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Chapter 1: What principles does Ben Shapiro uphold in politics?
Either you uphold the principle or you don't uphold the principle. If you don't uphold the principle, I'm going to call you out for not upholding the principle. On his epitaph, it will read, 45th and 47th presidents of the United States, he said a lot of shit.
Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates. You move to a state that has higher insurance rate, higher car insurance, not just home insurance, has higher property taxes, many of these red states.
And I think that we should start from a position in the United States of gratitude and recognition that we live in a free country where the vast majority of decisions are your own.
This is Gavin Newsom.
And this is Ben Shapiro.
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
All right, Ben Shapiro, welcome.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I love it. All the way from Florida. We'll get to that. in a moment. You seem a little bit spicy about it. Yeah. A little salty. Well, you know, Texas, that would have been more spicy. But, you know, especially, come on, you're a Hollywood kid, at least Hollywood adjacent.
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Chapter 2: How did Ben Shapiro's upbringing influence his views?
Where did they end up in terms of their professional pursuits and careers?
So all of us grew up obviously here. Only one is still here. I still have one sister who lives in Orange County. I have a couple of sisters who live within a mile and a half of me in Florida. So basically the whole family ended up in Florida. My parents ended up near me in Florida. My in-laws who lived in Sacramento ended up near me in Florida. Interesting.
Yeah, there may be some reasons for that, Governor.
We'll get to that. We're going to get to all of that and a lot more. I just want to paint the picture a little bit.
I appreciate it.
Not everybody knows your childhood, but it also connected, I mean, as you said, UCLA undergrad and then your interest.
My wife went to UCLA Medical School. I mean, we're very California embedded.
I love that. But politics had its calling there. Would you remember sort of a moment or issues or was politics part of the, even your childhood, was a part of the conversation around the dinner table? Were your parents politically active?
They weren't super politically active. I would say they were kind of Reagan Republicans. And, you know, growing up, we would talk politics in the house. But the thing that sort of sent me in a political direction overtly is I got to college campus at UCLA and I picked up a copy of the UCLA Daily Bruin. And this is back in
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Chapter 3: What role did bullying play in shaping Ben Shapiro's character?
And we've done that over 10,000 folks.
So it'd be wrong for us when AOC said this week that I should be abolished. You disagree.
Oh, I disagree when I think. A candidate for president by the name of Harris said that in the last campaign. I came out. I remember being on Chris Hayes hours later saying, I think that's a mistake. So absolutely. Number two, as it relates to the issue of sanctuary policy, I think it's important to establish because it's not well established. Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates.
lower crime rates than non-sanctuary jurisdictions. So this notion that it somehow increases crime is also, I think, contradicted on the basis of the facts. So this notion that population, it becomes an attractive nature for population increases, I think is contradicted by the facts.
As it relates to crime, it's contradicted by the facts, but there's unquestionably, and you're right about this, as it relates to an expansion of services, but not just for sanctuary jurisdictions. for population, diverse populations. Yes, there are states like California that have chosen a different approach.
And that approach, I mean, means that when you came into office, for example, the budget was, what, $200 billion? And your proposed budget last year or this year is $350 billion.
The general fund's $248 billion. We have $42.3 billion additional revenue structure than we anticipated. By the way, another 2.8 came in in December. And California is now replenishing its reserves, $23 billion, paying down pension obligations, $11.8 billion. There's no question their cost pressures is rates to Medicaid and Medi-Cal in California.
And those pressures are going to be made worse because of the big, beautiful bill.
Well, I mean, I think that the main pressures in the state of California in terms of kind of future costs looks like some of the programs that you mentioned, mainly if we're going to look at it, CalPERS, CalSTARS, the fact that you have perhaps $500 billion in unfunded liabilities going forward.
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Chapter 4: What conspiracy theories have emerged regarding Charlie Kirk's murder?
What did you say and why did you say it? And why did you choose that moment to say it?
So the reason that I chose the moment to say it is that Candace Owens, who has some issues of her own, she has been saying since Charlie's death that there was effectively a conspiracy to kill him. She has implicated pretty much everybody, ranging from, believe it or not, French colonists intelligence to the Israelis, to various friends and family members possibly of Charlie in his murder.
And there have been an enormous number of people in the influencer space on the right who have gone along with this, who have massaged it, pretended not to notice it, tried to defend her, tried to pretend that it was an aspect of ā that questioning her was an aspect of free speech, which of course was a violation of free speech rather. which of course it isn't.
Criticism is not a violation of free speech. It's a form of free speech. And so I got up on stage and I basically gave a speech saying our responsibility as people with influence in the public space, we have some responsibilities and those responsibilities include truth above all. We ought to give you, we ought to be clear about what we believe. We should not hide the ball.
We should not allow quote unquote friendship to trump what is true just because you're friends with someone does not alleviate the responsibility for you to say when they're doing something that is wrong or immoral. We should not engage in audience capture just because our audience wants us to say a thing doesn't mean that we ought to say it.
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Chapter 5: What responsibilities do influencers have in the political discourse?
And we ought to ensure that we are held responsible for the things that we say and also the people that we have on and how we question those people. So of course, anybody has the right to have anybody on their show who they want. And then they should treat those people how they want to treat those people.
I mean, if I were to have on somebody who's in a deeply adversarial position, I think what's great about this conversation is you can see how adversarial we are with regard to some of our positions, but at the same time still have the discussion. If you are going to have on, for example, as Tucker Carlson did, Nick Fuentes, who is a self-stated
Nazi apologist, and then you're going to treat him with kid gloves, then you ought to be held responsible for that in the court of public opinion. And if we as influencers do not do that job, if we lie to you, if we fib to you, if we make predictions which we are then not held responsible for, if we hide behind, quote unquote, just asking questions, this is one of my bugaboos, I hate it.
You hear this a lot in the influencer space, mostly on the right, but some on the left as well. This sort of I'm not putting out a theory. I'm just asking questions. Well, there's a difference between seeking answers and just asking questions. Seeking answers, that's what questions are for.
Chapter 6: How does Ben Shapiro view Trump's foreign policy decisions?
It's to get better information, more clarification. I should have a better idea after the question of the answer than I did before. Just asking questions is usually a guise for willful ignorance. and for positing a theory without having to carry the responsibility for positing that theory. So if I say, you know, I'm just asking questions about whether you have peculiar sexual proclivities.
I don't have any evidence. I'm just asking the question. And then you say, well, where is that even coming from? Listen, I'm just asking questions. I'm not asking questions. I'm obviously attempting to impute something to you. And so this is what this speech was about.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of Trump's economic policies on the average American?
I named names in it. I mentioned Tucker Carlson. I mentioned Megyn Kelly, who had sort of gone out of her way to massage Candace Owens in her pursuit of bizarre conspiracy theories about Erica and Charlie's murder. I mentioned Steve because I think Steve has been doing many of the same things. And so that was the speech at AmFest.
And you felt it was necessary to name names as opposed to imply. You just felt it was important to be clear.
Yes, because I think that people should know exactly who they're listening to, particularly since they're going to hear from some of those people at the same event. And so I thought that people should, you know, be forewarned about the people they're going to hear about. Then they can make their own decisions and determine whether my assessment of those personalities is accurate or inaccurate.
And the reaction was exactly as you anticipated?
I think that the reaction in the room was, I think, overwhelming because a lot of people were very upset that people had been saying this about Charlie's murder, which, again, was carried out by all available evidence, by a person motivated by... hatred of Charlie's position on transgender issues in particular.
And all the evidence points to Tyler Robinson as being the person who shot Charlie Kirk. And so I think that a lot of people in the audience were deeply offended and upset, correctly so, at the kind of specious conspiracy theories that have been promoted by this group of folks. The sort of blowback that came afterward was really interesting.
There were a lot of people who obviously were very upset and Many of the people who I'd named, I'm not surprised, came back and fired back. I will say that I don't think any of them actually argued with the point that I was making.
They seemed to make collateral attacks, imputing intent to me, suggesting that my speech had something to do with Israel, which is funny since I didn't mention Israel one time in the entire speech. And I found that sort of bizarre. And then obviously you've seen sort of the influencer wars going on. But the whole point that I was making is here's a principle.
Either you uphold the principle or you don't uphold the principle. If you don't uphold the principle, I'm going to call you out for not upholding the principle. And it really is quite simple. It's not about friendship. It's not about whether we go fishing together. None of that has anything to do with the principle that's at stake.
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