The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”
Wed, 26 Mar 2025
Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett calls the disabled Texas Governor Greg Abbott “Hot Wheels”; fallout continues from the Trump national security team’s botched Signal chat; and President Trump signs more key executive orders. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2166 - - - Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: We’re leading the charge again and launching a full-scale push for justice. Go to https://PardonDerek.com right now and sign the petition. Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Go to https://dailywire.com/subscribe today. Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: LifeLock - Visit https://LifeLock.com/BEN and save up to 40% your first year! Grand Canyon University - Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Visit https://gcu.edu today. International Fellowship of Christians and Jews - Bring comfort and relief to Israel and her people by donating at https://BenForTheFellowship.org HIYA - Go to https://hiyahealth.com/SHAPIRO for 50% off your first order of Hiya's best-selling children's vitamin. - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB
Chapter 2: What happened with Trump's national security team's Signal chat?
Why is this happening inside a signal chat? So let's separate the legal issue for a second from the actual. national security issue, because there are two real issues here. One is the legal situation. If this was classified information, was it mishandled? If so, is that a violation of criminal law? As we've said, usually violation of criminal law requires some level of intent.
This was exactly the standard that was set up for Hillary Clinton in the emails case. If you agree with James Comey on that, that basically you have to have intent to spread classified information. It's not just negligence. It's intent to spread classified information beyond its boundaries. then you're guilty of some sort of crime, then obviously there was no intent here.
No one meant to include Jeffrey Goldberg on purpose in the middle of the chat, obviously. So on a legal standard, very difficult to say that this would be violative of law as actually reinterpreted by James Comey and the FBI and pretty much everybody else going forward from that point, which means 15 years ago, maybe a crime. Today, not so much.
And then you reach the question of the political here. Does it look good that this sort of thing happened, that Jeffrey Goldberg was included in this chat? Obviously, it doesn't look good. It was messy and it was a mistake. However, is it going to damage President Trump? The answer here is no.
And the reason the answer here is no is because the strikes went forward, the Houthis were in fact eviscerated. The terrorist was in fact killed. The strikes were in fact successful. And the discussion that was actually had, as I mentioned yesterday, the discussion was quite fascinating because it illuminated
Differences inside the president's team over foreign policy and showed that both Secretary of Defense Hegseth and NSA Waltz in particular are very strong defenders of President Trump's peace through strength agenda. This is what Mike Waltz was saying yesterday on national television on Fox News. He said, listen, we're knocking the crap out of the terrorists, which is the central issue here.
This journalist, Mr. President, wants the world talking about more hoaxes and this kind of nonsense rather than the freedom that you're enabling. And a key part of our sovereignty is open sea lanes and knocking the crap out of terrorists, which is exactly what your team and Pete Hegseth, a good friend and fellow veteran, is leading the charge on.
President Trump, for his part, did the right thing. He defended Waltz. And I say it's the right thing here because the idea that Waltz or Hegseth or anyone is going to get fired over this in the wake of the reality about how national security information has been treated is ridiculous. It's particularly ridiculous in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal for which no one was fired.
So a slap on the wrist is appropriate. A firing is not. Trump's national security team is really, really good. I mean, that's actually the message that you get from the internals of the deliberations. Again, put aside the actual negligence of including Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat. The actual internal deliberations are fascinating, interesting, and high level.
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Chapter 3: Is President Trump more popular now than before?
So we have to determine whether or not the Senate can get on board with that idea. The Senate's blueprint right now does not have that in there. Thune stopped short Tuesday of promising Republicans finally had a plan for addressing the debt limit. He believed there was a consensus that was forming.
Some GOP lawmakers say they may have to strip out the debt limit measure from the massive bill to extend tax cuts if the U.S. approaches the debt limit too early, like before the lawmakers can come to an agreement. But again, I think that the senators come around. I think it is highly likely that Republicans get their one big, beautiful bill done. And that's a big victory for President Trump.
It's absolutely necessary because, again, the sort of trade war that's being unleashed on the world is a pressure in the other direction. Trade wars tend to lead to economic stagnation and inflation. The one big, beautiful bill leads to economic certainty. It leads to deregulation in certain areas. It leads to lower taxes. One of these things makes business happy.
One of these things makes business more unhappy. And so if you're going to do the tariff thing, then it just makes what's happening on the other end, on the legislative end, that much more important.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, barriers to open trade are rising around the world at a pace unseen in decades, a cascade of protectionism that harks back to the isolationist fervor that swept the globe in the 1930s and worsened the Great Depression. It isn't just President Trump's new tariffs.
Even before Trump retook the White House, many countries were increasing trade barriers, often against China. Now those efforts are proliferating as countries brace for a new wave of goods redirected across the globe by the U.S. 's rising tariff shield.
The EU said this month it plans to toughen measures to protect its own steel and aluminum producers from imports diverted from the United States by Trump's 25% tariffs on those two metals. Economists suggest that the world could be heading toward the largest, broadest surge in protectionist activity since the U.S.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was a large contributing factor in the Great Depression. Now, economists don't think that we're headed toward a Great Depression or anything remotely like that, but the economic slowdown could be significant, which is just one reason why if you're going to do one thing, you certainly have to do the other.
Meanwhile, that is something that the administration is pursuing in terms of deregulation and cuts. Doge continues to be popular with the American people as a general rule. They may not like Elon Musk. They may not like the way that this is being pursued. But the basic idea of going through the government with a red pen and just line iteming out all of the bad spending ideas.
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