a position where he was allowed to run by both his staff and his wife.

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People felt sorry for him. Quinn said, listen, look like dementia to everybody.

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Now, again, she ain't wrong. Meanwhile, the GOP is starting to look into the possibility of investigating how the White House actually handled Joe Biden's health. Senator Ron Johnson is now launching an investigation, according to Axios, into former President Biden's health.

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Apparently, he's going to try to find out who knew what when, which, of course, is fully warranted given the national security implications of having a dementia patient as president of the United States. That's also a point made by Senator John Cornyn of Texas. Here he was.

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Well, he ain't wrong. He ain't wrong. Joining us on the line to discuss this and more is the executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, my friend, John Bickley. So, John, a lot going on in the news, obviously. A continued cover-up of the Biden medical decline. It's a pretty amazing thing.

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Obviously, this week we saw new details emerge, not just from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book regarding President Biden's senility, but also the Biden family announcing that the president has probably fatal cancer. What did you guys make of it?

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OK, the thing about this that she's saying that is hilarious is she's saying two mutually exclusive things. She's saying, I want to lower the deficit. And also, this bill is going to cut health care coverage. Let's be clear. More and bigger social services mean a higher deficit. And the American people, Democrats and Republicans alike, do not want to come to grips with this. They simply do not.

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I mean, one of the things that I think is fascinating about the way that this story is now being covered is there are really a few different strains. There are people who continue to maintain that everything was fine above board and hunky-dory. That includes people like Joe Scarborough, who's maintained that over at MSNBC. Whoopi Goldberg, of course, is doing that over at The View.

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Then you have members of the media like Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, who actually are doing some very good reporting now. And so the big question for the right is why were they not doing this sort of reporting when it was happening, since we did have a president whose brain was not functional for the last year and a half of his presidency at minimum, maybe more than that.

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And so that sort of question, I think, is going to hang over the media for a very, very long time to come. And then you have, again, the members of the media who sort of claim that they didn't have anything to do with this, that they were completely bamboozled. And it's that last group that I have some trouble believing. The sort of group where it's like, well, I wasn't suspicious at all.

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I was just completely taken in. I mean, all of us could see in real time that the president was degrading. And it's absolutely unbelievable to be told by, again, a lot of those same folks that there was no way for them to see it other than for us to just recognize that they were viewing all of this through a political lens. And the political lens was stop Donald Trump at any cost.

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And if that means covering up the infirmity of the president of the United States that his drug addled son can run the country, then sure, I guess that's what it means.

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So when it comes to my sympathies, my political sympathies, there are a lot of reasons I'm not a huge Thomas Massey fan, the representative from Kentucky. But Thomas Massey is right that there are a gigantic series of problems with the American debt. And this bill does not radically change the trajectory of that debt. It changes around the margins.

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And like The Morning Wire, which is now available on video wherever your video podcasts are available. It is a beautiful looking show, by the way, and really some fantastic information every single morning. John Bickley, executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire. Really appreciate it, John. Thanks a lot, Ben.

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Well, meanwhile, this week's episode of Ben After Dark has a very special guest and a wonderful person. My friend Patricia Heaton, she joined us online a few days ago to talk about everything going on in the world. Patricia Heaton, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

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So obviously you've done enormous amounts of amazing work in Hollywood and you have this long and storied career, but you've also been doing tremendous work in the charitable world. One of the things you've been working on is something called O7C.

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Well, I mean, you've been doing amazing work on this. And I do appreciate the fact that you're reaching out to Christians on this because it is kind of astonishing that the feelings have changed with regard to Israel in some parts of the Christian community. When I was growing up, obviously, evangelical Christianity was wildly pro-Israel.

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It doesn't actually get to the core of the matter. That, by the way, is something that even proponents of the bill, including the OMB director, Russ Vogt, recognize that the best you can say about the bill is that it's better than it otherwise could have been. But nobody is making the case that this bill actually fundamentally restructures our debt in any serious way.

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Obviously, a lot of Catholics are extremely pro-Israel also. But there has been a larger split in the last couple of years among the Christians that I know on overt support for Israel in its war against Hamas, for example.

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Well, thanks for what you're doing with the O7C group that you've put together. And then to shift topics to something wildly more entertaining. Obviously, you're extremely successful in Hollywood. You have been for decades at this point. One of the things that's been fascinating to watch in Hollywood is sort of a newfound capacity for people to mention that they have heterodox politics.

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And when you and I first met, that was certainly not the case. I mean, both you and I were members of a group in Hollywood that was called Friends of Abe. That was basically the underground Hollywood conservative organization where everybody sort of kept it secret in their place of work about what their politics were.

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How much has President Trump do you think shifted the conversation in Hollywood and made it broader and easier to talk about this sort of stuff?

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Well, that's Patricia Heaton. Patricia, really, thank you so much for what you're doing. Thanks so much for your time. And of course, you are the unfortunate victim of having to be a guest on Ben After Dark. Thanks so much. Great to see you.

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Alrighty, folks, the show's continuing for our members. Right now, we will be jumping into the week's final mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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Okay, this bill is not a debt bomb ticking. Actually, just our government is a debt bomb ticking. Folks, when we talk about America's debt bomb, let's talk about the American debt to GDP ratio. Right now, we're already at around 100%. So I asked our friends and sponsors at Perplexity, what will our debt to GDP ratio be in 2035? And then compare that to some other countries.

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So according to Perplexity, U.S. debt to GDP ratio is projected to reach 118.5% by 2035 under current policies based on the CBO projections. This would actually be higher than our post-World War II record of 106%, which, by the way, is psychotic. That's crazy. Because World War II was really, really expensive.

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If the current legislation were to pass, then debt theoretically could climb even higher, maybe reaching almost 130% of GDP by 2034, according to Perplexity. Well, how does that compare to other countries? Well, Japan is in serious trouble. Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of somewhere in the 250 to 270% range. And that is because of serious deflation and aging population.

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It's an all-new terrible episode of Ben After Dark. You had your chance to stop this. you didn't. We're back with more unsolicited takes, unqualified guests, and unfiltered nonsense, just the way no one asked for. Patty Heaton joins me as we find out just how far left Hollywood's brain has actually slid off the table.

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France will be about where we are, somewhere in the 120% range. Italy will be a little bit higher, Canada a little bit lower, Germany much lower because Germany is much more fiscally responsible than the United States. China's debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to be 96% in 2025. That's lower than the United States. It is currently rising. It could theoretically rise to 105% to 110%.

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However, let's be real about this. The Chinese debt to GDP ratio is skewed by the fact that they don't actually take on government debt directly. Very often what they do is they sell their government debt to private citizens or they have localities that are selling bonds or whatever.

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The good news about China is because it's a dictatorship, if they ever get in trouble, they just screw their citizens. That's the good news for China. That's not something democracies can afford to do, obviously. Social Security and Medicare, if there were no changes here, would still be bringing our debt-to-GDP ratio to about 120% over the course of the next 10 years or so.

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So let's just be real about this. The bill makes sure that your taxes didn't radically increase, which, again, I think is a good thing. You want economic growth. You want to be able to grow your way out of some of this. You are going to need lower taxes and lower regulation. And those two things, lower taxes, lower regulation, that is stuff that the Senate is in fact doing.

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Yesterday, the Senate voted to end California's electric vehicle mandate. According to the Wall Street Journal, the GOP led Senate voted to take away California's ability to set its own tailpipe emission standards, effectively killing the country's biggest driver of EV investment. It was 51 to 44 vote.

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Again, that's a good thing because, again, the goal here is to actually unleash America's car industry, not to regulate it out of existence. So deregulation is actually a good thing. And of course, keeping taxes lower is a good thing. However, to pretend that we do not have a debt bomb coming, that is silly. Obviously we do. And this bill doesn't solve that.

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This is something that the Wall Street Journal editorial board makes clear, quote, what should have been a routine auction for 20-year debt with a face value of $16 billion turned into a mini fiasco amid soft demand. This is from a couple of days ago. The auction produced a yield of 5.014%, slightly higher than expected and well above the roughly 4.6% benchmark set in a string of recent auctions.

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The yield on the 30-year bond drifted about 5% for the second time this week. The 10-year note was near 4.6% an inch and higher. As the Wall Street Journal points out, It's trendy to blame Washington for this market fracas and with cause, but first recognize the biggest problem that appears to be bothering markets, economic growth.

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Where will growth come from to buoy consumer sentiment or to generate enough revenue to help Uncle Sam pay the bills? Keep that question in mind as commentators and some politicians try to lay the blame for a bond sell-off entirely at the feet of the Republican Congress. The rap is the budget bill will blow out the deficit by another $3.3 trillion over 10 years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2206 - Is There A Debt Bomb About To Drop?!

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Adam Carolla recommends something that may or may not have been a personal attack, and I end up one jellybean away from existential collapse thanks to a game Savvy cooked up during what I can only assume was a psychotic break.

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That profligacy, according to the story, leaves bond investors at the end of their tether. But that argument is a trap. It features more spending restraint than the Biden Democrats ever offered. And you do, in fact, need lower taxes. But again, the reality is the American people are not willing to face up to what it would actually take to fix the economy. for the long term.

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And so what that means is you are likely to get a bunch of bad bills from here to eternity, or at least until the point at which the debt burden becomes so strong that it basically sinks the ship that we are all riding on together. Meanwhile, there are some other headwinds the economy is facing. I mean, let's be real about this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If the tax bill went down to flaming defeat, the economy would crash almost immediately. That's just the reality because the vast tax increase would mean investors see economic slowing and pull their money out. But there are some bad signs anyway. Home sales in April fell for the second straight month, according to the Wall Street Journal. U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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existing home sales fell slightly, by 0.5% in April from the prior month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $4 million, the slowest sales pace for any April since 2009, which of course was right at the tail end of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the recession. The spring months have been lackluster this year.

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Home prices and mortgage rates remain too high for many buyers and concerns about the economy are making buyers nervous about making a big purchase. Plus, by the way, sellers are not actually selling because they don't want to have to then buy. So that's not a great sign. Meanwhile, it should be noted here that we still have a bunch of tariffs on the products coming into the country.

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We've got Weird Mail, a segment that might accidentally summon Homeland Security, and a Ben Destroys that goes full scorched earth on the worst cultural headline of the week. It is still unsupervised, still unfiltered, and still very, very bad. Ben After Dark, tonight, only on Daily Wire Plus, only for members.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2206 - Is There A Debt Bomb About To Drop?!

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There's sort of a funny situation yesterday when Howard Lutnick was at a consortium and he was talking to a reporter and they were talking about the tariffs. This is the Axios Forum. And he turned to the audience and asked them if they were feeling the pain of tariffs. And he said, there is no pain. So he turned to the audience to ask them and he did not get the answer that he wanted.

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And the audience actually said yes. Well, of course, because it turns out that policy has consequences. So here's what the Trump administration actually needs to do. Yes, the bill needs to pass. And yes, you need to radically deregulate. And yes, you need to pass a crypto bill and you need to pass a bill that unleashes AI. You need to do all of those things, all of the above.

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And then at some point, somebody is going to have to make the case. Somebody, somebody responsible is going to have to make the case that actually we need to curb our government debt. And that can't be done just by raising taxes on the rich. That is a lie the Democrats like to tell and the numbers just don't add up.

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There's a reason why if you're looking at European countries that have a lower debt to GDP ratio, that is because they cut in their top tax brackets at like $60,000 a year, $50,000 a year. The bottom line is there's no such thing as a free lunch. And eventually America is going to find that out. Meanwhile, more fallout from the awful terror attack a couple of days ago.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2206 - Is There A Debt Bomb About To Drop?!

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Well, folks, President Trump has, in fact, moved the big, beautiful bill through the House of Representatives. President Trump took a victory lap yesterday over this particular move. He put out a statement on Truth Social, quote, The one big, beautiful bill has passed the House of Representatives.

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at this party that was being put up, an event that was being put up by the American Jewish Committee, and everybody and their mother is coming out condemning anti-Semitism. Now, as you may have noted, on yesterday's show, I never actually used the term anti-Semitism in discussing these sort of lies that have created a permission structure for violence. And there's a reason for that.

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I'll get to that in a moment. Why I didn't put it in those terms. Muriel Bowser in Washington, D.C. is an example of somebody who's using this sort of language. She, of course, is the mayor. She says, don't worry, we're not going to tolerate anti-Semitism.

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OK, so no toleration for anti-Semitism. And again, this is the kind of line that's being repeated left and right. No toleration for anti-Semitism. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who has been a massive backer of the pro-Khamas movement in the United States, up to and including weeping on the floor of the House over the House funding Iron Dome, which shoots down terrorist rockets.

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Folks, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer just went on national TV bragging that he has put hundreds of progressive judges on the bench and said he's proud they are ruling against Trump time after time. If you actually care about truth, sanity, and reality, it is time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Winning the election, it turns out, was not enough. The fight for our values...

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Now, it is quite possible that what this is actually about has nothing to do with confidential war plans. It's about weapon systems. There's been a lot of controversy surrounding, for example, the F-35, which is incredibly expensive to maintain. And there's great and open debate within the defense community about the efficacy of the F-35 for the future.

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Because as drone warfare becomes more and more plausible, should the United States be shifting its production into drones? This is something that Elon Musk has suggested. Musk recently made an unannounced visit to the NSA, which of course focuses on communication intercepts to discuss operations and staff reductions.

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But I think the idea that they were going to bring him in and then show him like the actual set of war plans, it seems like that is not true at all. But the media are jumping on anything involving Musk right now, which does show that they are very deeply afraid of what Musk is doing. And what is Musk doing at this point? What Musk is doing is firing a lot of people.

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And he's not actually doing the firing. He's advising the Trump administration whom to fire. He's also acting as a sort of public relations shield for the Trump administration because everybody can hate on Musk, but he's an unelected official. So there's nothing for them to really do about it. In reality, if you're mad at Trump, you should be mad at Trump.

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If you don't like that Musk is doing what he's doing, you should be angry at Trump if you're on the left, not at Musk. Musk is just the messenger. He's the outside consultant who's been called in. If you don't like the firings, that responsibility does not lie directly with Elon Musk. That responsibility lies elsewhere. But for the left, it is indicative of where the left's mindset is.

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The problem, shockingly, is never the government. It really is an amazing thing. I'm old enough to remember the Occupy Wall Street movement. So back during the recession of 2007, stretching all the way through 2009, During that recession, two sort of groups sprang up and they were making similar cases from different angles. One was the Tea Party. I was a charter member of the Tea Party.

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And that means that the left is now excusing actual acts of violence against, for example, Tesla dealerships. There are entire sites that have been set up to dox Tesla owners, according to the UK Independent.

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You didn't actually have a membership card or anything, but basically the Tea Party was about reducing government spending. The idea was that the government's intervention in the economy had led to the real estate recession and general recession in the United States.

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And so the Tea Party focused its efforts on lobbying the government, on saying the government should cut, the government should restructure itself, the government should get less involved in the markets. which makes sense because if you're going to lobby somebody, lobby the government. Occupy Wall Street, as the name would suggest, did not occupy Washington DC.

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They occupied Wall Street, which was not answerable to them in any way. And it basically ended up being a bunch of anarchists and fellow travelers who pitched tents, not near houses of government, but near great centers of finance and industry because the private sector had to be to blame. The public sector was never to blame. And you can see that in the hatred of Tesla.

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Tesla has literally nothing to do with what Elon Musk is doing at Doge. Joining us online is Mary Margaret Olihan, Daily Wire, White House correspondent. A lot going on at the White House. Mary Margaret had the opportunity to ask questions again this week of Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, particularly with regard to Doge. So Mary Margaret, let me ask you about that.

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You had a report earlier this week about a bizarre standoff at the U.S. Institute of Peace. What exactly happened and what did the White House have to say about it?

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As protests against Doge had Elon Musk spread across the country, a website called DogeQuest has reportedly published the personal details of Tesla owners leading to concerns about privacy and safety. The site reveals the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Tesla owners on an interactive map and uses an image of a Molotov cocktail as a cursor.

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Mary Margaret, one of the things that's become quite apparent is that the hatred for the Trump administration is now being telescoped into hatred for Elon Musk personally. It's pretty clear it's a public relations ploy that's being done by the Democratic Party and members of the media.

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They can't actually challenge many of the things that Doge is doing on a sort of populist basis because most people actually want waste, fraud and abuse cut. And so they've decided they're going to go after Elon personally. What's the feeling in sort of the White House about Elon at this moment?

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The operators of the site have said that they will only remove the information of Tesla owners who prove they've sold their cars, according to 404 Media, which is full-scale insane. There are legitimately hundreds of thousands of people who own Teslas.

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Well, it's Mary Margaret Olihan. She, of course, is our White House senior correspondent. Mary Margaret, thanks so much for covering it and good to see you again.

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Tesla, again, is a private company. Tesla is a company that sells cars and develops AI technology. What does protesting Tesla have to do with protesting what the federal government is doing in terms of cuts? Even if you don't like Musk, shouldn't you be going after Musk in his pseudo-governmental capacity as opposed to in his private capacity as an owner of a business?

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Why does hitting the business... matter. Why is that? And the answer is because for the left, the government is never to blame. You just switch the people at the top of the government.

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The government must be maintained at all costs, even if that means you focus your ire on Tesla and not on the actual people in the government who are actively currently doing the kinds of firings that you're very angry about. Speaking of which, President Trump. is moving forward to try and dismantle the Department of Education.

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This is a four-decade-long promise from Republicans that they are going to dismantle the Department of Education, which of course performs functions that should be performed not at the federal governmental level, but should be performed at the state level. Here is President Trump signing an executive order directed at abolishing the Department of Education yesterday.

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There is President Trump signing the actual document with the marker,

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The president then made remarks about all of this. He was talking about Linda McMahon, who is the secretary of education, and he says that he is interested in her being the last secretary of education.

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continues every single day. That's why we need you to become a Daily Wire Plus member. You get my show ad-free, plus exclusive content you won't find anywhere else. Stream all our top-rated hosts on desktop, mobile, and TV. Join the fight today at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Well, speaking of the left-wing assault on basic human values, the assault on Elon Musk's Tesla continues.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The new site comes amid a number of attacks on Tesla properties, such as arson at showrooms and service centers, seemingly in protest of Musk and his role in the administration of President Trump. That map also includes locations of Tesla dealerships and superchargers.

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By the way, worth noting here that everybody is yelling at Trump about that. How could they're going to dismantle the Department of Education? They can't do that. It is an established department by Congress. He's not going to dismantle the Department of Education outright. He's going to reduce the size and the scope of it, and then he's going to wait for Congress to do it.

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This is made clear by Caroline Lovett over at the White House yesterday.

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By the way, that's inarguable. Educational performance in the United States has sunk over the course of the existence of the Department of Education. And when it comes to American educational performance, sort of like America's performance in the war on poverty, the question isn't, did America get worse at education over the past few decades?

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The question is whether we got better after injecting trillions of dollars into the system. So if the war on poverty took $22 trillion to reach the same point that we had before, That would be a failure. And if you have a Department of Education that spends trillions of dollars and achieves basically nothing, that would also be a failure.

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So I asked Perplexity, one of our sponsors, quote, And Perplexity answered, American educational performance relative to other countries has not significantly declined since the creation of the Department of Education in 1979. While the U.S. does face challenges in some areas, particularly in mathematics, the overall trend shows mixed results rather than a clear decline.

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So I'm old enough to remember when Sarah Palin was blamed for putting up a map of targeted districts that she was hoping Republicans could flip. And then a nut job who had nothing to do with that map went and shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. And Sarah Palin was blamed for that.

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But what does that actually mean? When it comes to the Program for International Student Assessment, in 2022, U.S. students ranked 21st in math, 5th in reading, and tied for 10th in science among OECD countries.

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When it comes to the trends in international mathematics and science study, in 2019, the US had higher average scores than most participating countries in both math and science at fourth and eighth grade levels, but higher than most. We also spend virtually more than anybody.

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The US ranked eighth out of 41 countries in educational attainment, with 92% of adults aged 25 to 64 holding at least a high school diploma. But that particular measure is also not a great measure because a lot of people in the United States are elevated through high school without ever learning anything, which is why you have to have remedial courses in college.

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One of the things that tends to happen when it comes to analyzing educational performance is people saying, look how many people have college degrees, rather than have the degrees been watered down such that a college degree is now worth what a high school degree used to be worth or a high school degree is now worth what a junior high degree used to be worth.

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The bottom line is we have expended trillions of dollars over time via the federal government Meanwhile, after more than a year of war, terror and pain in Israel, the need for security essentials and support for first responders remains critical.

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Even during periods of supposed ceasefire, Israel must maintain constant vigilance and preparedness for potential threats that could emerge from literally any direction. Throughout this challenging time, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has stood firmly alongside the people of Israel, providing essential security resources that save lives.

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We remain committed to this vital mission.

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Your gift today will directly contribute to life-saving security measures including bomb shelters to protect families during rocket attacks, armored security vehicles, ambulances that provide critical medical care, advanced firefighting equipment for emergency response teams, protective gear like flak jackets and bulletproof vests for those on the front lines, and numerous other crucial resources.

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By making a generous donation today, Thank you, and God bless. To help us feel energized and balanced, my team and I, we've been partnering with LiveGood. My assistant Kelly recently tried their bioactive complete multivitamin as well as the organic complete plant-based protein powder because this year she wants to stay on top of the health and the wellness.

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Here you have people who are putting up an actual map with the icon of a Molotov cocktail and individual private people who own Teslas. And somehow this isn't a national scandal in any way. It should be. It should be. I mean, there's incitement to violence, certainly. The site says DogeQuest is the ultimate hub for enthusiasts of the Department of Government Efficiency.

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Since taking them and getting all the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals your body typically needs, she's noticed a big difference in overall health and strengthened immune response even with all the bugs that have been going around recently. and the protein powder is so convenient for throwing in smoothies after gym recovery as well.

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Live Good delivers expert-formulated premium supplements at unbeatable prices by eliminating middlemen and excessive markups. It's no surprise they've become the fastest-growing supplement brand with over 1.5 million satisfied customers. Plus, all their products fit conveniently into your day.

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Kelly takes their multivitamin after breakfast, she throws some of the protein powder into smoothies after workouts, and she says she's noticed just how much more energy and focus she has throughout the day compared to before she added those Live Good products into her routine. If you're ready to make the switch and start saving, we'll make it even easier for you. Use our link.

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You can save an additional 10% off your first order on top of already low prices. Just go to livegood.com to save 10% on that first order. That's livegood.com. Don't miss out on this opportunity to invest in your health without overspending. The actual executive order, by the way, does not actually close the Department of Education.

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It says that it should close, but it doesn't close it because Trump doesn't have the power to do that. The actual text of the executive order says, quote, Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them. Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows.

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This year's National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of eighth graders were below proficient in reading and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The federal education bureaucracy is not working. Closure of the Department of Education would drastically improve program implementation in higher education.

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The Department of Education currently manages a student loan debt portfolio of more than $1.6 trillion. This means the federal student aid program is roughly the size of one of the nation's largest banks, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees. The Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid. The Department of Education is not a bank.

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It must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America's students. Ultimately, the Department of Education's main functions can and should be returned to the state.

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And then the actual executive order says, quote, the Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the states. Now, again, consistent with the provisions of law. And that's all. So he's saying we should move toward that.

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We can't actually do it without some sort of congressional intervention, but we are going to move toward that. And this, by the way, is a broad spectrum popular conservative policy. Chris Sununu, who is the former governor of New Hampshire and very popular in the state and certainly not a radically conservative Republican, talked on CNN about why conservatives have been focused on closing the DOE.

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He is right about all of that. And again, what President Trump is doing here, this is the thing the left cannot deal with, is actually popular. Many of the things he's doing, these cuts, examining for ways, Doge remains a popular idea. which is why the left is fulminating against Musk. They're trying to personalize the politics here. It's about Musk.

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Our innovative platform allows users to explore an interactive map of Doge landmarks. Leveraging our cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms, DogeQuest goes a step further by connecting like-minded Tesla owners with one another, facilitating a vibrant community through shared contact information. So obviously it's cynical and ironical.

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It's not about what he's trying to do, which of course is doomed to failure. But the good news is that Democrats do have a bunch of federal judges on their side.

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According to Politico, yesterday, a federal judge barred Elon Musk's Doge from accessing sensitive information at the Social Security Administration, saying the group appears to be on a phishing expedition that could jeopardize the data of millions of people. The Doge team is essentially engaged in a phishing expedition at SSA in search of a fraud epidemic based on little more than suspicion.

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said U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in a 137-page ruling. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack. That is a terrible analogy, truly a terrible analogy. First of all, we know that there are people who are using false social security numbers in the United States. That is a very real thing.

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Illegal immigrants in particular have spent decades obtaining false social security numbers and then receiving aid or employment based on those false social security numbers. But beyond that, that is really stupid.

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If you're auditing a government department and the argument is you can't audit the government department because you don't know if there's anything wrong, that's literally the purpose of an audit. That's why an audit exists, is to determine if there is something wrong.

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Honest to God, that's like suggesting that police should never, ever be able to serve a search warrant because they don't know for sure what's inside the house before they actually search the house. Yeah, that's the point of the search warrant. That's the whole idea.

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Hollander, of course, a Barack Obama appointee, said the group's broad access likely violated privacy laws and then ordered an immediate halt to the Doge social security team's access to any systems that contain sensitive data of social security recipients.

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The judge wrote, ironically, the identity of these Doge affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy. The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to Doge affiliates without their consent. Well, hold up.

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That is not the same thing at all. The people who are working for Doge are properly concerned based on the fact that, you know, the left is burning cars and doxing people and swatting their homes. That may be the revelation of their names would be a problem for their safety.

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Who thinks it's a problem for their safety if the Doge team looks at a list of social security numbers and tries to match it up with, say, birth records? And what exactly is what is the problem here?

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But this is part and parcel of a broader judicial attempt by Barack Obama appointees, in large part Clinton appointees too, Biden appointees, to undercut the functioning of the executive branch, the judiciary, saying that basically Trump can't do what he needs to do because the judiciary says no. And it's all exaggerated and ridiculous. Vice President Vance is correct on this.

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He was talking about judicial overreach yesterday. Here's what he had to say.

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All of this comes after a bunch of high profile attacks on Tesla vehicles, including setting Tesla vehicles on fire at a Las Vegas dealership. The vandalism against Tesla has absolutely surged, not just in the United States, but apparently also in Canada. According to the New York Times, people in Canada have done real damage to vehicles at Tesla dealerships in Canada.

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I mean, he's right about that. By the way, J.D. went to Yale Law School, so it's not like J.D. has no background in any of this sort of stuff. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, who was perfectly willing to buck the Constitution on behalf of both Barack Obama and Joe Biden routinely, he says that the United States is now in a constitutional crisis. Now, why? Seriously, why?

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What is the constitutional crisis that he mentions? The administration has no intention of bucking Supreme Court orders the way, say, Joe Biden did. They have no intention of doing that. What they are saying is a district court judge should not have the ability to issue nationwide injunctions on national policy before the Supreme Court is weighed in.

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And again, the Supreme Court needs to take this up. They do. The Supreme Court rejected taking this up just a few months ago and reverted it back to district court level. They need to take up the question of what exactly is the jurisdiction of a temporary restraining order issued by a district court judge because it is wrecking the system. It is a real problem.

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Overreaching judges can, in fact, wreck systems. By the way, you see this abroad all the time. You see it in Brazil. You're seeing it in Israel right now. You've seen it in South Korea. The overreach by a judiciary into the realm of what the legislature or what the executive does is just as much of a damage

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as the executive branch reaching into the functions of the judiciary or the legislature, or a legislative branch reaching into the functions of the executive or the judiciary. This kind of notion of a completely unfettered judiciary that can simply encroach upon the prerogatives of the other branch is a complete violation of what the founders meant to do. That's the constitutional crisis.

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Here's Chuck Schumer making the case that the Trump administration, not waiting around on every district court judge in America to sign off on their action, but instead wanting the Supreme Court to sign off on it, is somehow a violation of the Constitution.

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He thinks judges should—I mean, so did Barack Obama. Barack Obama so much thought that judges should listen to him that he literally ripped the Supreme Court in front of the Supreme Court, leading Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head mildly and create an entire news cycle about how the Supreme Court justice had been disrespectful to Barack Obama. Again, remember, for the press, if—

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The Supreme Court does not rule the way Democrats like. The Supreme Court is the threat to the Republic. If the Supreme Court rules against a Republican and the Republican says, I don't like it, that's a threat to the Republic. It's all about power. It is never, ever about principle. Now, again, I don't think that the Trump administration is dumb enough to start defying Supreme Court orders.

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And in fact, they've said repeatedly they are not. It would, in fact, be a foolish move to start defying Supreme Court orders. And this is what every poll finds. Here's Harry Enten explaining.

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More than 80 Teslas had their tires punctured and bodies scratched at a lot in Hamilton, Ontario. Police said on Thursday, several acts of vandalism against Tesla property have also been committed in the United States. Apparently all in retaliation for President Trump being mean to the Canadians and Elon Musk being friendly with President Trump.

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Okay, but the American public is not really talking there about like a lower district court judge who puts a temporary restraining order and then that temporary restraining order doesn't hold. They're talking about the Supreme Court says, for example, that student loans cannot simply be relieved by dint of executive action. And then Joe Biden does that. That's what the American public mean.

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Meanwhile, the leftist agenda here suggests, of course, that everything is a danger to the republic, including, by the way, the idea that if you deport Hamas supporters, somehow this is a danger to American citizens. So Mehdi Hassan, who is an American, I mean, I understand why he's upset. Mehdi Hassan is pretty warm toward terrorism and also became an American citizen in 2020.

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But no one can deport Mehdi Hassan and no one's calling for the deportation of Mehdi Hassan. But here he was claiming that the threat is to American citizens if, you know, a person on a student visa or a work visa goes to a Hezbollah funeral. Here's Mehdi Hassan being Mehdi Hassan. Again, the horseshoe theory here is so strong. Here he is with Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project.

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Mehdi Hassan crossing streams with Tucker Carlson these days. The horseshoe theory of politics is quite a real thing.

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Correct. So I'm just wondering, what is the due process that has been denied to citizens and political enemies? Can he name it? Truly, can you name it? And the answer is no. That is a large jump. That is a very, very large scale jump. Even the people that he's talking about, for example, this green card holder who is going to be deported for being a Hamasnik. That guy's getting due process.

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Literally, his case is in the process of appeal right now in front of the judiciary. And meanwhile, the battle on the left continues between the kind of insane and the people who are more moderate. The insane are likely to win that battle.

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On the side of the more moderate are people like James Carville, who keeps pointing out, why is it that the Democratic Party has abandoned the traditional sort of Clintonian blue dog Democrat audience?

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I mean, it has not exactly been sort of top of mind for Musk, what is going on with the Canadians and the tariff war. That's really outside his purview. Meanwhile, again, the left is celebrating this sort of stuff. The Daily Show audience literally cheered, Tesla is being burned. This is on Jordan Klepper's Daily Show.

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And again, Carville is not wrong about this sort of stuff. But Democrats are not going to listen to him. And the reason they're not going to listen to him is because they actually do not like non-college educated white men. This is a very big problem for the Democrats. They do not like a constituency that they actually need to win a larger share of. And you can see it in the polling.

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Right now, the Democratic Party is run almost entirely by college educated white ladies. That is what the Democratic Party is. It is run by college educated white ladies who are disproportionately unmarried. This is evident from the polling from NBC News earlier this week, for example.

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Steve Kornacki says, when it comes to positive or negative views of Trump, among all voters, 46% positive, 49% negative. Among white voters, Trump is 52-45, 52% positive. 69% of white men without degrees view Trump positively. Only 28% see him negatively. Among white women with degrees, it is 29% positive and 67% negative. That is a net negative of 38 points.

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That is a 79 point net rating gap between the two groups. Those splits are absolutely enormous. And by the way, it does not include white non-college educated women. White women with no degree, for example, are plus 14 on Donald Trump. They're negative 38% on Donald Trump if you're a white college-educated woman. If you're a white college-educated man, you're plus one on Trump.

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If you're a white man with no degree, you're plus 41 on Donald Trump. The gigantic outlier is not educational. It is educational and also sex-based. White college-educated women are enormously woke Take, for example, the issue of DEI. So in this NBC News poll, what it shows is that on DEI, white men with no college degree, negative 40 on DEI. White men with a college degree, negative 17 on DEI.

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White women, no degree, negative one on DEI. White women, college degree, plus 31 on DEI. Plus 31. It is a truly what a complete disaster area for the Democratic Party. They are they are holding to a a one slice of the electorate and they're holding on to it tighter and tighter and letting it define them. This is why you end up with the popularity of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Because Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is appealing to one group of women, white college educated ladies overall. That is really her subgroup. Those are the people who want the sort of resistance nonsense. Here she was just a couple of days ago saying that Americans, the Republicans have disdain for working people because they make fun of her being a bartender.

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Well, yeah, we make fun of you being a bartender because you have not shown that you are qualified to be a useful person in the halls of Congress. And by the way, cosplaying as a blue-collar working woman while earning a pretty good salary to live in a really nice Georgetown apartment, it doesn't play anymore.

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Ridiculous. Let's be clear. Trump voters are much warmer toward your normal bartender than Democrats. Truly, like across the country. The Democrats are exactly the sort of people who believe that a degree in gender studies from Wellesley qualifies you for higher office.

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Alyssa Slotkin, who is the senator from Michigan, who's attempting to do the James Carville routine, she actually spent yesterday slamming AOC and Bernie Sanders and said, what the hell do you guys do for a living? You're useless.

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Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, and she, of course, is right, ripping on Bernie and ripping on AOC. They haven't done anything, but that is going to be their entire pitch going forward for the Democratic Party. We weren't involved in the system. They are a danger to the Democratic Party.

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Now, the real danger is that, God forbid, Bernie Sanders and AOC start to gain credibility if there's an economic downturn. I've said this a thousand times. I will continue to say it. Bad economic policy is the greatest threat to the Trump administration. There's a bunch of good economic policy that they are currently doing, ranging from deregulation to presumably enshrining tax cuts permanently.

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The current tax rates should be maintained. All of that would be really, really good. But the markets are still quite nervous about the possibility of a major hike in tariffs come April 2nd. The Dow Jones is bouncing around a lot. It was up yesterday. It's down today. There's just a lot of turmoil in markets and a lot of lack of faith right now in what the markets are going to do.

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There's a reason for that. The Federal Reserve set out its projections. yesterday, and what they suggested is that the president's tariff plans are likely to subdue the strength of the economy. Policymakers had presumed that they would spend 2025 gradually cutting rates to keep inflation heading down without a big rise in joblessness, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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The latest projections point to the prospect that tariffs covering a swath of goods and materials will actually send prices up while sapping investment sentiment and growth in the short term. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said, we now have inflation coming in from an exogenous source. The underlying inflationary picture before that was basically 2.5% inflation, 2% growth, and 4% unemployment.

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Now, officials are projecting weaker growth, higher unemployment, and higher inflation. President Trump continues to push forward with the idea that there should be both tariffs and rate cuts, which is not a thing that's going to happen. He put out a statement on Wednesday saying, quote, the Fed would be much better off cutting rates as U.S.

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tariffs start to transition and ease their ways into the economy. Do the right thing. But cutting rates in the middle of inflation that is still 50% too high while tariffs are increasing prices would actually not be the world's best move. The truth is that if you want to wipe inflation completely out, the Fed made a mistake last year by artificially lowering those interest rates.

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They should have actually kept the interest rates where they were and let the inflation peter out in the economy. Now, there is some good news. Again, the economy is ready to go in a lot of ways.

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For example, existing home sales rose 4.2% in February from the month prior to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.26 million, according to the National Association of Realtors, which was far better than expectations. I think one of the reasons for that probably is that there are a lot of people who are now running out of cash and now they are going to have to try and sell their houses.

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And they figure that the interest rates on mortgages are not going to drop dramatically anytime in the near future. And so they're basically giving up and now they're selling their houses. There's more inventory. So people are buying those houses. However, there are people who are in fact capable of buying those houses. So you are seeing some action in the real estate markets.

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Weirdly enough, that action in the real estate markets might actually lead to prices going down as supply increases to meet demand. The Trump administration's number one goal at this point has to be a booming economy. All the other stuff is secondary. All right, folks, it is a Friday, so it's time for a cultural recommendation. So I have recommended the show Severance on Apple TV before.

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It is great. It is a truly terrific show. It's fascinating. It's interesting. It raises really interesting philosophical questions about identity, work-life balance, relationships. It really is a fascinating show. So the season finale is out on Friday. I had a chance to watch it. And I will say, again, really well-constructed show.

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It is doing the thing that Lost never did, which is answer the questions that it actually poses, which is wonderful. So I was a huge Lost fan.

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For people who remember back to 2007, 2008, Lost was a huge show on ABC, a fascinating show that posited a bunch of mysteries and then refused to answer any of them and suggested you were an idiot if you wanted to know the answers, which is why Damon Lindelof, who wrote the show, is a schmuck. I'm still angry at Damon Lindelof.

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Here's an entire show filled with interesting mysteries and you have faith in the writers are going to solve them. And then he says at the end of the show that if you want those mysteries answered, well, you're just not mature. So well, then don't pose the mystery. I get it. Life is a mystery, but TV ought not be. So Severance is doing the opposite.

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Severance sets up a bunch of mysteries and then it actually starts solving those mysteries. So for those who haven't watched Severance, there will be spoilers. The setup for Severance is essentially that there is a process that has been invented by a company called Lumen Industries.

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And Lumen Industries has made it so that you can sever your brain in such a way that your work life is completely separate from the rest of your life. So you lead your life and then you get in an elevator. And as you go down the elevator, your brain actually changes. When you get off the elevator in your workplace, you don't know who you are. You don't know where you are.

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You just have your work life. And the purpose of this would be that when you get home, you're not thinking about work. And when you're at work, you're not thinking about home. And so it's for people who have trauma and they're trying to dissociate from that trauma and all of the rest. And so immediately, you've set up some interesting sort of spiritual and identity-based conundrums.

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And the audience is cheering. They're cheering. Now, I'd like you to imagine for just a second that there is a company associated with the Biden administration, wherein right wingers literally went to the factories where that company manufactured its product and started burning up the factories.

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Like, for example, if you have a completely separate identity when you go to your work life, a completely separate love life because you might fall in love with a co-worker because you don't even remember that you have a wife upstairs, for example. If you do that, is that a separate human? And if that person goes away, did you just kill a person?

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It's these sorts of questions that severance is asking. What is the nature of identity? Is it Is there a common thread between the different parts of your identity that holds them together? And it's wrapped into a really compelling plot with really likable and interesting characters and terrific writing. It's super weird and super interesting.

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So in the season two finale, the setup is that the main character played by Adam Scott is Mark Scout when he goes into his any world, which is sort of the employment world. Then he's known as Mark S., And he falls in love in the any world with a woman who is not his wife. His wife supposedly died, but actually has been taken prisoner by Lumen and is being used in experiments, as it turns out.

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And he doesn't realize when he's in the any world that he actually has a wife. So he falls in love with a co-worker who, it turns out, is working for the company in her Audi life. The Audi life is what's happening outside the workplace. The any life is what's happening inside the workplace. And so... Mark S. finally breaks the barrier.

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The course of season two is about him sort of introducing his innie to his outie and trying to find what is the connection between them and what their various interests are. Because it turns out that

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mark scout's wife is alive and so his interest is in getting his innie to go and free his wife and then for him to basically turn back into mark scout as opposed to his innie and then he and his wife can be together and meanwhile the innie is saying well i have my own separate life down here and sure it's kind of hellish because we live in this cubicle office space but i have a love life i have somebody i love i have friends so you're asking me to give up my life to you and so that's the central conflict of season two

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It's really well thought out. The characters are really fascinating, all the way down to the certain characters who are sort of the indoctrinated parts of the Egan Empire, which is Lumen Industries. Particularly the guy who plays Mr. Milchick is really a terrific actor. He's really great. It's a really well thought out show. The season finale really pays off.

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And again, I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it because it's still pretty early. It only came out late Thursday night on Apple TV. So a lot of people are gonna watch it tonight, presumably. I will say that it pays off. For those who've been watching, The show's great. More of this. More creative shows. And there's so many paint-by-numbers pieces of content right now.

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And not the kind of stuff where you buy Bud Light and then you break a Bud Light to demonstrate you don't like Bud Light. What we are talking about, people vandalizing other people's property, burning cars, and this stuff is really ugly.

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And good for Ben Stiller and for his team for putting together a piece of content that truly is interesting, asks cool questions, is well-plotted, is well-written, truly well-acted. I think it's the best TV show of the last several years. I mean, minimum. By the time it's over, if it continues to operate at this level, it's going to be one of the top five TV shows of all time.

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It really is that good. Severance is terrific. If you haven't seen it, you should get into it today. I will admit that I watched the first season thinking my wife wouldn't like it. And then like various travels last year. And then this year I said, you know, season two is coming out. Maybe you should go back and watch season one.

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And after watching it, she's very angry at me that I didn't wait for her to watch season one. And so now she's all caught up. It is. It's great. Can't wait for season three on it.

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Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into some more cultural questions, including apparently LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign narratives on Assassin's Creed Shadows, a video game, and also images of the new Mattel doll have broken. We'll get to that momentarily. First, you do have to become a member.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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If you want to hear the rest of the show every single day, you do have to become a member here at Daily Wire Plus. And that means you get all sorts of stuff. You get Matt Walsh's amazing movies. Am I racist? What is a woman? All the background. You get all access library. You can hang out with me and Matt and Jordan and all the rest of the crew. Michael Knowles, all the rest of the crew.

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The only way you can watch all of this and the rest of my show is to join Daily Wire Plus. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And of course, it shades over into violence because many of the same people cheering this are also cheering the murderer, the alleged murderer, Luigi Mangione, who's the person who shot the head of UnitedHealthcare. The escalation of rage against the right into actual acts of violence is truly astonishing and also predictable.

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Now, I will say, it's pretty incredible what we're watching right now. There have been across American history a number of very large industrialists, bankers, innovators who have worked hand in glove with the American government when called upon to do so.

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And it's being fomented by some of the most voluble people in American culture, including, of course, the schmuck Bill Burr, who used to be interesting, used to be funny, and then decided that he was going to go full woke. And he's angry at me for saying that. But that's your fault, Bill. It's not mine.

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You're the one who decided to make the call that you were going to become Michael Moore with less hair So here is Bill Burr on The View, what a constellation of intellect, saying that he's very angry about who's running the country. There are a bunch of nerds who don't know how to talk to girls. I mean, Elon Musk is definitely a nerd. Also, Elon Musk has like a thousand children.

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So I'm pretty sure he knows how to at least talk to girls. Nerds who don't know how to talk to, I'm getting lectured by Bill Burr on this. Okay, here we go.

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Just psychotic, just psychotic stuff. And again, I point out Bill Burr because he's the same person who literally cheers Luigi Mangione, which is an act of evil. Cheering on murder is a bad thing to do. Cold-blooded murder. I mean, he has called essentially for the murder of billionaires, Bill Burr, a man who makes his living by saying marginally funny things in front of crowds.

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And again, I say marginally funny because I watched him perform live and he wasn't even funny enough to keep the crowd in their seats. It is truly amazing to watch how the left is swinging even further left. The far left has decided that resistance must eventually shade into Beider-Meinhof excuses for domestic terrorism and violence. It really is an amazing, amazing thing.

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And again, Hollywood leads the way in all this. John Cusack, who again is particularly irrelevant at this point, except that he appears on sort of activist phone calls. Apparently there was something called a Tesla takedown mass call It is amazing.

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In the early 20th century, there were bankers who worked with the federal government in order to essentially bail the United States government out of serious debt problems. During World War II, obviously, industrialists worked with the FDR administration in order to rev up the American war machine. Nothing about what Elon Musk is doing is particularly unprecedented.

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They don't have the ability to win electorally, so they are going to wreck the largest electric vehicle company on planet Earth, all of these environmental nutjobs. I get the impression that their priority is not the environment, that it actually is something far grimmer. Here is John Cusack, who was last relevant 15 years ago.

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I'm glad that he was using the term ghoul so precisely. If he had not been using it with exactitude, I would have been a little bit upset. Also, I love him calling out Elon Musk as some sort of anti-Semite, throwing up Hitler salutes. John Cusack is pretty famously totally fine with anti-Semitism.

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So much so that the ADL, which is a left-wing organization, slaps John Cusack fairly regularly for it. John Cusack hasn't excited anybody in a movie for years, but starting a business is exciting. The financial chaos that comes with it, not so much.

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When I launched The Daily Wire, I became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee expenses, spending countless hours reconciling statements. It was a nightmare until we got it all figured out, which is why I want to introduce you to Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card that automates your entire tedious and time-consuming expense process.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Most finance teams are trapped, spending about 80% of their time on tactical busywork like chasing expenses and reconciling statements. with only 20% left for strategic thinking. Ramp flips this equation entirely. Their corporate card automates operations, freeing you and your finance team to focus on those strategies that truly drive growth.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's very difficult to think ahead when you're just trying to stay apace on the treadmill that is business. Ramp allows you to do that because it takes care of the treadmill part of the business. It's no wonder over 25,000 businesses trust Ramp, including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America, which is why they were just named number one in spend management by G2.

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Plus, switching on over to Ramp is easy for new members. Ramp offers a complimentary white glove onboarding service to help you migrate from your current corporate card to start using Ramp. And now, for a limited time, listeners of this show can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro. That's ramp.com slash Shapiro. R-A-M-P dot com slash Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, who's attempting to drink Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's milkshake as the most viral left-wing congressional star, she was also on this Tesla takedown mask. Notice where they are directing their energies.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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Notice where they're directing their, they're not directing their energies toward the actual elected officials. There's a congressional election next year. They could be directing their energies at Congress, but they're losing because it turns out the Democratic Party is deeply unpopular. They could be directing all of their energies at President Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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But they know they're getting nowhere with that. So instead, they've decided they're going to attack the private company of a private individual. Obviously, I don't mean that Musk isn't a public figure. He certainly is. And Tesla is publicly traded. But none of this has to do with government interventionism. Typically, in a republic, the way that you change policy is through your vote.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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What is unprecedented is the idea that it's good for the country if his company is taken down. The hatred of President Trump is so strong and President Trump has been so invulnerable to that hatred that pretty much all the hatred of the left has now turned to Musk. It's kind of a fascinating thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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Even when you're lobbying, the threat is to change votes. The threat is that you're going to do something that is going to change the nature of the electorate, which will then change the nature of the people who are governing you. But that's not what these people are doing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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They're literally attempting to pressure a private company so as to pressure the owner of that private company into doing something that they would prefer he not do. It's an amazing thing. Here's Jasmine Crockett, U.S. representative. I mean, again, these are members of Congress who are actively attempting to foment some of the worst action against an electric vehicle company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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That's all she wants on her birthday, to see Elon taken down. These people are, there's something sick about this. Truly, truly sick. You know, Chuck Schumer is admitting that all these activists who you're seeing showing up at Republican town halls and screaming at Republican Congress people, basically Democrats are astroturfing this.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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This is not a natural thing that when you're having Harriet Hageman, who is a congresswoman from Wyoming. Wyoming is like 110 percent Republican being berated at a congressional town hall that that is not the natural state of things.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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I mean, at least you know what they're doing and who's astroturfing it. Meanwhile, again, this is spreading beyond its kind of normal boundaries into the realm of attacks by private citizens on other private citizens.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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According to Breitbart, a series of swatting incidents targeting conservative commentators and journalists have transpired nearly every evening since March 11th, according to X-Post, in which victims shared video surveillance footage and photos of the events, sparking questions as to who is engaging what Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee called domestic terrorism and attempted murder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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When you talk to people on the left right now, sure, they hate Trump, but they're kind of tired of hating Trump. They got bored with it. The fact is that they hated Trump 10 years ago. They hate Trump today. Elon Musk is the new hot thing to hate.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have also reacted to the wave of dangerous crime. SWATing is where an anonymous person will call the cops and claim that there is a dangerous crime going on at some conservative's house. The police arrive ready to engage in some sort of battle with the person inside.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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They'll say that a murder or a hostage event is taking place at the home. It's designed to prompt SWAT teams to arrive at the targeted home and then possibly do violence to the people inside. As Breitbart reports, at least 15 figures in conservative politics and media have reportedly been swatted within the course of one week.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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The string of swatting incidents seemingly began on the evening of March 11th with InfoWars reporters Chase Geiser revealing in an early morning March 12th ex-post that six to eight police officers used a PA system to call me by name and order me to walk out of my house. And he is not, of course, the only one. Nick Sorter announced that his family was swatted. We have also seen

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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Gunther Eagleman has 1.3 million followers on X, who is swatted, right? This sort of stuff is really dangerous. And the fact that it is becoming more and more popular with the left to do this is a very bad sign for the country. Now, meanwhile, the media are trying to target Musk with anything they can.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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There's a story that the Trump administration is calling fake news about Elon Musk having a briefing at the Department of Defense today. According to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times also reported this. Musk was scheduled to receive a briefing Friday on the U.S. military's top secret war plans for China, according to two U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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officials, giving the wealthy businessman and presidential advisor insight into one of the Pentagon's most closely guarded operational blueprints. Now, the reality is that Elon should not be in on that. He does not, in fact, have security clearance. Elon does enormous amounts of business with China. Tesla does enormous business in China.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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And because Elon Musk has dedicated himself to Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, because he is going through department by department and looking for possible waste, fraud and abuse because he's so voluble. Because he's so rich, specifically because of all that, he has become persona non grata, enemy number one.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2163 - The Left’s ASSAULT On Musk Continues…

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And so the idea that America's confidential war plan should be put in front of a civilian without proper security clearance, that is a bad idea. Well, fortunately, according to the Trump administration, that was never going to happen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Musk was going to visit the Pentagon, but he disputed that he would receive a sensitive China briefing saying, quote, it's an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies and smarter production. President Trump put up a post on Truth Social Thursday evening saying China will not even be mentioned or discussed.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So you now have a conflict between a media that has two confidential sources that they are not revealing and openly members of the Trump administration saying that it is not true. Supposedly, according to the Wall Street Journal, Admiral Sam Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said last month in remarks at a defense forum in Hawaii, the U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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has war-winning advantages in possible conflict with China in both space and cyber capabilities, as well as a general advantage in submarines. Paparo was expected to participate in a Musk briefing with Hegseth Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg and Admiral Christopher Grady, who's vice chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

Folks, there is a myth that pervades Western societies, and it's an unbelievably dangerous and stupid myth. That myth is that all cultures are like ours, and all people underneath are really just like us. They think the same way, they want the same things, and all it requires is a little bit of kindness and education for everyone to blossom into a good Westerner.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Hamas is also in Judea and Samaria, and they're quite powerful in Judea and Samaria. So apparently, Hamas loaded, as best we know, five different bombs onto five different buses. And it is only through the grace of God that this did not kill hundreds of people. One of the bombs on the bus was identified by one of the women on the bus. And she told the driver, there's something on this bus.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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We need to get off. They got off. The bus blew up. Two other buses then blew up. Apparently that is because the terrorists were stupid enough to mistime the bombs. They put analog clocks on there. And instead of setting it for 10 a.m. during rush hour, they set it for 10 p.m. And so they blew up in a parking lot without anybody aboard, which is a miracle.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Israel then stopped every bus in the country and searched all of the various buses.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's speculation that this was supposed to be the lead off for another October 7th style attack because Hamas, knowing exactly what was going to happen after they had a celebratory event surrounding the murder of babies, knowing that the war is going to restart in the Gaza Strip, wanted another October 7th style event from the West Bank.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The goal there would be, presumably, to set off bombs simultaneously around Israel, draw troops to those areas, and then breach fences between the Arab areas of Judea and Samaria and the Jewish areas, and then start to rush into various Jewish villages and to another October 7th this time from the Judea and Samaria area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Again, it's only through the grace of God that that was thwarted because the Shin Bet, which is Israeli's domestic security service, completely, completely failed. Apparently explosives, this Jerusalem Post wing, four to five kilograms were found intending to explode on Friday morning in order to kill hundreds of civilians.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And again, a Hamas West Bank battalion appeared to claim responsibility for the mass bus bombings. So what are we to make of all this? Well, the first thing we're to make of all this is that Donald Trump is absolutely right. The time to unleash hell is long past. It is long past. President Trump acknowledges realities on the ground better than any politician I have seen.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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In any case, this was also made clear by the fact that between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was in control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan was in control of the so-called West Bank, Judea, and Samaria, there was no attempt at a Palestinian state. And in fact, in 1964, when the Palestine Liberation Organization was originally founded, calling for a Palestinian state

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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He recognizes that this two-state solution nonsense is precisely that. It is nonsense. It is rooted in wishful thinking. It is not rooted in reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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When President Trump suggests that Gaza be cleared of its population and people be allowed to go elsewhere and that the place actually turn into a place of investment and decency, that is the only decent solution that I have heard to this entire situation for literally decades.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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When it comes to the so-called West Bank, Judea and Samaria, and I always say so-called West Bank because that is not the proper name of this area. Judea and Samaria are the historic names for this area. The reason that the Jews are called Jews is because they spring from, wait for it, Judea. That is the biblical heartland of Israel.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Pretty much every place mentioned in the Bible is in the so-called West Bank, Judea and Samaria. It is called the West Bank because it is the West Bank of the Jordan River. It was called the West Bank, this particular area, when it was under Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967. Israel should annex all of it. Israel should say there will be no Palestinian state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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There can be domestic home rule in some of these areas for purposes of picking up trash and collecting taxes. Anybody associated with terrorism will be expelled or jailed. Security control must retain in Israeli hands. And as for voting, nope, it's just like Puerto Rico. The United States and Puerto Rico have a wonderful relationship and Puerto Ricans do not vote in American national elections.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It's exactly the same thing. That is the only proper answer to what is going on here. Because the evil that we saw in Gaza is not relegated to Gaza. It exists in Tulkarm. It exists in Jenin. It exists in Nablus. It exists in Hebron. It exists in all of these places.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And so this bizarre, stupid Western notion that you can project your own values onto people who celebrate, cheer, and train their children to cheer the death of babies, the purposeful murder of babies. Again, the false equivalence, the sick false equivalence by some people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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in the media infrastructure who suggest that there is somehow an equivalent between attempting to target a terrorist who's hiding behind a child and the child being a civilian casualty and breaking into a family's home, kidnapping babies back to terror tunnels and murdering them. If you are that sort of person, you have a moral perversion inside you that I'm not sure how to solve.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The Western left and even some on the Western right who agree with this particular mentality, that is a moral perversion. President Trump certainly doesn't agree with that particular mentality. The moral equivalence is non-existent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And because there is, in fact, no moral agreement on the basic things of life, in order for there to be any agreement, there has to be some sort of agreement on interests. There is no agreement on interests. There is no agreement on what this war is even about. Israel believes that the war should be about setting territorial boundaries.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The Palestinians and the Palestinian cause is that Israel should disappear. End of story. As my friend Dennis Prager has frequently said, if Israel were to put down all of its guns today, every Jew in the area would die. Everyone. That was proved on October 7th. It's proved every single day. And if the Palestinians had put down their guns 30 years ago, they'd have a state.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The West Bank and Gaza Strip were not in Jewish hands. So the call for a Palestinian state when the PLO was founded was for the destruction of the state of Israel. The Palestinian cause has always been about the destruction of the state of Israel. It is why the Palestinians will simultaneously insist that Gaza is their home, but also a refugee camp. It's a refugee camp from where? From Tel Aviv.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And instead, they've not. They've decided they would rather that their own children die in war. They'd rather train their own children to whistle, cheer, and sing at the death of Jewish babies. That is not a situation that is fixable. Other ideas must be considered, and this is why President Trump is right, and this is why all hell should, in fact, break loose on Gaza.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Israel should do precisely what President Trump has suggested in the Gaza Strip. They should waste no more time on this, and they should do exactly the same thing in Judea and Samaria as well, because Hamas is in control of Judea and Samaria too. In fact, Hamas right now, by polling data, is more popular in Judea and Samaria than they are in the Gaza Strip.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Well, speaking of the evils going on in the Middle East right now, in the wake of the ongoing conflict, Israel continues to face profound humanitarian challenges. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews remains steadfast in providing vital support to those affected across the Holy Land, offering hope and healing to communities in crisis.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Your compassionate gift today will deliver essential aid to the devastated communities in both northern and southern Israel. Your generosity will directly impact those most vulnerable.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Displaced families seeking refuge from conflict zones, dedicated first responders and volunteers, recovering soldiers, elderly Holocaust survivors, families who've lost their homes and livelihoods, and countless others in desperate need. In these uncertain times, your support becomes a beacon of hope. Join us in bringing comfort and relief to Israel by donating at benforthefellowship.org.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That's one word, benforthefellowship.org. Your kindness makes a huge difference. And what's going on in Israel is truly horrifying. Israel is facing existential threat, not just from Hamas, not just from Hezbollah, also from Hamas in the West Bank. And the suffering continues day in and day out. Your help does in fact help. Benforthefellowship.org. Thank you. And God bless once more.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Benforthefellowship.org to help out the suffering people in the Holy Land. Also, this country was founded on freedom. Of course, freedom from another country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea. And then they blockaded us when we dumped their tea into the ocean. Well, now we're a separate country in Great Britain. What do they do lately? Well, here's the thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It's time to throw out your overpriced big wireless contract as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, this is for premium service on America's most dependable 5G network.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Get your iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy for $0 with a qualifying plan by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. You can make the switch in as little as 10 minutes. No hassle, no gimmicks, just honest-to-goodness wireless priced right. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim your new iPhone or Galaxy with qualifying purchase from Pure Talk, America's wireless company.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Visit puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. Their coverage is excellent. Otherwise, I wouldn't use them. You should try them out right now. Best price, best coverage, puretalk.com slash Shapiro for details. Okay, meanwhile, the other big global conflict that is taking place is obviously in Ukraine.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The Europeans are panicking over President Trump's approach to Ukraine. And again, I think that we need to separate off some of President Trump's rhetoric here, his sort of tirades against Vladimir Zelensky, many of which I find ill-founded as I talked about it on yesterday's show, from the actual policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The actual policy that President Trump is pursuing is in fact the only rational policy and everyone knows it. Security guarantees that are durable enough to ensure that Vladimir Putin does not reinvade Ukraine to Ukraine. And an acknowledgement that without a massive expenditure of resources that no one is willing to undertake,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It's why the Palestinians have always called for a quote-unquote right of return that would allow them to enter Israel and destroy it from within. This has always been the Palestinian nationalist cause. And the West has decided, because of its own stupid

The Ben Shapiro Show

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the Donbass and Crimea are going to remain in Russian hands for the foreseeable future. Okay, that is just a reality. And everyone acknowledges that that is the reality that's been true for years at this point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Again, one of the very weird things that's been happening on the right is that if I agree totally with President Trump's agenda, but I disagree with some of his rhetoric surrounding the agenda, apparently that is some sort of heresy. I don't quite understand why. I don't quite understand why in order to agree, and actually,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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in order to propose an alternative that I have been proposing for years and that the Trump administration actually mirrors. Why, in order to do that, I also have to believe that Vladimir Zelensky is a CIA asset or some such nonsense. How about both these things? How about Russia is the aggressor in this war? Vladimir Putin is an evil dictator. Vladimir Zelensky is not, in fact, a dictator.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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He may be venal. He may be a problematic personality on the international stage in terms of how he approaches various countries, including the United States. All those things can be true. And also, the end sort of lines of the deal are exactly the same. Why is it that there has to be some sort of loyalty test about mirroring sort of the excesses? It seems to me a foolish proposition.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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But in any case, the Europeans are adjusting to the new vision of the world proposed by President Trump. He's basically saying, listen, you guys want a different deal? Why don't you pony up? Get in here. Pony up. Show us the money. This is in Europe. It's not in the United States.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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According to the Wall Street Journal, American and European supporters of NATO said that by siding with Europe's longstanding adversary, Trump has done serious damage to its greatest asset, the deterrence that comes from the alliance's ironclad commitment to collective defense. But of course, President Trump has not suggested that NATO ought to be abolished.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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President Trump has suggested that the war in Ukraine ought to come to an end. It would be a mistake to abolish NATO because, again, withdrawing forces from, say, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia will lead to further Russian predations in those areas. If they believe they can get away with it, they'll do it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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In the same way that removing the American trigger force in South Korea would presumably lead to North Korean predations in South Korea. It's a rather cheap deal to keep some military bases in Eastern Europe to prevent a Russian invasion of those areas, pushing deeper and deeper into continental Europe. However, I've not seen any proposal, a serious proposal that is like that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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idea that everyone thinks like the West, that this is just a territorial dispute in which if the sides could just get over themselves and if you drew the lines in the right places, everybody would go home happy. What everybody wanted was two states side by side in peace and prosperity. That was a lie. It is a lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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But if it causes the Europeans to step up, that's not a bad thing. The United States, Pete Hegseth said that NATO will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship, which encourages dependency. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security. Now, I don't understand why that's a bad thing. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And some of the messaging that's coming out of the Trump administration, in fact, is not the sort of radical Russia is right messaging that is being mirrored on X. So, for example, Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, has asked about sanctions on Russia. He said, listen, we can ratchet them up. We can ratchet them down. We haven't decided yet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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OK, so, again, a lot of options are still on the table, but the foreign policy freak out is is happening. There's a piece in The Wall Street Journal that kind of is fascinating about this because it talks up a failed foreign policy while talking down Trump's foreign policy. Quote, since the end of World War II, the American-led system of alliances has bolstered U.S.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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power, most foreign policy experts say. By vowing to defend allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the United States, more than any other country, took on the role of global guarantor of free trade and stability, a mission that included countering first the Soviet Union and more recently China. Trump has a different take. Allies take more than they give.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Instead of relying on the US military and its nuclear umbrella for their security, other countries should spend more on their militaries while providing economic incentives to stay in America's good graces. Trump's is a far more transactional win-lose vision of foreign policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Well, I mean, I don't see why that is cutting out the best parts of the prior foreign policy, meaning if our allies contribute to their own security and strengthen their own war-making capacity, that means we have to pay less and we achieve the same end. Trump is not saying that China should overrun the Far East. He's saying Taiwan should arm itself and we should help them arm themselves.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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He's not saying that Europe should surrender to Vladimir Putin. He's saying Europe should stop free riding on our coattails. That all makes perfect sense to me. Victoria Coates, vice president for national security and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, said, quote, It's not that President Trump is abandoning the post-World War II order.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It's that we're no longer in the post-World War II era. We have to accept the geopolitical landscape has shifted. So, I mean, that's clearly true. Why can't Europe afford to spend more of its own money on defense? Why are we paying for all of its defense in the face of a reality, which is that Europe as a combined entity is significantly more powerful than, for example, Russia?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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That is a lie, and it is a really dangerous lie, because when you grant that credibility to people who who actively want a different thing, who actively foment evil, who teach their children evil. When you say, well, they don't really want evil. They're not really evil. They don't believe evil things. Really, it's just about us not being nice enough.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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It will always be a lie because the Palestinian nationalist cause is in its essence a rejection of the possibility of a Jewish state. It is a mutually exclusive proposal and it always has been. Now, that is the only way to understand what happened yesterday. So yesterday in Israel, Hamas, which has an ongoing hostage deal, a so-called ceasefire with the Israelis,

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Russian GDP last year was about $2 trillion. The EU's GDP in 2024 was about $17 trillion last So I'm confused as to why precisely the EU and NATO countries can't pony up more in order to defend their own collective security. Like, why do we have to pay the bill? That is Trump's actual proposal here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Now, as far as the Vladimir Zelensky of it and President Trump's statements about Zelensky, again, some of this is personal. Some of this is that Zelensky has made an awful lot of boo-boos when it comes to offending President Trump preemptively. There's a point that Mike Walz, the national security advisor, was making yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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So again, the Trump administration is trying to actually cut a deal with Ukraine in which the United States invests in Ukraine. Now, Ukraine might not like the terms of those deal, but if that's the case, then they should make a deal with Europe. And nothing Trump is doing here is actually crazy in terms of actual policy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And so all of the rhetorical flourishes and excesses aside, the actual policy being pursued is significantly more real world than anything Joe Biden was pursuing in the first place, which is this sort of bizarre wish casting in which there is no end of the war and we're going to eternally fund it, which, again, made no sense on any level whatsoever.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Well, the truth is that all over the world and domestically, your dollars are generally not safe. During tax season, your sensitive information travels through countless hands and systems from payroll to tax preparers to data centers before ever reaching the IRS. Every stop is a potential vulnerability. Your W-2 contains exactly what identity thieves need to wreak havoc on your life.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It's no surprise the IRS reported a 20% spike in tax-related identity theft last year, and that's where LifeLock comes in. Their advanced system monitors millions of data points every second, catching threats you might miss on your own. If If the worst happens, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists have your back, supported by their million-dollar protection package.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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They'll fix your stolen identity, guaranteed, or you get your money back. Producer Jessica uses LifeLock to protect her data. You should do the same. Don't let identity thieves turn your tax season into their payday. Get the protection you need with LifeLock. Join now. Save up to 40% off your first year of membership. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and mention promo code BEN or...

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Only available if prescribed after an online consultation with a provider. That's ro.co. Well, meanwhile, I will say the Trump administration needs to start putting heavy focus on the economy. There's been a lot going on. Doge is one attempt to get the economy under control by presumably cutting the excesses of government.

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The truth is the cuts that Doge is going to undertake, even if they get up to $100 billion, it's not going to make a dent in the national debt. It would be good in the sense that it would actually restructure, again, that blue pipeline we've been talking about between the federal taxpayer and a bunch of left-wing permanent organizations in and out of government.

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That deal is that Hamas is supposed to trickle out live hostages and dead bodies of people that it kidnapped on October 7th. And in return, Israel is supposed to turn over murderous terrorists. That is the deal.

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But Doge isn't going to be the cure-all for all of this. The real question for the Trump administration, Trump was elected for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason, the single biggest reason he was elected was the inflationary policies of Joe Biden. Inflation has to be coming down. It has to be. In order for Trump to get his agenda done, the inflation has to drop.

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The economy has to keep chugging and the inflation has to drop because whether Trump is responsible for it or not. Presidents get the blame for the economy over which they preside. Sometimes fairly, as in the case of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and sometimes unfairly, as in the case of, say, George W. Bush after 9-11. But presidents always get the blame. They get the credit and they get the blame.

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That's the way this works. And so the economy needs to continue chugging. President Trump is doing his best with deregulation via Doge. But if inflation keeps clocking along at 3%, that is going to be a serious problem. According to Politico, President Trump's approval ratings have in fact been sinking.

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Two new polls from CNN, SSRS, and the Washington Post-Ipsos show the president is now at 47% in the CNN poll and 45% in the Post. So his positive approval rating is now, it's flipped, it's now in slightly negative territory. Again, these are not like disastrous approval ratings or anything, but they're not great.

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And when it comes to the actual economy, which is going to be the bellwether, that's the problem for President Trump. He currently has negative numbers on the economy. For the first time in years, President Trump has always been considered a good bet on the economy. But the inflationary signs continue to mount.

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According to Axios, bond markets are betting that inflation will stay elevated in the years ahead. Some evidence from business surveys and forecasters points in the same direction. This belief suggests the Trump administration and Federal Reserve face a headwind in securing a return to low inflation.

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And Israel foolishly has agreed to these sorts of deals in the past and is agreeing to those deals now because Israel puts a high priority on getting not only its live citizens home, but also on getting dead bodies out for proper burial. It is a policy with which I disagree. I think it's a stupid policy. I think it's a bad policy because all it does is incentivize further hostage taking.

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Concerns that have escalated just in the last few weeks as the president has threatened tariffs on a variety of US trading partners. And again, whether you like the tariffs or not. Will they have some minor inflationary impact? They absolutely could. I like his illegal immigration plans, for example. That will have some impact on inflation. Why?

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Because when you limit the labor supply, for good or ill, and I believe for good in this particular case, that is going to have economic impact. And here we are just talking about the economic impact of various Trump policies, which means a few things. One, the Federal Reserve needs today to actually increase the interest rates. 3% is not sustainable.

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The Federal Reserve needs to increase the interest rates. I understand that President Trump doesn't want that to happen. Republicans are wary about all of that. It's very, very early. It is February of the president's first year in office, in his second term. Now would be the moment to take the pain for the long-term gain. The interest rates should increase.

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There's still too much money floating around the economy. The price earnings ratios of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are totally out of control. Those big seven companies, which are right now driving an enormous amount of growth, are trading at P.E. ratios, meaning the price of the stock to the earnings of the company. They're trading at P.E. ratios in excess of 40. A proper P.E.

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ratio, typically speaking, according to Warren Buffett, is around 16. His mentor, Benjamin Graham, said 16 to 18 would be a normal price to earnings ratio. The Dow Jones Industrial Average right now is currently at 27%. That is way too high, way too high. That means there's a lot of money chasing around, not as much opportunity. We happen to be in an AI bubble right now.

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The amount of money that's being spent on the semiconductors from NVIDIA A lot of people chasing AI, the return on AI is not nearly what the actual investiture into AI has been. That doesn't mean that AI isn't important. It's very important. But just like the internet bubble didn't mean the internet wasn't important.

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It just meant that at the very beginning of a new technology, tons of money follows the tech and most of it gets wiped out. The same thing right now is happening in the AI space. An enormous amount of money that's being invested in the AI space is just going to get wiped out. So what does that mean? It means that the economy is actually a lot more tenuous than I think people are recognizing it is.

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The Fed is reluctant to cut interest rates, but actually the Fed should be increasing the interest rate right now. According to Axios, longer-term measures of inflation expectations look less worrying. The bond market break-even for annual inflation in a window of five to 10 years from now is down slightly this year at levels consistent with the Fed's 2% target. But let's be clear about this.

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If inflation stays at 3% or if it increases from there over the course of the next five years, inflation is an invisible tax on people's savings. It means that your wages are degraded. President Trump needs to put significant focus, and I think he is, into passing a bill, passing that one big beautiful bill that is going to make clear that the Trump tax cuts are not disappearing.

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But that is the policy of the state of Israel. That's why that ceasefire is in place. So yesterday it became clear that the Hamas terror group, which runs the Gaza Strip with the acquiescence and support of the civilian population. And let's be very, very clear about this. The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is supportive of the destruction of Israel. Period. Full stop.

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He needs to continue to allow Doge to do its work. He needs to pursue business opportunities that make it easier, not harder for costs to come down. All of those things need to happen because the success of the Trump administration rides on all that. Now, there's some misplaced worries over here.

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One of those misplaced worries, people suggesting that President Trump's idea to donate, basically to give back part of the savings from Doge to the American people, that will be inflationary. Kevin Hassett did a good job of explaining why this is false yesterday.

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So, again, he is correct about that. You're basically taking money that is already being spent by the government and you're putting it back in the American people's pocket. That's not what inflation is. That doesn't inflate the prices. Government spends all of that money. That money being spent in the private sector is actually significantly more efficient.

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He's the director of the National Council of Economic Advisors, by the way. Meanwhile, President Trump is trying to negotiate a budget bill. The House version is one big, beautiful bill. The Senate... led by Senator John Thune, has been proposing the possibility of two separate bills, one that would basically do a bunch of border security and ancillary measures, and one that would be the tax bill.

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The problem, of course, with that proposal is that it is very difficult under reconciliation rules to get two of those bills through a single Congress. It hasn't happened any time in the recent past. I suppose the idea is that it'll be easier to get the budget bill through as an immigration matter. And then the tax bill can be taken up. And at that point, you'll get a cleaner tax bill.

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But again, that's a high-risk proposal. Mike Johnson, who's the one who has to work with basically no majority, I mean, it's like a one-seat majority, two-seat majority, depending on how many House members he has on any given day, he's going to have to cobble something together. That is why he's going for this sort of big, beautiful budget bill.

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There's a lot of talk at the White House about what is the proper strategy. Joining us on the line to discuss is Mary Margaret Olihan. She's our senior White House correspondent. Mary Margaret, thanks so much for joining us.

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So let's talk about the budget bill. What are you hearing from the White House about their approach to the budget bill? One big, beautiful bill or two separate bills via the Senate?

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So, Mary Margaret, as our senior White House correspondent at the White House, let me ask you about the differences in access from the Trump administration between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, because obviously Biden, his level of access was not high. Many members of the media were upset about that. And now things have radically changed.

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The same thing is true in the West Bank. It's true in Judea and Samaria as well. This is true by every available polling statistic literally ever in this area. There is no desire for a two-state solution. There is no desire to live side by side in peace and security. In fact, there's an inculcation into children of the idea that the Jews must be wiped out.

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Now, Mary Margaret is the person on the ground asking those questions. Really appreciate the time, Mary Margaret, and we'll check back in with you.

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So again, these are very important things. I mean, there's a lot of important stuff going on inside the Trump administration. Kash Patel yesterday was confirmed. That's excellent. It is funny to watch Democrats lose their mind over Kash Patel being confirmed as the head of the FBI, an uber qualified person for this particular role. The final vote was 51 to 49.

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All the Senate Democrats voted against Kash Patel. Two Republicans, Collins and Murkowski, of course, voted against Kash Patel. Patel then posted, quote, the politicization of our justice system has eroded public trust. That ends today. My mission as director is clear. Let good cops be cops and rebuild trust in the FBI.

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Democrats, including Adam Schiff, were out there freaking out about all of this. Adam Schiff talking about the evils of weaponization of law enforcement is just beyond. It's beyond parody.

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Listening to Adam Schiff, who is the head of the Russiagate witch hunt, talk about the weaponization of law enforcement is insane. Insane. Meanwhile, Dick Durbin, another foolish senator from Illinois, he was out there in front of the FBI talking about how it's just terrible.

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It's just terrible that Kash Patel has joked about turning the FBI into a museum for memorializing the evils of things like mass surveillance. Here's Dick Durbin.

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And that is why you saw what you saw in the Gaza Strip yesterday. So yesterday... Kamas had announced a couple of days ago that the Bibas family, there are four members of the Bibas family who were kidnapped on October 7th.

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Yeah, I mean, I'm confused. It's called the J. Edgar Hoover Building. So if you want to talk about the evils of government surveillance of people and how you don't care about that next to the J. Edgar Hoover building, good luck with that particular situation. Here's the thing. A lot of very serious things are going on. And we can either take our politics seriously or we can treat them as a joke.

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If you treat politics as a joke, there are some downsides. President Trump is trying to do very serious things on the economy, on foreign policy. He's trying to do very serious things on illegal immigration, for example. All of these things are very serious things. And it seems to me that we should treat our politics seriously since it has incredibly serious consequences.

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This is why I'm slightly annoyed by some of the response to Mitch McConnell announcing that he's not going to seek reelection. So McConnell, of course, should not. He is 83 years old at this point, and he's had a couple of health lapses over the course of the last several years. He's sort of a bizarre celebration from the right in the retirement of Mitch McConnell.

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The single most effective Senate majority leader in modern American history is beyond recognition for me. I don't understand it. I don't agree with Mitch McConnell on a lot of stuff. Also, the job of Senate majority leader is to cobble together bare majorities to do the best that you can.

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And three quarters of President Trump's legislative triumphs would not have happened without Mitch McConnell in the background pulling strings. That includes, by the way, the stacking of the Supreme Court. The only reason Merrick Garland is not on the Supreme Court right now is Mitch McConnell. So this sort of bizarre hatred of McConnell, it's deeply unserious.

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When I see unserious people who really have never accomplished anything in politics ripping on Mitch McConnell, of all people, who, again, is single-handedly responsible for the overturning of Roe versus Wade, I just, I don't get it. I've critiqued Mitch McConnell. I've criticized many of the stances he's taken. I disagree with him on some of the things that he's done.

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But this bizarre idea that Mitch McConnell is somehow the enemy, it's just chicken feed for people who don't watch closely. Here's McConnell announcing his retirement yesterday.

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That included the father, included the mother, and included two children, one of whom was three at the time of the kidnapping, and one of whom was nine months at the time of the kidnapping. And I want to introduce you to these children because... It's important to the story. So here are these children. One is named Ariel Bibas, and one is named Kfir.

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A lot of problems with Mitch McConnell, but the kind of overall judgment on the right that Mitch McConnell was an obstacle to victory when in fact he was a tool for victory many, many times, including most specifically on the Supreme Court, Trump's tax cuts, all of his legislative accomplishments. That's an unserious point of view. We'll get to more on that in a moment.

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First, the best reason to become a Daily Wire Plus member, you're directly supporting the fight. Every dollar goes right back into building a real alternative to the mainstream. More shows, more movies, more investigative journalism. This is how we continue to reshape the culture. But there's another reason. If you like this show, there's more of it waiting for you. Ooh, mysterious.

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Only Daily Wire Plus members get exclusive content at the end of every episode, the show after the show, and live chats and more. Don't just listen, be a part of it. Download the Daily Wire Plus app or go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and become a member today. Well, folks, it is a Friday, and that means it's time to do a little bit of culture talk. I know, I know.

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But the good news is my production team is filled with people who actually care about this stuff, and so we're going to go through it for your viewing pleasure or suffering, depending on the kind of thing that you like. So... Apparently, Denise Richards, you remember her. Maybe you don't. She was in a Bond movie at one point.

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She's in Wild Things with Nev Campbell and all the rest of that crew, Matt Dillon. And now she has a reality show with her kids called Wild Things. And her daughter apparently has an OnlyFans. Apparently that is a thing. So here is Sammy Sheen. Again, Denise Richards had her kids with Charlie Sheen. So that is a... A pairing, if ever there was one.

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By the way, Charlie was the one who objected to Sammy joining OnlyFans. When Charlie Sheen is the responsible one in a relationship, you know you got a problem. Here is Sammy Sheen explaining why she joined OnlyFans in June 2022. She was 18.

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This is so sad. I'm sorry. That's so sad. She's met some really good people. Really? Are those the people you meet when you are stripping for money on OnlyFans? That's him. Also, by the way, she is the daughter of Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards. I assume that there is some money available to help pay for the apartment.

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Kfir is coming home from the hospital because just born. Ariel, at this point, would be barely three years old. Here is Ariel's reaction to meeting his baby brother for the first time.

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This was your best job opportunity available was stripping or working at the candy store. Those were the two big job opportunities. Well, never you fear. Denise decided after watching the success of her daughter, she too would join OnlyFans because the family that strips together stays together.

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Hmm. Wow. That sounds like a reasonable explanation. I mean, to be fair to Denise Richards, basically all she's doing on OnlyFans is what she was doing in Wild Things when all the teenage boys had to go to Blockbuster Video and then pause the tape. So nothing particularly shocking happening with Denise Richards over there. I do feel horrible. for their sister, of Sammy's sister.

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So Sammy's sister is a person named Lola, and Lola was recently baptized in the Christian church, and she looks so uncomfortable during these clips. She looks just uncomfortable, which she should. So Denise Richards was asked, you know, how do your kids feel about mom joining OnlyFans, which, again, is stripping for money. That's all it is.

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She didn't know what more she could do. Well, she could not do that. Maybe she could figure out a way to help her daughter so she doesn't become a career stripper. Maybe that. This sort of mainstreaming of OnlyFans is one of the worst things that has happened in American public life. It's just horrifying. The turning of normies into porn stars who sell their bodies for money is just gross.

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It's truly gross. And if you don't think it's gross, well, I have some more gross OnlyFans content for you. So hope you're ready. And you can blame producer Jessica for compiling all of this. So apparently, you remember there was an announcement that Bonnie Blue, who is an OnlyFans creator, which is to say she's a prostitute on camera. I mean, I don't know what else you call it.

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She literally has sex on camera for money. That is what she does. And if she's insulted by that, I wonder why, because definitions of words exist. In any case, Bonnie Blue, who had sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours, which is 10 men an hour. No, I'm sorry, 100 men an hour? That is 100 men an hour. Somewhere in that 80 men an hour?

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I have some logistical questions that are probably not air appropriate for how precisely that works. Is it just like an assembly line? What is the average time? In any case, She suggested that she was pregnant.

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And this led to all sorts of memory, particularly from the Maury show, which is like, this is the ultimate Maury show, is that Bonnie Blue said that she was pregnant after having sex with 1,057 men. It did lead to one of the great tweet exchanges of all time, where somebody said, well, wasn't she using birth control? And somebody said, well, it's 99.9% effective. And she had sex with 1,057 men.

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For those who can't see, he's a small child approaching a baby and smiling big. This is a baby brother hugging the baby. And here is the baby brother, a little bit older. Just laughing and giggling as babies will. On October 7th, this baby and his slightly older toddler brother were taken along with the mother, Shiri Bibas, into kidnapped captivity, not by Hamas, not by Hamas, by Gazan civilians.

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So you do the math, right? Fair, fair statistical analysis that you have made, sir. But it turns out that she wasn't actually pregnant. She faked the pregnancy, which I have to say I'm relieved for the potential child that doesn't exist. I'm glad for children to be born, but I don't think that everyone should necessarily have to be mothered by Bonnie Blue. That seems bad.

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Like, if the child were already created, I'd be very happy that the child was created. But if Bonnie Blue could not have a baby with a random stranger, I feel like that's also not a terrible thing. In any case, she apparently faked it to raise funds for a stranger's IVF. It's all for charity, folks. For a stranger's IVF treatment.

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Again, she is the least decent model for IVF I've probably ever heard. But... So I guess we're just going to do like biblical conundrums now. Like, can you use prostitution money to pay for temple dues and that sort of stuff? Like, we're really going to do like Talmudic debates over this sort of thing now. Great. How exciting.

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By the way, she wasn't the only OnlyFans girl this week who faked a pregnancy. Apparently, Lily Phillips, who had, you know, held the title.

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of person who slept with the most people in a particular time period until bonnie blue decided to you know outshine her she slept with 100 men she announced the cheat was pregnant and then it turns out that that was fake and it was role play for her subscribers it was role play don't worry only fans is only enriching the lives of americans and the health of women oh boy this is the culture you have created and i hope that uh i hope that you wallow in all of it

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Okay, other pieces of culture today. So I've been told, again, I'm just informed of these things and then told that people want to hear about them. I'm not sure I share the sentiment, but in any case, apparently Alec Baldwin and family now have a reality show because why the hell not? Everyone needs a reality show, everyone. So Alec and his wife, Hilarious, her name is Hilaria Baldwin, I guess.

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She's actually just from Boston. And she, I think, changed her name and then changed her backstory and changed her accent and maybe everything else about herself. I'm not really sure. Apparently, they have a reality show now. I don't know where they shot the reality show.

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I know where Alec Baldwin typically does his shootings, but I'm not sure where they... In any case, we have a bit of the trailer for The Baldwins, which is a thing that is happening in all of our lives. Here we go.

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Wait, you shot somebody.

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And then the music turns inspiring.

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Wow, that sounds meaningful. That sounds great. Also, remember when TLC was the learning channel? I remember that. And now it's just random celebrity family who maybe somebody shot somebody. So that's great. By the way, again, Hilaria Baldwin is in fact one of the most hilarious people in possible human history. Flashback clip. Here is Hilaria Baldwin and her widely variant accent.

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What you end up doing is surrendering to the evil. And that is the story of the Palestinian nationalist cause for the last 80 years. The Palestinian nationalist cause is based on an evil supposition, which is the destruction of the state of Israel. That is what it is about. It's about the extirpation of the Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel. How do we know this?

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She went by Hillary, her original name, until 2009. That's when she started using the name Hilaria. Instead of dropping the Spanish accent. Her original name is Hillary Lynn Hayward Thomas. In other words, the whitest name that has ever been whited. And yeah, so that's all great. Everyone needs a reality show. That's exciting.

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Speaking of reality shows, in just a moment, we're going to get to our 51st state because tragedy occurred last night in a hockey game between the United States and our archenemy, the Canadians. We'll get to that later. First, you need to be a subscriber. And again, we have tons of great content over at DW. We've got our kids' content, Bent Key. We've got all of our movies.

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We've got Matt Walsh's films. We've got All Access. We have all sorts of amazing, Jordan Peterson's content. Like the content is nearly endless. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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A huge number of Gazan civilians joined in with Hamas on October 7th to participate in the rape, kidnapping, and murder of civilians. And they purposefully kidnapped a toddler and a baby back into Gaza. And we found out a couple of days ago that mom and both of those babies are dead.

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And now we know through forensic analysis, apparently, that the two kids aren't just, they didn't die of malnutrition. They were apparently murdered about a month into their captivity. Now, the IDF this morning actually announced, after doing the autopsy of the two babies, of the toddler and the baby, they announced that actually these kids were not killed in an airstrike.

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So Hamas had lied, apparently. They had said that these kids were killed in an airstrike. Now, here's the thing. Even if they'd been killed in an airstrike, that would still be on Hamas. It's like saying that the Americans are somehow responsible for the death of Anne Frank because she died of typhus in the camps, as opposed to the Nazis, you know, just stuffing her in a gas chamber or something.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And if only the Americans had somehow gotten food to her, like that's not how it works. Okay, but that's actually not what happened. What actually happened here, according to the IDF, and they have now made public, The physical details of the bodies of these babies to various other countries, they've made that public so that it's transparent.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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According to IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari, quote, Ariel and Kafir were murdered in cold blood savagely in Gaza in the first weeks of the war. They didn't shoot them. They murdered them with their bare hands and afterwards did horrific things to hide it. They mutilated the bodies to make it look as though they were not, in fact, beaten or strangled to death.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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But these were actually, and remember, they were taken by people not in Hamas uniforms. They were taken by Gazan civilians. That's what evil sounds like. True, true evil. I mean, there's no other word for it. There are no synonyms that do justice to this. The barbarity and the cruelty and the horror of what this ideology generates.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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So Hamas was supposed to release the bodies of these children, babies that they had murdered along with their mother. They're supposed to release the bodies back to Israel in exchange for live terrorists. Now, just understand the moral logic here. You have one party that is seeking to bring back the dead bodies, the corpses of children who were just murdered and kidnapped.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And the other side is celebrating the release of terrorists who murder children. Not all cultures are the same. Not all people think the same way. Not all people inculcate the same values in their children. That is a stupid, idiotic, foolish, counterproductive, and dangerous Western conceit. That is the only way to look at what happened yesterday in the Gaza Strip. So Hamas held a parade.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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An actual parade with the coffins of babies, of Jewish babies. Here is what that looked like in the Gaza Strip. Giant crowd showed up, by the way. Giant crowd. Here's some of the footage of Hamas parading around with the coffins of dead babies. With the music playing, celebratory music. And by the way, you're seeing representatives there from all of the various terror groups, including Fatah.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Well, because the call for a Palestinian state ended originally with the creation of one in Jordan. The original territory of Israel was supposed to include both Jordan and Israel. And then under the British mandate, it was sliced off, Jordan, and was made into a Palestinian state for the Arabs. And then under a variety of negotiations and white papers from the British,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Fatah is the military wing of the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority that is supposedly ruling the West Bank at this point. People are cheering the movement of these bodies, of these dead bodies. Music, celebratory music is playing in the background. of all of this. You can hear the voices of children. And in fact, again, here's a shot of the size of the crowd.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It was a massive crowd that showed up to cheer, to celebrate the dead bodies of babies. This is a culture of death. It is in fact an evil culture. There is no culture. I've never even heard of a culture that celebrates the death of babies, like literally celebrates the...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Actual murder of children, not civilian casualties, which are tragic and awful and should be avoided, but the actual purposeful murder of babies. There is no culture on earth that I've even heard of that does this. And yet that's what it was. Listen to the cheers and whistling. You can hear the cheers and the whistling. This is thousands of Gazans who are out there, civilians, civilians, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The innocent, starved, genocided Gazan civilians out there cheering the coffins of babies being moved. And by the way, it's the kids too. Okay, now kids are not responsible for their actions. Their parents are responsible. The awful evil tragedy of children being indoctrinated into something like this is so beyond words. It is unspeakably, unspeakably malicious and horrifying.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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They put children on stage where the baby's bodies were one second ago to dance and sing. Here's some of the footage. These are children. Those kids are no more than 10 years old. Those kids are somewhere between five and 10 years old, smiling, cheering, dancing up and down. And behind, Hamas has put up a poster. Apparently their printing facilities were not wrecked in the war.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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They printed out giant banners, including one of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, as a vampire, supposedly responsible for the death of these babies. Okay, those are children, children. And then you have the exhibits with the coffins. Okay, so they went up there, they built out a full stage, they had a full sound production.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Here they are, here's a Hamas terrorist standing on stage, flanked by all sorts of posters, including one poster that says, we're going to murder the rest of your hostages if you try to come in here. These are the people that Western leftists support. These people, these human pieces of debris, these are the people that Kamala Harris said maybe had a point.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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These people, Western self-flagellation, Western self-hatred. Western belief that all sins in the world can be laid at the feet of the West is not just self-defeating. It is wrong. It foments evil. It makes evil more common. Understand, Hamas initiated this war knowing full well what was going to happen. And they did so knowing the Western left would come to their defense.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And indeed, they were not disappointed. The Western left did come to their defense because the Western left is of the opinion that the more barbaric, evil, and angry a group of people are, the more they must have been victimized by evil overlords. That is where the left-wing stream of thought crosses streams with the jihadi stream of thought. It gets worse, by the way.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The supposition was that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would eventually become an Arab state in the partition plan of 1947. That was then rejected by the Arabs. The Arabs said there can be no Jewish state here under any circumstances at all. Palestinian nationalism is rooted in rejectionism of Jewish presence anywhere in that area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Hamas actually labeled the coffins with the supposed date of arrest. It literally says here, date of arrest, October 7th. Arrest? There's a mother and her babies arrested and murdered. Arrested. OK, but you think you think it gets it can't get any. Well, no, actually, it gets worse. So a couple of details from this. These coffins were locked.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The Israelis had to run them through metal detectors to make sure that they weren't actually booby trapped with bombs, because that is something that Hamas absolutely would do. Hamas gave them keys to the locks. The keys did not match the locks. They gave them false keys and false locks.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Then when Israel finally opened up the coffins, it turns out that Hamas had put a bunch of leaflets with Hamas propaganda inside the coffins. And then, as a final indignity, and the indignities are so strong here, as a final indignity, Israel had to do forensic analysis on the charred bodies of a baby, a toddler, and mom.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It turns out that the forensic analysis found that these were, in fact, the children, that the babies, these were the corpses of babies murdered by Hamas in November of 2023 and held for a year hostage to free terrorists. And it's just unspeakable. I mean, the level of evil is unspeakable. They didn't do this by accident. They did this on purpose. They kidnapped babies to murder them.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And then they held their bodies to free terrorists. That's evil. Full stop. Period. And a culture that celebrates it in the streets. Every aspect of it is celebrated by a huge percentage of the population in the Gaza Strip. That doesn't mean that civilians ought to be treated as members of the military.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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It does mean that any sort of quote unquote two state solution is, was and always will be completely unworkable because one side wants to completely kill everyone on the other side. In any case, the final indignity here is that the mother's body, Shiri Bibas, was then analyzed. And it turns out it is not her body at all. Hamas handed over a random woman's body instead.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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So Shiri Bibas' body is still being held hostage inside the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds. Not only did they kidnap the father, Yardane Bibas, who, by the way, was never told what happened to his family. He was never told what happened to his family. He only found out that his family was dead after he was released from captivity.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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His entire family slaughtered when he was released from captivity. Not only did they kidnap the father, Yardane Bibas, the young mother, Shiri, and their two small babies. In an unspeakably cynical manner, they did not return Shiri to her little children, the little angels. They put the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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Hamas said that they would examine the claims very seriously and would announce the results clearly. And then they told Israel they should return the body of the Palestinian woman. Sick, sick, sick. But don't worry. The horror didn't end with that. The International Red Cross took part in it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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The International Red Cross literally sat on stage during the ceremony and signed documents to receive the bodies. The International Red Cross, by the way, is a horror show of an institution. The International Red Cross, by the way, funded by taxpayer dollars all over the world. 82% of their budget is provided by various parties to the Western Geneva Conventions.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And in fact, the extirpation of all Jews from that area, which is why every two-state solution that has ever been proposed by anyone has included the complete Judenrein nature of a Palestinian state. No Jews living within an Arab Palestine, despite the fact that 20% of Israel is actually Arab Muslim.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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So some of your taxpayer dollars have in fact funded the International Red Cross. The International Red Cross provides aid to Hamas, basically. They visited the hostages zero times.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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And of course, this is all part and parcel of the International Red Cross's horrible record over the course of decades, dating all the way back to World War II when they were being shuttled around to Rasenstadt during the Holocaust and then vowing that the Nazis were treating people half decently. As this was happening, as this was happening,

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

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There were five buses yesterday that were loaded with bombs in Israel. Three of them blew up in the area of Bat Yam, which is near Tel Aviv. The initial assessment from the security establishment is that the plan for the attack came from Iran and was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the West Bank, from Judea and Samaria. So remember, Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

Hey folks, Ben Shapiro here. Don't miss our latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage. Join me, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and Jeremy Boring as we cover the top stories in politics and pop culture with enough laughs and insights to get you through these insane news cycles. Take a listen. Well, folks, you know, I'm not famous for being a particularly optimistic sort.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And the cigars. And the Mayflowers.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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So by far the best thing that has happened during the first 30 days was that exchange that he had with the Afghan lady reporter, which is one of the great moments in all of media history. And if you haven't seen it, folks, you absolutely should Google it, because it is legitimately one of the funniest things that has ever happened in the history of the media.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump has been slandered by the media as somebody who creates fictions of his own and sort of lives within those fictions and says a lot of words that don't always match up with the truth and all that kind of stuff. The reality is that President Trump, in his gut, lives in the real world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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There's a reporter from Afghanistan who asked President Trump a question in a very thick accent, and he had no idea what she was saying. And he said, your voice, it's so beautiful, so melodious, I don't understand a word you're saying. God bless, and live long, live in peace. He went full Spock at the end. It was great. So that was great, just as a moment.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And there have been many such wonderful moments, including the I don't care, Margaret, right, from the vice president. And there are a bunch of great memeable moments. And of course, Elon is a walking meme, as you've seen. But in terms of actual policy, I think the most important thing that President Trump has done is he actually, he has exposed

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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the reality, which is that the amount of power that has aggregated in the executive branch over the course of time is extraordinary, and it is at the behest of the presidents of the United States. So for two reasons, this is really important.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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One, because the Democratic Party established over the course of the last hundred odd years, really since Woodrow Wilson, that the executive branch was going to be the predominant branch of American government, and all power was going to be centralized in it, spending power, regulatory power, all of it. And then they basically said, and Republicans can't touch it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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When we run it, we'll run it, and we'll put permanent employees in place so that when you run it, you don't run it. And President Trump came in, and he said, no, no, no, no. You've given all this power to the executive branch. Guess what? Guess who's the president now? It's me. Long live the king. And he literally put out an executive order saying, like yesterday, all of you people work for me.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And here's your reminder. The executive branch is a branch of government. There is no fourth branch of government that is an unelected bureaucracy. And thus, you work for my agenda. And this is great for a couple of reasons. One, because it means that he's going to be actually able to clean out so much of the rot inside these institutions. And that's what Doge is in large part.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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But second, I think it sets up the predicate for if there is going to be a useful constitutional fight, which I kind of like. then let that fight be about the prerogatives of Congress.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Let Congress try to actually go back to the original structure in a fair way, because for too long, Republicans have been playing by the Marcus of Queensbury rules on this stuff, where, as I say, the rules apply when Republicans are in power, and then they stop applying the minute a Democrat is in power.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And President Trump, as I said before, he lives in reality, and for President Trump, there's no... There's no set of rules where there are two sets of rules, right? There's either one set for everybody or there ain't no rules. And he says, there's one set of rules for everybody. I'm the president, and now all you people work for me or you're fired, which is just wonderful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Which is why President Trump wins so often, because if you are going to win, you have to acknowledge reality, because reality always wins. And this is what makes President Trump conservative. Conservatism lines up really, really well with reality. The reason that President Trump won the last election cycle is because the Democratic Party, the left, completely disconnected themselves from reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Well, folks, let's talk about how you stay healthy. OK, because let's be real about this. You need to stay healthy. And if you wish to stay healthy, balance of nature, fruits and veggies will make it happen for you. There's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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That sounds horrible. It sounds like torture. It sounds like a year in jail with Nancy Pelosi. Well, Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. And let me tell you, I can pop those directly into the protein smoothie, and that keeps me looking like a Greek god.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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I know it doesn't look like that from the outside, but I can promise you that I am absolutely jacked. Believe me or don't believe me, that's your choice. But you should believe me when I say that you should take Balance of Nature fruits and veggies every day and your body will do the rest. Head on over to balanceofnature.com.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Use promo code backstage for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com. Promo code backstage. And thank you for helping, you know, like pay our bills and everything.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Completely disconnected themselves from reality in every possible way. They ran screaming with their hair on fire, their blue hair on fire, away from reality. President Trump embraces reality with both arms. When it comes to the world of economics, for example, President Trump only cares about success. He cares about economic dynamism.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Pick her up right here.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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He cares about American businesses being able to build and succeed. And he understands that in order for all those things to happen, you have to free American business from the shackle of regulation and government. You have to allow businesses to innovate. You have to allow people to rise and fall on their own merit. Meritocracy has to be valued more than, say, identity politics and DEI.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump knows that in his guts because he's a business person. President Trump has had to make payroll. Unlike literally every leader of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime, he is not a career politician, which means He's always been answerable to reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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I mean, first of all, I'm having trouble getting over Drew calling God Uncle God. I really am. When you're as old as me. Wow.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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We've been together a long time. My goodness. It's rare that you spring a new one on me, but Uncle God was definitely a new one. So I think that one of the great dangers that conservatives face right now is that so many of our institutions have been thoroughly corrupted by the left that the temptation is to destroy all of them. And you see this in government.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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A huge number of institutions in government are completely broken, need to be destroyed, rebuilt from the ground up. But my problem is that I see some people entertain, who are attempting to take social institutions and then destroy those social institutions as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Pretend that they are meritless, that because there have been bad things that have been done to those institutions, now you throw out the baby with the bathwater and those institutions are themselves meretricious and need to be destroyed. And the substitute morality that is offered is actually amorality, it's actually sin. And that is a deeply disturbing and disturbed point of view.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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The thing that we all need to do, I think, and what I hope to do in my own life, is not to make excuses. Okay, this is the biggest thing. And this to me is the essence of conservatism. Stop making excuses for your own failure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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It is one thing to point to an actual wrong that is being done in the world and say that this wrong needs to be corrected because the world is filled with wrongs and it's filled with injustices and it's filled with bad things that do need correction. It is another thing to look at your own failure and then not say, what can I fix?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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But instead look out there at, you know, the institution, I can't find a girl. Thus, the institution of marriage is broken, and thus I should treat women like trash. That is a terrible way to go about your life. The answer to finding a good woman is to be a good man. The answer to having a good marriage is to find a good woman and engage in a good marriage. The answer to...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Finding yourself a better church is to find yourself a better church. If you don't actually like the church that you're going to, if it's been taken over by Wokies, then the answer is not, well, I guess we're done with the church. The church is stupid. We're not doing it anymore.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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The answer is to either form your own or to find a more traditional instituted church that is not doing those stupid things. And I think one of the great temptations of politics is to assume that politics can solve everything. You've got problems in your life, economic, spiritual, marital, and politics is going to solve all of those problems.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And that means that when he unleashes another businessman, Elon Musk, inside the government and says, go in there with a meat ax and start taking out programs, that is what a businessman would do. If you came into a business as a business person and it was rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, you wouldn't sit around and run a commission on it. You would start firing people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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If only you can go after somebody out there and blame those people, well then that gives you the license to do really whatever you want. And then the failures that spring there from are not your own fault. And that to me is a sin.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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It's a sin against yourself, it's a sin against your society, it's a sin against the God who created you, gave you free will, the ability to choose, and the skills with which to do something productive in the world.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You would go in and you'd start making changes. You'd start breaking things and moving quickly, and President Trump is doing precisely that. You can see business optimism in the country is skyrocketing specifically because of that. Meanwhile, the Democrats don't know what to do because their cherished blue pipeline, which is what the federal government is.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Well, speaking of the hard parts of life, taxes, folks. So, am I right? Taxes suck, right? They're bad. That's why President Trump just fired everybody at the IRS. He actually did. He just fired, like, thousands of people at the IRS.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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unfortunately you don't have a choice i'm sorry to tell you this april 15 tax day is just around the corner and don't think that just because trump and elon are going through and basically making all these people unemployed that you're not going to have to pay your taxes you eventually will but you don't have to worry about your tax issues with tax network usa

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Did you see where I was going with that, folks? Did I project it? In any case, Tax Network USA has a preferred direct line to the IRS, meaning they know exactly which agents to deal with and which to avoid if you get in trouble with your taxes.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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With proven strategies to settle tax problems in your favor, whether you owe 10 grand or $10 million, Tax Network USA's attorneys and negotiators have already resolved over $1 billion in tax debt. You should talk with their strategists today. It is free. You don't need the threatening letters. You don't need to look over your shoulder.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You can protect yourself from property seizures and bank levies as well. Do not let the IRS control your future, and don't count on the IRS agent who's in charge of your case suddenly losing their job. Maybe it'll happen, you know, God willing, and the creek don't rise, but eventually they're going to come after your taxes. So you should call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Daily Wire.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Again, that's 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Daily Wire. So, clap for the avatar. It's the best part of the show. It's an ad. I mean, it's what we all love, correct?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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It is a permanent payment program for the left, the federal government. They have permanent institutions that exist outside the government. They take literally trillions of your taxpayer dollars, and then they funnel all that money out to their political allies inside and outside the government. And Donald Trump came in, and he broke the pipeline. Why? Because he lives in the world of reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Hmm. I think it depends on the kind of business that you're founding. There are certain things that are just baseline conservative, like be honest in business and don't try to cheat people. In my faith, the Jewish faith, you may have noticed, it says that the first thing that God is going to ask you after you die is, were you honest in your business dealings?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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It's one of the things that Judaism teaches. As you know, we like the money. In any case... When it comes to actually forming a business, the hard part of business, and Jeremy can talk about this more than I can since he does a lot of the hiring and firing, is actually being cold-blooded enough to look at what's working and what's not.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You're not doing anybody any kindnesses by keeping people in the wrong position for too long. That's the hardest part, I think, of doing business, is the difficulty in extricating yourself emotionally from the business to do the efficient thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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But it is important that in order for your business to be a success, in order to be able to employ other people and provide goods and services at a market rate, that you actually make those hard decisions. And again, I think that that requires a certain level of emotional remove.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And you have to understand that you're actually, again, not doing anybody any favors by keeping them in a position where they ought not be. And that does... I think also include the reality that you have to, I think, take the blame on yourself if you hired the wrong person, right?

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Usually if an employee fails, if somebody does something wrong at your company, it's probably because you put the wrong person in the wrong position to succeed, right? That's sort of your job as a company is to put people in the right position to succeed. And so that I think is the hardest part.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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When we're talking about foreign policy, President Trump lives in the world of reality. When President Trump looks at the situation in Ukraine, he doesn't say, well, you know what, we're not gonna set an endpoint. We're not really gonna set a goal. We're just gonna wing it. We're just gonna go along with this for years. He says, listen, here's the reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Eventually we'll be for sale. I started writing a syndicated column when I was 17, so actually not that much older than your daughter is now. And the key, I think this is true by the way in virtually all businesses, but it's certainly true when it comes to political commentary, is you have to read an awful lot, learn an awful lot about the business, and do a lot of work for free.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's no such thing as a person who's success in literally any business who was not a failure for a very long time before they were a success. Everyone who's an overnight success was an overnight success 10 years in the making. I started writing a syndicated column making no money off of this for probably a decade before I had the famous Piers Morgan interview.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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That was fully a decade after I started doing what I was doing. That takes an awful lot of reading and writing. Then the other thing that I would say is that she should attempt, and I think everybody should attempt, to find a niche where you're a specialist in the thing. And that can be an information niche.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Either you can know a lot about a particular topic, or you can be willing to report on a particular topic. And if you have a monopoly on that topic, that makes you a marketable commodity. Everybody's got an opinion on politics. Everybody in the room could be a political columnist, I'm sure.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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But there's a difference between that and being a person who does the research and does the hard work that nobody else wants to do. One of my mentors, Andrew Breitbart, used to say that if you have a cell phone with a camera, you're now a reporter. And that's one way that I encourage young people to get started is you're in your town.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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There are stories all around you of things that probably require change. Get those stories. hook up with an outlet like ours, we'll report it, and we'll make that a thing. And that's a great way to get started in this particular business.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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The reality is that there is a grinding trench warfare situation in Ukraine. There is very little shot that Ukraine is gonna be able to win back Donbas and Crimea. And we don't want Ukraine to actually fall to the Russians, and so we know what an off-ramp looks like. Now it's just a question of how do we get to that off-ramp. That is what a practical person does.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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That is a person who lives in reality. That's not a person who wants to speak airy-fairy nonsense and nostrums about democracy and tyranny. All that stuff sounds nice, but does it get the job done is the question that President Trump is always asking. Does it get the job done? When it comes to the Middle East, President Trump has completely broken the mold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Oh, I totally disagree with this. You totally lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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He's very old. You should totally lie. So the way that this works is that when I was at UCLA, you speak up in class, and then they had these things called blue books. The blue books were the anonymous test that you took. You would write by hand in those days. I know, it's a long time ago. And you would write a student number, not an actual name on your blue book.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And then you write a comma, and you get the A. Obviously, because what difference does it make what you write inside the blue book? So that's where you lie.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Look at my wallet.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Well, I mean, it depends if you're talking about foreign actors who are actually funding American media. So yes, I think there should absolutely be congressional investigations, presumably the House Foreign Affairs Committee, looking into funding of various enterprises and the propaganda that emerges from those enterprises.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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If you're talking about the Democratic Party working in cahoots with the legacy media, I'm not sure that you need an investigation with that. I think you just need retinas and a prefrontal cortex. I mean, basic logic suggests that the human centipede, that is the relationship between the Democratic Party and the media, is an ongoing bleep show.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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The sort of ancient wisdom of the State Department, which has been wrong for 80 years in the Middle East, is that the only way that you actually achieve peace in the Middle East is to make the Palestinian issue front and center. President Trump in his first term totally turned that on his head. He ignored it, and peace broke out in the Middle East.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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So I don't think that requires an investigation, and I don't think it's a big scandal. I think that the truth is that the legacy media, and this is something Drew said earlier, so Drew, this is where you're right. You were wrong before, but now you're right. What Drew said earlier is right. The legacy media has absolutely destroyed itself.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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What this last election cycle did was expose the legacy media beyond all repair. And that was really exposed not even by COVID, which was truly terrible, or BLM, which was also truly terrible, but by Joe Biden dying on stage. When Joe Biden died on stage, in that moment, the legacy media was destroyed for all time. And I don't think that they're ever going to be able to recover it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And you can see it in the numbers. People do not trust the legacy media. It's irrecoverable. The Washington Post is never going to have a majority of Americans that believe it's trustworthy again. So I'm less worried than I've ever been about the power of the legacy media. And I've spent most of my life worrying about the legacy media.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump has now thrown onto the table a solution with regard to the Gaza Strip that is breaking people's brains and also happens to be the only plausible solution anyone has proposed in about a century in this particular area.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Because it turns out that when you have a population group that literally held today a celebration of dead babies in the Gaza Strip, babies they had murdered in the Gaza Strip, it turns out that a two-state solution in which one of those states is actually run by those people is a really bad idea. And President Trump knows that. And he says it because he lives in the world of reality.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And this is how you chalk up victories. When it comes to China, President Trump is a realist. He understands that China is globally an opponent of the United States and that we need to stand up to Chinese predations, stealing our IP, buying American land, funneling fentanyl precursors through Mexico. He understands on immigration that a realistic nation cannot have an open border.

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So it is important never to acquiesce in this. Truly, it is really, really, really important. And you're not doing anybody any favors. Harsh truth is still better than kind falsehood. And telling somebody who is obviously suffering from a mental condition that in reality they're a member of the opposite sex is not doing them any favors at all. You wouldn't do it in any other circumstance.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You cannot have a welfare state and an open border and pretend that that's workable. President Trump understands that. Now, all of this sounds commonsensical to all of us, right? Because it is commonsensical. But in Washington, D.C., commonsensical is not the way things have been run.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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You would never say to an anorexic person, actually, you know what, you're totally right, you're really fat when they're actually underweight by 40 pounds. You would never ever tell somebody who is suffering from severe depression that actually maybe you're right, maybe suicide is the proper answer, maybe you're thinking this through properly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And so the idea that you should confirm somebody in what is an unhealthy delusion is wrong. Now, is that going to make friends? No. Is that person going to necessarily want to go out to dinner with you? No. But they are going to remember in the darkness of the night that there was somebody who was telling them the truth. And that is really, really important.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Because if no one tells them the truth, then they're never going to understand that the other answer was always there, which is that maybe this is not a body problem. Maybe this is actually a brain problem. And that requires different thinking about these issues entirely. And of course, Matt is the expert on this particular topic. Because not only did he make a movie, but I've heard he's a woman.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Sorry.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Instead, people have been so wedded not to victory, not to winning, not to achieving things, but to saying things properly in just the right way to get the right coverage in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal or in whatever media outlet they're pandering to, that they never actually think about what wins and what loses. And then there's the matter of the reality of our daily lives.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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If you've ever listened to my show, I'd say morosity, depression, that may be a feeling that's come over you once in a while listening to my show where I describe what's going on in the country. But I can safely say I've never felt more optimistic about the United States than I do right now. And that is thanks to President Donald J. Trump.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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If this kid asks for cocaine, the answer is no. The answer is no.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You're all fine. No, no, I'm good. It's okay.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump understands that what most Americans want is not identity politics. What most Americans want is not some bizarre notion about androgyny, where men can be women and women can be men, and that we are sort of free-floating sets of feelings existing within the meat suits that we wear around.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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It's a massive category error. So when you're talking about people who are intersex, these are people who...

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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have some sort of genetic disorder in which they develop differently than, say, XY genetics because the SRY gene has crossed over, for example, or where they develop secondary sexual characteristics that are not in line with their genetics, this does not make them a separate sex any more than a person who is born with a third arm would constitute a separate class of human being called the third arm people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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A genetic defect is not the same thing as suggesting that there is an entirely separate sex. Sex is defined by the actual reproductive resource that is being created, either the egg or the sperm, or the large cell gamete or the small cell gamete. That is actually how you define sex biologically speaking.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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So suggesting that because somebody has a birth defect in which it's unclear to the outside eye what their genetics might be, that this somehow means that a genetic man who has all the normal characteristics of a genetic man could theoretically be a woman.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump understands basic things that the left has completely abandoned and that he was willing to say. Stuff that was uncontroversial, you know, five minutes ago, like boys are not girls.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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That's just an asinine category error, and people are lying when they attempt to equate intersex with, for example, a person who is a genetic male who claims that they are actually a female.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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These are controversial statements to make, but President Trump understands that that actually has some pretty deep ramifications when you say things like boys are not girls, such as perhaps men have a role to play that is different from women's role. That does not mean that women shouldn't be in the workplace, obviously. And it doesn't mean that men shouldn't help take care of the kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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But it does mean that men being masculine is a good thing. And it means that women being wives and mothers is a good thing, too. And that no country that ignores these basic truths can survive and grow and thrive.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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President Trump acknowledges and knows that the things that most Americans want, whether they are Hispanics living down on the border of Texas or whether they're white Americans living up on the border of Canada, those things are basically the same. They want to be able to live in safety, free of crime, with prosperity, being able to hold down a job in a growing, innovative, dynamic economy.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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They want to be able to go to their church and worship God and share that with their community without the government getting in their way. These are all things that, again, sound so easy. They sound so easy. But the way that President Trump measures whether a thing is true or not is whether it works. And that is why he has been so unbelievably successful.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Now, when it comes to us, what can we do? This does say something to the rest of us. I talk for a living, which is a really fun way to make a living. But the reality is that people come to me all the time and say, how do I make a difference in politics? And obviously, there are things that we all can do.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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I spent the last election cycle campaigning with a variety of Senate candidates and with President Trump. I went out and I did things. But the things that most of us can do, aside from all the normal political fighting that Steve was talking about earlier, which is really important, the thing that is most important

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is to live a reality-based life, to be a model to our children, to be a model to our community, to build the social fabric that actually makes this country work, to create the businesses that make the country function, to engage in everyday common virtue. Because the truth is, the country is not just built by President Trump. We love President Trump. He's doing an amazing job.

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He should continue to be healthy and well and continue to succeed day in and day out. We're all praying for him. But the country also runs because of the people who are doing the everyday things, whose names we don't know.

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Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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You, people I know, all the people out there who are just living with their families and bringing up their kids in the correct fashion in a country that is growing and thriving, building those building blocks, taking those building blocks and actually... day-to-day level, President Trump is clearing the field for you. He's clearing the field for me. The Republicans, I hope, are going to do that.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But then it's our job to actually build. And that's what we should be focused on, not just on politics over the next four years or eight years or 20 years. We should be focused on the building because that project, that's the project that never ends. The political fight will always be there. There's no such thing as permanent victory. There will be losses in the future.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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But the one thing that we can do every single day is continue to build. And thank God, President Trump, the reason I'm optimistic, President Trump has brought us back to a world of reality where that building is possible and we should all build together. Thank you so much. And now, thank you, I appreciate it.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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And one of the things that's sort of mysterious about President Trump is the fact that he isn't really an ideological conservative. Now, people like me, I grew up in the movement. I grew up reading Thomas Sowell and Frederick Hayek and reading Russell Kirk. I don't think President Trump has ever sat around reading those people.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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And now, I want to take the opportunity to welcome out my buddies from The Daily Wire for an episode of Backstage Live.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I don't think he sits around at night and browses Edmund Burke or anything. And so the question is, why is it that this man, who's not truly an ideological conservative, is the most successful conservative president of my lifetime, bar none? It's a real question.

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And I think to understand that, the thing that we need to understand about President Trump is that more than anything else, more than anything else, and in this era, needed more than anything else, President Trump lives in the world of reality.

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Alrighty, folks, a lot to get to on today's show. But if you want even more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, it's time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, and early access to our new releases. Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else.

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the congresswoman from New York, had been nominated for. But when it became clear that the Republican majority in Congress was under threat, she was sort of removed from that nomination. So Walt is moving from NSA over to the U.N. ambassador role. Rubio is now serving in four positions simultaneously.

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Okay, so Marco Rubio, again, taking a very strong position on the negotiations, but he's not the one leading the negotiations. Steve Witkoff is leading the negotiations. So all these sort of mixed signals are certainly leading to, as I say, a lot of Kremlinology, what exactly is happening inside the administration.

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Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, put out a message on Twitter yesterday, quote, message to Iran. We see your lethal support to the Houthis. We know exactly what you are doing. You know very well what the U.S. military is capable of, and you were warned. You will pay the consequence at the time and place of our choosing.

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So again, strong messages being sent to Iran via the Secretary of Defense. But the question is, who's in President Trump's ear? What advice is President Trump taking? Who seems to have the upper hand in discussions over how harsh the United States should be in these Iran negotiations?

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And is there really a possibility that the United States would participate in some sort of military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if they don't actually denuclearize entirely? These are all open questions. And frankly, no one knows the answers to those questions except for the president of the United States. Now, meanwhile, the president did cut a very good deal with Ukraine the other day.

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We talked about this on the program. It's good. This deal between the United States and Ukraine, this rare earth minerals deal, which is something Ukraine should have signed on to in February. Well, they finally came around and they did it. Basically, the rare earth minerals deal

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Inked on Wednesday, according to the New York Post, after months of negotiations, created a shared investment fund to which both nations will contribute, including through oil, gas, and mineral rights licenses sold in Ukraine. The profits are going to be split 50-50. So the United States is not taking money and just throwing it into this fund, basically.

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We are going to earn credit toward our total contribution equal to the cost of military equipment, technology, or training that we send across the Atlantic. So basically the deal is that additional military aid we provide to Ukraine is going to be counted against whatever we would have had to pay into this fund.

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So we're trading military aid in some ways for the rare earth minerals development from Ukraine, which again, we need rare earth minerals because we're not going to get them from China anymore, presumably. Ukraine requires military aid in order to stand up against the Russian onslaught. It is a good thing, full stop.

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It is a good thing that President Trump is committing to a free and independent Ukraine. That is an important thing. So the agreement does not preclude the United States from dispatching remaining military aid approved by Congress under former President Biden. It doesn't require the U.S. to sell any military aid to Kiev either.

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It's not clear how much is supposed to go into the fund, but the bottom line is that instead of this just being pure military aid, we are now getting something in return. And for the Ukrainians, The Ukrainians see this as a way of ensuring continued American support.

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He's the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor temporarily, the acting head of USAID, which of course is basically getting zeroed out, and the official archivist of the United States government. So he's like that kid in your third grade class who is simultaneously the... the secretary of the student government, as well as the vice president and the treasurer.

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One source familiar with Kiev's strategy originally suggested that they thought that maybe they could leverage the president into a better deal for Ukraine. That did not happen. However, the representative of the Ukrainians has said that this is a good deal for both sides. The Kremlin recognizes the significance.

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The deal was blasted by Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev, who, again, everybody in the Russian government is a cutout for Putin. Praise the U.S. leader for making a deal with a nation that will, quote, soon disappear. Quote, Trump has finally pressured the Kiev regime to pay for U.S. aid with mineral resources.

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Now the country that is about to disappear will have to use its national wealth to pay for military supplies. So again, that does not sound like a Russia that is ready to come to the table.

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Again, the White House itself, in its actual explanation of the minerals deal, suggested this partnership represents the United States taking an economic stake in securing a free, peaceful, and sovereign future for Ukraine.

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This agreement will also strengthen the strategic partnership between the United States and Ukraine for long-term reconstruction and modernization in response to the large-scale destruction caused by Russia's full-scale invasion. The language of this agreement is some of the most pro-Ukrainian language that has come out under the Trump administration. That is a positive shift that is necessary.

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If you want Russia to come to the table, the United States can't be threatening to walk away from Ukraine. According to the White House's fact sheet, quote, President Trump envisioned this partnership between the Americans and the Ukrainians to show both sides' commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine.

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So and by the way, no state company or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine, including in participation in projects supported by fund resources. So good for Ukraine. Good for the United States. Good for President Trump.

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Connect with a community that shares your values, not one that cancels you for those values. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe also. Do you hear drums in the distance? You can own a piece of Daily Wire history. A beautiful mini Focahontas statue at dailywire.com slash shop. Yes, it's been years in the making.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham is apparently, according to The Wall Street Journal, forging ahead on a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia and steep tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas and uranium. This, again, is the right approach. If you want Russia to come to the table, the only way they are going to do that is through more leverage.

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And the Trump administration is, in fact, responding to the reality, which is, as I've said, President Trump is a reality-based president. When something goes wrong, he shifts and he moves. And so the idea that he could just pressure Ukraine to the table and Russia would magically come to the table, that didn't materialize. And so President Trump is now shifting and moving.

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The South Carolina Republican said in an interview support for his bill crossed the critical threshold of 60 co-sponsors on Wednesday, meaning it has enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster. By the end of the week, according to Graham, the bill will have at least 67 co-sponsors, which is enough to even override a potential presidential veto.

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That list of co-sponsors is evenly divided across the aisle and includes the Senate Majority Leader John Thune. It also includes members of the Senate Republican leadership team. So unclear if it makes a floor vote, if President Trump were to oppose it. The White House is not commenting on it so far.

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That basically appears to be what's happening with Rubio. Now, there's still a lot of questions about what happened here, because people are interpreting this as a proxy fight inside the Trump administration over the direction of foreign policy more generally. And that's absolutely credible.

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But again, more leverage against Russia is the thing that is going to get them to the table, not sort of the carrots and massages approaches that has been retailed by Steve Witkoff so far. In other good moves from the Trump administration, President Trump has now signed an executive order to terminate federal funding for NPR as well as PBS. That is a positive move. NPR is a disaster area.

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NPR is a leftist agitprop outlet. that is paid for with American taxpayer dollars. There's no reason that NPR requires that level of support. I mean, we operate in the media space. We here at The Daily Wire in the private sector, we take no government money. NPR certainly has the capacity to do the same.

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President Trump wrote in the order, government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary, but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.

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Trump has directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end indirect funding for NPR and PBS, including by ensuring licensees and permittees of public radio and TV stations, as well as any other recipients of CB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS. This is a great move by President Trump. It is something that is long overdue.

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NPR has been, again, a left-wing Democratic agiprop outlet for as long as I have been alive. So that is a very positive move by President Trump. So again, a lot of good things happened yesterday, ranging from that Ukraine rare earth minerals deal to the Trump EO. And we'll still have to see the fallout inside the national security establishment because things remain up in the air.

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We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, let's talk about that car that you own, but you don't use. You know, the one in your front yard, the one that is... You're paying to keep it registered, insured. It just takes up space. It's rusting, not doing anybody any good. Well, let me tell you what you should do about that. You should give Cars for Kids a call. Have them take care of it for you.

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That's right. Just give them the info. They will come to you as soon as the next day. Take that car off your hands at no cost to you. Even better, they'll turn that car into funds to help kids. They take care of all the paperwork and logistics and you walk away with a tax-deductible receipt for the sale price of the car, a vacation voucher, and space in your driveway for your new car. Don't wait.

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Call 1-877-CARS4KIDS or go to cars4kids.org slash ben. That's cars with a K, the number four, to donate now. It takes just two minutes. Give them your information. They take over from there. They've done this over a million times. Let them help you as well. Cars4kids.org slash ben. Remember, that's cars with a K. Cars4kids.org slash ben. Cars4kids.org slash ben. They've been doing this for years.

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It is certainly plausible that there is, in fact, an ongoing conversation slash fight inside the administration over the direction of foreign policy. We know that because we know those conversations are happening

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And why not turn a liability into an asset for somebody else and a tax write-off? carsforkids.org slash Ben. Also, with Mother's Day just around the corner, I want to share an amazing organization making a real difference for moms in need. Preborn, their network of clinics provides love, support, and hope to pregnant women who are feeling scared, alone, pressured about their pregnancy decisions.

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These choices can affect not just their baby's life, but their own emotional well-being as well. When a woman walks into a pre-born clinic, she's welcomed with compassion, offered a free ultrasound so she can see and hear the little life growing inside her. And you know what? Most of the time, this powerful moment helps mom choose life.

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This Mother's Day, you can help both a mom in crisis and her baby. Just $28 provides one ultrasound. $140 covers five. Every dollar goes directly to supporting moms and babies. Plus, monthly sponsors receive photos and stories of the lives they've helped to save. Want to get involved? It's easy. Just dial pound 250, say baby, or visit preborn.com slash Ben.

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Make a difference this Mother's Day by supporting both moms and their babies. Again, that's preborn.com slash Ben. Get involved today, impact generations to come. And meanwhile, with regard to illegal immigration, every day that goes by, the Chris Van Hollen, Senator from Maryland, moron, decision to go down to El Salvador and hang out with a suspected MS-13 member looks worse and worse.

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The newest breaking news on that front is that the wife of this particular illegal immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, his wife, a woman named Jennifer Vasquez Sura, it turns out that she actually called the cops back in 2020, and there's audio of her doing so, pleading with a judge for protection from her husband in 2020. Seems like a delightful person to have in the country. Here's the tape.

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largely from that signal chat that was originally leaked accidentally to the Atlantic, in which you had basically on one side, in favor of bombing the Houthis, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, It appeared Rubio was on that side. And then on the other side, you had Vice President J.D. Vance.

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OK, so he sounds like a delightful person. So I'm glad the Democrats have decided to resonate to him. That apparently includes Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin. He was one of the impeachment leaders, you will recall, who says that actually Joe Biden was great at removing people who shouldn't be here, which is weird because this guy was still here.

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But in any case, he also adds that Abrego Garcia's knuckles did not show that he was Trenderagua, that he was MS-13. I don't understand the necessity for this from Democrats. If you want this guy, this person who seems really like a terrible person to have due process, that is an argument that I think people across the aisle should agree with.

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Due process is, in fact, a necessary prerequisite of our functioning of law. If you want to make the case that he's actually like a decent fellow and that everybody's misinterpreting it, this is where Democrats can't help themselves. Why do you always have to say the stupidest version of the argument? Why? Here's Jamie Raskin.

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So I'm just I'm confused. Why do you always have to defend the bad guys? You don't have to do that. Just say that you want due process. Meanwhile, another federal judge is an individual federal judges across the country signing into chat. Another federal judge, a U.S. district judge named Fernando Rodriguez Jr.

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in the Southern District of Texas, is ruling against President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport alleged members of a foreign gang. He says, quote, the historical record renders clear that the president's invocation of the AEA through the proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain ordinary meaning of the statute's terms.

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This judge, by the way, was in fact nominated by President Trump during his first term. So the question here as to whether the Alien Enemies Act could in fact be invoked in order to deport Venezuelan illegal immigrants is Because the act gives the president broad powers or citizens of an enemy nation that the United States has declared war against.

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Now, obviously, the vice president and many people associated with his team, including presumably Special Envoy Steve Woodcuff, we'll get to in a moment. They have a very different view on American foreign policy. They're very much in favor of a sort of isolationist-laden foreign policy, not a Reagan-esque peace through strength. And this is an ongoing conversation inside the administration.

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The question is whether this is a quote unquote invasion in a real legal sense, whether Venezuela is an enemy country that is actively facilitating the entry of these people into the United States. The judge says that's really not fact in evidence. And so you can't use that authority. Now, is there other authority for deporting illegal immigrants? Sure. I mean, it's just called federal law.

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But this gives him more plenary power to sort of do so with presumably fewer layers required in order for a deportation to happen. So we'll have to see how that plays out at the Supreme Court level. Again, you can hold all of these thoughts in your head at the same time that due process, according to legal standards, ought to be applied.

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And also that the people that Trump is trying to deport are pretty much all people who should not be in the United States. And meanwhile, the president of the United States continues to push back against the DEI regime put in place by Joe Biden and team Caroline Lovett at the White House yesterday, attacked a DEI full scale. It was great. Here she was.

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And that obviously should be the standard. Stephen Miller also stopped by the White House press room in order to explain the destruction of the DEI policies that were being pushed by the Biden administration.

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Well, again, he is right about that as well. Now, with all this important work happening, the biggest thing, I keep saying it over and over, the biggest thing is that if you want President Trump to continue to unleash successes, you need Republicans not to make stupid mistakes. We'll get to the trade war in a moment and what the latest is there.

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But the latest stupid mistake that is possibly on the table here is the possibility of Marjorie Taylor Greene running for Georgia Senate. Let us be clear. If she wins the primary, she will lose the general to John Ossoff. That is a deeply winnable seat in Georgia. The polls right now show that if Ossoff were to run against Marjorie Taylor Greene, he would win outright a sheer majority of the vote.

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He would beat her by 15 points, 54 to 39. There is no reason for that whatsoever. Zero. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fine where she is. If she's going to be in her district, she's popular in her district, that's fine.

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The idea is she's going to win a statewide race in Georgia over John Ossoff, and that Republicans are going to blow another winnable Senate seat because they've decided to nominate a sort of passionate defender, the most passionate defender of Trump. How about this? How about we get a Georgia senator who is in line with President Trump's agenda and actually can sit in the Senate?

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This is no great secret by any stretch of the imagination. This move inside could betray more of that fight, but again, unclear which side of that fight Marco Rubio is on. Traditionally, a lot of people in the administration had perceived Rubio to be on the more traditional Republican peace through strength side of that fight. And now, presumably, because J.D.

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So right now, there's been a lot of talk about the possibility of Brian Kemp running for Senate in Georgia. If he were to run for Senate, he would defeat John Ossoff, according to that very same poll. It turns out the candidate quality makes an awfully big difference. And cutting off your nose to spite your face for Republican primary voters is a terrible strategy.

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There's a reason why Georgia, which went for President Trump pretty easily in the last election cycle, has two Democratic senators. And the reason is, number one, because President Trump decided back in 2021 that he was going to intervene in the senatorial election for no apparent reason. And then number two, Republicans nominated some pretty bad candidates in places like Arizona and in Georgia.

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How about nominate better candidates and take the Senate seats? That seems to be a much more necessary preconditions to the success of President Trump. Meanwhile, in other news that's sort of fascinating, apparently Alberta, which is a province of Canada, is now deciding whether or not they want to remain a part of Canada. So how exactly does the process work in Canada?

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I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity what exactly happens under the Canadian constitution. According to perplexity, the Canadian Constitution does not grant provinces a unilateral right to secede.

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The Supreme Court of Canada, in a landmark 1998 Quebec secession reference, clarified secession would require a constitutional amendment, which in turn necessitates negotiations involving the federal government and all the provinces. So basically, you have to have a referendum on whether a province wishes to secede with a clear majority, not clear exactly how much a clear majority is.

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Then there are constitutional negotiations between the federal government and the provinces. And Alberta has been considering all of this. Apparently, Premier Danielle Smith is introducing legislation to make it easier to initiate a referendum on separation. Again, this is a piece of leverage to be used by Alberta in negotiations with the federal government of Canada.

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So Danielle Smith is a very conservative leader. She's the premier of Alberta. I've met Premier Smith, very conservative along a wide variety of lines, obviously very pro-Canada, very opposed to the tariff regime that President Trump is hitting Canada with, but very, very opposed to the left-wing policy promoted by the Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.

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She says, as Premier, I will not permit the status quo to continue. Albertans are proud Canadians that want this nation to be strong, prosperous, and united, but we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa. So she is pushing for concessions from the national government. Mark Carney is promising some changes.

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There is the possibility of what is called a wexit. So that was something that was pushed back in 2019, where there was a serious move to take Alberta completely out of Canada. So it'll be fascinating to see how that plays out for Mark Carney.

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Again, the fact that he won the election is a referendum, I think, on the fact that Canadians hated Justin Trudeau, but also a backlash to President Trump and his trade war and comments about Canada. It didn't solve all of Mark Carney's problems by any stretch of the imagination. Speaking of which, when it comes to the tariffs,

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Again, the statistics from a couple of days ago show that the GDP actually shrank, and that is almost entirely due to the tariff war. According to the Wall Street Journal, gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the first estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Most of the damage came from soaring imports. Imported goods and services rose 41.3% in the quarter, goods alone by almost 51%.

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Vance is supporting Marco Rubio for taking over NSA, Maybe that means that Rubio has sort of moved over to the van side of the argument. Again, a lot of this is sort of trying to read tea leaves as to the direction of the administration. And in the end, the only policymaker who really matters is, of course, the president of the United States.

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Imports subtracted a startling 5.03% from GDP. A tax increase in production shock as large as Mr. Trump's tariff were bound to do economic harm, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board. So J.D. Vance, vice president, was confronted by Brett Baer on Fox News about the shrinking economic numbers. Here's what he had to say.

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OK, so again, the idea here that he inherited Joe Biden's terrible economy and then he had to fix it. And what we're seeing right now as a result of that, once you own the economy, you own the economy. Once you take the signal step of declaring a trade war on the rest of Earth, you do, in fact, own that. That's the reality. Now, maybe everything plays out according to script.

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Maybe it all ends up being fine. Maybe America has a more durable manufacturing industry. The economy recovers and all the rest. Maybe. Right now, the weekly jobless claims have surged to 241,000. That is an increase of about 18,000 from the prior period, higher than the Dow Jones estimate for 225,000, according to the Labor Department.

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GM, as we've mentioned, faces up to a $5 billion tariff bill in 2025. They've now slashed their outlook. So they had a profit margin that they were projecting that was going to be between $11 billion and $12.5 billion. They've now moved that down to about $8 billion. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

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McDonald's is starting to see a decline in spending, which is pretty fascinating because, again, that's kind of cheap staple food. I mean, unfortunately, but it is for a lot of people. The burger giant posted a 3% drop in revenue in the first quarter. Same store sales in the U.S. dropped 3.6% from the prior year, the steepest decline since 2020.

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So some of that is maybe people becoming a little more health conscious, but a lot of that is just a decline in spending generally. The oil industry is taking a beating right now. The reason the oil industry is taking a beating is because of the trade war, there's less demand for American oil. Less demand means the price goes down.

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President Trump wrote on Truth Social from his time in uniform on the battlefield in Congress. And as my national security advisor, Mike Walz has worked hard to put our nation's interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.

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Prices going down means that there is less development of oil and natural gas, which runs directly up against some of the stuff that Secretary Doug Burgum is trying to do over at Department of the Interior. He's been trying to unleash U.S. energy dominance through deregulation. But if the price of oil drops too low, there's no real reason for people to drill more.

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There's no real reason for people to develop new energy if there appears to be a glut of supply. Doug Burgum, we actually had reporters who went with Secretary Burgum out into the field over on Morning Wire, which, by the way, you guys should go check that out. It's a great show, Morning Wire, and is now available on video. Totally worth the watch over at Daily Wire. Go check it out right now.

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But Secretary Burgum has been trying to drive up energy production. Hard to do that when the prices are dropping tremendously. So what exactly is going to be the next step here? Well, China may be starting to waver a little bit.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, China said it was weighing starting talks with the United States, but only if Washington shows sincerity through concrete measures such as by canceling the tariffs against Beijing. The ministry spokesperson said China's position is consistent. If you want to fight, we'll fight. If you want to talk, our door is wide open. If the U.S.

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wants to talk, it should show sincerity and be prepared to act in correcting its erroneous actions and canceling unilateral tariffs. So China wants some signal from Trump that he's backing down. President Trump obviously doesn't want to give that signal. So it may be that this tariff war lasts a little longer than people are currently expecting, including the markets.

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Axios says that China is not backing down in the game of chicken with President Trump. China says it sent around 15% of its exports worth $525 billion to the U.S. last year, about three times what flowed in the opposite direction. New export orders are already falling sharply, pretending empty shelves and price hikes in the United States.

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Now, there are a lot of reports out of places like Axios that essentially the White House was already turning on Walz from very early on in the administration, that he didn't get along supposedly with the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, that his foreign policy was priors, the things that he actually believed, were at odds with people like Vance or like Steve Witkoff. That is what Axios is reporting.

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China, of course, does have the unique ability to simply cram it down on its own constituents. I mean, the people who live in China, I mean, it's an unfortunate reality, but it turns out that China is a pretty terrible place and they don't care very much about their citizens. So China's being hurt by the trade war, but can they take more pain than the U.S.?

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I mean, typically speaking, yes, because tyrannies can take more pain, at least on a policy level, than democracies can. All right, folks, it's a Friday, and that means it's time to do a little bit of nonsense with regard to the culture. So my friend Matt Walsh, he did a review, apparently, of Revenge of the Sith. I know it's a little weird because Revenge of the Sith originally came out in 2005.

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But the 20th anniversary means that it was re-released in theaters recently. And Matt was very upset. He took his kids to see it. And he did not like the movie. Now, my own opinion on Revenge of the Sith is that the first half has some flaws and the second half of Revenge of the Sith is actually quite great.

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There's some rough dialogue for sure, but basically everything from the execution of Order 66 on in Revenge of the Sith is really good canon. Like it's good Star Wars canon. Now, Matt didn't like it very much at all. Here's some of what he had to say.

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I mean, no, I'm sorry, Matt. First of all, they're way worse Star Wars films, namely the entire last trilogy that they did. The entire Rise of Skywalker trilogy, not good at all. Like serious problems. We reviewed all of them. The first two movies in the prequels, way worse than Revenge of the Sith. Now, again, I think that some of Matt's criticisms here I'm going to agree with.

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At the same time, the sort of overall idea this is the worst movie ever made or one of the worst movies ever made. He needs to see more movies. I've seen a lot of truly awful films. Truly, truly awful films. I mean, has he ever seen The Shape of Water? Ooh, complete stinker. Anyway, here is Matt going off on the dialogue. And again, I'm going to agree with some of these critiques, I will admit.

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Apparently, on a trip to Greenland in March, Vice President Vance counseled Waltz about, quote, working more collaboratively. And people inside the White House said that he didn't work well with Susie Wiles. And then apparently, Laura Loomer came in and, of course, started urging President Trump to fire some of the staffers that Waltz had appointed. Those would be the quote unquote neocons.

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Okay, I can't disagree with that part. That part I agree with, Matt. I'm sorry. And actually, that's not even the worst dialogue in the film. The single worst piece of dialogue in the film, there are multiple nominees. There's the part where Anakin and Obi-Wan are arguing, and he's talking about how only a Sith deals in absolutes, which is, in fact, an absolute.

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So, I mean, there's all sorts of problems. I think my favorite bad line is when Yoda, who obviously has some sort of syntax problem because he's constantly putting his verbs where they should not be. There's one point where Yoda is trying to convince Obi-Wan not to look at the security tapes of Anakin murdering a bunch of children.

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And he says, if into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find. It's like, oh, no, that is not good. So, again, I'm not going to disagree with every aspect of Matt's review here. He also ripped into the acting.

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OK, so the acting is not uniformly bad. Natalie Portman is quite terrible in the whole series. And Hayden Christensen, who actually turns out to be a pretty good actor in some other stuff. Like if you ever watch Hayden Christensen in the movie called Shattered Glass, he's actually pretty great. There's no question that George Lucas has some problems with actors.

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He doesn't get the greatest performance. But the general plot line of what leads to the takeover of the galaxy by the Empire is definitely, it's interesting. Now, he rips on the choreography of some of the fight scenes. And here, I'm sorry, like, no, he's just wrong on this.

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Now, again, the term neocon has basically become a term of universal opprobrium applied to people who clearly are not neocons. A neocon, just technically speaking, these are people who were Democrats in the 1960s and they called themselves liberals mugged by reality. They moved over to the right.

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Oh, come on. I mean, seriously, come on. There's never been stunt doubles ever in the history of movies, Matt. Really? The last fight scene between Obi-Wan and Anakin is a good fight scene. Some of the stuff involving Count Dooku is pretty good. And this is not the movie that has the worst fight scenes.

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And by the way, the movie that actually has maybe the best Star Wars duel is the original Phantom Menace. The original Phantom Menace. It turns out that the what the Darth Maul is actually the best of the various fighters. OK, finally, we have Matt on the storyline here. Again, he's not totally off base here, guys, but it's the entire gestalt of the movie.

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Am I saying Revenge of the Sith is like the best movie? I'm not saying it's the best movie ever made, but I could do what Matt is doing with virtually any movie. Not virtually. With many movies that are considered classics, you could definitely rip them apart along many of the same lines. Here is Matt.

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Many of them during the Bush administration were very interventionist, not just with regard to Iraq, but also with regard to, say, Libya and Syria, which is a sort of better acid test as to whether somebody was a truly interventionist neocon. Because, again, Iraq was widely approved by large swaths of the Republican Party, including some people who now count themselves isolationists.

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I mean, that last point about the high ground is true. As far as why they're on Mustafar, the answer is the Separatist leaders were in Mustafar and they were in this crappy planet as a hiding place. That's the actual reason why they end up on Mustafar. And also, yeah, because Anakin turns evil and lava's cool. I mean, is it okay just for lava to be cool? Can that be okay once in a while?

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And Matt is so cynical about things that he turns me into the optimist. Pretty impressive stuff. Alrighty, guys. Coming up, Ilhan Omar has a bit of a tete-a-tete with a reporter. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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It was really the post-Iraq conflicts like Libya and Syria where these divisions started to really emerge between people who are very interventionist and almost Wilsonian style and people who are not. So a good example of this would be Ted Cruz, right? Ted Cruz was against the intervention in Libya and against an intervention in Syria as well.

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I'm surprised it took us this long. This six and a half inch finely crafted resin statuette is a scale replica of the legendary monument that towers over the Daily Wire site. Word has it, she's won 1,024th authentic, but 100% hilarious. Perfect for your desk, bookshelf, or mantel. of your teepee, longhouse, or other traditional dwelling. Limited quantities available at dailywire.com slash shop.

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By the way, so was I. In any case, the attempt to label everybody a neocon is basically now just an all-purpose insult that you throw at anybody who doesn't agree with a more Papu Canaanite vision of American foreign policy. So in any case, a bunch of people who are under Waltz were targeted by Laura Loomer and some of them got fired. That was a couple of weeks ago.

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In recent days, according to Axios, Susie Wiles began collecting names to replace Waltz, but kept the process and discussion strictly under wraps. Secretary of State Rubio will fill in on an interim basis. Interim. Apparently, one of the original people who has floated for the job of NSA was Steve Witkoff. Now, I don't think that Witkoff wants the job.

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And the reason Witkoff doesn't want the job is because the NSA is actually an entire apparatus that you have to run. Witkoff's role so far has been flying off to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin or flying off to Qatar or flying off to Saudi Arabia or whatever it is.

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He's sort of a freewheeling agent in the mix, operating directly for the president of the United States and seems to have the president's ear on a lot of these negotiations.

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According to Axios, Waltz, Alex Wong, who is his assistant director of the NSA, and many of the National Security Council staffers who already departed were on the more hawkish wing within the administration, were perceived as quote-unquote neocons within the MAGA group. On Iran, both Vance and Witkoff favor diplomacy. Waltz was much more open to the idea of military strikes.

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For now, according to Axios, it seems the restraint wing has won that argument and is generally in the ascendancy within Trump's national security team.

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And one of the sort of open questions is whether a straight wing is trying to say that the United States should not be involved in a strike on Iran, under what circumstances that would change, or whether they're trying to restrain Israel from a strike on Iran, which is a completely separate question.

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Because obviously Israel has a very strong interest in Iran not gaining a nuclear weapon, considering that Iran has specifically stated and has never stopped saying that once they get a nuclear weapon, they're using it on the quote unquote Zionist entity. So J.D. Vance appeared on Fox News last night. trying to explain what exactly had happened inside the administration.

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Okay, so one of the things that's sort of fascinating about the way that the vice president is phrasing that is we. There's a lot of we, meaning that he was obviously involved in the decision-making around the movement of Mike Waltz.

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The alternative read here is that Waltz was on the outs with a lot of members of the administration, particularly, again, in these sort of non-peace through strength contingent of foreign policy, and that the president...

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basically because he didn't like hurting waltz i mean waltz gave up a very solid congressional seat that's now occupied by randy fine in florida in order to come into the administration very early back or the president trump didn't actually want to hurt waltz since he moved him over to the un ambassador position which is in fact a pretty nice position

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And yeah, we're making fun of Elizabeth Moore and they're not Native Americans. Alrighty, so let's talk about what just happened in Washington, D.C. yesterday. So President Trump, in a shock move, decided to fire Mike Waltz, is what it looked like originally. And a bunch of people were celebrating this. Mike Waltz is the National Security Advisor, or was the national security advisor.

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OK, so again, all of this is sort of Kremlin ology trying to figure out what's going on inside the administration. It has some pretty significant ramifications for American foreign policy, especially because there's a lot of critique of the man who is now sort of leading American foreign policy in a wide variety of areas. And that, of course, is Steve Witkoff.

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So Witkoff, who I've suggested, has not actually achieved any victories that I can see at all in any of the arenas whatsoever.

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where he has been placed, whether you're talking about the Hamas negotiations to free hostages, including an American hostage, Idan Alexander, or whether you're talking about the Iran negotiations where Witkoff doesn't appear to know his ass from his elbow, or whether you're talking about the Russia-Ukraine negotiations where Steve Witkoff has been over there and then

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gone on TV and started sort of parroting many of the talking points that Vladimir Putin was putting out there. Let's put it this way. If it is not clear to you yet, I'm deeply unimpressed with Steve Witkoff's diplomatic record. He may be a very nice guy. He may be a good businessman. I don't know. I really don't know Steve Witkoff from Adam. I've met him briefly for about 20 seconds one time.

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I will say that I am not impressed with the results of his negotiating leisure domain at this point in time. And there are a lot of open questions about Steve Witkoff and his competence. The New York Post ran a piece yesterday suggesting that administration insiders are distressed by his approach. to negotiating with both Russia and Iran.

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According to the New York Post report, Wyckoff, who has become President Trump's de facto personal ambassador to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in addition to taking on the Middle East portfolio, takes part in high-level meetings alone. He is even relying on Kremlin translators Okay, that is an amateur move.

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Having somebody who works for Vladimir Putin do your translation for you is not exactly an amazing move if you're negotiating a deal. Ahead of Witkow's most recent meeting with Putin this past Friday, the New York native greeted the Kremlin tyrant like an old friend with no sign of the usual coterie of advisors, experts, and military officers who typically accompany U.S.

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officials during negotiations. Putin himself did not attend Friday's meeting solo. Instead, he was accompanied by one aide, a guy named Yuri Ushakov, and the head of Moscow's Sovereign Wealth Fund. Now, that in and of itself is a little bit weird. I'm not sure why the head of Moscow's sovereign wealth fund was attending a meeting with Steve Witkoff about an end to the Ukraine-Russia war.

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What does the sovereign wealth fund of Russia have to do with any of that? Raises some sort of rather interesting questions. Well, this prompted, this New York Post piece, which prompted a lot of heartburn inside the sort of Witkoff team.

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It prompted tweets from Alex Witkoff, his son, who's very close with the administration, and Donald Trump Jr., who of course is very close with Alex Witkoff, as well as his brother. Well, this again kind of comes down to what approach is the administration going to take on foreign policy? And there are a lot of mixed signals coming out of the administration.

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On the one hand, you have Witkoff, who is going around and attempting to cut deals, deals that, again, do not reflect sort of the traditional Trump 1.0 peace through strength approach to places like Russia or Iran. And then at the same time, you have President Trump pushing quite hard on a number of sort of pressure points for Russia and for Iran. So, for example, President Trump.

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literally yesterday, was pushing more sanctions on Iran, even as he was saying a little bit earlier this week that he was going to cut a deal with Iran. Very unclear whether this is putting on more sanctions to take them off, whether these sanctions are largely targeted not at Iran, but at China, particularly because China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil at this point.

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Obviously, Mike Waltz had been under severe fire since this signal chat screw up in which he accidentally included the Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who President Trump then gave an interview to. Again, not sure why that happened. In any case, it was a screw up. There's no question it was a screw up. The question was how long Waltz would last over at NSA.

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Here's President Trump just yesterday.

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We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, you know, we're here in Israel for Independence Day. We talked to Mike Huckabee yesterday. Well, Independence Day fell on May 1st. For the people of Israel, however, the concept of freedom has become intertwined with their ongoing challenge. Massive fires breaking out all over the state, for example, set by terrorists.

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Many people are facing difficult circumstances. They navigate their daily lives amid uncertainty. During these challenging times, it can be hard to find moments of joy and celebration. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews works to provide essential support for vulnerable populations.

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ensuring the elderly, the sick, wounded soldiers, and families in need that they receive the care they deserve. Your generous gift to the fellowship today will help provide vital aid, including medicine, nutritious meals, safety measures, and comfort to those who need it most. Show your support for Israel by making a meaningful contribution. Your gift can make a real difference in someone's life.

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Make your gift online today at benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. There's a lot going on here in Israel. A lot of people suffering. You can help out at benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org. God bless and thank you. Also, tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just starting.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2191 - SHAKE-UP At The White House

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If you miss that April 15th deadline or you still owe back taxes, the IRS is ramping up enforcement. Every day you wait only makes things worse. With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years. Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast.

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Ep. 2191 - SHAKE-UP At The White House

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The good news, there's still time for Tax Network USA to help. Self-employed, business owner, even if your books are a mess, they've got it covered. Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track fast. Even after the deadline, it's not too late to regain control. Your consultation is completely free.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2191 - SHAKE-UP At The White House

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Acting right now could stop penalties, threatening letters, and surprise levies before they escalate. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. You might have missed April 15th. You have not yet run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help before the IRS makes the very next move. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Shapiro. That's TNUSA.com slash Shapiro to get started.

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Ep. 2191 - SHAKE-UP At The White House

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Meanwhile, there were negotiations that were scheduled between the United States and Iran for Saturday. Apparently, that has now been rescheduled for logistical reasons. Apparently, there was never a hard date on the schedule, according to the United States. The Iranians say this is being done for logistical reasons. Oman is claiming that it was logistical in nature.

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Well, yesterday it was announced that Waltz would no longer be at NSA and cheers went up from the anti-Waltz kind of anti-traditional Republican isolationist wing of the Republican party. And then it was announced that Marco Rubio would become the temporary NSA and Waltz himself would be moved over to the role of UN ambassador, a role that originally Elise Stefanik

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Iran is saying that what they really, really want is a deal that will allow for peaceful nuclear development, which of course is a lie. Iran does not need nuclear development at all. It's one of the most oil and natural gas rich countries on planet earth. The idea that Iran, which is an underdeveloped economy, they're not using that energy for AI. Let's put it this way.

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Iran is not desperately creating nuclear facilities because they are so in hock with the green revolution. I guess not with what's happening here. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Bakhai, issued a statement describing the talks as postponed at the request of Oman's foreign minister. He said Oman remained committed to reaching a fair and lasting agreement. A U.S.

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source said that America had never confirmed its participation in a fourth round of talks, but the source said the U.S. expects the talks to take place in the near future. So, again, there's a lot of sort of mixed signals coming out of the administration with regard to what an Iran deal would look like. The Washington Post, by the way, is cheering the idea of a JCPOA 2.0, an Obama deal 2.0.

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Although even the Washington Post, I will say it's kind of amazing. The editorial board of the Washington Post is now free to admit that Obama's JCPOA deal was really bad, that the Iran deal in 2015 was a bad deal. Now, they still want a bad deal, the Washington Post. They just want it to be slightly less bad than the Obama deal.

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Quote, the onus is now on Trump and his team to show they can negotiate a better deal, one that doesn't end up looking like the old one. Well, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and now interim national security advisor, he was on with Sean Hannity last night and he discussed what the United States' goals in the Iran talks are.

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Well, folks, Democrats have what seems to be a somewhat target-rich environment, and they are blowing it yet again. First, you should know, The Daily Wire, you need to be here because it's just news-breaking all the time. And here is where you are going to get the facts straight. You're going to get a conservative perspective. We're not going to fib about it. Now is the time to join us.

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So what you easily could have is a situation in which China draws closer to these countries, manufactures, sends to Vietnam, Vietnam slaps a Vietnam label on it, comes to the United States anyway, and thus sanctions are avoided. This has always been a very real problem with international trade schemes and tariffs placed on one country.

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How do you stop that sort of stuff from happening, especially because China is willing to cheat on all of these sorts of matters? So what would we actually need to do to reshore? Well, the answer is we would need time and we need to do it gradually.

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Kilmer Abrego Garcia is an illegal immigrant into the United States. He had been found to be a proper target of deportation all the way back in 2019, but there was a withholding order placed on him because he claimed that if he were returned to El Salvador, he might be killed. The federal government suspected back in 2019 that he was in fact a member of MS-13.

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And most of all, what we'd really need to do is get rid of the regulatory schemes in the United States that make it difficult for people to build in the United States. Now, all this talk about tariffs, how other countries have treated us unfairly. We have treated ourselves unfairly. We have treated our own manufacturers unfairly.

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We've made it very difficult for people to do business in the manufacturing sector in the United States. Good piece in the Wall Street Journal today by Sham Sankar and Julia Diamond. Sham Sankar, of course, has been a guest on this program. He's chief technology officer of Palantir Technologies. Diamond is a partner at Allen & Company.

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And they point out that nearly half of generic active pharmaceutical ingredients consumed in the United States originate in China. In the past decade, the number of U.S.

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factories producing active pharmaceutical ingredients has fallen by more than 60%, largely because of state-subsidized foreign competition in China, which means America relies on drugstores primarily or even exclusively from overseas. More than 90% of antibiotics and antivirals have no U.S. producers.

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Nearly half of all generic active pharmaceutical ingredients consumed in the United States originate in China. More than 100 are only sourced in China. So what exactly should be done? According to Sankar and Diamond, the government can build incentive structures that make it financially attractive and fast to make pharmaceuticals in America.

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No single incentive, tariffs included, is powerful enough on its own to onshore production. Instead, policymakers have to use a lot of tools to stimulate greater investment in U.S. production. There's plenty they could do. Most of it has to do with tax benefits as well as deregulation. Serious investment paired with technology and policy can catalyze a health reformation, they say.

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But that sort of stuff takes time. The problem is there ain't no time.

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Meanwhile, the polling shows that while Americans are very hard on China, as they should be, and believe that China has screwed the United States on trade, as they have, most Americans also understand that if these tariffs go forward, as they are currently constructed, Americans are going to get absolutely hammered in terms of their ability to buy, in terms of their own businesses.

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Brand new poll out from Pew Research Center, and what they find is is that in total, a significant majority of Americans, or plurality of Americans rather, believe that China mostly benefits from trade with the United States. There's some 25% who believe that both benefit.

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Bottom line is that even Democrats are split on that particular question, where Americans are not split on whether the tariffs will have a bad effect or a good effect on them. According to this poll, 52% of Americans believe that the tariffs will have a bad effect on the United States. 53% believe that they will have a bad effect on them personally.

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Only 24% say that the tariffs will have a good effect on the United States. Only 10% believe the tariffs will have a positive effect for them personally. Those are not the kind of numbers that you need to sustain a trade war that has not been properly explained. If you're going to say that there is no cost, then you have to demonstrate how the cost will not materialize.

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If you are saying that there is cost, you have to explain what the cost is likely to be to get people to buy into this sort of stuff. Instead, the Trump administration is now focusing on Jerome Powell as though Jerome Powell can bail the Trump administration out of its tariff policy by essentially inflating the currency through lower interest rates.

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It turns out that in 2021, his wife filed charges against him. She filed a police report at the very least claiming that he had engaged in serious domestic abuse. The Trump administration then deported him despite the withholding order. But there's no doubt that this particular human being is no saint. There are a wide variety of police reports that have him being brought up on charges

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So yesterday, President Trump threatened Jerome Powell again. Now, Jerome Powell got it totally wrong during the Biden administration. Why? Because he thought that inflation would be transitory. And so he failed to raise the interest rates until it was too late. And by the time he raised the interest rates, inflation was a permanent feature of the American financial landscape.

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President Trump is basically asking him to do that again. He's basically asking him to lower interest rates in the face of inflationary tariff regimes that are weakening the American dollar and making it more likely that Americans have to pay more for the goods and services they consume. So here's President Trump basically trying to get Jerome Powell to bail him out here.

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Okay, so those sorts of threats are not going to make the market sanguine because what it sounds like there is, forget about Powell, what it sounds like is that President Trump does not want to move off of his tariff stance, which is in fact inflationary, and that he actually wants to sort of backfill that by firing the chair of the Federal Reserve and putting in somebody friendlier to his agenda.

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who will lower the interest rates despite the fact that inflation is actually likely going to move the wrong way in the aftermath of the supply chain disruptions that are going to occur because of these tariff regimes. Apparently, President Trump has been thinking about firing Jerome Powell for some time, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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President Trump has for months privately discussed firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, but he hasn't made a final decision about whether to try to oust him before his term ends next year. Apparently, Trump has spoken with Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, about potentially firing Powell before that term ends and possibly selecting Warsh to be his replacement.

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Warsh himself says, no, don't do that. He says he should let the Fed chair complete his term without interference, especially because if you want to really roil the markets and freak them out, fire Jerome Powell and then substitute somebody else who's just going to, quote unquote, do the bidding of the Trump administration.

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make monetary policy subject to the whims of Peter Navarro and the Trump trade team. You want to freak the markets out? That is one amazing way to do that. President Trump accuses Jerome Powell of playing politics.

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Well, I mean, one of the reasons also that the Europeans are doing that is because they wish to, for example, expend much more money on things like Ukraine, whereas we are not doing that sort of stuff.

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Scott Besant, who, again, is the voice of reason inside the administration on these issues, apparently has been repeatedly cautioning the White House not to attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. He said that would risk destabilizing financial markets, which, of course, is absolutely true. That, of course, is true. So, by the way, could Trump even fire Jerome Powell?

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I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, which is, by the way, the best AI search service just is, does the president have the power to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve? And here's what they say. The president does not have the unilateral power to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve simply because of the policy disagreements or dissatisfaction with monetary decisions.

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The Federal Reserve Act specifies that members of the Fed's Board of Governors, including the chair, can only be removed for cause. This phrase has consistently been interpreted to mean reasons such as misconduct, neglect of duty, or malfeasance, not for differences over policy or performance.

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In 1935, the Supreme Court set a key precedent ruling that members of independent regulatory commissions like the Federal Reserve can't be dismissed by the president at will, but only for cause. However, it'll be interesting to see. The Supreme Court is considering a lot of cases right now about the president's power to fire people at independent agencies.

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on a wide variety of topics that would lead to his deportation. There are accusations of everything ranging from human trafficking to drug trafficking to association with MS-13. In short, Kilmer Abrego Garcia is not a person who is a particularly sympathetic victim.

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However, can Congress be overruled in this fashion? Unlikely. Unlikely. So it'll be fascinating to see how that plays out in the courts. In the markets, it will not play out well at all. Meanwhile, the instability globally is not relegated to the financial markets. It is also true in terms of foreign policy.

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So the Ukrainians seem to be doing their best at this point to try and give President Trump what he wants. So there was a lot of talk a few weeks ago about Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, visiting the United States and signing a rare earth mineral deal. You remember, that's why he was there in late February. And then it turned into this face-off between President Trump, J.D.

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Vance, and Zelensky in the Oval that got really ugly. And Zelensky ended up being ejected from the White House and all the rest. You remember all of that. That was all originally over this rare earth minerals deal. And right now, the United States is desperate for a new supply of rare earth minerals because China is cutting off the supply.

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It's one of the main spigots that China has to control the United States economy and harm the U.S. economy. Well, yesterday, President Trump announced that, in fact, the rare earth minerals deal was back on the table, that Ukraine would be signing it sometime next week. Here he was in the Oval.

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Now, that's great. The only way the benefits of that deal materialize is if Ukraine survives. A deal with a country that no longer exists because Russia has walked all the way through it is not a deal at all. And ain't going to be no drilling for rare earth minerals in a war zone. That's just not something that's going to happen.

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And so the precondition to the United States seeing the benefit of the bargain would be some sort of peace or at least a ceasefire brokered between Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. The problem, of course, is that Vladimir Putin has shown zero willingness to this point to come to the table. This is just the fact. Vladimir Putin is lying.

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When he says that he wants peace or that he wants a ceasefire, there has been literally zero evidence that this is the case. And I understand that Steve Witkoff, the supposedly amazing negotiator, is brokering something in Ukraine. I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that Steve Witkoff can negotiate his way on foreign policy out of a paper bag. Seriously, what is he doing?

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It's got to be humiliating to the White House. President Trump came into office saying that within 24 hours, he was going to broker a peace treaty or some sort of ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

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And no one believed that that was a literal thing, but they thought that it was achievable fairly quickly, especially because President Trump himself had laid out how he was going to do it in broad strokes. And the answer was going to be get the Ukrainians to the table by saying that our support does not last forever. We're not going to do this interminably.

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So if you're trying to separate off the victim from the actual activity of the Trump administration, what you do is you ignore the victim and you focus in on the activity of the Trump administration. That's the smart play. The smart play is to say, that the Trump administration is violating the law and that's a threat to the Constitution. That'd be the smart play here.

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And at the same time, go to the Russians and say, listen, you guys should come to the table because if you don't come to the table, we're going to clock into next week. That is the way you actually get both sides and you have to provide incentives for both sides to get to the table. You can't just incentivize one side to come to the table and hope for the...

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The beneficence of Vladimir Putin, who is, in fact, a brutal dictator who throws people off the third story of buildings like you can't do that and then somehow assume that Vladimir, what would Putin's interest be in coming to the table, seeing the aid from the United States to Ukraine going away, regardless of whether he comes to the table? He may as well just stick it out.

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Meanwhile, conflict is still continuing around the world. Israel is still under attack. Missile fire has resumed on multiple fronts, Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, all enemies openly seeking Israel's destruction. Here in the United States, we don't really imagine what it would be like living under the constant threat of terrorism and rocket attacks day after day.

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But that is the harsh reality in Israel today. Parents taking their children to school, suddenly having to fall to the ground and lie on top of their small kids, desperately trying to comfort them as sirens blare throughout neighborhoods. The horrific events of October 7th made painfully clear the next attack against Israel is not theoretical. It is happening right now.

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Stream my show ad-free. Get exclusive content you're not going to find anywhere else. Watch anytime, anywhere on desktop, mobile, and TV with The Daily Wire Plus app. Be part of the movement. Subscribe now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. I have to say I am amazed that the Democrats are this bad at this. It's just almost unbelievable how terrible Democrats are in this political moment.

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We may have precious little time to prepare for what comes next. We must act now before it's too late. That's precisely why I partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to help provide immediate life-saving aid and essential security measures. Your urgently needed gift today will directly help provide critical security essentials that save lives.

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Ep. 2182 - The Democrat/MS-13 Love Match

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From bomb shelters to vulnerable communities to flak jackets, bulletproof vests for first responders, armored security vehicles, emergency ambulances, and so much more. Join me in standing with Israel during this critical time. Head on over to benforthefellowship.org today. That's benforthefellowship.org. Your support matters more now than ever. Also, let me tell you something.

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I never realized just how bad my old mattress was until I got my Helix mattress. You know the feeling where you wake up and your back is already complaining at you? Well, that was me more often than not. Don't get me started on how the old mattress turned into a heat trap every single night you wake up in a sweat. There's nothing worse than that.

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Whether you sleep hot, need extra support for your back, or share a bed with a restless partner, Helix has a perfect match. for you. I have a firm but breathable mattress, which is what I need, so I don't get the back pain and also I tend to heat up at night. Right now, Helix is offering an incredible deal during their spring savings event. It will only last until the end of April.

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And it's not as though Democrats can't do it. They can. Literally yesterday, the Federal Appeals Panel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals released an opinion from Judge Harvey Wilkinson, who is a pretty conservative judge. This is not some sort of far left Obama appointee judge. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

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Well, the approach of the Trump administration on this has been to be very soft on Russia publicly, has been to be really hard on Ukraine, both publicly and privately. And that is not bearing the kinds of fruit that President Trump is obviously hoping for. So yesterday, for example, President Trump was asked about reports that China was sending weaponry to Russia, which clearly is happening.

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China, of course, is backing Russia in this war. China has basically made Russia its oil supplier and proxy state in this war in Ukraine. The same thing is true with regard to North Korea, which has been sending actual honest to God soldiers to Russia to fight in Ukraine. The same thing is true of Iran, which has been sending drone technology to Russia to fight in Ukraine.

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And all the bad guys are unified on this one. It's the good guys, the people on the other side of the aisle who can't figure it out. In any case, President Trump was asked about China sending weaponry to Russia, and he basically pooh-poohed it. He basically said, well, we don't know that it's happening.

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Okay, so again, the sort of downplaying of Russian activity, that problem continued at the UN, where the United States voted against a UN General Assembly resolution on cooperation with the Council of Europe, not because the United States doesn't want to cooperate with the Council of Europe, but because it included language condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

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Jonathan Schreier, the acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, said, quote, the current resolution repeats statements as to the Russia-Ukraine war that the United States considers unhelpful in advancing the cause of peace. So what exactly did the resolution say that was so objectionable?

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Quote, recognizing also that the unprecedented challenges now facing Europe following the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and against Georgia prior to that, and the cessation of the membership of the Russian Federation in the Council of Europe calls for strength and cooperation between the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

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That is the chief thing that is being objected to. is that it blames Russia for invading surrounding nations, which Russia has repeatedly done for a couple of decades here, and mentions multiple times the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Okay, so I have a question. Has that softer approach to Russia been met with a softer approach by Vladimir Putin, or is he pushing where he believes there is mush?

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Well, the answer pretty obviously is the latter. which led to a breakdown in negotiations yesterday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was attempting to broker some sort of rapprochement between Russia and Ukraine. He said yesterday that if there is no peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in the short term, then the United States will walk away from the table, which again, Russia's like, okay, fine.

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At one point, he was considered a possibility to be on the Supreme Court during the Bush administration. Wilkinson released an order yesterday that is absolutely brutal with regard to the government's treatment of Kilmer Abrego Garcia. According to the order, quote, the government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not.

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Like, don't threaten Russia with a good time. The whole idea here of the United States playing, quote unquote, honest broker is that it is going to hold both sides to account. If the United States walks away, Russia is going to really feel its own. Russia is going to believe that the United States is not only cutting off aid, they're cutting off diplomatic pressure on Russia.

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Like, where's the threat here? Here's the secretary of state yesterday.

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OK, well, if it's not possible and we walk away, that is, in fact, enabling the Russians. Let's just be clear about that. If the United States walks totally away from both negotiations and any sort of military support for Ukraine, which side does that help? We're not helping the Russians. So who like we're not sending the military aid.

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We're not like what exactly is the threat to get the Russians to the table? Peace through strength requires the credible threat of use of economic force.

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military force or any other sort of diplomatic action if you just walk away who does that benefit russia's sitting there going this is great like we're just we've been intransigent and then the threat from the united states is well if you don't if you don't make a deal if you russia if you won't make a deal then we are walking away from the deal-making table russia doesn't want to make a deal what do they care that makes them happier than anything and the europeans aren't going to step into the breach and you can't trust the europeans to do anything right

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So listen, maybe the Europeans do. Maybe that's the end product here, is that the United States walks away and the Europeans have to step up. And maybe they should. Maybe they should. But if that's the case, we should just recognize this war is going to last a much longer time.

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If the goal is to get to the end of the war, if that's the actual goal, less killing, end of the war, if you want the rare earth minerals deal to actually materialize into, you know, rare earth minerals, then what you would want is the United States applying our unique capacity in the world to get Russia to the table. That's what you would want.

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And I'm waiting to see the incredible diplomatic leisure domain of Steve Woodcoff and team in this particular area because I have yet to see it. Meanwhile, our White House correspondent, Mary Margaret Olihan, had an opportunity to actually go visit the unveiling of the RFK files with Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI. Here's what that looked like.

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Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or mistakenly deported. Why should it not make what was wrong right?

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Joining us on the line to discuss is Mary Margaret Olihan. Welcome to the show. How was that experience? What was that like?

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So what were some of the artifacts that you saw in the National Archives? And also, why are those not public at this point?

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And then this particular panel, again, the opinion by Judge Harvey Wilkinson says, the Supreme Court's decision does not allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.

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So obviously, that's huge news. We're going to go through all of that. I'm sure the Internet will tear all of this apart. And, you know, the director of national intelligence has said it'll ask more questions than it will answer, which, of course, you know, these questions are likely to remain unanswered for people who don't feel the answers are sufficient for the rest of time.

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Meanwhile, the vice president of the United States is heading over to the Vatican this weekend. That was also another story that you were working on.

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Facilitation does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country's prisons that the withholding order forbids, and further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns. Facilitation does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign detention centers in the manner attempted here.

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That's our senior White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan. Mary Margaret, hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend and get some rest.

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Meanwhile, the president of the United States made a very strong stand yesterday with regard to the Second Amendment. So there's this horrible shooting that happened at Florida State University. The gunman has been identified. I don't do the names of mass shooters because it gives additional credibility to mass shooters who are interested in notoriety.

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But this person was the son of a sheriff's deputy who apparently had access to one of her weapons. Again, this appears to be somebody who snapped. Was mentally ill, not a shock. A spokesperson with the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital confirmed to CNN a local hospital received multiple patients with gunshot wounds.

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At least six patients were transported to the hospital with those gunshot wounds, one in critical condition, others in serious condition as well. CNN did what it usually does. They spoke with somebody who was sheltering at the time. One of the students was on campus who immediately called for gun control.

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Well, obviously, this would normally turn into a giant series of claims by Democrats about how they need gun control. That has been a loser for them for well over a decade at this point. Democrats claiming after every mass shooting that this requires some sort of, quote unquote, assault weapons ban. President Trump was having none of it.

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Well, he said that what happened was absolutely horrible and he was horrified by it. He said, you know, I'm the president of the United States and I do have to protect the Second Amendment.

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So, again, one of the things that President Trump is great for, honestly, is preventing the excesses of the left. It's something that President Trump has two jobs. One is to push the ball forward on a wide variety of measures that conservatives want and that Americans want. The other is to stop the excesses of the left. And normally, Democrats would use this, again,

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as a leaping off point for a call for gigantic large-scale arms seizures or for bans on the sale of arms or all the rest. The fact that's not even a discussion is definitely one of the benefits of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is still trying to figure out exactly what it wants to do about Iran.

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And Steve Witkoff is leading many of the negotiations with regard to Ukraine, with regard to Iran. There are supposed to be these indirect negotiations happening between the United States and Iran. Iran obviously attempting to slow walk things, open up its economy.

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Allowing all of this would facilitate foreign detention more than it would domestic return. It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans with diverse views and persuasions have always stood. And the order goes on from there, blasting the Trump administration, talking about how the executive branch seemed to be violating respect for the judiciary.

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What they're trying to do is get the Trump administration to re-embrace a deal that President Trump called the worst deal of all time when he ran for office the first time, which was, of course, the Iran nuclear weapons deal cut by the Obama administration. He literally called that the worst deal. And the Iranians want it back.

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Whether Steve Witkoff is willing to stand up to them is another question we'll find out. The administration continues to maintain that it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

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OK, so what happens in those negotiations and what exactly does that mean for practical negotiations? Because, again, the bright red line only gets crossed, you know, them getting nuclear weapons once they announce they have a nuclear weapon. And so the question is how you forestall that in the first place.

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There's a big New York Times article that we talked about yesterday on the show suggesting that Israel had considered a strike and that the United States had said it would not participate in that strike thanks to the intervention of figures in the administration ranging from J.D. Vance to Witkoff. In any case, President Trump was asked about that story yesterday.

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He said, I didn't wave off the attack. We just have to see how things play out.

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That's President Trump making clear that all options are on the table. As far as whether Iran wants to talk again, we keep hearing this. The China wants to talk about trade or Iran wants to talk about nuclear weapons or Russia wants to talk about peace. When that stuff starts to materialize, I'll get excited.

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Until that point, I'm going to assume the worst from geopolitical enemies of the United States, Russia, Iran and China. That seems like. the intelligent way of dealing with their jabber? Are they willing to actually put skin in the game? If the answer is no, then options become significantly more limited. Alrighty, meanwhile, on the cultural front, I've been, it's a Friday.

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That means it's time to talk some culture. And I've been made aware of an artist who calls herself Horse Girl. Now, as with all types, oh my God, as with all types of this sort of nonsense, Horse Girl is not spelled like Horse Girl. It's spelled Horse, G-I-I-R, large L. Don't know why. This person is also known as Stella Stallion, embodying, that's the character, half horse, half human.

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Not like a centaur, not like one half is a horse and one half is a human, like Island of Dr. Moreau kind of stuff. Like muzzle, ears, heart-shaped spot on the face. Horse girl keeps her real identity secret. She calls herself a simple human horse as opposed to a complex human horse. Horse Girl first entered the spotlight. Why is this relevant?

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Because this person performed at Coachella and is apparently a thing now. Horse Girl first entered the spotlight in 2022 with the hit song, My Barn, My Rules, which I got to admit is kind of hilarious.

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Quote, the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against each other in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy to which by dint of custom and detachment, we can only sparingly reply.

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so this is creepy and horrifying apparently the lyrics to this are long mane big hoof shiny coat what's new small ears so cute nice tail good mood I walk I trot I lope I gallop I want to run till sundown my barn my rules my toys my tools okay so yeah it's basically Cole Porter you know like very solid stuff right there Her debut album was called Very Important Pony.

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And the original big song on it was called Material Horse, which I guess is a takeoff on Material Girl, like from Madonna, I suppose. This person has 560,000 monthly Spotify listeners. So apparently her musical inspirations include Crazy Frog, Hampton the Hamster, Schnuffle the Bunny, and Whale Composers. I have no idea what any of that means.

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And thanks to producer Jess for compiling this nightmare. She has performed at many major venues, including Coachella Weekend One. Here's her song, Eat, Sleep, Slay. Why? When does the asteroid come? Okay, so it's a lady dressed up as a horse. Cool. Cool, cool. Everything is fine in Western civilization. Things are going really, really well. Probably we should take notes from the Gen Zers.

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They seem well. They seem very well. She credits her musical passion, if you can call that music, to her upbringing and claims to have been discovered by Whitney Horston, which is really funny, actually. Quote, I got into it more professionally after we did an annual Harvest Feast Festival together. And I was discovered by a really, really famous horse, also a singer, Whitney Horsten.

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The executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions, right? So Democrats should be jumping all over this. This would be the way to do it. And in fact, President Trump himself knows that this is a vulnerability, which is why President Trump yesterday was asked in the Oval Office.

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I don't... Is that person really famous? Whitney Hor... Had you ever heard of that until this moment? Ever since then, I've been galloping around stages. And three years ago, I made the crossover into the human music space a bit little more. It's been very fun. Apparently... On tour, she requests kombucha, fresh veggies, dried fruits, and nuts, but avoids hay.

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Quote, the thing with hay is it's a very unhealthy snack. I love hay, but it's like sugar. Same thing. When I'm touring, to just have the energy levels, I tend to try and just be a little more on the healthy food side. The hay can come after the tour. And she is apparently concerned about ketamine shortages affecting those who need it medically, including horses.

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So she says that because the humans are using the ketamine, the horses don't have the ketamine. Well, I feel like nothing would be lost to human society if Coachella went away. That's sort of my short take. I have no more on Horse Girl, and there's not much more I can say on this other than the sort of lack of spiritual humanity in all of this is quite evident.

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When human beings want to be animals, that is never a good sign for a civilization. Being human means to actually leave behind the aspects that make you an animal in many ways. And to be a civilized human being is to leave behind the idea that you ought to be like the horses. Obviously, humans are animals, but we are also ensouled animals with moral values and duties in the world.

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And the more we embrace this idea that actually humans and horses are the same, the worse it is for humans. Very, very bad. Okay, in other news, other cultural news. Apparently, a new movie has been announced, a new Star Wars film. It's directed by Shawn Levy, and it comes off the Rise of Skywalker and that entire series, which the Force Awakens series, which was not good.

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Ryan Gosling is going to be starring in it. It's called Star Wars Starfighter. which, you know, I'm interested. I will admit that sounds interesting to me. Like just a straight story of an X-Wing fighter, for example. And that's it. But you'd have to figure out exactly what the universe looks like post Rise of Skywalker.

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This has always been the problem in the Star Wars universe, that you know what things look like from basically the end of the Republic to the death of the Empire. And that whole world is really interesting. But post the death of the Empire and the New Republic, they've really never known quite where to go with that. The Mandalorian kind of exists in that world a little bit.

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But actually, no, the Mandalorian is before that. So there's actually not much that exists in the world after that that's interesting because they don't know what that world looks like. As far as Sean Levy, his films, he was a producer on Arrival, which is a good film. He's an executive producer on Stranger Things.

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He was doing a meeting with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgio Maloney, and he was asked by the press about Abrego Garcia. He said, listen, I'm not any part of this Abrego Garcia imprisonment story. I really have nothing to do with it.

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He was also a collaborator with Ryan Reynolds by directing Free Guy, The Atom Project, and Deadpool and Wolverine, all of which are not good. So, I don't know, man. I don't know. Torn. It can't be. Did Kathleen Kennedy greenlight it? That's going to be my, if she greenlit it, then I'm skeptical. If she did not greenlight it, then I'm optimistic.

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All righty, folks, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. But remember, you have to be a member to actually ask questions and to watch. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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The problem here is the Democrats aren't exactly focusing on that. Instead of focusing on the rule of law questions, Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland, he decided that actually the smart move would be to fly down to El Salvador and do a photo op with the suspected MS-13 member. This was the bright move. This was the thing that definitely had to happen.

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So let's say that you are a Democrat and you are given a story where the Trump administration, its own DOJ, had admitted to making a mistake by deporting a man who had a withholding order on him that he shouldn't be deported to that place. And the administration looks like they just sort of ignored the withholding order.

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So, Van Hollen shared a photo of himself with Abrego Garcia on X on Thursday. He flew to El Salvador earlier this week to seek a meeting with Abrego Garcia. He said, quote, I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight, I had that chance. He said he would carry a message back to his wife.

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Nayib Bukele, who is the president of El Salvador, then tweeted out photos of the senator with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Again, a suspected MS-13 member, who at the very least has a police record accusations of wife beating and all the rest.

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Bukele tweeted out, Kilmar Abrego Garcia miraculously risen from the death camps and torture, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador. Well, Bukele then indicated that nothing had changed. Quote, now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody. So this, of course, is a ridiculous own goal by the Democrats.

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Taking pictures with the least sympathetic victims in the world rather than focusing on the rule of law questions is the biggest stupid own goal I have seen this week from the Democrats. I say this week because they're doing it all the time. And the White House immediately jumped on this. They put out a tweet saying we are not the same.

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And it's a picture of President Trump with Patty Morin, who is the mother of Rachel Morin, a woman who's a mother of five, was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant. It's a picture of Trump with her mother in the Oval Office treating her sympathetically. Next to a picture of Chris Van Hollen leaning forward and treating sympathetically the likely MS-13 member.

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Genius level stuff here from Democrats. And it just shows you the reactivity of our politics, the reactionary nature of our politics. It is simply not possible any longer for people to hold two thoughts at the same time. That maybe Kilmer Abrego Garcia is a bad guy who shouldn't be in the United States. And also due process should be accorded. And that law should be followed.

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Democrats can't handle that. And so they have to valorize the bad guy. They have to valorize Kilmer Abrego Garcia in order to somehow tar President Trump as the bad guy in this particular story. It is political malpractice of the highest order. Republicans are, of course, going to seize on this.

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Now, again, the proper solution to this from a legal perspective is likely that if the United States could, if one senator could go down to El Salvador and basically pressure Bukele into allowing an MS-13 suspect to have lunch with the senator at a restaurant, it seems to me that probably the administration can do more to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia so he can return, get his day in court, and then be deported again.

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That is with no sympathy for Camargo Garcia, who should not be in our country, clearly. The fact that Democrats cannot square that circle, the fact that they cannot and apparently have no capacity to simply put aside sympathy for some of the worst people in the world is a pretty amazing fail, like a giant fail. Truly incredible stuff there from the Democrats.

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And then they were told by a court that they needed to facilitate this person's return. And then they didn't do much to facilitate the return. And then they got slapped down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in some pretty brutal language. That'd be a big win for you, right? That's where you would jump on the due process is being denied bad wagon.

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And again, they're in an environment where they should be making hay while the sun shines with regards to the Trump administration, because there are a bunch of issues where the Trump administration is particularly vulnerable. One of those issues obviously remains with regard to the economy.

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Democrats, you know, I'm not sure exactly what they are doing, but then again, I rarely know what Democrats are doing because they love big government and I dislike big government. But you know what else? I hate big cell phone bills. Peartalk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is finally challenging the wireless industry and their overpriced cell phone bills. That is correct.

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Peartalk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk, text 15 gigs of data, plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part? Right now, you'll get a free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus.

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Access the entire library of Daily Wire Plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored, ad-free daily shows. Child My Producer is on our live chat. As always, your free leftist tier is Tumblr. And with Pure Talk's U.S. customer service team, you can switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need Pure Talk.

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Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to puretalk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. I'm using Pure Talk myself for years. You should do the same. Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to get started. Also, tax season is now upon us.

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While we might be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention. $16.5 billion in IRS refunds flagged for potential identity fraud last year. Identity theft tax fraud surged by an alarming 20% in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Americans. But there is hope in these numbers as well.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Find peace of mind and unmatched security with LifeLock Identity Theft Protection because your financial identity Deserves nothing less. Join now. Save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK. Use promo code Ben or go to lifelock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply. So thanks to the tariff war particularly, the economy is in fact slowing.

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If it can happen to this guy, we don't even like this guy. But if it can happen to this deportee, then it can happen to anyone. Because once due process is denied to anybody, it can be denied to everyone.

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According to the New York Fed President John Williams, on Fox Business, they are expecting significant economic slowing this year over last year.

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OK, so slower economic outlook. It may not be a recession, but it's not going to be great. And that, of course, would be a positive view of the economy. Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, one of Wall Street's most consistent profit engines is close to breaking down.

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Even before President Trump's tariff chaos, buyout firms have been struggling to sell their portfolio companies and return money to anxious investors. Now, recession fears and market turmoil have brought dealmaking to a near standstill.

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Shares of Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, KKR, and other private equity fund managers are down 20% or more this year, far worse than the S&P 500's sharp losses. The longer that deal logjam lasts, the harder it will be for firms to hand money back to clients like pensions and endowments. So basically, private equity funds are getting absolutely hammered by the uncertainty in the markets.

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And right now, the only reason that the markets seem to be sort of roiling but not significantly dropping at this point, the real reason for that is because of uncertainty about what President Trump is going to do next.

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The uncertainty inside the Trump administration's economic agenda means that there's still great hope on Wall Street that President Trump is going to drop the China tariffs, that he's going to blow giant holes through them, for example, that a bunch of trade deals are going to come down the pike. And President Trump is feeding those hopes.

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That would be the tactic that you use if you are a Democrat, unless you are these Democrats, in which case you apparently have your head so far up your own butt that you can actually spot polyps in your own colon. That is the only explanation that I have here for why Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled down to El Salvador to try and broker a meeting with Kilmer Abrego Garcia.

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Yesterday, for example, he said that we are going to make a great deal with China. Now, are there any ongoing conversations between the United States and China about the tariffs? What does a great deal look like?

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What exactly would China do to assure us that they're not going to steal $600 billion of RIP every single year and spread their tentacles throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East? Here's President Trump saying that a great deal is coming.

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Okay, so the markets, because President Trump is saying this sort of stuff, they're sort of waiting and hoping. There's a lot of hope in the markets these days. The same thing is true with regard to the EU. So President Trump was asked yesterday about making a deal with the European Union and European countries with regard to tariffs.

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Okay, so what do those fair deals look like? Nobody really knows at this point. And the pain is going to start to be felt fairly quickly. I'm talking to manufacturers in the United States, distributors in the United States. The tariff cost is quite real, and it's particularly real for businesses that are at the margin.

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Giant businesses might be able to shift their shipping facilities and their manufacturing facilities to other countries that aren't getting hammered with the China tariffs. But small guys are not going to be able to do that same sort of thing. So Tim Cook can broker a deal with the White House to get Apple out of the tariff storm.

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This is the problem with tariff regimes, that very often the way to avoid the real downside cost of the tariff regimes is the biggest companies pay their lobbyists to go into Washington, D.C. and exempt them from the exact regime that's supposed to punish the Chinese.

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The reality is if you actually want to punish the Chinese, then you do have to hit Apple because Apple manufactures an enormous amount of product over in China. But Cook was able to broker a sort of detente with the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post. Cook spoke to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week about the potential impact of the tariffs on iPhone prices.

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Cook spoke to other senior officials in the White House as well. He refrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national TV, as many other executives have over the past several weeks. And by the end of the week, the Trump administration agreed to exempt from import duties electronic products Apple produces in China.

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That also granted reprieve to other firms like HP and Dell. Trump did so despite the recommendations of senior White House aide Peter Navarro, who wanted all of those tariffs to remain in place. And so Apple stock was sort of held up by all of that. The problem is that these tariffs are going to bite.

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So you either have to be willing to take the pain or you have to be willing to blow giant holes in it. There really is no third choice. China, for its for its part, by the way, continues to take a very strong stance against the United States. President Xi Jinping, dictator of China, he has spent the last week visiting various countries in Southeast Asia in an attempt to draw them closer to him.

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One of the things that President Trump would have to do if he wished to actually win a trade war with China is not just cut China off from US markets, but get other countries to make common cause with the United States in cutting China off from their markets. You actually have to isolate China.

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Otherwise, if you have countries that are triangulating with China, well, then China is hurt and the United States is hurt, but neither is sort of crippled in a serious enough fashion to stop Chinese growth and Chinese ambition. So Xi has now visited Vietnam, visited Malaysia, visiting Cambodia, and all of these are also manufacturing hubs and distribution hubs.

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Folks, we've got a ton to get to today. Did the former FBI director threaten President Trump's life? Plus, the Supreme Court is deciding on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and President Trump is finally leaving the Middle East. And we interview the probable next president of Romania.

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So meanwhile, over at Morning Wire, obviously you guys have been covering extensively President Trump's trip to the Middle East. A lot got done on that trip. A lot of big deals getting done in Saudi, in UAE, in Qatar. A lot of ramifications for the future of the Middle East more broadly. He's made comments about relieving sanctions on Syria, for example.

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He seems like he is open to a deal with Iran, although it is unclear what exactly that deal would look like. What are your big takeaways at Morning Wire from his trip to the Middle East?

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You're welcome. Don't miss the all-new Ben After Dark tonight at 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time only at Daily Wire Plus. Lower your expectations. Also, do you hear drums in the distance? You can own a piece of Daily Wire history at dailywire.com. What am I talking about? I'm talking about this. You remember Elizabeth Warren, Chief Warren.

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Well, that is John Bickley. He is the executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire. Now, again, available on video anywhere. John, great to talk to you. Thanks, Ben. Great to talk to you. All right, meanwhile, the Trump big birthright citizenship case is now before the Supreme Court. There was a hearing yesterday. This case is interesting for a couple of reasons.

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One is President Trump issued an executive order saying that birthright citizenship no longer applies in the United States. And this raises a couple of questions for the Supreme Court because district courts put an injunction on the EO, nationwide injunction. So there are two separate issues in this case. One issue is what is the authority of local courts to provide nationwide injunctions?

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And this has become an incredibly hot issue because every time President Trump does anything ranging from using the Alien Enemies Act to this sort of EO, some local court will then issue a nationwide injunction. As I've discussed before on the program, There's not a lot of precedent historically for the idea that a local district court can simply enjoin an entire national policy.

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Typically, what you would do is have an injunction in the area over which the judge presides, not over the policy nationwide. Otherwise, you could just forum shop, find some district court judge somewhere who doesn't like the president and nationwide enjoin any policy coming out of the executive branch.

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This is a point that was made by Clarence Thomas back in 2018 in a concurrence in a case called Trump versus Hawaii. And Clarence Thomas wrote at that time, universal injunctions do not seem to comply with sort of basic principles of law. These injunctions are recent development emerging for the first time in the 1960s and dramatically increasing in popularity only very recently.

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They appear to conflict with several traditional rules of equity, as well as the original understanding of the judicial role. As he points out, the basic idea of injunction is supposed to be for the case in front of you, not for all similar cases all the way across the nation.

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He says the judiciary's limited role was reflected in the court's decisions about who could sue to vindicate certain rights. Right. So this would go to standing. Right. Typically, in order to bring a lawsuit, you have to have standing. You have to have been damaged by a particular law.

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But you being damaged by a particular law doesn't mean that everyone across the country was, quote unquote, damaged by the same law outside of that particular district unless you get to the Supreme Court level.

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He says, by the latter half of the 20th century, some jurists began to conceive of the judicial role in terms of resolving general questions of legality instead of addressing those questions only insofar as they are necessary to resolve individual cases and controversies. And that is when what appears to be the first universal injunction in the United States emerged.

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That would have been in like 1963. And then they still remain pretty rare. But recently, again, this is 2018, Clarence Thomas writes, they've exploded in popularity. Some scholars have criticized the trend. No persuasive defense has yet been offered for the practice. And of course, Clarence Thomas is correct about this. He says, universal injunctions are legally and historically dubious.

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If federal courts continue to issue them, this court is duty bound to adjudicate their authority to do so. So that's going to be one of the big issues that comes up in this particular case. And it looks very much like the Supreme Court is going to limit this form of judicial overreach. Now, Amy Coney Barrett came under some fire yesterday. She, of course, a Trump appointee.

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Justice Barrett, she asked the Solicitor General for the United States about this yesterday, whether or not the administration will actually obey court decisions.

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As I understand it, longstanding policy of the Department of Justice. Okay, so it'll be interesting to see how the Supreme Court comes down on this. I would imagine that they are going to limit the power of nationwide injunction for district courts, which in and of itself would be a win for the Trump administration.

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Because otherwise, you're just going to, as I say, have forum shopping for some district judge somewhere to knock down entire national policy. And that is not why the court system was built this way. Now, onto the broader underlying issue here of birthright citizenship. So the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says... with regard to citizenship.

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All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. That is the text at issue here. And this has been subject to some pretty wide-ranging controversy over the course of American judicial history. What does that mean?

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Okay, so originally, this was obviously meant to be directed at the children of freed slaves. Because the idea was that while slaves were not, in fact, considered legally, they should have been, obviously, but they were not considered legally citizens of the United States. They couldn't vote. They didn't have constitutional rights. What about their kids? Are their kids citizens or not?

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So the 14th Amendment says, yes, they are. They were born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof is the key phrase. Because if you just wanted a birthright citizenship clause, like plain and simple, why do you need that phrase?

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Why not just say all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States? That would be a pure birthright citizenship clause. Why add the phrase subject to this jurisdiction thereof? What exactly does that mean? Are there people who are born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof?

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But first, I was going to do an all-new ad read for my brand new show, Ben After Dark, premiering tonight on DW Plus exclusively for our members. But instead, our unoriginal and profoundly lazy team decided to just recycle what I said on Monday. So, Here's that. Or, you know, a trailer. Enjoy or don't. It's happening whether you like it or not. This Friday night, Ben After Dark returns.

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And the Supreme Court has ruled on this in a variety of ways many times, mostly indirectly. That is why this case has now reached the Supreme Court.

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So controversy arises from random areas of the political spectrum these days. Do you remember James Comey? James Comey was the former FBI director. He was the FBI director who presented the so-called Steele dossier to President Trump. And then that Steele dossier just happened to leak into public view.

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The court first in 1873, in a case called the Slaughterhouse Cases, said the phrase subject to this jurisdiction was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States. Okay, so that seems pretty unequivocal. In 1873, which again, the 14th Amendment, was ratified in the year 1868.

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Okay, so five years later, five years after ratification, the Supreme Court said in the slaughterhouse cases, that subject to the jurisdiction was meant to exclude. Let's say that you're an ambassador. You're an ambassador from the UK. You're here. Your wife has a baby. Is the baby a citizen of the United States?

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Subject to the jurisdiction thereof says no, because your kid is actually a British citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of British law. Okay, so now apply that to our modern context. Let's say that you're a Mexican national. You're a Mexican citizen. You come across the border. with your wife, you drop a baby.

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Is that baby subject to this jurisdiction of the United States, or is that baby subject to the jurisdiction of Mexican law? And it seems, according to the slaughterhouse cases, that that kid should actually not be an American citizen. That kid should actually just be a Mexican citizen. Okay, but then in a case called U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898,

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The Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent who at the time of his birth were subject to the emperor of China, but had a permanent domicile in residence in the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China. That kid was in fact a citizen.

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So that seems to contradict what was being said in the slaughterhouse cases. So in Wong Kim Ark, the court said, well, that's just dicta. Okay, so when you read a Supreme Court decision, There is sort of the precedent, and then there's dicta. The actual governing law is the ruling.

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And then courts can sometimes distinguish between that and stuff that the court kind of says on the way to get to the decision, which they will call dicta, sort of side points that are not binding in law. There was also a case in 1884 called Elk v. Wilkins

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in which the Supreme Court ruled that children of Native Americans who were born in the United States were not citizens by birthright unless they were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Again, same kind of thing.

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Native Americans who were living on reservations or subject to the jurisdiction of their tribe were not automatically citizens of the United States if born within the boundaries of the United States. Get some more on this in a moment.

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Whether you're a lifelong rancher or you're just looking for your first pair of Western boots, Tecovis makes it feel easy. You can wear them from sunup to sundown. They're built tough enough for long days, but stylish enough for a night out. So, you know, when I go out to dinner with my wife, Tecovas are like a great pick for me. And look at me. Do I look like a cowboy to you?

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That was the one that suggested that President Trump wasn't just a Russian cat's paw, that he was actually having affairs with prostitutes in Moscow and and all this sort of crazy stuff. And Comey presented that to Trump, and then magically, it just emerged in the press very soon afterward, the news hook being that Comey had presented it to President Trump.

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Point your toes west. Again, 10% off at tecovas.com slash Shapiro. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com slash Shapiro for 10% off. Also, Bull & Branch, I'm just going to tell you, it's great. Bull & Branch is the best. I travel literally with their throw blanket. when I go on the road. So when I was on the road, I still had Bull & Branch product because they're just that good.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Ben Shapiro Show

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Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bullandbranch.com slash ben. That's bullandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash ben to save 15% exclusion supply. See site for details. So that brings us to a case called Plyler v. Doe in 1982.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There, the court found that illegal immigrant kids were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore could be given free education. In other words, this actually is kind of an open constitutional question. Now, the practice in the United States has been birthright citizenship for well over a century at this point.

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Not only that, in 1940 there was a piece of legislation from Congress that basically enshrined the idea of birthright citizenship. However, It is a fascinating legal argument and would obviously make a very big difference in terms of how migration is done to the United States.

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Because one of the ways that illegal immigration has become so prevalent in the United States is somebody comes, they overstay their visa, for example, they drop a baby. Now the baby is an American citizen. And so because the baby is an American citizen, the idea would be that the parents should be given preference in terms of becoming American citizens.

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James Comey, of course, was also the FBI director who led Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling of classified documents, a precedent that would then be used for, as it turns out, pretty much every subsequent president who... It now appears that everyone is allowed to just mishandle classified documents because James Comey deliberately misread a statute to let Hillary Clinton off the hook.

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And you can easily see there's a world where the Supreme Court would rule that, for example, Wong Kim Ark, which is the governing precedent here, which was holding, again, that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents who are subject to the emperor of China, but had permanent domicile and residence, that those babies are birthright citizens.

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So you could say if you have a permanent green card, for example, not a temporary visa, not you're here illegally. If you have a green card and you drop a baby, the baby's a citizen. I can see the court saying that based on Wong Kim Ark, that would not be in conflict with Wong Kim Ark. However, is that the way that the court is likely to go? Probably not. Probably not.

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The Solicitor General of the United States made the claim on behalf of the Trump administration that I've made here, which is that the citizenship clause was originally designed for the children of former slaves, which, of course, it was.

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Okay, so I think that just on a legal basis, that seems correct to me. As far as the birthright citizenship clause and how it will be interpreted by the Supreme Court, again, I think the Supreme Court is going to be reluctant to step into this fight. So probably they will rule against the EO on that basis.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked, okay, let's say that you actually were able to get rid of birthright citizenship. How exactly would you even effectuate that at a hospital, for example, to determine whether a kid is a citizen or not?

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So it'll be interesting to see which way the court goes. My guess that the court will limit nationwide injunctions as well they should. My guess is that they will not go along with the argument that the Supreme Court is going to invalidate birthright citizenship. I think that's going to be a stretch. It'll be hard for them to do it

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Justice Alito, by the way, had the best line with regard to the nationwide injunctions. He said, the practical problem is there are 680 district court judges, and all Article III judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking, I am right and I can do whatever I want. That is exactly right. Justice Alito, of course, is a tremendous justice.

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But then, right before the election, also announced that there was more of an investigation into Hillary Clinton mishandling classified information, leading Democrats to believe that he threw the election to Donald Trump. So, needless to say, he was a very, very bad FBI director. Soup to nuts, awful FBI director. Well, in his post-FBI director career...

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Alrighty, meanwhile, the tax bill that is percolating through the Republican system, unclear at this point whether it's actually going to materialize in time or whether it is not. A lot of issues have to be hashed out here.

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As I said yesterday, there's going to have to be some political magic here done by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, as well as the Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get this thing together. It is a giant unwieldy bill. You have several different wings of the party who are arguing for different things.

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You have the so-called moderates in the party who are arguing for higher caps on salt deductions, as well as arguing for zero cuts effectively to Medicaid, zero restructuring, zero work requirements on Medicaid, and all of the rest. That'd be like Josh Howley in the Senate, as well as people like Mike Lawler in the House. Again, these are people from purple states or purple district.

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Then you have people who are very strong on the idea that we need to make cuts because the reality is that we are facing a fiscal disaster in the United States over the course of coming years, that if we continue to blow out our deficit to the tune of $2 trillion a year, eventually... It's all fun and games. And if you jump from the sixth story, the first five stories are fine.

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It's the sixth one that really hurts. And that's sort of the idea with the American economy, that at a certain point here, you can see, for example, right now, the 30-year bond yields in the United States are disastrously high. Why is that?

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Because people are scared that they are not going to be able to get their money paid back to them outside of inflated currency by the United States government over time. There will come a point here where the United States is paying trillions of dollars a year just in interest on our national debt.

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Like trillions are not like a significant percentage of our GDP will go to paying for the interest on our national debt if we don't get our spending under control. So you have Republicans who are pointing this out and saying we at the very least need to be bending the cost curve. This is the case that Senator Ron Johnson is making.

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He's saying, you know, we really should be doing in this bill is just going back to 2019 spending levels. Why exactly are we doing this? wildly inflated spending from after the COVID period. That's silly. Here is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to get a fiscal hawk.

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OK, so meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul, again, another fiscal hawk. He says the same thing. He says we're raising the debt ceiling by four point five trillion dollars. What are you talking about now?

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He decided to become a giant weirdo who wanders around forests. I'm not even kidding. That's what he does. He is basically the world's worst Instagram influencer. And so just as an example, here is a tweet from James Comey a couple of years ago.

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Now, again, squaring the circle is going to be very difficult because you do have representatives like Mike Lalo who are in trouble in some of these purple districts. And remember, the House Republican majority is razor thin right now.

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As Politico reports, the boiling internal GOP debate that's holding up President Trump's self-declared big, beautiful bill isn't over the deductibility of state and local taxes. It's about the class and geographic divide splintering today's Republican Party, and it's really about two midterm elections.

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Trump's first in 2018, when a series of Republicans from affluent districts retired or lost, and his second next year's election, when many of the lawmakers elected from upscale suburbia ever since are facing difficult reelections. And that's why salt deductions have become such a big issue.

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So most Trump era congressional Republicans are fine with lower caps on salt deductions because they're from red states or red areas within blue states. But there are some who are not. And so Mike Lawler has said they have a very myopic view of New York and California. He says, you know, you're going to lose our seats and then you're not going to have a majority anymore.

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And that's not totally wrong. Meanwhile, the hardliners are saying, listen, this doesn't cut spending in any material way. And what you're doing here is basically leading us a little bit slower toward the cliff.

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All of this led to a bit of a breakdown yesterday when a planned Friday vote in the House Budget Committee to advance that GOP mega bill was placed in peril with three hardliners pledging to oppose the party line legislation. This is yesterday afternoon.

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Representative Ralph Norman, who sits on the Budget Committee, told reporters he would vote against the package of tax cuts and extensions, border security investments, energy policy and more. He was joined by Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Brasheen of Oklahoma. And Jody Arrington, the House budget chair, he, you know, he said, we'll see as far as when the vote would actually be moved forward.

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So, again, this is very fraught at the very least. According to Politico, House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party line mega bill a lot sooner than they thought.

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A surprise holdout by those conservative members of the House Budget Committee is forcing Speaker Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for a House package.

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The hard right objections surrounding missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts Republicans are prepared to make. One option under serious discussion as a concession to those fiscal conservatives is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries by two years from 2029 to 2027. Now, again, that makes a lot of sense.

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It is a picture of James Comey, who is a uniquely tall individual, by the way, he's like six foot nine, standing among the redwoods of California with the caption, so many questions. But we're not done. James Comey also had a very weird tweet about Iowa. Here is his weird tweet about Iowa. This, of course, is circa 2017. It says, Goodbye, Iowa. Goodbye.

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I mean, those things should be moved up. I'm not sure why work requirements should only be put in place, you know, four years from now. That is a bizarre thing. Of course, that should be moved up. But again, you have several wings of the Republican Party that are all clashing with one another at this point.

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If it does not move forward with alacrity, however, you will see an economic downturn, a serious economic downturn, because the markets have already priced in a big, beautiful bill passing. Beyond that, many of the most controversial provisions of the so-called big, beautiful bill push a bunch of these sort of pain off into the future.

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So for example, according to Politico, for all four years of President Trump's presidency and only those years, Americans would enjoy benefits like no taxes on tips or overtime. Then it won't be until 2029 when congressional GOP incumbents have already run for reelection and Trump is gone that voters feel the sting from the payfors.

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That includes much of the Medicaid cuts estimated to strip health care coverage from more than 10 million people. Now, again, it's not stripping health care coverage from 10 million people. That is a wild overstatement. The idea that people should not have to work in order to receive Medicaid if they are otherwise healthy and young is silly. That's not stripping coverage.

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That is saying you need to do the bare minimum. You're talking about 80 hours a month, by the way. I want to see Democrats make the argument you don't need to work 80 hours a month if you are otherwise fit and healthy in order to receive Medicaid benefits. And why? You just get to be as lazy as a bum and sit around doing nothing and still receive Medicaid? Why? Why would that be?

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But that, of course, is what the media are pitching. Get to more on this in a moment. First, your online activity is just as in private. Data brokers track every single thing you do online. Browsing, shopping habits, your beliefs. In the United States, they can actually legally sell that information. Companies buy that data to target you with ads.

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Social media platforms use it to control what you see. During elections, it can even be used to influence your vote. To protect your privacy and maintain your autonomy online, try out ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN routes all my online activity through secure encrypted servers. making it impossible for my internet provider to see what I'm doing online. It also hides your IP address.

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That's the unique number that identifies you online and allows data brokers to build and sell profiles about you. Without access to those IP or activity data, the companies have nothing to work with. I use ExpressVPN all the time. I'm on the road a lot. And when I'm on the road, I have to use public Wi-Fi. I use public Wi-Fi.

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I'm putting my data at risk, except that I'm not because I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is remarkably simple to use. One click activates protection across all my devices, from phones and tablets to smart TVs and computers. Plus, it works on up to eight devices simultaneously, so I can extend privacy protection to my entire family.

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Right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. There are some perks that are being added to the bill. including a so-called MAGA deposit for babies. We've talked about this before, the so-called MAGA account, Invest America.

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This is basically every baby born in the United States. It's a $1,000 trust fund, essentially. It is placed in an untouchable fund until they are 18 years old that is linked or invested in the S&P 500, which means it grows over time, which by the way, I think should be used as an alternative to other forms of special benefit, right?

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How about we get rid of some of the other subsidies and we use that instead? That makes more sense. There's a $4,000 tax break for seniors. Medicaid work requirements, however, wouldn't kick in until 2029. Medicaid address checks, which is the states would have to verify the addresses of people enrolled in Medicaid, that wouldn't kick in until 2029.

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The GOP bill would force states to cover five to 25% of food aid costs under SNAP. That would kick in October, 2027. Now, again, states should be paying for this stuff generally. I'm not sure why the federal government should be paying for that as opposed to the state government. With that said, again, dragging this thing over the finish line is going to be difficult.

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There is danger here if the Republicans do not drag it over the finish line. Jamie Dimon, he says that recession is still very much on the table and pretending otherwise is quite silly. He's the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, of course.

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And it's just him standing in the middle of a road. So James Comey is a person who likes to stand in random places and take contemplative pictures of the things around him or himself and just kind of put it out there. James Comey also is some sort of novelist. I don't know whether any of his novels have actually been successful at any point in the past, but he has a new book

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So meanwhile, President Trump came home today from the Middle East after a very successful round of negotiations and business dealings with Saudi, UAE, and Qatar. So first he went to Saudi Arabia, where he cleared some $600 billion in deals. Then he went to Qatar, where he cleared some $1.2 trillion in deals. Then he went to UAE, where he cleared like $1.4 trillion in deals.

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So a lot of money supposed to come into the United States thanks to all of this. There's still some sort of open questions here as to what happens on the big outstanding issues in the Middle East that are not financial and commerce related. The biggest one, of course, is Iran. So Saudi has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.

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Israel, of course, has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there. UAE has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there. Qatar, they're basically a cutout for Iran. So they're perfectly fine with an Iranian nuclear program, actually, which is one of the reasons that it's a little disquieting when President Trump praises Qatar for trying to broker an Iran deal.

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I mean, yes, because Qatar plays both sides. Again, treating all of these countries as though they are identical is very silly. UAE, Qatar, and Saudi, not the same. UAE and Saudi are completely aligned. Qatar is so unaligned with UAE and Saudi that they nearly went to war in 2017. Really? Here's President Trump paying homage to Qatar trying to broker the Iran deal.

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I mean, at this point, you might want to ask yourself, if the Amir is fighting very hard for Iran, why are we taking a $400 million jet from him? There are always strings attached. Qatar is a country with 2.6 million people living in it. By the way, not 2.6 million citizens, 2.6 million people. Qatar's actual citizenry is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000.

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The rest are foreign migrant workers and or slaves because modern slavery is a real thing in Qatar. Again, this kind of warm relationship we have with Qatar boggles the imagination. It really does. That's not saying that we shouldn't do business deals with them. It's not saying we shouldn't try to foster better relations with them.

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It is saying we should hold them accountable, which is something that I hope President Trump will certainly do. Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday made some more comments with regard to Iran, in which, again, it's unclear which way the administration is going to go. He issues warnings with regard to Iran, but the devil is in the detail with Iran always. There was a rumor yesterday

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that the Trump administration was proposing basically a three-year moratorium on all nuclear development with Iran, and then after that, the JCPOA. The answer to that is no, because if you leave it to the next person in office, who could theoretically be a Democrat, that just means Iran goes nuclear.

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right now called FDR Drive that is all about presumably some sort of far right extremist talk show host who's creating threats against the federal government that are turning into people, assassinating folks in the federal government. And it takes an intrepid investigative prosecutor to go after this particular right wing talk show host. He's a strange person, shall we say.

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That is basically just JCPOA, the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in history, part two. And by the way, it is worth noting right now that Republicans have already united to fight a JCPOA part two. There was a letter that was put out Wednesday, signed by every single GOP senator except for Rand Paul, naturally, and 177 House Republicans.

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The GOP members asked President Trump to explicitly reinforce the warnings that he and his officials and his administration have issued that the regime must permanently give up any capacity for enrichment. That, of course, is the right perspective. Now, the thing that's being pitched to the Iranians or from the Iranians is something short of that. Iran has already said it won't do that.

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Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.

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Okay, so again, I think President Trump does live in the world of reality. And so I do not think that he is going to make those sorts of concessions to the Iranians. I don't think he's going to be taken in by them. Now, again, the Iranians are very good at this game, like extremely good at this game.

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The phrase in the Middle East that's constantly used about Iran is that they never win a war or lose a peace, which seems to be about right. And the manipulations that Qatar is trying on behalf of Iran are quite dangerous, but I think President Trump understands that. And meanwhile...

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Vladimir Zelensky heeding President Trump's desire for him to go to Turkey to negotiate with Vladimir Putin without any sort of preliminary ceasefire. Zelensky was basically abandoned in Turkey then by Vladimir Putin. So Vladimir Putin did not, in fact, show up. Zelensky yesterday did show up in Ankara.

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Again, he was there to talk and Putin didn't show because Putin has no desire for this war to end. He believes he can simply outlast the United States. The United States will get bored and withdraw support and then he'll be able to do whatever he wants in Ukraine. Here is Zelensky talking about it yesterday.

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So he said he was here. It was a message to Putin. President Trump, for his part, says nothing will happen until Putin and Trump get together.

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Okay, well, I hope that President Trump continues to put the pressure on Putin because Zelensky is doing what he wants. He brought Zelensky to the table. Zelensky's at the table. In fact, he's the only one at the table. Putin is not at the table as of yet. More pressure is going to obviously have to be applied. And Trump wasn't going to go to Turkey if Putin wasn't going.

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So he had a bit of a bizarre catch-22 where Putin... According to Trump, wasn't going to show up if Trump wasn't going to show up. Trump wasn't going to show up if Putin wasn't going to show up. So neither of them show up and Zelensky shows up. Again, the desire by Putin to get to the end of this is significantly lower than the desire by Zelensky and Ukraine to get to the end of this.

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And I think Putin knows that at this point. And meanwhile, speaking of problems in Eastern Europe and situations in Eastern Europe. So the country of Romania has an election coming up. Romania, you'll recall, did actually have an election. That election was invalidated last year, supposedly because of Russian interference in the election.

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So there was a Romanian government investigation alleging that the election in December of 2024 had been tilted toward a candidate named Kalin Drogescu, who is not particularly well-known, but then he ended up winning. And the Romanian government decided to simply invalidate the election based on allegations of Russian interference.

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And this is a reminder to you. that every government agency is staffed with lots of weird people. There are lots of weird people on earth. Think about your own personal life. Tons of weird people around you, right? Everybody has their own brand of weird. And those people are also in the federal government. And when you give them outsized power and they're big weirdos, weird things happen.

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There's a problem, however, for that particular argument, which is that the current front runner, a man named George Simeon, he is probably going to win in the first round of the vote in Romania. So Georgescu was basically ruled out of order that they said he can't run. So he's been replaced by George Simeon. Simeon then won 40% of the vote. He is very, again, likely to win the presidency.

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Well, we're joined on the line by George Nikolai Simeon. He, of course, is the front runner in the current Romanian election. He is the founder and current president of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians. Obviously, Romanian elections have been a point of significant political controversy over the course of the last few months. Mr. Simeon, thanks so much for joining the program.

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Really appreciate it.

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Well, thank you so much for joining us. So why don't we start with this? Obviously, people who don't follow Romanian politics closely, they're not even sure what happened. There was an election, the election was kind of thrown out, and now you're the frontrunner. So what's the backstory for people who don't know the backstory here?

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Okay, so how is James Comey relevant? The answer is James Comey yesterday put up a tweet. Or he put up a post on his Instagram. And it was another one of these contemplative posts or would-be contemplative posts. Except that this one got him in a little bit of trouble. He put this up on Instagram. It's a cool shell formation on my beach walk.

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So obviously, because of all the accusations of Russian interference and all the rest, that's sort of top of the heap in terms of questions people are asking about Romania and your candidacy.

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What do you think the relationship between Romania, the EU, the United States, Russia, Ukraine, what should the position of Romania be in the ongoing war in Ukraine, especially considering the fact that obviously Romania borders Ukraine?

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So aside from national security issues, there's been enormous amounts of pressure put on you and your party with regard to, say, traditional Judeo-Christian values, traditional biblical values. A lot of the same insults have been hurled that say Viktor Orban in Hungary have been hurled at you, hurled at your party.

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What's your perspective on the sorts of values that should be promulgated in Romania? And why do you think there's been so much resistance to that?

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And it was a series of shells that were put in the sand to read 8647. Now, for a moment, you might be thinking to yourself, what are we watching lost? What do these numbers mean? Why are these numbers important? And then you think, oh, wait a moment. 47 would be like Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States. And the number 86, well, that could mean a couple of things.

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Why, hello! And now it's not just a terrible segment. It's a full-blown disaster. It is great to be here, Ben. That's right. We took a perfectly short, manageable late-night bit and we turned it into a full-length show. I'm sure it is. Why? Because no one asked us to. And that felt like the right reason. Which makes sense.

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So obviously you have seen this massive populist upsurge in Europe. An enormous amount of that has been driven by the immigration issue. What is the immigration issue like in Romania? How much of that has mattered in this election cycle?

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Originally, to 86, someone meant to like throw them out of a bar or a restaurant or to cancel a password. It's sort of like deep six, 86 someone. So this could also be interpreted as kill. The president has one way to interpret this shell formation is as 86, 47, not get rid of the president, like kill him. And this is how secret service has taken it.

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So, Mr. Simeon, let's say that you become the elected leader of Romania. What do your first few actions look like? What do your first few months look like? What are your top priorities?

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Well, that is George Nikolai Simeon. He, of course, is running for president of Romania. He's the current front runner likely to be the future president of Romania. Sir, thanks so much for taking the time. Good luck in the elections. Thank you, Ben. Alrighty, folks, it's time to get into a segment we are now calling The Takedown. Here's the deal.

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The left loves to put out monologue speeches, diatribes completely unchallenged, but not anymore. In Takedown, we're going head to head, breaking apart arguments piece by piece, exposing the contradictions, the logical fallacies, the outright nonsense. They've had their say. Now it's my turn. Let's get to it. This is The Takedown. All righty.

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So Ruben Gallego is the senator from Arizona who shouldn't be a senator from Arizona. Again, Republicans need to stop running bad candidates. You can't run Carrie Lake for every single seat ever, guys. Just stop it. Anyway, Ruben Gallego is now not just a senator from Arizona. He has presidential aspirations. He wants to run for president. He pretty openly is saying he wants to run for president.

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And so now he has presented a five pillar plan on the border and immigration. And let's just say that this plan that he is presenting is at odds with some of the things that he has said in the past, and some of it's just bad. So here is Ruben Gallego explaining that our border and immigration systems are broken.

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So where were you for several years there, my dude? Like, really, where were you? I would like to know. You're a senator from Arizona. Arizona is one of the state's hardest hit by the border crisis.

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Went down to the border in Arizona and watched as the entire border was unoccupied by anything remotely like border patrol, as Mexican drug cartel drones were flying above the American side of the border. We were there. We saw it. That was your state, my dude. And you were nowhere to be seen. Not only was he nowhere to be seen, by the way,

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They said, um, you are not allowed to threaten the president in public media. That is a violation of 18 us code, eight 71 threats against the president and successors to the presidency. Well, James Comey, You know, he put that out there and pretty soon the entire White House came down on his head.

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If you go all the way back to 2017, Ruben Gallego was getting very angry when he was a representative at that point for Phoenix. He was getting very angry at the Trump administration for enforcing the law. So go back to 2017. And the DHS was ordering more aggressive enforcement of detainment and deportation laws for undocumented immigrants, according to azpbs.org. So what exactly did he say?

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He said, the new guidelines tell us one thing. The Trump administration is willing to go after just about any member of the immigrant community. Last week, ICE arrested a DACA recipient and continues to hold them in custody without showing sufficient cause for his detention.

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Now the administration releases guidelines that lay the groundwork for mass deportation and tries to sell it to the American people as business as usual. This is far from the truth. And he continued to complain. He suggested, quote, these are not the values our country was founded on. So he says that the border isn't a political talking point to him. I think that it is.

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I really, really think that it is.

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He is so serious about keeping our country safe. He's so serious that back in July of 2018, House Republicans passed a resolution in support of officers and staffers with ICE. The Senate did too. And you know who abstained from that vote, who decided not to actually vote for a resolution supporting ICE? That one.

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Ruben Gallego, who was then a representative, voted present on that particular resolution. So, yeah. Then he got to the actual point. The actual point, he says he wants more border patrol agents. Okay, fine. I mean, sure. Then he says that he wants to reform the asylum system.

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Now, when he says he wants to reform the asylum system, what he means is he wants to make it much easier than it currently is under the Trump administration to grant asylum. He also wants to grant a broader pathway to citizenship for people. So what he really wants is a more open border, more regularized. So there are sort of two issues when it comes to the southern border.

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One is people who are crossing the border between ports of entry illegally. The other is people who are showing up at ports of entry and wanting to enter the country, being given a sort of preliminary asylum ruling, being let into the interior and never showing up again. There is very little in what Ruben Gallego is saying that stops number two.

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In fact, it actually accelerates number two by basically saying we should have quick, fast asylum hearings and basically let people into the country. Also, pathway to citizenship for pretty much everybody who's here already. So amnesty. That's his argument. So, yeah, solidify those borders, but amnesty everybody who's here. That does not sound like a moderate plan to me. Here's Ruben Gallego.

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So Taylor Butowich over at the White House, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, while President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI director puts out what clearly can be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States. A message etched in the sand is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously. Donald Trump Jr.

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So what exactly is that way? So if you actually look at his 21-page plan for his new immigration system, remember this is important because he wants to run for president as a Democrat, and Democrats are going to pretend to be quasi-border hawks before opening the border wide again. So he says, we need to make it easier for people to come to the United States legally, according to azluminaria.org.

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The plan calls for increasing the annual allotment of some visas and green cards and of removing or significantly increasing arbitrary per country caps. He calls for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children. That's like at least three and a half million people. He also wants a pathway to citizenship for spouses of U.S.

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citizens who are in the country illegally. Joe Biden tried that last year. That would have covered like 600,000 more people. You're talking about four million people immediately given amnesty under Gallego's plan. Also, he wants to hire more asylum officers and give them the power to decide those cases.

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So he wants to cut back on asylum access during border surges, but by adding more asylum judges, do you really believe that he's not going to loosen the standards on asylum from what Trump is doing right now? Diego argues the United States needs to figure out why migrants are leaving their home countries in the first place and then address those problems.

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Okay, that may very well be true, but that is actually the responsibility of their home countries, not the responsibility of the United States per se. Again, the game that Democrats are going to play now is they're going to pretend to be border hawks because they recognize that across the globe, open borders is not a popular position. They understand that.

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And so now they're going to try to cosplay as tough on immigration border hawks. Ruben Gallego is not that. He has never been that. Pretending otherwise is simply silly. Okay, meanwhile, the Democrat resistance is not going particularly well. They have yet to find sort of the talking point that they wish to hit upon. Bruce Springsteen tried his best. They wheeled him out.

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It's like Joe Biden, except he quasi sings. Bruce Springsteen is currently 75 years old. And, you know, I got to say, I was never a Springsteen fan. I understand. I understand that a lot of people love him. All right, whatever. But he is now going around talking about how Trump is treasonous.

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Okay, where's Robert De Niro? We're just going to bring out the octogenarian Democrats to try and lead the resistance. Good luck on that one. Speaking of old Democrats, Chuck Schumer says that Trump is a dictator as well. Why? Because he does not like offshore wind farms. These people are beyond parody. They're beyond parody.

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signed in to say, just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered. Kristi Noem came out and ripped into James Comey as well, the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Pretty much the entire cabinet got in. Kristi Noem said disgraced former FBI director James Comey just called for the assassination of President Trump.

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Trump gave them an absolute political gift with this whole Qatar jet thing. They're off it within like three days. It's unbelievable. Instead, they're like, ah, he's probably a dictator because, you know, offshore wind. Yes, this is what the blue collar man and woman in America cares about, is that Trump doesn't like wind farms.

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In a way, it is like a dictatorship. Yeah, because of the wind farms. Oh my God, they are so incompetent. Maybe Trump will be president forever. Maybe Trump 2028 is. I don't know. I mean, you guys are so bad at this, truthfully awful at this. Alrighty, it's a Friday. That means it's time for some culture talk. So I have some culture updates. First of all, there is a person named Lord.

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I say person because this person who is a woman wishes to suggest that she is not, in fact, A woman. When asked by Chapel Rowan, another woman who pretends that she's not a woman. I don't know what's so bad about being a woman that women don't want to just be it. And why is Chapel Rowan trying to like run away from being a woman? And apparently so is Lorde. Not like L-O-R-D, L-O-R-D-E.

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I know what the E does. It's silent. Um, and, um, apparently Chapel Roan asked Lord if she was non-binary, which is not a thing. There's no such thing as a non-binary person. There are intersex people, but there's no such thing as a person who is non-binary.

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It's a made up nonsense term for trash, for stupid, for people who have some sort of deep desire for attention that they cannot earn any other way. Apparently Lord said, quote, I'm a woman except for the days when I'm a man. Well, that's interesting. Does she randomly grow a penis? How does that work precisely? Apparently, Lorde said her idea of gender began to change in 2023.

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So I'm just going to point out at this point that Lorde is 28 years old. Her idea of her gender began to change when she was, according to her, 26.

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Hmm. I feel like that's not a biological imperative then. If I'm going to be given this line that all of this is just part of, it's all baked into the cake, born this way, baby, in the words of Lady Gaga, if that's the take, then you don't get to claim that you randomly changed your mind about your gender when you were trying on a pair of men's jeans in 2023. That's what she says.

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She says she tried on a pair of men's jeans and sent the photo to her collaborator, Jim E. Stack. I say Jim E. because the name is spelled Jim hyphen capital E. Not Jimmy. Jim E. Like wall E. Apparently he's some sort of Disney robot. He responded, I want to see the U that's in this picture represented in the music.

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Then, while writing one of the songs that appeared on an album called Man of the Year, she said she tried to visualize how her gender felt in that moment, dressed in men's jeans with duct tape on her chest, similar to her Met Gala look this year. These people are very well, very, very well. Probably we should let them promulgate culture and decency to your children.

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DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately. Stephen Miller, of course, a top advisor to President Trump. He put out a statement reading as the former FBI director and key leader of the deep state.

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And that seems to be the thing that matters the most. That's just, that's great. Okay, so what did we learn? We learned there are a lot of mentally ill people in the performing arts is one of the things that we learned. Now, speaking of people in the performing arts, we have some updates on Halle Berry.

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I know you haven't heard that name for a while, but apparently, Cannes Film Festival has now issued a new dress code forbidding voluminous outfits and nudity from the red carpet and theaters. By the way, I have the same exact rules at our dinner table. No voluminous outfits and also no nudity at the dinner table. And mostly it works except for the two-year-old.

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The fact that you have to make these rules for, you know, grown-ass adults is pretty impressive. Apparently, according to an article that is available at MSNBC, given the cultural reorientation toward conservatism across the Western world, especially in America, this new dress code reeks of control. That reeks of control. Okay.

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Apparently, it was at least in part a reaction to Bianca Sensori's viral moment on the Grammys red carpet in February where she and her Nazi husband showed up and then she just took off all her clothes. So that's great. And apparently, this had something to do with Halle Berry because Halle Berry has worn stuff, I guess, that... is either voluminous or contains nudity.

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Comey's call for assassination while the president is abroad, no less, is a chilling escalation of the war against our democracy by a faction committed to its destruction. Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, didn't want to get lost in the shuffle, so he put out a statement saying, we are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey directed at President Trump.

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Before I even get to this, do you remember what Halle Berry was in last? I remember I saw her, I feel like, in one of the John Wick movies. So you know what? I'm going to ask our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity. Yes, I am correct about that. So John Wick chapter three, she was in it. It was kind of weird. But she hasn't been a lot recently. She was in the X-Men series.

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You'll recall where she played Tulsi Gabbard. Sorry, Storm. And then she was in Monsters Ball where she won Academy Award for Best Actress. That's when Billy Bob Thornton was, that was kind of his first round being a thing. She was in Die Another Day playing Jinx Johnson. That's why they, as we'll see, they asked her about James Bond, which is kind of interesting. And yeah, that was kind of it.

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You know, it's been a checkered career, shall we say. Some hits, a lot of misses. But that wasn't the only Halle Berry story. Apparently, Halle Berry did something. We have a good Halle, bad Halle. We need the Trump music here. We have good Halle, bad Halle in Cannes. So she said something that is true, which is that James Bond should never be a woman.

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Again, I love the fact that we have to say the perfectly obvious now because apparently it's very controversial to say the perfectly obvious.

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That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard that there was a time when it should have happened. Of course, it shouldn't have happened that way because men and women are different. Again, I provide you with the perfect example of why this is the case. The reason that James Bond is an interesting and cool character.

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One of the reasons is because since the inception of the James Bond character, he can talk any woman he meets into bed, right? This is just a reality of the character. It's not me saying it. This is what the character is. So there is a widespread perception that that is like a difficult thing to do. And what makes James Bond uniquely charming, suave, and persuasive is that he can do that.

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He can get beautiful women into bed with him. You know what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her? A woman. That's what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her, basically. Because it turns out the male sex drive and the female sex drive are not the same. And there is science to prove this. This is not me just speaking anecdotally. This is scientific.

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Scientifically speaking, they have done studies. This is actually my favorite social science study. There is a couple of professors. And what they did is they had a beautiful woman walk through a bar and proposition a bunch of men. And he said to them, listen, I don't want to have a relationship with you. I'm not interested in the quick jibber jabber. Let's just go back to my place.

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And nearly 100% of the men in the bar said yes. Nearly 100%. The only ones who said no, it was because they had an other appointment or because they were married and they had to get home. And those were the only reasons. Everyone else in the bar said yes. Then they repeated the experiment, except they had a man go into a bar and do the same thing.

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We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran. Primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service on these matters, and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support. Then President Trump came out, and he himself commented on James Comey's bizarre post, to say the least.

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The man would go up to him and say, listen, I don't want to mess around here. Let's just go back to my place. his hit rate was zero, zero. Because it turns out that men and women do not approach sex the same way. So if James Bond, one of his major appeals is that, well, then it doesn't work the same way if he's a chick.

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The same thing, by the way, also happens to be true in, I know that it's a now famous Hollywood idiocy that women can beat up very large men. And it's in the Bond movies, right? You'll see Anna DeArmas beating up guys who are like four times her size. And it's ridiculous. And actually, when you watch these sort of stunt scenes, the sort of

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The preparation for the scenes where Ana de Armas is beating up these giant men. You can tell how ridiculous it is. They add all sorts of sound effects and they move the camera in different ways. They add velocity to her movements in order to make it look as though she can really beat the hell out of it. Ana de Armas is a tiny person, right? Ana de Armas is her height. She is five foot six.

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She might weigh, like, I don't know what Ana de Armas' weight is. It cannot be particularly high. I would bet that Ana de Armas weighs no more than 125 pounds soaking wet. I don't care who you are. If you are a 125 pound woman and you are going up against a 220 pound man, you're done. You're finished. It's why there are weight classes among men.

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It's why you don't have a lightweight fighting Mike Tyson because that would be idiotic. So can you make James Bond a 125-pound beautiful woman and it be the same character? Of course not. Okay, so Halle Berry is right about that. But then we got to Halle Berry being a weirdo because we have to.

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So it was Mother's Day, which means it was time for Halle Berry to pose nude with her paramour talking about lubrication. Oh, goody gumdrops.

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Well, as it is Mother's Day, I hope that her two children really revel in that Mother's Day video and really enjoy it. Because there's nothing children love better on Mother's Day than to hear their parents talk about lubrication publicly in bed with her new boyfriend. Pretty, pretty solid stuff there. That's, that's great. That's just great. Oh, yeah. All right.

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Well, that's the thing that's happening in all of our lives, apparently. Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to the latest on Scandal Biden. Yes, it turns out that everybody knew, but everybody pretended they didn't know. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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Click that link in the description and join us.

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Now exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members, Ben After Dark delivers more of everything. More uncensored takes. Oh my God, that's rough. More cultural chaos. Have you seen Lena Dunham? Unvetted questions from celebrities who should know better. And more segments that probably should not exist. I know, we have a professional writing staff.

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571.82

Now, President Trump, when he says he's a dirty cop, what he means there is that James Comey was presiding over the FBI when the Hillary Clinton Fusion GPS scam document that initiated the entire Russiagate investigation was basically laundered by the Hillary Clinton campaign via the intelligence apparatus to the FBI. That's what he means.

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He means all of Russiagate can basically be laid at the feet of James Comey. Comey put out an apology message saying, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk. which I assumed were a political message. I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind. So I took the post down.

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We'll get some more on this in a moment. First, Pure Talk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just $35 a month. The best part?

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You just need PureTalk. Obviously, things cost a lot of money these days. Why should your cell phone bill cost that much money? Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Switch on over to PureTalk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with a qualifying plan. PureTalk is wireless by Americans. for Americans. Go check them out right now, puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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This week, we ask Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee if he knows about Bill Belichick's new girlfriend. And everybody else is glaring at her, not Bill Belichick. I found out if America actually has talent. What is the clapping guy going to do? Like, where is that useful? And someone let a mystery guest ask me whatever was on their mind. Totally unfiltered.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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I've been using Pure Talk myself for years. Their coverage is excellent. And remember, you get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan, puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Also, give your family some peace of mind with Policy Genius Life Insurance. There's not very much that is certain in life, but the number one certainty in life is in fact

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With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for a million dollars in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about your future. Life insurance is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Policy Genius understands this perfectly.

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They present all your options with complete transparency, showing you different coverage amounts, prices, and terms, so you can make an informed decision. There's no guesswork involved, just clarity that helps you choose what's right for your specific needs and budget. Their side-by-side comparison tool shows you quotes from top insurers across America, completely free, no hidden fees.

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Their licensed experts are with you every step of the way, answering questions, handling paperwork, advocating for you, so you can get the coverage you need and get back to living your life. Check Life Insurance off your to-do list in no time with Policy Genius. Head on over to PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description.

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Ep. 2201 - Former FBI Director Headed to JAIL for Threatening Trump?!

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Compare free life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro. OK, so he's claiming ignorance on all this. Now, there are a few things right off the bat. First of all, President Trump was nearly assassinated twice last year, like two times. So we should take very seriously threats of violence against the president of the United States.

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I mean, he nearly had his head blown off on national TV. And then he was nearly assassinated again by a person who was sitting outside of his golf course in Florida and was waiting for him to get to a particular hole so he could kill him. And then, of course, we know that the Iranians were also attempting to assassinate President Trump.

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So it's not as though there is a shortage of threats on the president's life. We also know that members of the radical left despise President Trump. And there would be few tears shed by many of those people if, God forbid, something were to happen to President Trump. So in that sort of climate, what Comey says there is indeed pretty bad. Is it prosecutable? Did Comey actually mean it?

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So this takes you to the edge of the stupidity versus malice conversation. As I've said very frequently on this show, I generally like to attribute people's motivations when they do something wrong to stupidity rather than malice, unless I have like very solid counter evidence. This is like right at the edge. At the very least, this is incredibly stupid.

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However, James Comey is an incredibly, that guy's a stupid guy. He is a stupid man. I mean, I showed you his tweets standing on a road in the middle of Iowa and standing in a forest. Like, this is a weird, stupid man. And so it isn't all that hard for me to get to the conclusion that he took a picture.

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He thought that 86-47 meant something like, I get rid of Trump as opposed to kill President Trump. On the other hand, could he be malicious? Could he hate President Trump enough that he would openly call for that? Now, if it were really malicious and not stupidity, you have to assume at least a stupid malice.

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OK, you have to assume at least a level of stupidity where the former FBI director does not know enough about the law to understand that if you openly threaten the president of the United States on social media, Secret Service is going to come knocking at your door.

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So, I mean, that would be like the truest level of stupidity and malice would be that he wants to kill Trump, but he's stupid enough to post it online knowing that he's probably going to go to jail for it. That's like the top level of both stupidity and malice. If you're at the top level of malice, then presumably he wouldn't just post something about it.

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So nothing about the Declaration of Independence or the Territorial Incorporation Doctrine. Oh, and there's a brand new Ben Destroys because it's either this or I start throwing things at my TV. There are 330 million people and that was the best we came up with. It's the all new, definitively worse, absolutely more Ben After Dark. Friday night only at DailyWirePlus.com. Only for members.

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If you're at the top level of stupidity, then he would post something about it and then walk it back, which may be what this is. The bottom line is this with regard to James Comey. Is the Justice Department going to take this very far? We'll have to see how far they take it.

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It is certainly true that many of the people who are currently going after James Comey are people who also feel specifically targeted by folks like James Comey. That includes the current FBI director, Kash Patel. So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.

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Joining us online to discuss is executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now available on video everywhere that you can get Morning Wire, John Bickley. So let's talk about this bizarre story. So, you know, is there anything that I'm missing here? What is the current status?

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Do you believe, do your sources tell you that a prosecution is forthcoming for James Comey along these lines?

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Well, President Trump has chalked up another win with the victory of a continuing resolution in the Senate. We'll get to all that in a moment. First, if you want more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, it's time to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, early access to our new releases.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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Is that the impression that you're getting from the administration at this point?

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Now, Speaker Johnson, you're doing an incredible job under very trying circumstances. Really appreciate your hard work. And again, congrats on the victory in the continuing resolution fight.

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Speaking of the economy, now, again, if you're a Democrat right now, if you're smart, and again, I don't mean to give advice to people who I hope continue to lose from here until the end of time, but if you are smart and you're a Democrat, the thing that you are focusing in on is not the continuing resolution. It is not even Doge, which by and large is actually doing pretty popular things.

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Most Americans don't like waste, fraud, and abuse. Whatever they think of Elon Musk and whatever the media's take on Musk is irrelevant. The real question is whether Americans like somebody going through the books and firing people who are useless on the federal government payroll. They're focusing in on the wrong thing.

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The obvious thing they should be focusing in on is the tariff controversies that are being driven by President Trump because they have a pretty clear narrative win when it comes to the idea that this is creating havoc in the markets. Yesterday, U.S. stocks slid. The S&P 500 closed in correction territory, down more than 10% from its record high in February, according to CNN.

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And that allowed enormous discretion inside the executive branch for President Trump to continue to allow Doge to do its work. This is what Democrats were objecting to. However, if they had gone into government shutdown, then President Trump would have had the ability to determine who was an essential worker and who was not an essential worker. because he's the president.

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The Dow ended the day down 537 points, 1.3%. The S&P 500 fell 1.39%. The NASDAQ was almost 2% lower. The sell-off extended a route in US markets that has been driven by the uncertainty around Trump's tariffs. And by the way, you can see this happening in real time. When President Trump does a presser, You can see the actual stock market reaction to his presser based on his answers.

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You'll be watching him on the main screen talking about tariffing the EU. And you will see the Dow Jones Industrial Average dip from green into red as he talks because the markets react very quickly to what President Trump is saying. And as I've said before, even the sort of flip-flop appearance of chaos with regard to these tariffs is bad for markets. Uncertainty is just bad for markets.

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This is a point that the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, was making. And I really hope that President Trump is taking advice from his quite brilliant Treasury Secretary. And Besson is an excellent pick. He knows exactly what he's doing. Here he was making the case for what the administration really is focusing on or at least should be focusing on.

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And that, of course, is exactly, that's the stuff that Trump really needs to focus in on. Unfortunately, the stock market has now dropped. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped from a high on February 19th, which, again, is less than a month ago, of 44,627, all the way down to yesterday's close at 40,813.

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Okay, which means that the stock market has now dropped something like 3,700 points, almost more than 8% over the course of the last month. So that should be a winning case for Democrats, right? This is what they should be focusing in on. James Carville has been making this case. Again, I think James Carville is a schmuck, but James Carville is not stupid.

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And when he says, wait around for your opponent to make the mistake, that, of course, is good political advice. Well, obviously... I want President Trump's agenda to succeed. I've said this a thousand times. The way that it's going to succeed is focusing in on Doge, on deregulation, on tax cuts, on doing the things that create a predictable investment environment.

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It is not helped by President Trump continuing to bang on the Canadians and smacking around the Canadians. Again, it might be fun and games. It might be enjoyable to rip on the people up north who keep putting use in words that don't need them. I just don't understand what the actual economic goal here is. What is the attempt to achieve?

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And that would have meant more firings. So Chuck Schumer got himself stuck in this box canyon. His radical left-wing base was very upset with him for not standing up to President Trump by filibustering the continuing resolution. Here was Jasmine Crockett, who's kind of the new AOC. AOC's lost some steam, and now she's been replaced in the public mind of the crazed left as sort of the hot new thing.

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This notion that Canada is somehow screwing us on trade is just not true. It is not true. The average Canadian tariffs on American goods, the average, is one of the lowest in the world on American goods. Under an agreement President Trump himself negotiated in Trump Term 1, the Canadian trade deficit is only in oil. Every other area, we have a trade surplus with Canada.

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So I suppose if we want to stop buying oil from Canada, we could do that. I'm not sure why we would do that. Presumably they're not exactly an enemy of the United States. Our cruel northern neighbors. President Trump keeps suggesting that Canada should simply be absorbed as the 51st state. Well, they're a sovereign country. They're not going to be absorbed as the fifth.

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Again, I like the joke, but at the point when the joke meets reality, things start to get a little dicier. And one of the unfortunate effects, I'll say this over and over, Pierre Poliev was leading in the polls by a huge margin until the trade war started. Then the trade war started, and now it appears that Justin Trudeau's party is likely to retain power in Canada. That is terrible. That is bad.

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If you want other countries to sympathize with the Trump agenda, And everything from free market economics to foreign policy, you would like for those countries to be friendlier with the United States than you don't want to drive them into the arms of political opponents. But here's President Trump yesterday ripping on Canada again, suggesting they need to become the 50.

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Again, I get the joke, guys. I get the joke. But when people start taking the joke seriously, it's kind of a problem.

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Again, hilarious, but not as hilarious when the Canadians in response to all of this are like, listen, we're a little bit freaked out. And so we're going to increase our tariffs. And then we get into a tariff war with the EU and all the rest. We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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It's fantastic because everybody's got these old pictures and tapes lying around in the garage moldering. Well, there's no reason for that. Get them preserved forever with LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro. Also, after more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel, all of Israel is brokenhearted after learning of the horrific murders of the Bibas family.

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who were held hostage in Gaza and then Hamas actually murdered babies with their bare hands. Countless families continue to suffer throughout the Holy Land, where the needs for aid and support grow more urgent with each passing day.

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The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported and will continue to support the families of hostages and other victims of the October 7th terror attacks. With your help, IFCJ has provided financial and emotional help to hostages and their families and to those healing. But the real work is just beginning.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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There's the hotter, newer thing in Jasmine Crockett, the congresswoman from Texas. Here she was yesterday.

The Ben Shapiro Show

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As communities struggle to rebuild what was destroyed, families are attempting to piece together shattered lives while living under the constant threat of further violence. Children who've witnessed unspeakable horrors need specialized care. Communities require ongoing protection and resources. Stand with Israel during this critical time.

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Your compassion makes a tangible difference in the lives of those who continue to suffer. Your gift today will help provide critically needed support to families in Israel as Israel remains surrounded by enemies. Give a gift to bless Israel and her people. Go to benforthefellowship.org. That's www.benforthefellowship.org. Thank you and God bless.

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And again, all of this is the precursor to what is supposed to happen on April 2nd. This is one of the reasons the markets are freaking out right now, because President Trump said in his State of the Union address, and I want to actually quote it here, quote, this system is not fair to the United States and never was. He's talking about the trade system. He said, Think of that, four times higher.

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And so he says, The system is not fair to the United States. It never was. And so on April 2nd, I wanted to make it April 1st, but I don't want to be accused of April Fool's Day. Just one day, which costs us a lot of money. We're going to do it in April. I'm a very superstitious person. April 2nd, reciprocal tariffs kick in. Whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them.

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That's reciprocal, back and forth. Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of the market, we will do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. Market. There's a lot of that too. They don't even allow us in their market. We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.

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Okay, this is where the disconnect happens. reciprocal tariffs as an idea to drive down tariffs is actually precisely what Canada is trying to do with us right now. We increased our tariffs on certain products. They increased their tariffs in an attempt to get us to ratchet back down our tariffs. So President Trump's saying, we're going to do that to all these other countries on April 2nd.

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We're going to do it to South Korea. We're going to do it presumably to China. We're going to do it to Brazil, to India, to Mexico, to the EU, basically all of our main trading partners. We're going to do that to them. Now, It would be one thing if he said, we're doing that in order to get them to lower their tariffs.

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Instead, he says that he's doing that because the tariffs themselves will make us richer. We'll take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before. Not by getting them to lower their trade barriers, which actually would do that, but by increasing our own trade barriers. And this is why markets are saying, it's March 14th today.

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In a couple of weeks, if we get President Trump radically increasing tariffs, and he's already making noises about it now, Well, what are the markets going to do in just a couple of weeks? This is how people who trade in the markets think.

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They take in the information and then they just determine on as objective a level as they can whether this means that markets are going to go up or whether they're going to go down. Well, yesterday, Martha McCallum over at Fox News was pressing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who's an advocate for a lot of these tariff measures, about the Canadian tariffs. What's the point of these?

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Now, again, if the idea is the tariffs are going to quote unquote bring all the jobs back to America, first of all, jobs are not an amazing gauge of the economic health of a country. They are a decent gauge if the unemployment numbers are super high. It's a good shot the economy is doing really poorly if the unemployment numbers are really fantastic.

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Actually, you can have countries where the unemployment numbers are really fantastic that are absolute bleep holes. North Korea has a 0% unemployment rate. Why? Because everybody works for the government. So actually, it's not a good proxy. What you actually want for economic growth is the living standard of the American people. Is it getting better or is it getting worse?

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And there's so much gamesmanship that is played, all these sort of bizarre games that are played with regard to numbers, everything from the GDP to inflation rates to living standards and all the rest of it. My preferred standard is the standard that is used by the economist Marion Tupe in his book, Superabundance. And that is, how many hours do I have to work to achieve a certain good?

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And that has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper over time for virtually every vital good in human existence. To take, for example, electricity. The reality is that if you were to find the equivalent of electricity 200 years ago, it would be whale oil. How many hours did you have to work for some whale oil so you could read a book at night?

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And the answer was you had to work a significant number of hours in order to achieve the money necessary to buy the whale oil. Today, you can flip on the light and it costs you almost nothing. And that is true for an enormous number of goods, products, and services in the United States.

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For all the people who are nostalgic for the 1950s, I don't see a bunch of these people sending their kids to riveting school because they want them to work on an assembly line at Ford. They're all sending their kids to college so their kids can be techies. And for all of the talk about how Americans are living so much worse than they were in 1980, that is not actively true. It isn't.

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You would not trade your economic life. I'm not talking about your spiritual life. There are lots of problems with America spiritually. You would not trade your economic life right now for your economic life in 1980? You wouldn't because you wouldn't have a cell phone. You wouldn't have a computer. I remember these times. I'm old enough to remember before the internet was a big thing.

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I'm old enough to remember when cell phones were not available and the only cell phone you saw was Gordon Gekko walking around on the beach carrying basically a giant box on his head. This sort of stuff is how economies develop. So using the proper metrics is important.

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Okay, but here is the problem. If you actually shut down the government, then he gets to designate people as essential workers and then furlough everybody else. So again, Democrats got themselves stuck here. And this was basically a really, really amazing play by Speaker Johnson. Speaker Johnson was somehow able to cobble together the entire Republican majority.

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The metric of we're going to bring jobs home, we're going to bring jobs... Again, it's not hard to bring jobs home if everybody works for the government or if everybody is subsidized by the government. The question is economic health. Is everybody's economic livelihood getting better?

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And again, you can make the case that in some areas, America's economic livelihood is not as good as it was a few years ago. Presumably with home ownership would be a good example. But overall... Is America worse off now economically than we were in 1980 in terms of Americans' everyday life? Not in terms of the national debt, in terms of Americans' everyday life. The answer, of course, is no.

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We are not. Okay, so what is the goal? So what are we trying to achieve here? Well, Howard Lutnick said, again, yesterday, the Commerce Secretary, that all these people, the Canadians, they need to say thank you to us. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for a thank you.

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Okay, so first of all, sure. I mean, everybody should say thank you to the United States all the time. Everybody should thank God for the United States all the time. We are the most benevolent world power in human history. No question. Sure, everybody should say thank you. However... Is that a way to make trade policy? Let's say the Canadians come tomorrow and they say thank you.

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Thank you for being the power on our southern border that protects us from enemies foreign and domestic and that helps drive our economy. Thank you for that. If they say thank you tomorrow, do the tariffs go away? And what exactly is the goal? Again, if the goal here is to lower the tariffs, I'm for it. If the goal here is just the idea that tariffs are going to make us somehow richer...

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Again, no one is for that, including, by the way, Tesla. So Tesla sent out a letter to the administration yesterday. This is Elon Musk's company. It sent out an unsigned letter to the administration warning that President Trump's trade war could make it a target for retaliatory tariffs against the United States and increase the cost of making vehicles in America.

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In an unsigned letter, this is the Financial Times reporting, addressed to U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer, Tesla said it supports fair trade, but warned that U.S. exporters were, quote, exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to U.S. trade actions.

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For example, past trade actions by the United States have resulted in immediate reactions by the targeted countries, including increased tariffs on EVs, electric vehicles imported into those countries. And that, of course, is not a shock. If we are hitting other places where they live, they're going to hit us where we live. They're going to hit our tech sector.

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The question I have in all this is, what is the goal? And this is where, again, I'm bewildered that Democrats are not honing in on this. Why are Democrats not honing in on this? Just as a matter of politics, it's malpractice. Maybe they agree with the tariffs. Maybe they have no idea what they're doing. I don't know.

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And there's been a lot of talk about Speaker Johnson, the unworkable Republican majority because it's so small. In some ways, he's actually benefited by that because any single vote could be the vote that sinks a Trump agenda item. And no one wants to be the House vote except for Thomas Massey to sink a Trump agenda item.

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Whatever it is, when markets go down, that is typically a good proxy for a good line of political attack. And meanwhile, none of this, it's just not necessary. It's not necessary. Why are we focusing in on a tariff war initiated against our allies mainly, places like Canada, places like the EU.

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China's right there, and China is perfectly willing to ship its goods anywhere, cheaply, and make deals with Canada and the EU. And there's plenty of stuff that needs to get done. Again, as the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, suggested, what the administration should be focused on is deregulation, cuts to government, and tax cuts.

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Speaking of which, you can see the panic in the eyes of the public sector employee unions. One of the worst aspects of American politics is the fact that you have all of these unions that are in the public sector, taxpayer-funded public unions, and these unions are not negotiating against a profit-driven management, against a business-savvy management.

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Instead, they are negotiating against the taxpayer, and they are literally electing the people to negotiate on behalf of the taxpayer. So these public sector unions donate enormous amounts of money to Democrats, and then they negotiate with the Democrats for their own salary, all to be paid for by the national debt or by the taxpayers.

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Well, now Doge is coming in and cutting a lot of these folks, and they are freaking out, totally freaking out. So here, for example, is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelly, and he's freaking out.

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Okay, well, I mean, the idea that the federal government is the same size it was in the 70s belies the fact that the federal budget in 1970 was approximately $195 billion. That was the total outlay of the federal government in 1970. $195 billion. Today, the annual outlay of the federal government is somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 to $7 trillion. Okay, so, no. The...

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Speaking of which, we'll be having Speaker Johnson on in just a few minutes here on the show to discuss what's going on. For Democrats, according to the Wall Street Journal, a key issue in the continuing resolution was the GOP's full-year continuing resolution omits the report that details where the executive branch should spend money program by program, as I mentioned.

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Yes, the federal government has grown just a little bit. Just a little bit. The federal budget in 1970 on a non-inflation adjusted basis was about 3% of what the total federal budget is right now. So to pretend the federal government hasn't grown is totally psychotic. It's just ridiculous on its face.

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Unfortunately, the Trump administration is facing down adversaries across the country in the form of district court judges. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsop described the mass firings that have been made by Doge as a, quote, sham strategy by the government's Central Human Resources Office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce.

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And this is one of the really terrible effects of these public sector unions. They sign these long-term contracts in which people basically can't get fired, which is ridiculous. You should be an at-will employee of the federal government if you're working for the federal government. This judge was a San Francisco-based appointee of President Bill Clinton. Shocker, shocker.

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He ordered the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs departments to immediately offer all fired probationary employees their jobs back. The Office of Personal Management, according to the judge, had made an unlawful decision to terminate them.

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Alsup said that the agencies have the authority to implement reductions in force, but they have to follow proper procedures, so they're claiming this is a procedural matter. Well, we'll find out. We'll find out, because all this stuff's going to end up at the Supreme Court.

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By the way, so should the general principle that district court judges have the ability to issue nationwide injunctions on the basis of having jurisdiction over a small share of the United States. Well, meanwhile, the Trump administration has been cracking down on pro-terrorism protests at universities all over the country.

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And hilariously, now Columbia has decided that, you know, it might not be a great idea to have foreign exchange students who actually support terrorism, according to Two, the Columbia University statement that was just put out yesterday.

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The Columbia University Judicial Board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring. You remember this? A bunch of pro-Khmerist protesters took over buildings on campus violently.

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With respect to other events taking place last spring, the UJB's determinations recognized previously imposed a disciplinary action. The return of suspended students will be overseen by Columbia University's Life Office. So finally, they are actually enforcing their own rules. That is only because the administration threatened to remove their federal aid dollars.

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Until then, they were perfectly fine with their own university being taken over by the radicals because, of course, they largely agreed. Meanwhile, along the same lines, the controversy continues over Mahmoud Khalil, who is a foreign exchange student who apparently attained a green card.

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He was brought to the United States apparently to learn how to agitate because that's pretty much all he did at Columbia University. He joined up with a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest. This was the group that led the violent protests at Columbia taking over buildings. He was the chief negotiator on behalf of that group.

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Such a report would give Democrats their best chance of defending the existence of shuttered operations in the courts. This week alone, the Education Department announced it was cutting about half its staff. The Veteran Affairs Department outlined plans to cut about 70,000 from its workforce. Now, the continuing resolution would extend funding for fiscal 2025 at prior year's levels.

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That group put out many statements in solidarity with the violent actions of Hamas. And somehow the idea is that he can't be deported now because he has a green card. Again, we're not talking about an American citizen. And by the way, the real question here is not whether he should be deported. The question is why the hell he was here as a foreign exchange student in the first place.

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How did he end up with a student visa? Well, yesterday, pro-Khamas protesters took over Trump Tower in New York City. And so I hope that all these people who are illegally inside Trump Tower and trespassing, I hope that they, in fact, are prosecuted. And if they are here on a student visa, then they can go home as well. That'd be fun.

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because it turns out that violating the law by taking over somebody else's property is in fact a deportable crime. Here we go. Okay, and then they started chanting, bring Mahmoud home. Okay, which again is a riff on the Israeli attempt to get actual hostages to be brought home from the predations of Hamas. Just wonderful people.

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And these are the people that the Democrats have decided that they truly need to reach out to. This is the single moral issue on which they are absolutely unified, is that terrorist supporters who get in here on a student visa should be allowed to get a green card and then should be allowed to stay permanently in the country. That's what America needs more of.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, about 300 protesters entered the Manhattan skyscraper that houses the Trump organization and the president's New York penthouse on Thursday and then swarmed the ground floor. The New York Police Department arrested 98 pro-Palestinian protesters. No injuries reported, no property was damaged. Okay, but if you're arrested and you're here on a visa, You can go.

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We don't need you here, actually. That's fine. And it's not the same thing if you're an American citizen. If you're an American citizen, you have the right to say whatever dumb thing you want to. That is not the same thing if you are here as a guest of the United States, obviously. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving in strong ways to cut the Department of Education.

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According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration promised that massive staffing cuts would not impact the process students used to apply for federal financial aid. About two dozen workers who helped manage a key piece of the system were among the hundreds that laid off. The next day, access to FAFSA, that's the free application for federal student aid, went in and out for four hours.

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Okay, so then they fixed it. This, of course, is going to be used as an excuse to suggest that there can't be any cuts to the Department of Education at all. But the reality is that when you're moving fast and breaking things, you're going to rebuild the pieces that you most need. And that's what's going to happen with federal student aid, for example.

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The percentage of people who are laid off in the federal student aid arena, about 30%. So that shouldn't kill federal student aid by any stretch of the imagination. The number of people who were fired in the Institute of Education Sciences, that's more like 78%. These are huge layoffs.

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There would be some cuts, cutting to non-defense spending by $13 billion, increasing military spending by $6 billion. It would also unravel some portions of Joe Biden's ridiculous Inflation Reduction Act. Overall, it really doesn't change the workings of the government all that much. It just allows Trump to keep doing what he's been doing.

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According to Frederick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, we're talking about huge layoffs, unprecedented layoffs. So of course, Democrats are freaking out about this. Randy Weingarten in particular is freaking out. She says it's death by 2,000 cuts.

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Well, I can only hope that her evil leadership of the American Federation of Teachers ends up on the chopping block.

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So we will find out soon enough whether that is true. We can only hope that that is the case. Meanwhile, the negotiations over Ukraine continue. Vladimir Putin has rejected them. Vladimir Putin has said that he is not interested in an immediate ceasefire. He instead wants a longer term ceasefire, but without any of the conditions that would actually be necessary to achieve that ceasefire.

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Let's be real. There is not going to be a ceasefire, an armistice, anything like that, unless there are security guarantees to Ukraine preventing this from happening again in two years when Russia has rearmed. That is the only way Ukraine will sign on to anything. And frankly, it's the only reason that Ukraine should sign on to anything.

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And if Vladimir Putin continues to press forward militarily, it would not be in the interests of the United States or any of our allies for him to take Eve. That'd be a mistake. If you actually want to get to an off-ramp that freezes the lines where they are, you have to maintain enough pressure to keep Vladimir Putin from strolling through Kyiv and rolling tanks into western Ukraine.

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Well, Putin apparently feels like he's got control of these negotiations, which, honestly, the United States should take as an insult. Putin said on Thursday he did not support an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, calling for more discussion on a permanent end to the war as Moscow's army made rapid gains toward expelling Kiev's forces from the Kursk region.

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Again, the interruption in aid and intelligence that the United States was trying to use to leverage Ukraine back to the table has had some significant downside impact in the Kursk region. Kursk, of course, is in Russia. It is one of the areas where Ukraine has pushed forward. Why? Because they then want to trade that territory for area in Crimea or the Donbass.

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Putin said any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine's interest because Russia is gaining on the battlefield and a host of issues would need to be resolved before a ceasefire could be reached. Those were the first official responses from Moscow after Ukraine agreed this week to a U.S.-backed proposal for a pause in the war.

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Putin spoke as President Trump's special envoy, Steve Woodcock, was due in Moscow. Trump said that he planned to speak with Putin soon and was pressing to a speedy end to the conflict. Here was President Trump talking about this yesterday, flanked by the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rudy.

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This, of course, is why so many wild left-wing Democrats are upset. Pramila Jayapal, who's the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was very upset about this bill.

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And it will be a disappointing moment for the world if Vladimir Putin continues to push forward. He said, who will give orders to stop fighting? What is the price of those orders? Who will determine where and by whom they were violated? Well, I mean, if you guys crossed the border into Ukraine again, then you'd be the one violating the orders.

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President Zelensky of Ukraine called Putin's response highly predictable and manipulative words aimed at dragging out the process by setting unworkable preconditions. And, of course, Zelensky actually is right about that. He said Putin is afraid to tell President Trump directly he wants to continue this war and keep killing Ukrainians. Putin does this often. He doesn't say no.

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He drags things out and makes reasonable solutions impossible. Again, that is accurate from Zelensky. Everything is Zelensky. Putin is the one who's not accepting an immediate ceasefire right now. And Putin is the one who's suggesting an inordinate number of preconditions that are just not doable. They're just not doable. He says that he doesn't want Ukraine to rearm.

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Well, of course Ukraine is going to rearm. You just invaded them. What do you think they would do? Sit there with a half-scarred military? It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So it'll be interesting to see what happens from here. Obviously, the ire of the Trump administration should turn to the intransigent party now.

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And the intransigent party is not Vladimir Zelensky, who has been properly chastened by the Trump administration. The obstinate party right now is pretty obviously Vladimir Putin, who feels as though he has his opposition on the run.

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Well, folks, a little bit earlier this week, I had a chance to sit down with my friend Seth Dillon from the Babylon Beat to talk all things comedy, humor, and politics. It was a great conversation. Here's what it sounded like. Well, I'm joined here in studio by Seth Dillon, the founder of the Babylon Bee, which is, of course, the funniest news site in America.

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It's a satirical news site, as it constantly points out, and yet the left seems never to understand. Seth, great to see you. Great to see you, too.

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It's been an amazing journey for the Babylon baby. It has. It is also amazing to think that the change that has happened across the world may have happened because you guys got banned at Twitter for making a joke that boys are not girls.

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Well, I mean, again, it is kind of funny to think that you guys are that first domino in the domino, maybe. Yeah. That ends with President Trump destroying DEI and the Oval Office with a baseball bat and all the rest of it. That must be an amazing thing. But I want to ask you about how to do comedy in this particular era, because comedy is now closer to prophecy.

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We've done entire segments of the show talking about how Babylon be headlines. end up being prophetic. It used to be the lag time has gone down. It used to be like a five-year lag time between when you'd write a headline and when it would materialize. And now it seems to be about a month headline between when you write a headline and then it materializes.

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So how do you do comedy in an era that is this outlandishly absurd?

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And one of the other things that seems to have happened over the course of the last 10, 15 years is I actually think people have lost a lot of their sense of humor. It used to be that you could laugh at a joke, particularly about your own side. It was okay to laugh at jokes about your own side. Things that I would say on the show in 2015 that were kind of

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jokes about Republicans or President Trump or Ted Cruz or whomever was running, because that was a really funny primary. I mean, 2016 was a hysterical time in American life. If you don't remember all the way back to 2016, youngins, let me just tell you, that race, that primary race was hysterically funny. It was like- That was right when the beast started, too. Exactly.

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It was like Donald Trump on stage, insulting Rand Paul's hair by saying he had like a dead animal on his head and President Trump going after. And it was inherently funny that President Trump became President Trump. I just remember the night of the election literally bursting out laughing hysterically for like 90 seconds live on air when it was announced that he'd won because it was so outlandish.

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All right, so Chuck Schumer had made noises a little bit earlier this week about the possibility of holding up a continuing resolution that would fund the government all the way until September. And it was sort of unclear why he was doing that. Strategically, he had no ground to stand on because after all,

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And yet now it's obvious why that happened. And in retrospect, you can kind of see the historic moment happening. But at the time, it was really, really humorous. But everybody, I think, also was willing to laugh at things. Do you feel like people are less willing to laugh at things on pretty much all sides of the aisle in a lot of ways?

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Okay, so the Senate did not. So Chuck Schumer gave up the ghost yesterday. He said he would back the continuing resolution, not that he'd vote in favor of it, but that he at least would not filibuster it. Here he explained yesterday.

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One of the things I think that you guys have done an incredibly great job at is somehow navigating the line of humor where you don't just become – kind of over the top edge lords. One of the things that's happened in sort of meme world, and we all now live in meme world because the lord of all memes is the head of Twitter. Elon is a living meme.

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I saw him at CPAC and he literally turned to me as he was wearing the ridiculous meme sunglasses and carrying a chainsaw and he turned to me and he goes, Ben, I'm just living the meme. That's the guy who is the head of Doge and the head of X and the head of Tesla and the head of SpaceX. So we now live in that world.

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That has some benefits in that it's inherently funny, but it also means that one way that people get attention is by being edgelords. And so the idea is the more provocative, more violative, more transgressive you get, then that's like a form of humor. And that's always been a form of humor, shock humor. But shock humor seems to be a huge and growing part of sort of the humor contingent.

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The problem with shock humor is that sometimes the reason that the thing is shocking is because it's actually bad. And not because, you can make people laugh in a lot of ways, but the cheapest way to make somebody laugh is to say the F word. And it's always been true in humor. If you want to make somebody laugh, the discomfort laugh, right?

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Saying the F word or graphically describing sex or something. These are ways that- Vulgarity. Right, vulgarity. And there is a such a thing as sort of a political vulgarity where you say something that is so kind of gross that people laugh because it's gross and violative and taboo. You guys have never gone there.

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You always have had sort of a moral line that you won't step beyond just for the sake of the laugh. How do you find that sort of ground where you're being moral and humorous at the same time, which is a hard thing to do? Yeah.

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So when you look at sort of the political spectrum, a lot of the issues that were great sources of humor seem to be on their way out. And the right is in the ascendancy, particularly culturally.

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And so a lot of the stuff that has been mined for humor by you guys, by us, we made Lady Ballers, which is an entire movie just about the idea of transgender people in sports, men playing women's sports and all and all of that. Now, that's on the way. I mean, the president has signed executive orders essentially banning that from sports that are sponsored by taxpayer dollars.

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Wokeness has been banned at the highest levels of the American government. Like, the battles are getting won on the cultural level. So what do you see are sort of the next battles? What are the next, as I say, the Babylon Bee is half prophecy, half dark prophecy, and half humor. What are sort of the next big cultural battles that you see on the horizon that... You guys are gonna mine for the joke.

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I think they're going to move into sort of the realm of economic insanity, because they've already played out the cultural insanity, and they'll continue to do that to a certain extent. And Again, I think they've kind of hit the edge cases already.

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I mean, when you're sitting on your hands because you can't applaud a 13-year-old cancer survivor at the State of the Union address, I'm not sure how much further you can go to hate President Trump. So the hatred of President Trump, he's not going to be president in four years. So they're going to have to move on to whatever is the next thing.

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And it seems to me that the Democratic Party, if they are going to have any shot at electoral success in the future, is going to have to move away from a lot of these cultural kind of wokeness-based issues and into the sort of demagoguery of success. And you see that in a lot of the attacks on Elon. A lot of what they're doing right now is Elon is bad, Elon is evil, Elon is corrupt.

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That's my favorite one, is when they say that Elon is corrupt. He's the richest man on planet Earth. What would you have to pay him to buy Elon off? How would you even accomplish this? But I think you're going to see an enormous amount of this left-wing economic populism, which is mirrored by parts of the right, that starts to become a sentence. And that has its own sort of bizarre logic.

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Yeah, we're seeing some of that already, for sure. So what's next for you guys? You guys have done a number of projects. You have the Bee itself, which is text-based, and then you've done videos. You've done now a movie about January 6th, the worst day. What's the name of the film? I don't want to screw it up. Yeah, January 6th, the most deadliest day. The most deadliest day, correct, exactly.

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He went on to explain why with MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

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So what's next on the horizon for bigger projects?

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Well, Seth Dillon, it's always great to see the Babylon Beat. It's great, folks. If you haven't checked it out, well, you've been living under a rock, but you definitely should. Babylonbeat.com, go check them out right now. All righty, coming up, we'll get to Representative Sarah McBride. He, Tim McBride, says that the Republicans are obsessed with culture war issues.

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We'll also jump into today's mailbag, but you have to be a subscriber. We have so much good stuff coming. Pendragon Cycle is coming. Backstage Live, Morning Wire, Am I Racist? What is a Woman? All Access Live, so much good stuff. You need to become a member. Become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

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And so one of the things that Democrats are doing increasingly is they're reverting to cursing. If they are upset about something, they curse. They have to show performatively that they oppose Trump, even if they can't actually obstruct his agenda in any sort of effective way. So you'll notice every single Democrat beginning to curse at a higher level. Again, that's performative.

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Chuck Schumer doesn't just drop bastards into a normal cable conversation. He drops it there because he wants to show his base he's really, really, really mad. But it's not going to be enough. Jake Sherman over at Punchbowl News, which is maybe the best insider newsletter in Washington, D.C., he says, what a mess this has become for Democrats.

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A government funding fight that began with Democrats demanding restrictions on Trump, Elon Musk, and Doge has ended with Democrats folding and now sniping bitterly at each other. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team distanced themselves from Schumer's decision but didn't name him in a statement on Thursday night.

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Other House Democrats took direct aim at Schumer, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and Schumer ally, thinks it is a big mistake. Sherman says, let's be blunt here. Democrats picked a fight they couldn't win and caved without getting anything in return.

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If the United States Senate, the Democratic minority, decided that they were going to filibuster the continuing resolution, there would be a government shutdown. And the Republicans would correctly say they had the votes to prevent the government shutdown, and it was Democrats who had actually created the government shutdown.

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We'll also note it's more than five months into fiscal year 2025 already. Even with another month of negotiation, what Democrats were asking for, it's still not clear they would have notched any policy wins. And there's a reason Republicans put Democrats in this position, because they knew Democrats would cave. And they did.

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As Sherman points out, Democrats never managed to put Speaker Johnson or Senate Majority Leader John Thune or Trump in a tough spot. There are plenty of policies House Democrats could have asked for in the CR, more money for certain programs, for instance, that could have placed Republicans in a bind, but they never actually did any of that. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats tried to have it both ways.

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They warned each other in private and in public about forcing a government shutdown, but then they tried to force the government shutdown. So this set the Democratic base up for disappointment for seemingly no reason. And they violated the first rule of politics. Never interrupt your opponent while he's making a mistake.

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And right now, the mistake the Democrats should be focusing in on is the tariff war, because that tariff war is driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average down. That is an easy case to make. If it recovers, of course, that case will disappear. But they can say, well, Dow Jones Industrial Average is now in corrections.

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Instead, they decided, hey, maybe we should start a giant fight over a continuing resolution we have no chance of actually stopping. And if the government shuts down, we get to own the economic chaos. I mean, it's just the dumbest thing I've ever heard. In a second, we'll be joined by the Speaker of the House. First, only two things in life are certain, death and taxes.

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Well, there is now a third certainty. If you're with one of the three big phone providers, you could be saving a fortune every single month by switching on over to Pure Talk. That's right. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, is cutting the fat from the wireless industry. For just $35 a month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data with Hotspot on America's most dependable 5G network.

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The average family of four saves over $1,000 a year when they switch to PeerTalk. That's real money back in your pocket. Plus, our favorite deal is back. When you switch to PeerTalk's super low $35 plan this month, you'll get one year of Daily Wire Plus for free.

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You'll get access to a library of DW Plus movies, series, and documentaries, including Lady Ballers, What is a Woman, Mr. Burcham, Run, Hide, Fight, and more. Uncensored ad-free daily shows. One year free of our DW Kids platform, BentKey. Free leftist tears Tumblr. You know the one and only. But the only way you get that stuff is by going to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

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Switch to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Get a year of Daily Wire Plus for free with qualifying plan. Pure Talk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Also, here's something shocking. Over 140,000 family farms across America have shut down since 2017. Why?

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At which point, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats would be blamed for everything. It was a gigantic unforced error by Chuck Schumer. Well, yesterday he reversed himself. Democrats are, of course, very upset at Chuck Schumer because they believe that it is their duty to obstruct literally everything the Republicans do. Now, to be fair to Schumer, it was a no-win situation.

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Because grocery chains keep pushing cheap imported meat instead of supporting the people who live and work right here in the United States. So this spring, let's spring into action and make a real difference. When you visit goodranchers.com, you're not just getting better meat, you're getting behind a mission that matters. Well, what makes them different?

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For starters, everything they offer is 100% American sourced. That means every juicy steak, chicken breast, pork chop comes from farms right here in the United States. And you can taste the difference because the meat is completely free from hidden additives. No antibiotics, no added hormones, no seed oils. Plus, when you choose Good Ranchers, you're helping preserve a way of life.

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They partner exclusively with local farmers who spent generations perfecting their craft and feeding American families just like yours. Producer Savvy. We'll not stop talking about the Good Rancher steak that her husband cooks for the family every single week. And obviously it's working because her baby is a chunky baby. That's a baby who eats probably seven steaks a week.

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Subscribe to Good Ranchers and you'll get to choose free bacon, ground beef, seed oil-free chicken nuggets, or salmon in every single order. for a full year, plus an extra 40 bucks off with Code Ben. You'll get incredible meat delivered right to your doorstep. American farmers keep their livelihoods. They even donate to veterans with every purchase.

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Head on over to goodranchers.com today and use Code Ben for that incredible spring into action deal before it disappears. Good Ranchers is American meat delivered. As I mentioned before, Speaker Johnson has done a masterful job of keeping together an incredibly narrow House majority. He joins us on the line right now. Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for the time.

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Let's start with the continuing resolution. So Democrats in the Senate were thinking about filibustering the continuing resolution. This is one of the great own goals that I've seen in recent history, because obviously if they'd filibustered the continuing resolution, the government shutdown would have been totally on them. Credit really goes to you and the Republican majority in the House.

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It's a very slim majority. Somehow you keep cobbling together wins. How is that happening?

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Yeah, Speaker Johnson, one of the things that you mentioned there is sort of the open ocean that you need in order to get things done. The reality is the thing that everybody is waiting for is the one big, beautiful bill. So how are the negotiations? On that going, obviously, this wraps up a bunch of different topics into one gigantic bill.

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On the one hand, if the continuing resolution goes forward, then President Trump continues to unleash the executive branch on itself to use Doge to cut, to slash, to burn, to fire. He had the ability to do that because the continuing resolution basically just says the government is going to continue to run at the same funding levels it has previously run.

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And there's been some controversy between the House and the Senate over what that looks like. The Senate had originally suggested they wanted two different bills, one that would be tax focused, one that would be sort of immigration and defense focused. How are those negotiations going?

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So one of the big questions that's emerging with regard to the tax bill, Speaker Johnson, is the question of baseline budgeting. So typically the Congressional Budget Office has a 10-year budget estimated on current law because the Trump tax cuts would expire over the course of the next couple of years.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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The idea from some is that somehow we should treat a tax cut continuation as though that's a change in the law and then it wouldn't be deficit neutral. Maybe you can explain what's going on.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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And this continuing resolution did not, in fact, include specific designations of where funding ought to go within each department, which would sort of force Trump to spend the money in each department. Instead, it has a broad overview. Spend X dollars at HHS. Spend X dollars at Department of Defense, for example.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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So obviously, all this is really important because as Treasury Secretary Scott Besson was saying yesterday and has been saying, the goal here is to provide a predictable, economically friendly future for business and investors. This, of course, brings up the turmoil in the markets. There's been a lot of turmoil in the markets over the course of the last three and a half weeks or so.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2158 - Democrats CAVE, Trump Chalks Up Another Win!

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A lot of talk about tariffs, reciprocal tariffs and all the rest of this. My great hope has been for the Trump administration that when President Trump says reciprocal, he means reciprocal, meaning that the goal is to get other countries to lower their tariffs so we can also lower our tariffs and then we sail off into the future together.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2139 - SHOCKING Tapes: Department of Education Pushes SEX WORK FOR CHILDREN