Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Code ben to unlock 15% off exclusions apply. Major breaking news from the Daily Wire over the Biden administration cracking down on pro-lifers. You won't believe the extent to which the Biden DOJ was targeting people who actually stand up against abortion. And of course, President Trump is now in a war of words with Pope Leo.
President Trump, in my opinion, is right on the politics and he's wrong on the rhetoric. Criticizing Pope Leo's politics, that's fully within bounds because, you know, the Pope sometimes talks politics. And criticizing President Trump's approach, because he should be more respectful to the Pope, The same.
But we are going to talk today about why Pope Leo and the president ought to find an off-ramp here. Spoiler alert, they tend to agree on some pretty fundamental issues, ranging from protection of Christians to, you know, not killing the unborn or transing the kids. And here's the thing.
If you are one of those people who favors every single one of the seven deadly sins, or you're a person rooting for the triumph of radical Islam, or you're a radical Muslim yourself and you are attempting to pursue the extermination of Christianity, And somehow you're now hiding behind the Pope's robes in order to go after President Trump. We can all see you. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So the Daily Wire has some pretty astonishing reporting here today. Again, just another reason you should become a member over at Daily Wire so we can continue to bring you these kinds of important breaking stories. So it turns out that the Biden administration was literally partnering with abortion activists to track and imprison pro-lifers. I mean, that's how bad the Biden administration was.
This is why when I see the president and Pope Leo going at it, I think to myself. If we're going to talk about presidents who are legitimately attacking Catholics, we should really be talking about Barack Obama, who went after the little sister of the poor and decided that he was going to mainstream every sin he could find.
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Chapter 2: What major news does the Daily Wire report about the Biden administration's actions against pro-lifers?
One dossier that was given to Patel from an abortion group in 2021 contained information including addresses, photographs, including spouses and young kids, names of associates and affiliated ministries, information about upcoming travel plans or planned protests, even driver's license numbers of pro-life activists before they had actually committed any crime at all.
And actually, social media posts were being flagged by these pro-choice activists and sent over to the DOJ. Here, for example, is an image of the DOJ asking this person, Michelle Davidson, about an evangelical Christian from Michigan who would go around doing pro-life activism. This is the email from Sanjay Patel over at the DOJ to Michelle Davidson over at ProChoice.org. Hi, Michelle.
Do you have any info on Zastronco's travel to Montana? One 136 page DOJ dossier documented the attendees of a conference hosted by Operation Save America, a pro-life group. And apparently that dossier suggested, quote, the entire Zastro family is engaged in anti-choice activities and sometimes refers to themselves as Zastro Holiness Revival Team.
And again, all these people who were mentioned, including members of the Zastrow family and other people that the Zastrow family was associated with were later prosecuted by the Biden administration. And this is all part of these non-governmental organizations working hand in glove with the federal government under Joe Biden.
Chapter 3: How is President Trump involved in the controversy with Pope Leo?
So again, the short story here is the Biden DOJ was working with non-governmental organizations in order to target pro-life activists. And as it turns out, Daily Wire reporting looked into the sentences that were sought by the Biden DOJ against pro-life activists.
And what they found is that the Biden DOJ asked for a longer average sentence for pro-life defendants compared to pro-abortion defendants. Actual sentences shook out to an average of 14 months for pro-life defendants versus three months for pro-choice defendants. Again, this is astonishing stuff. It demonstrates full scale the animus that the Biden administration had for the pro-life movement.
And again, this is nothing new. This is nothing new. I mean, you go all the way back to the Clinton administration and the attempt to target political adversaries using the DOJ is perfectly obvious. This is why all of the heartburn, I think proper heartburn in some cases, about the Trump DOJ going after political opponents, the glass was already broken. I've said this 1,000 times.
I've said 1,000 times that the left likes to say that Donald Trump broke all the rules, that he's the one who killed the American political system. The reality is the American political system was already dead and Trump stumbled upon it. Barack Obama used his IRS to go after pro-life groups, to go after conservative groups, Tea Party groups. It was Joe Biden's DOJ going after pro-lifers.
I mean, there's nothing new here. Democrats have been doing this for a very, very long time. All President Trump is, in essence, is turnabout as fair play. Now, again, that doesn't justify what President Trump has done with the DOJ. I've criticized the president when it comes to DOJ prosecutions that I think are unjustified and going after former officials.
With that said, the fact that this will make no front page news, none, that the Biden DOJ was going after, again, pro-lifers in unique ways and coordinating with outside groups to do that. Imagine the scandal if, for example, the Trump administration was coordinating with pro-life groups to go after abortion advocates. Can you imagine the scandal? Can you imagine the front page coverage?
It would be very real. Now, one of the questions here is how people who are involved in this were allowed to stay at the DOJ for so long. I mean, buried in this story is the little factoid that one of the people who was doing all of this, again, this person Sanjay Patel, was still working for the DOJ all the way up until Monday.
which is kind of crazy and does demonstrate the truth of President Trump's statement and the statement of many of his associates, that there is in fact a deep state. There are people who have been lifelong appointees of various administrations who are still working inside the administration and working against the priorities of the administration. That's very real.
And thank God that we have people like Harmeet Dhillon, who's now in charge of the Civil Rights Division over at the DOJ. I'm very, very pleased that Todd Blanche has taken over for Pam Bondi, who I thought was not good at her job. But it just goes to show you that the attempt to cleanse the administration of holdovers who are very much in the camp of Joe Biden, that is an ongoing pursuit.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Biden administration's alleged targeting of pro-lifers?
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Meanwhile, just going to point out that yesterday, in brief, we discussed the president of the United States putting out an image of him that appeared to be him as Jesus. He later said that he thought it was a picture of him as a Red Cross doctor or something, which, I mean, I don't know how your Red Cross doctor's dress didn't look like that to me.
You know, again, the president loves the memory. He did take it down. I said it yesterday on the show. And then within moments, he had actually taken down the picture. Yesterday, the president ordered DoorDash to the White House, which was pretty hilarious. And he talked with the DoorDash grandma. But then he then he spoke about why the image was taken down. Here he was.
Well, it wasn't a picture.
It was me. I did post it. And I thought it was me as the doctor. and had to do with Red Cross. There's a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one. So I had just heard about it. And I said, how did they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.
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Chapter 5: How does the FACE Act relate to the Biden administration's actions?
However, the attempt by the media to now drive a wedge, like a wedge deep between President Trump and his Christian base, good luck on that. Because remember, there is another party that is still out there. It's always funny. In a vacuum, no party looks good. This is true for any party. No party looks great in a vacuum because you can compare them to perfection.
But in reality, when it comes time for Christians to vote, in the next election or in the midterms, are they going to vote for the abortion, transgenderism, open borders, pro-crime left? Is that the choice? Because the president put up a meme that they didn't like for like a day, and then he took it down? Again, that is not a defense of the meme. The president himself took it down.
But the reminder here, and again, this is why that Daily Wire report from Leif LeMayhew is really important. The reminder here is when you have Democrats in charge and they have control of the levers of government, do they use them to bolster religious practice in the United States or to attack religious practice in the United States?
Do they use the elements of government to go after religious principles in the United States or to defend religious principles in the United States? And there's so many people, including Christians who I know and like and people like David French or David French will write a column for The New York Times defending James Tallarico as some form of glorious Christian while attacking President Trump.
It's like, well, you know, James Tallarico wears around the the. sheep's clothing of Christian rhetoric while promoting wild leftism. That seems to me significantly worse than the president who speaks in untoward ways and puts up dumb memes sometimes, but is actually a staunch defender of Christians in the United States and abroad and religious practice in the United States and abroad.
This attempt, again, right now what we are watching is a pylon. The Iran war was the occasion for everyone who wanted off the Trump train to jump and for the media to then notice some of those people jumping and to try to turn this into a cascade, a sort of tidal wave of opposition to the president. But the reality is this.
The president's approval rating has not markedly dropped since the beginning of the war. He was in the low 40s at the beginning of the war. He's in the low 40s now or high 30s now. And this attempt to sort of divide him off from core constituencies, that's not going to work. He may be able to take away the marginal, the people who joined on in 2024 just to oppose Kamala Harris.
But the actual Christians who are voting in droves for the president and will vote for his successor, whether that is Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance or whomever. Those people are not going to turn away from the Republican Party based on the posting of a meme. And this brings us to the president in a war of words with the pope.
So all of this started because the pope decided that he was going to comment on a wide variety of topics implicating American politics. Recently, of course, he made a comment with regard to Pete Hegseth, where he said, quote, we tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared.
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