The Ben Shapiro Show - 5 Reasons Why Trump Holds All The Cards On China

00:00:00.000 President Trump is headed to China in two days.

00:00:02.000 Now, according to the legacy media, President Trump is in a weak position.

00:00:06.000 He has no cards to play. 1.00

00:00:07.000 The Chinese have the upper hand. 1.00

00:00:10.000 This is total crap. 0.99

00:00:12.000 President Trump has spent a decade totally reshifting the global power map. 1.00

00:00:16.000 China is in trouble.

00:00:17.000 And President Trump is heading into the summit in a power position on every front.

00:00:21.000 Go back 10 years.

00:00:22.000 Everyone said that China would be dominant 10 years ago.

00:00:25.000 Wrong.

00:00:26.000 Well, today, America's critics, the left and the woke right, which is basically the new left, They say that America should cede global power to multipolarity, which means China and Russia. 0.99

00:00:37.000 That's not just stupid. 1.00

00:00:38.000 It makes them useful idiots for one of the world's worst regimes. 1.00

00:00:41.000 President Trump has reshuffled the global order even more in America's favor. 0.99

00:00:45.000 In a second, we'll get to the real story, how China is in serious trouble, how America is rising.

00:00:50.000 Plus, we'll talk to the acting labor secretary about some new economic numbers.

00:00:54.000 We'll get some pretty egregious jokes at the roast of Kevin Hart, and we will discuss whether indeed Elliot Page is playing Achilles in Christopher Nolan's new flick.

00:01:02.000 And where did Ellen Page go?

00:01:04.000 Why is she still missing?

00:01:05.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:13.000 So, as you know, this week, President Trump is headed to China to meet with the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

00:01:19.000 According to Reuters, the president and Xi Jinping are set to discuss Iran, Taiwan, artificial intelligence, and nuclear weapons as they weigh extending a critical minerals deal, according to U.S. officials who have been previewing Trump's two day visit to China this week.

00:01:33.000 Now, according to some sources, China is actually overconfident.

00:01:36.000 They believe that they have the upper hand.

00:01:39.000 Zhang Zhuang, who was a global health expert specializing in China, wrote for the New York Times over the weekend.

00:01:46.000 As Beijing prepares for President Trump's visit this week, I see a dangerous new overconfidence taking hold in my native country based on misplaced notions of American decline.

00:01:53.000 I fear it is fueling a sense of intransigence that is making Chinese leaders more willing to weaponize their nation's power and less likely to back down in future confrontations with the United States.

00:02:02.000 The belief is partly a defense mechanism to help Chinese people cope with their own problems, a slowing economy, a collapsing property market, high unemployment, and a widespread sense of uncertainty.

00:02:11.000 Now, again, one of the things that's happening here is that people in China are being allowed to see by the Chinese government.

00:02:17.000 Coverage of what's happening in America, and because that coverage is very often negative about America, that is ramping up the Chinese government's perception of strength.

00:02:26.000 It turns out that what we say to one another here in the United States has a massive outsized impact abroad.

00:02:32.000 This is why you will see members of the woke right appearing on Iranian television in clips, or on Russian television in clips.

00:02:39.000 It is true that when you say things that are untrue about the United States, and when you spread the idea that America is on her last legs, that's actually quite good for America's enemies.

00:02:48.000 And as you can see, Both China and Russia are trying to claim that the new status of planet Earth ought to be multipolarity.

00:02:54.000 What they mean by multipolarity is the same thing that is meant by Hassan Piker or Tucker Carlson.

00:02:59.000 The idea is America must cede global power.

00:03:02.000 So, Vladimir Putin, who again is a war criminal, here he was suggesting that multipolarity must be based on the UN Charter.

00:03:10.000 Again, the idea of the UN Charter, which is paid for by the United States.

00:03:14.000 We are the chief foundational lodestar of the United Nations.

00:03:20.000 The idea that the UN ought to be a club in the hands of Russia and China is insane.

00:03:23.000 Here was Putin at the Victory Day celebration.

00:03:27.000 The multipolar architecture of today must be based on the charter of the United Nations organization in its fullness and its entirety.

00:03:39.000 The security must be equal and indivisible, and cultural diversity and ethnic diversity of the planet must be taken into consideration, and the nations must have the right to determine their own future.

00:03:55.000 So, again, the idea that Russia cares about nations determining their own future while they're attempting to destroy Ukraine wholesale is pretty astonishing. 0.73

00:04:02.000 Meanwhile, their buddies in the sort of European slash Canadian world are helping them out.

00:04:08.000 Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, is calling for global cooperation based on common values and interests.

00:04:13.000 Now, I'm just wondering what those common values and interests would be with, say, Russia and China, because he has been reorienting Canada away from the United States in the aftermath of the trade war with the U.S. and toward China.

00:04:23.000 Here's Mark Carney again calling for a sort of multipolarity.

00:04:28.000 We're making this progress in part because we've recognized, in some cases before others, the degree to which, in the new world, sovereignty requires more than a country just being able to feed, fuel, and defend itself, as important as that is.

00:04:44.000 It requires access to those critical minerals, to space based communications, to sovereign cloud, AI, payment systems, clean energy, and vaccines.

00:04:54.000 And all of that demands partnership.

00:04:57.000 And there's no one stop shop for that partnership.

00:05:00.000 We need a variable.

00:05:01.000 Geometry, a dense web of partnerships across those core strategic capabilities and issues, drawing on common values and interests, because it's those common values and interests that will assure alignment and respect to those agreements.

00:05:16.000 So many common values and interests with, say, China and Russia.

00:05:19.000 And of course, he was saying at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank outlet.

00:05:24.000 Now, President Trump is headed over to China, and you're being told by our beloved legacy media that President Trump is somehow in a weak position.

00:05:30.000 Multipolarity is happening.

00:05:32.000 Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

00:05:35.000 China is in the weakest global position it has been in at least a couple of decades.

00:05:40.000 Go back one decade to the Obama administration.

00:05:43.000 So in September 2015, Obama and Xi Jinping had a joint event at the White House urging U.S. China cooperation.

00:05:49.000 Here is President Obama talking about China way back when.

00:05:53.000 So greater prosperity and greater security.

00:05:55.000 That's what American and Chinese cooperation can deliver.

00:05:59.000 And that's why I want to say again the United States welcomes the rise of a China that is peaceful, stable, Prosperous and a responsible player in global affairs.

00:06:10.000 And I'm committed to expanding our cooperation even as we address disagreements candidly and constructively.

00:06:18.000 Now, again, the idea from Barack Obama was that China would be a global partner with us.

00:06:22.000 We would work with them in the same way that he wanted Iran to be a global partner or Russia to be a global partner.

00:06:27.000 President Trump, you may remember when he was running back in 2016, his language with regard to China was a little different than that of Barack Obama.

00:06:36.000 Here he was in 2016 running for president. 0.98

00:06:40.000 When the Chinese traders come in, and they come in 20 at a time, they come in all the way. 0.98

00:06:46.000 But when the Chinese come in and they want to make great trade deals and they make the best trade deals, and not anymore, when I'm there, we turn it around, folks, we turn it around. 0.93

00:06:55.000 We have a $500 billion deficit, trade deficit with China. 0.98

00:07:00.000 We're going to turn it around, and we have the cards.

00:07:03.000 Don't forget, we're like the piggy bank that's being robbed.

00:07:06.000 We have the cards.

00:07:07.000 We have a lot of power with China.

00:07:09.000 When China doesn't want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, sorry, folks, you got to fix the problem. 0.72

00:07:14.000 Because we can't continue to allow China to rape our country. 0.95

00:07:19.000 And that's what they're doing. 0.98

00:07:22.000 I have to say, it is astonishing how well President Trump has held up.

00:07:25.000 There are all of these before and after photos from every president where it shows a president going into office, he looks all young and vibrant.

00:07:32.000 And eight years later, he looks as though death is upon him.

00:07:34.000 President Trump is identical.

00:07:36.000 He looks the same as he did in 2016.

00:07:38.000 It's unbelievable.

00:07:39.000 He's the only person in America who's not aging.

00:07:41.000 In any case, things are not going amazing for China in the Trump era.

00:07:44.000 See, here is the thing. 0.97

00:07:46.000 China is an awful, terrible, autocratic, economically fascist one party state. 0.92

00:07:51.000 And they've had serious systemic problems for years, decades even. 0.71

00:07:55.000 Now, those problems have been masked over the course of the last three decades or so by China's movement from a totally closed economy in the 1970s to an economy that actually engaged with world markets, that moved from communism at home into a sort of mercantilism under the predecessors to Xi Jinping, Zhang Zemin, and Hu Jintao.

00:08:16.000 They actually moved from full on communism toward, again, an embrace of global markets.

00:08:20.000 Even if their businesses were structured top down in China, that growth itself masked China's massive internal problems.

00:08:27.000 Now, there are always moronic economists here in the West who are in love with the idea of a mercantilist centralized state, meaning a centralized state that directs where private monies should be spent and then determines what kind of trade deals can be made.

00:08:41.000 Everything is government sponsored, everything is government subsidized, everything is government regulated. 0.75

00:08:44.000 And a lot of economists love this stuff because it gives them the illusion of control.

00:08:48.000 And over the course of sort of capitalism versus mercantilism, there's always been a group of economists.

00:08:54.000 Who sort of love this model.

00:08:56.000 Back in the 1930s, there were economists in the United States who were very jealous of the Nazi German and Italian fascist models because they were capable of mobilizing on a broad scale.

00:09:06.000 Now, both those economies were very weak.

00:09:08.000 One of the things that drove Germany toward war in the late 30s is the fact that they had driven up extraordinary foreign debt because they were spending all of their money on military industrial rebuilding.

00:09:17.000 But again, it was true of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 60s this idea that the Soviet Union was going to bury us.

00:09:24.000 And it's true now of China.

00:09:25.000 But China is not the economic powerhouse we are making it out.

00:09:28.000 To be.

00:09:29.000 Now, they can direct their economy in a few different directions with serious power.

00:09:33.000 And they can take whatever they have with their economy and they can cobble it together and they can punch in one direction.

00:09:38.000 So, for example, if they want to generate extraordinary levels of power, they can build lots of nuclear plants or they can dig for coal and they don't care about the environmental effects.

00:09:46.000 So, they can really outproduce us in terms of energy and they have been.

00:09:49.000 Or they can build some new cars that are pretty competitive by stealing and adapting Western technology, which they do. 0.97

00:09:56.000 But let us be real the Chinese economy is not truly competitive with the American economy. 0.94

00:10:02.000 In any serious sense, their products are not better than ours.

00:10:05.000 Their services are not better than ours.

00:10:07.000 Their economy is not better than ours.

00:10:08.000 Not even close.

00:10:10.000 Not even close.

00:10:12.000 Again, it is just a misnomer.

00:10:15.000 The reality is that China's nominal GDP per capita, and probably is lower than this, is like $15,000 a year.

00:10:23.000 $15,000 a year.

00:10:24.000 They have the same GDP per capita as Kazakhstan. 0.91

00:10:28.000 The United States, our nominal GDP per capita, right? 0.72

00:10:30.000 We're all suffering.

00:10:31.000 It's just terrible.

00:10:32.000 Our economy is, we hear this all the time.

00:10:35.000 Right now, our nominal GDP per capita is $95,000 a year.

00:10:40.000 The average American, right, if you just take the GDP and divide it by the number of Americans, our economy is like seven times the size of the Chinese economy on a per capita basis. 0.98

00:10:50.000 Their growth rates are always lies, they're always exaggerated. 0.92

00:10:52.000 All right, coming up, we'll get to all the reasons why China has serious systemic problems.

00:10:57.000 First, at some point, Americans collectively decided paying 80 or 90 bucks a month for wireless service was kind of normal.

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00:11:31.000 Modern phone bills, they're going up and up and up.

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00:12:12.000 A couple of years ago, I cut a YouTube video explaining China's problems.

00:12:15.000 A couple of years ago, I like saying I told you so, so I'm just going to.

00:12:19.000 And if you'd watched the video, you would have known.

00:12:19.000 I told you so.

00:12:22.000 They have five main problems. 0.98

00:12:24.000 One, demographics. 0.87

00:12:25.000 Huge demographic problem in China. 0.99

00:12:28.000 It's an old country with no kids at all. 0.99

00:12:30.000 Here is some of that video I cut a couple of years ago.

00:12:34.000 A healthy demographic chart in terms of age looks something like a pyramid.

00:12:37.000 Most of the citizens will be young, a solid number will be middle aged, and at the very top, the fewest will be elderly. 0.53

00:12:44.000 Even in 2000, the warning signs were clear in China.

00:12:47.000 You can see the dramatic lack of people in the nine and below group. 0.83

00:12:50.000 That did not change.

00:12:52.000 So here's what that same chart looks like by 2020.

00:12:55.000 Look how the vast bulk of the population is now over the age of 30.

00:12:58.000 According to the Chinese government itself, the one child policy prevented 400 million births.

00:13:04.000 China's population has already peaked.

00:13:06.000 It's now dropping.

00:13:07.000 The question is, as the population ages in a heavily Marxist system, who's going to pay the bills?

00:13:13.000 Again, if you'd listened a couple of years ago, you'd be ahead of the curve, which is usually true of this show. 0.95

00:13:18.000 Okay, reason number two that the Chinese economy is a problem, that it is not, in fact, totally competitive, is they lack innovation. 0.99

00:13:25.000 So they can build these gigantic labs and they can force a bunch of people into those labs. 0.87

00:13:28.000 But When you don't have free markets, the system of free markets allows for better products and services because of competition.

00:13:35.000 You want to know why every major AI company is located in the United States?

00:13:38.000 Because they're all competing with each other.

00:13:39.000 In fact, many of them are located a few blocks from one another in Silicon Valley.

00:13:44.000 And that is not atypical in a free market economy.

00:13:47.000 Because you have a business, the business starts off, it starts making a profit.

00:13:51.000 Another business says, I can do that better, and they jump in.

00:13:53.000 But what if the state decides which businesses should win and which ones should lose?

00:13:59.000 As I said again in that video a couple of years ago, innovation is not the Chief part of the Chinese economy.

00:14:06.000 Instead, it's just ramming things through, producing things at bulk.

00:14:11.000 Right now, the entire Chinese economy is reliant on producing things at scale, undercutting foreign markets, and stealing technology.

00:14:18.000 As the young working population declines, producing things at scale becomes a lot more difficult. 0.98

00:14:22.000 Cheap labor goes away. 0.52

00:14:24.000 Then there is the problem of innovation.

00:14:26.000 It turns out when you nationalize all innovation, you kill it.

00:14:29.000 The solution is you rob everybody else of their IP and then you try to recreate it.

00:14:33.000 Some Reports suggest that Chinese IP theft costs the United States alone up to $600 billion per year. 0.84

00:14:40.000 And again, that's what they did with DeepSeek. 0.86

00:14:41.000 They basically robbed a bunch of IP from the United States and they tried to get chips they weren't allowed access to and hooked those all up.

00:14:48.000 Does that mean they could outcompete us in a true competitive market?

00:14:50.000 The answer is no.

00:14:52.000 Reason number three that China has a problem is everybody pretends that China doesn't have a serious debt problem. 0.88

00:14:57.000 They hide their debt problem by stealing money from their citizens. 0.55

00:15:00.000 China has a massive debt problem. 0.51

00:15:02.000 Again, this is from my video a couple of years ago explaining.

00:15:07.000 The country's debt to GDP ratio is at least 159%.

00:15:10.000 That is 60% higher than the global rate, according to the SP Global Ratings.

00:15:14.000 The nation's total stock of corporate, household, and government debt is now over 300% of GDP.

00:15:19.000 It comprises 15% of all debt globally, according to the Institute of International Finance.

00:15:25.000 Because Chinese banks are owned by the state, their decision making is rooted in government interests rather than profitability.

00:15:31.000 That means they're probably carrying trillions of dollars in bad loans.

00:15:35.000 Okay, reason number four they got a problem.

00:15:37.000 We're always hearing about the Chinese military.

00:15:38.000 And yes, of course, they have a gigantic nuclear arsenal.

00:15:41.000 But technologically speaking, they are way behind the United States.

00:15:45.000 Now, maybe they're able to pick it up, but not if they're also lagging in AI.

00:15:48.000 This is why we need to win the AI race. 0.94

00:15:50.000 Because basically, the only thing that can solve Chinese demographic problems, productivity problems, and military problems is winning the AI race. 0.89

00:15:56.000 This is why it's so stupid when you see people from left to the woke right making the case that AI in the United States needs to be set back. 0.98

00:16:04.000 That's crazy. 1.00

00:16:04.000 It's nuts. 1.00

00:16:05.000 You're handing global power to the Chinese. 1.00

00:16:08.000 You're constantly hearing about China's gigantic army. 0.53

00:16:10.000 Well, they got some problems.

00:16:11.000 Again, here's from my video.

00:16:14.000 China's two million man army is indeed huge, but manpower isn't everything, as we saw in the Ukraine war.

00:16:19.000 Like Russia, the Chinese military isn't up to snuff.

00:16:22.000 China relies on older, less sophisticated chips, according to the RAND Corporation.

00:16:26.000 What's more, China doesn't yet have the capacity to project deep water power.

00:16:30.000 They have a lot of boats in their navy, and their navy is effective in coastal zones, but they have no capacity to project power beyond those zones.

00:16:37.000 So, the Chinese Navy is largely a brown water navy, meaning internal waterways, or a green water navy, meaning the Taiwan Straits, immediate areas right off their coast.

00:16:46.000 They do not have a serious blue water navy, meaning they can't project power all the way to, say, the Strait of Hormuz in any really serious way.

00:16:53.000 And then finally, of course, China's entire governmental system is built around lack of competition.

00:16:59.000 It is built around being closed to ideas. 0.98

00:17:02.000 And you will always see, there are always a class of morons who will claim that centralized control, whether economically or politically is better. 0.99

00:17:10.000 Thomas Friedman, of course, is one of these people. 0.98

00:17:12.000 But here's the problem with Chinese centralized control. 0.97

00:17:16.000 It turns out that you can't get innovation. 0.91

00:17:18.000 You can't get Building, you can't get the thriving, you can't get any of it.

00:17:22.000 Again, here's from that video a couple of years ago, which if you'd watched it a couple of years ago, you'd be pretty well informed as to what's happening.

00:17:29.000 While fools like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times write that China's one party autocracy can impose the important policies needed to move a society forward, the reality is the reverse.

00:17:39.000 Because the dictatorship is the be all end all, it can't allow the freedom and innovation necessary to grow the country and fix its problem. 0.94

00:17:46.000 So here's the thing President Trump knows all of this, and he has been spending the last 10 years putting the screws to China.

00:17:51.000 It is the through line on his foreign policy.

00:17:53.000 People look at Trump's foreign policy.

00:17:55.000 Say, what's he doing in Iran?

00:17:56.000 What's he doing in Venezuela?

00:17:56.000 I don't understand.

00:17:57.000 I don't understand.

00:17:58.000 What's he doing with regard to Japan?

00:18:00.000 I don't understand.

00:18:01.000 All of this is oriented at China.

00:18:03.000 All of it.

00:18:05.000 Now, President Trump is opportunistic in foreign policy terms.

00:18:08.000 He waits for an opportunity to arise and then he takes advantage of it.

00:18:10.000 But let us be clear Venezuela represented between 4% and 5% of total Chinese oil imports before we captured Nicolas Maduro.

00:18:18.000 That is now down to basically zero.

00:18:21.000 And not only that, Venezuela acted as a go between for China and Iran.

00:18:25.000 They don't anymore.

00:18:26.000 In 2023, 10 to 15 percent of Chinese entire oil supply came from Iran.

00:18:31.000 Guess what?

00:18:32.000 They are not getting now any of that.

00:18:35.000 Saudi Arabia provides something like 14 to 15 percent of oil to China.

00:18:38.000 That is why China has been trying to woo Saudi Arabia.

00:18:42.000 But is that going to be successful?

00:18:44.000 Well, they've alienated the UAE.

00:18:46.000 The UAE provides six to seven percent of their total oil supply, and UAE, contra Saudi, is moving away, away from China. 0.61

00:18:54.000 UAE is moving toward America. 0.51

00:18:55.000 UAE is moving toward Israel. 0.51

00:18:57.000 UAE, by the way, being far smarter in their approach to foreign policy than Saudi right now. 0.65

00:19:01.000 Saudi is trying to split the baby, being half American, half Chinese. 0.64

00:19:04.000 It's not going to work.

00:19:05.000 UAE already broke from OPEC.

00:19:08.000 People missed what a huge development this is.

00:19:10.000 OPEC, which again was a gigantic cartel designed to restrict oil supply coming from the Middle East, UAE, Saudi, they were all a part of it.

00:19:19.000 UAE said, no, we're not doing that anymore.

00:19:21.000 We're now going to produce oil how we want to produce oil.

00:19:23.000 And they're going to take those oil winnings and they're going to invest them in tech.

00:19:26.000 In military and industrial cooperation with Israel rather than opposition to Israel.

00:19:30.000 If Saudi goes the way of China, they will be on the wrong side of this particular battle.

00:19:37.000 Now, a lot has changed.

00:19:38.000 Democrats today even concede that China is a geopolitical opponent of the United States.

00:19:42.000 This has become a pretty bipartisan issue.

00:19:45.000 And the effect on China has been, again, very, very, very bad.

00:19:47.000 Their nominal GDP is $15,000 per capita.

00:19:52.000 That is way behind the United States, way, way, way behind the United States.

00:19:58.000 They've even been having to abandon some of their biggest initiatives.

00:20:01.000 So, you remember a dozen years ago, they were talking about this thing called Belt and Road.

00:20:04.000 This is their big thing Belt and Road.

00:20:06.000 Belt and Road was an initiative, or what they called the Silk Road Initiative.

00:20:09.000 It was designed to basically create massive debt traps for countries.

00:20:14.000 They would give them free money.

00:20:16.000 The money was not free, it would be attached to constraints.

00:20:19.000 Those countries which were poor would take the loans.

00:20:21.000 And then Beijing would basically foreclose on the loans and take control of property and strategic areas and all the rest.

00:20:26.000 And countries were joining up because, hey, free money.

00:20:29.000 But it turns out that countries have been leaving the Belt and Road Initiative.

00:20:33.000 And even Chinese investment in Belt and Road has been dropping pretty precipitously.

00:20:38.000 According to the Institute of International Studies in Australia, Panama, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of them have been moving away from the Belt and Road Initiative.

00:20:48.000 According to that institute, Panama's withdrawal exemplifies this dynamic.

00:20:52.000 Following U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit and warnings regarding Chinese influence over the Panama Canal, Panama chose not to renew its memorandum of understanding with the Belt and Road Initiative, a decision celebrated by Washington.

00:21:06.000 According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, China has quietly begun to pull the plug on BRI infrastructure spending. 0.87

00:21:12.000 China's overseas development financing shrunk from a high of more than $80 billion in new funding in 2016 to around $5 billion in 2021.

00:21:20.000 In Africa, the numbers are particularly stark.

00:21:22.000 They dropped from $30 billion in 2016 to $1 billion last year. 0.98

00:21:27.000 And again, a huge part of this also is because China totally screwed all of planet Earth with the COVID pandemic. 0.88

00:21:34.000 All right, coming up, President Trump is going to be discussing a wide variety of issues with Xi Jinping in China. 0.96

00:21:38.000 We'll go through all of those plus.

00:21:40.000 We'll be getting to the worst joke I've ever heard, I think, from Pete Davidson first.

00:21:44.000 There's apparently no piece of personal information anymore that somebody somewhere is not trying to monetize.

00:21:49.000 Your browsing history, your searches, your shopping habits, your location data.

00:21:52.000 Probably the exact moment you give up and order takeout at 1130 at night.

00:21:56.000 Here's the crazy part.

00:21:57.000 Most people barely even realize this is happening.

00:22:00.000 Modern surveillance is huge.

00:22:02.000 You have people who are following you around and checking all of your data, but actually it's just your internet service provider.

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00:22:57.000 What is the president likely to address with Xi Jinping when he heads on over to China?

00:23:02.000 Well, four issues are on the table AI, Iran, the global economy, and Taiwan.

00:23:08.000 So on AI, first thing to understand, we are dominating them on AI.

00:23:13.000 I understand that a lot of people are looking at things like DeepSeek, where they kind of surprise us.

00:23:18.000 And saying, well, now China is on the verge of beating us. 0.50

00:23:20.000 They are not.

00:23:21.000 Every major AI company is an American AI company.

00:23:25.000 All of them Anthropic, XAI, obviously, OpenAI, Gemini.

00:23:34.000 These are all major American perplexity.

00:23:36.000 Every single major American company in AI is a world leader in AI. 0.85

00:23:43.000 That is not true in China. 0.70

00:23:45.000 So, what are they relying upon?

00:23:46.000 They're now relying upon their friends abroad, people like Bernie Sanders, to try to shut down AI.

00:23:51.000 This is why it is incredible.

00:23:52.000 Definitely dangerous, really, really dangerous when you see people in American politics trying to shut down the development of AI.

00:23:58.000 Again, responsible regulation is one thing, but the sort of populist drive toward AI bad, AI data centers bad, shut down the AI. 0.55

00:24:06.000 If you want to cede power to China, that's a great way to do it. 0.79

00:24:08.000 There's a reason why Bernie was joined by a bunch of Chinese cutouts at the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance in order to talk about AI. 0.97

00:24:17.000 Here is Bernie Sanders standing with the Chinese. 0.98

00:24:20.000 Bottom line, what I believe and what I suspect that most people in the United States, China, and around the world believe is that we need international cooperation between the nations of the world to prevent the possibility of a cataclysmic development. 0.89

00:24:39.000 We need to cooperate, we need dialogue.

00:24:43.000 Do you really believe that the Chinese give two dams about safety in AI? 0.98

00:24:48.000 This is a country that keeps millions of people in concentration camps. 0.92

00:24:52.000 You think that they care deeply about human rights with regard to AI?

00:24:57.000 Totally nuts.

00:24:58.000 And China, by the way, is stealing our tech, like at scale, according to the American Spectator.

00:25:03.000 Last month, the White House accused Beijing of industrial scale theft of know-how from American AI labs.

00:25:08.000 Meanwhile, U.S. prosecutors claim to have busted an international smuggling ring that funneled advanced chips worth billions of dollars to China in defiance of sanctions.

00:25:15.000 The CCP is also stepping up efforts to protect China's own AI innovation, blocking a $2 billion takeover by Meta, Of a Chinese AI startup called Manus.

00:25:24.000 For good measure, the authorities then banned the founders of Manus from leaving the country.

00:25:28.000 They are also engaging in something called distillation.

00:25:30.000 Distillation involves the creation of thousands of fake accounts for the targeted AI chatbot or tool with the accounts working together to extract information.

00:25:38.000 So, for example, Anthropic said it had detected some 24,000 fraudulent accounts, which had generated more than 16 million exchanges with its powerful cloud chatbot.

00:25:48.000 It accused leading Chinese labs of being behind the campaign in order to acquire powerful capabilities in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost.

00:25:54.000 Again, they are stealing tech.

00:25:56.000 That is what they are doing, which is why even Jensen Huang over at NVIDIA, who wants to be able to sell sort of lower level chips to the Chinese, says that NVIDIA is not going to be selling top of the line.

00:26:06.000 Here he was at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week.

00:26:10.000 Should they have the latest and greatest chips?

00:26:13.000 No.

00:26:14.000 We have to write.

00:26:15.000 The United States, we're an American company.

00:26:17.000 The United States has to write to make sure that, and we're delighted by that, and we're huge supporters of it, that the United States has the first, the most, and the best.

00:26:27.000 But simultaneously, All American companies should compete globally.

00:26:33.000 Because remember, in the final analysis, we're trying to maximize exports.

00:26:37.000 We're trying to maximize American exports.

00:26:39.000 Okay, so again, we are winning.

00:26:43.000 We are winning.

00:26:44.000 So, what should President Trump do with regard to AI? 0.97

00:26:45.000 He certainly shouldn't make concessions to the Chinese on AI. 1.00

00:26:48.000 We're dominating them. 0.99

00:26:49.000 And President Trump is not going to make concessions on AI. 0.94

00:26:51.000 We need to continue dominating the Chinese for military reasons, for economic reasons. 0.84

00:26:55.000 Okay, now, Iran. 0.99

00:26:57.000 So, again, there's been an idea here that China somehow is winning with regard to this. 0.98

00:27:02.000 China is the big loser. 0.98

00:27:03.000 The biggest loser with regard to the Iran situation. 0.98

00:27:06.000 I mean, Iran is the biggest loser, obviously, but China is the second biggest loser because remember, 10 to 15% of their oil was coming from Iran. 0.85

00:27:15.000 They want the Iranian regime to stand.

00:27:17.000 But at the same time, Iran is blocking oil that is mainly going to China.

00:27:21.000 54% of all Chinese oil imports are coming from the Middle East, and a huge percentage of that ain't going out.

00:27:28.000 Like, we don't have a supply problem in the United States, we have a price problem in the United States.

00:27:31.000 China has a supply problem because so much of their oil is coming from the Middle East in the first place.

00:27:37.000 So, President Trump actually does have tremendous leverage with China with regard to Iran.

00:27:42.000 According to the Financial Times, President Trump will urge Xi Jinping to curb China's support for Iran when the leaders meet in Beijing.

00:27:51.000 According to one U.S. official, he said Trump would resume the previous discussions with Xi about China's support for Iran and Russia, including providing them with dual use components and potential arms exports.

00:27:59.000 And again, the idea that America has no cards to play is insane.

00:28:03.000 You want to, by the way, you want to end China's support for Iran? 0.79

00:28:06.000 Very, very easy.

00:28:08.000 A couple of bombing runs and China's support for Iran is over. 0.82

00:28:10.000 Just destroy their energy facilities and there's nothing left for China to care about in Iran. 0.77

00:28:15.000 You think that China cares about the Islamists in Iran? 0.98

00:28:17.000 They love them. 0.96

00:28:18.000 They may like that they're kind of vaguely anti American or wildly anti American, but they certainly don't like the idea that revolutionary Islam is somehow going to take over planet Earth. 0.79

00:28:28.000 They're interning a million Muslims right now in China. 0.68

00:28:33.000 The only reason they care about Iran is because of the oil resources. 0.95

00:28:35.000 So if we decided to really put the screws to China, all we would have to do is bomb Karg Island and destroy their energy facilities in Iran. 0.82

00:28:41.000 And suddenly, China switches sides because all China cares about at that point is freeing up the Iraqi oil, freeing up the Saudi oil, freeing up. 0.82

00:28:48.000 The UAE's oil, Qatar's oil.

00:28:51.000 Meanwhile, America, by cracking down on Iran's economic machine, has cracked down on China as well.

00:28:59.000 According to Zineb Riboa, who's a research fellow with the Hudson Institute Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, we have been systematically degrading China's financial machine in Iran.

00:29:10.000 Quote First, Beijing built the financial plumbing, developing methods for shadow banking, obscuring the origins of Iranian crude, rotating ship identities, layering payments through third country intermediaries.

00:29:20.000 Second, its teapot refinery sector absorbed most of Iran's oil exports to China.

00:29:24.000 Third, Xi used Iran as a rehearsal space, refining evasion techniques he intended to deploy on a far greater scale if Washington decided to directly pressure China.

00:29:34.000 However, we have now unleashed Operation Economic Fury, and it's cracking down on all of these things.

00:29:41.000 What appears to be a pressure campaign against the IRGC and another against Beijing's financial architecture is, in fact, a single operation.

00:29:48.000 And President Trump is not wavering here.

00:29:49.000 I mean, it's an amazing thing.

00:29:52.000 I've said it before.

00:29:53.000 President Trump is doing the single most politically courageous thing I have ever seen because, again, it is always a risky game to get involved in foreign policy that involves kinetic action.

00:30:04.000 That's particularly true in the Middle East. 0.95

00:30:05.000 And President Trump has the cojones to actually stay the course. 0.98

00:30:09.000 So Iran keeps trying to drag this out. 0.98

00:30:11.000 But one of the things you should notice about what Iran is doing Iran keeps trying to fire on ships.

00:30:15.000 The reason they're firing on ships is because the worst case scenario for Iran basically goes like this The worst thing that could happen for Iran is the United States decides to destroy its energy supply. 0.55

00:30:25.000 We destroyed their energy supply.

00:30:27.000 And basically, they're the black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

00:30:31.000 They can lie there with no arms and no legs.

00:30:32.000 That's about all they can do if we destroy their energy supplies.

00:30:35.000 But the second worst thing for them is the maintenance of the blockade.

00:30:39.000 And so they're trying to draw America into some sort of kinetic action that does not end with the United States blowing up their oil facilities because they would rather fight than allow the United States to continue to choke off their oil supply to and fro. 0.67

00:30:52.000 So President Trump put out a statement after Iran's latest useless proposal. 0.71

00:30:57.000 In which he said, Iran has been playing games with the United States and the rest of the world for 47 years, delay, delay, delay, and then finally hit payter when Barack Hussein Obama became president. 0.67

00:31:05.000 He was not only good to them, he was great, actually going to their side, jettisoning Israel and all other allies, true, and giving Iran a major and very powerful new lease on life. 0.75

00:31:13.000 Hundreds of billions of dollars, $1.7 billion in green cash flown into Tehran, was handed to them on a silver platter. 0.87

00:31:19.000 Every bank in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland was emptied out. 0.95

00:31:21.000 It was so much money that when it arrived, the Iranian thugs had no idea what to do with it. 0.98

00:31:25.000 They had never seen money like this and never will again. 0.99

00:31:27.000 It was taken off their plane in suitcases and satchels, and the Iranians couldn't believe their luck. 1.00

00:31:31.000 They finally found the greatest sucker of all of them in the form of a weak and stupid American president. 1.00

00:31:41.000 He was a disaster as our leader, but not as bad as sleepy Joe Biden. 1.00

00:31:44.000 For 47 years, the Iranians have been tapping us along, keeping us waiting, killing our people with their roadside bombs, destroying protests, recently wiping out 42,000 innocent unarmed protesters, and laughing at our now great again country.

00:31:54.000 They will be laughing no longer, President Trump. 0.85

00:31:58.000 Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, he appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. 0.82

00:32:02.000 He says, There are lots of ways we can end Iran's nuclear program.

00:32:07.000 The nuclear expertise in the United States is within my department. 0.80

00:32:11.000 They are ready.

00:32:12.000 They've been monitoring what's happening in Iran.

00:32:15.000 And they've been involved in the dialogues about how would we handle this material?

00:32:20.000 Where would we take it?

00:32:21.000 What would we do with it?

00:32:22.000 But that is a critical thing.

00:32:24.000 Iran has nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%.

00:32:29.000 So close to weapons grade, way higher than any potential commercial use of it.

00:32:35.000 They've lied all along that it's for a civil nuclear program, it's for their own energy.

00:32:39.000 It was never about that, it was always about weapons. 0.95

00:32:43.000 And the world just can't live with a nuclear armed Iran. 0.99

00:32:46.000 We need to remove the nuclear material from Iran and end their enrichment activities to produce more of it. 0.98

00:32:54.000 There's many ways that that can be achieved, but that must be achieved. 0.96

00:32:58.000 One of the chief ways that that can be achieved, by the way, is again, destroying their actual energy facilities, and they don't have the money to pursue nuclear weapons.

00:33:05.000 All their scientists are dead.

00:33:06.000 The top levels of the IRGC are dead, and they will run out of money to pay their boys.

00:33:11.000 Well, this is having a major impact.

00:33:13.000 It is having a major impact in Iran.

00:33:15.000 Again, what you're hearing from the legacy media.

00:33:17.000 that Iran can last for years like this. 0.79

00:33:19.000 No, they absolutely cannot.

00:33:20.000 When they run out of money and people start starving, things are going to get rough for the Iranian regime, and they know it.

00:33:25.000 We'll get to more on what's going on in Iran.

00:33:28.000 Plus, we will get into the latest on the economy.

00:33:30.000 Labor secretary will stop by first.

00:33:32.000 One thing everybody learns eventually is that a resume can still sound impressive and tell you almost nothing.

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00:34:34.000 According to the New York Times, an Iranian government official, Hulam Hossein Mohammadi, estimated that the war has caused the loss of 1 million jobs and the direct and indirect unemployment of 2 million people.

00:34:46.000 That was reported by an actual regime outlet.

00:34:50.000 Mehdi Bostanchi, head of the country's Coordination Council of Industries, a body that liaises between companies and the government, Said Iran's industrial sector was going through a contraction that would affect as many as 3.5 million workers.

00:35:03.000 Iran is in serious, serious trouble.

00:35:07.000 Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, he did an interview with 60 Minutes, his first major American interview since the beginning of the war over the weekend.

00:35:14.000 And he pointed out that a lot has been accomplished, but America and Israel would still have to deal with Iran's nuclear materials.

00:35:21.000 It's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran. 0.76

00:35:28.000 There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.

00:35:33.000 There are still proxies that Iran supports. 0.76

00:35:36.000 There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. 0.98

00:35:40.000 Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there, and there's work to be done.

00:35:46.000 President Trump This war cannot end until all those things are eliminated.

00:35:50.000 Well, certainly we want to get the nuclear material out.

00:35:53.000 We certainly want to get the enrichment sites dismantled.

00:35:57.000 We've curbed a lot, we've degraded a lot of the missile production sites.

00:36:01.000 The agreement should cover all these areas, including the proxies.

00:36:04.000 Can it end with, as President Trump has led now, a blockade and economic pressure on them to do it with non military means?

00:36:15.000 Fine, if it can be accomplished, why not?

00:36:18.000 But if not, both the United States and Israel, we both agree, President Trump and I, that if necessary, you can re engage them militarily if it's necessary.

00:36:29.000 Prime Minister Netanyahu, by the way, also added that a lot of Arab countries have been strengthening alliances with Israel.

00:36:34.000 That is absolutely true.

00:36:36.000 That is 100% true.

00:36:38.000 And China's support for Iran has not resulted in greater support for China, but in less support for China in the region.

00:36:47.000 I now see the possibility of the expansion of those agreements and the expansion and the deepening of the agreements we do have to alliances with Arab states of the kind that we never even dreamed of. 0.74

00:37:01.000 And that's the result of the change in the relative power of Israel, the fact that we face down this neighborhood. 0.84

00:37:08.000 Bully this killer regime in Iran that's brought quite a few of the Arab countries closer together with Israel, and that's good for peace. 0.84

00:37:17.000 I'm hearing the fact from Arab countries, which I won't get into, who say All of them? 0.96

00:37:23.000 No. 0.60

00:37:24.000 But some of them, and I never heard that before, let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because that, in fact, deters Iran. 0.84

00:37:33.000 Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because we can work up our defenses as a result of it. 0.56

00:37:38.000 Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because we can do amazing things with Israel.

00:37:44.000 Now, worth noting that in this interview, Netanyahu said that his goal is to draw American aid to Israel down to zero.

00:37:50.000 So, for all those people who are claiming that Netanyahu wants to increase American aid to Israel over time and spend more American taxpayer dollars in Israel, and there's a very strong case that the memo of understanding between Israel and the United States actually benefits the United States.

00:38:02.000 Number one, it all goes back to our military industrial complex.

00:38:05.000 That's the reality.

00:38:06.000 It goes to our defense contractors.

00:38:07.000 Number two, we get access to Israeli military tech.

00:38:12.000 And number three, For better or for worse, the United States is frequently yanking the chain of the Israelis when they're in the middle of aggressive military action based on that MOU.

00:38:22.000 So Netanyahu wants to cut it off.

00:38:23.000 It's why President Trump said, What are you doing?

00:38:25.000 I don't want to cut it off.

00:38:25.000 In any case, here was Netanyahu on 60 Minutes.

00:38:29.000 Do you believe it's time for the state of Israel to reexamine and possibly reset its financial relationship to the United States, meaning what the United States provides to Israel on an annual basis?

00:38:42.000 Absolutely.

00:38:43.000 And I've said this to President Trump, I've said it to our own people.

00:38:48.000 Their jaws dropped, but I said, Look.

00:38:50.000 What do you mean?

00:38:51.000 What are you saying?

00:38:52.000 I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have, because we receive $3.8 billion a year.

00:39:06.000 And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support.

00:39:14.000 Can you give me a timetable?

00:39:16.000 I said, Let's start now.

00:39:18.000 And do it over the next decade, over the next 10 years.

00:39:21.000 But I want to start now.

00:39:22.000 I don't want to wait for the next Congress.

00:39:25.000 I want to start now.

00:39:28.000 So, when it comes to what President Trump's going to talk about with China on Iran, the United States has all the cards with China.

00:39:33.000 Remember, they are way more dependent on that region than we are at this point.

00:39:37.000 And the United States can do many things that make the pain very, very bad for China in the region.

00:39:42.000 Okay.

00:39:44.000 Third issue is Taiwan.

00:39:45.000 So, of course, China would love to grab Taiwan.

00:39:49.000 And there's been a lot of loose talk, I would say, about the idea that the United States is going to change the status quo on Taiwan.

00:39:55.000 Highly unlikely.

00:39:56.000 Highly unlikely.

00:39:57.000 The United States has always taken a strategically ambiguous position with regard to Taiwan.

00:40:03.000 We constantly are saying that Taiwan is its own polity, but at the same time, there's one China policy, which is that Taiwan theoretically is a part of China, all the rest of it.

00:40:12.000 We've never been clear that Taiwan is its own country, for example, because we're afraid that if we say that, then China will try to invade Taiwan.

00:40:19.000 According to the Taipei Times, Taipei will be watching for any sign that Trump has unnerved partners with his transactional approach to alliances, could soften or reframe longstanding U.S. policy on Taiwan.

00:40:30.000 Again, I think that that is unlikely.

00:40:33.000 I think it is likely that the president will continue to maintain current American positioning with regard to Taiwan.

00:40:38.000 And worth noting, because of the new relationship between Japan and the United States, and obviously we have a very good relationship with Japan, we have for decades at this point, but the brand new leadership in Japan is extremely aggressive in its defense of its territorial rights and wants to ensure that Taiwan does not fall into the clutches of China and is rebuilding militarily.

00:40:58.000 We're going to have allies in the region who can help us out.

00:41:00.000 When it comes to the defense of Taiwan in the future.

00:41:02.000 So, likely nothing will change with regard to Taiwan.

00:41:05.000 And finally, they will discuss the economy.

00:41:08.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, discussions will focus largely on trade issues, namely the Chinese purchases of American agricultural goods, energy products, and aerospace technologies like Boeing airplanes.

00:41:18.000 The leaders will also discuss establishing a U.S. China Board of Trade that would consider how the countries can trade goods that aren't related to national security.

00:41:25.000 Now, again, China's economy is a lot weaker than people tend to think it is. 0.52

00:41:30.000 They're stealing a lot from us. 0.68

00:41:32.000 Probably there'll be some papering over of those differences.

00:41:34.000 The reality, again, is that when it comes to the economic battle between China and the United States, we have the upper hand and it ain't particularly close.

00:41:41.000 Joining me on the line is Keith Sonderling.

00:41:43.000 He's the acting U.S. Secretary of Labor.

00:41:45.000 Secretary Sonderling, thanks so much for the time.

00:41:47.000 Really appreciate it.

00:41:49.000 Thanks for having me.

00:41:52.000 So, obviously, a very solid jobs report coming out late last week, suggesting 115,000 jobs added across various sectors.

00:42:01.000 And the Trump administration has done a pretty great job.

00:42:03.000 Job of ensuring that the jobs that are being added are in the private sector versus just adding jobs in the public sector.

00:42:08.000 Let me talk about sort of the labor balance under President Trump versus President Biden.

00:42:12.000 Yeah, and that's a really great point you made.

00:42:15.000 And two things before I get to that, it's really important to note that once again, President Trump continues to prove the doubters wrong.

00:42:23.000 Just this past jobs report 94% of the economists that Bloomberg surveyed thought the jobs would come in around 65,000, the number, and it was nearly double that.

00:42:34.000 The month before, the same thing.

00:42:35.000 The month before was actually.

00:42:36.000 Revised upwards from 178,000 to 185,000.

00:42:40.000 But when President Trump ran, he committed to right sizing the federal government and getting jobs back in the private sector, which is the exact opposite of what the Biden administration did.

00:42:50.000 Their job numbers were going up because they were just continuing to hire in the federal government and have a bloated federal government.

00:42:57.000 So we're pleased to report that the federal government is at its smallest size since 1966.

00:43:04.000 And that saves taxpayers over $40 billion a year.

00:43:08.000 And what's expected?

00:43:10.000 Exciting about this job report, it continues to show the private sector is growing, but growing in the right places.

00:43:15.000 Construction is up.

00:43:16.000 And that's something that the president has really been pushing on.

00:43:19.000 As we see manufacturing coming back, as we see so many different industries coming back, we're seeing the correlating construction jobs that are leading into the manufacturing jobs.

00:43:28.000 So that's what we look at.

00:43:29.000 The private sector is booming, exactly what President Trump promised.

00:43:35.000 So let's talk about why Americans are kind of dyspeptic about the economy.

00:43:39.000 Obviously, we've got some heartburn.

00:43:40.000 The polling shows that Americans.

00:43:41.000 Think the economy is moving in the wrong direction, which statistically speaking is not true.

00:43:45.000 It seems like there are a couple of factors that are obviously playing in here.

00:43:49.000 One of them is the uncertainty about gas prices.

00:43:51.000 Obviously, gas prices are up since the beginning of the Iran war.

00:43:54.000 So, why don't we start with that one?

00:43:56.000 I've been making the case on the show that, of course, gas prices are up during the Iran war, and then they will go wildly down once the Iran war is over, because either you will see some sort of behavior change in Iran or regime change in Iran, which will open up gas markets there.

00:44:09.000 Also, one of the things people are not noticing is that UAE just broke out of OPEC, which means that they're no longer going to be cartelized in terms of actually being part of a gigantic cartel that restricts oil output.

00:44:19.000 And so the price is dropping pretty precipitously when this is all over.

00:44:22.000 That seems like a pretty sure thing.

00:44:25.000 Absolutely.

00:44:25.000 And the president has been very clear Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, period.

00:44:30.000 So, you know, the correlating gas price issue that we're seeing, it's coming down.

00:44:35.000 Last week, Brent crude oil went down by a great percentage, and we're going to continue to see gas prices coming down.

00:44:41.000 It is temporary, but a metric we look at at the Department of Labor, really, for the workforce is that wages continue to, wage increase continues to beat inflation.

00:44:50.000 And I think that should give American confidence that they're earning more than any inflationary temporary gains related to the conflict in Iran.

00:45:00.000 And you said it best, these prices are coming down, they'll continue to come down.

00:45:04.000 It's temporary, and any of the economic numbers that have changed related to that are temporary and will continue to decrease.

00:45:11.000 So, that is not something that people should worry about.

00:45:14.000 People should worry about job opportunities and job opportunities for Americans and industries that have left and have been pushed out of the United States coming back.

00:45:22.000 You know, this past month, we've seen historic investments.

00:45:25.000 Eli Lilly, $4.5 billion into Indiana.

00:45:28.000 General Motors, $830 million for plants in Michigan and Ohio.

00:45:34.000 And that's what matters to the American workers.

00:45:37.000 High paid, High skilled jobs that left, they're coming back.

00:45:42.000 One of the other areas that a lot of Americans are uncertain about is, of course, artificial intelligence.

00:45:47.000 So people don't know very much about it.

00:45:48.000 A lot of people are using it on their phones or using it in their businesses.

00:45:51.000 But you can see that there's sort of an inverse proportion between the number of people who are using it, which is very high, and the fears about it, which are also very, very high confidence in it, very low.

00:46:00.000 A lot of people are worried that they're going to lose their jobs to a guy.

00:46:03.000 The evidence is precisely the opposite so far.

00:46:06.000 In fact, you've seen extraordinary job gains.

00:46:09.000 In, for example, construction of AI data centers, you're seeing job gains in a lot of these AI related industries.

00:46:15.000 What do you make of Americans being worried about AI?

00:46:18.000 Well, that's a key initiative of ours here at the Department of Labor to make sure that not only Americans have the baseline skills and understanding of what these tools can and can't do, but really to dive into what AI's impact on the workforce is.

00:46:32.000 Right now, so much of the narrative being out there, whether it's related to layoffs or whether it's related to these, tools being built that may replace your job.

00:46:41.000 That's really driven by the outside.

00:46:43.000 And what we're trying to do here is work with private sector partners, work with tech companies, work with industry who's interested in these products, who's developing these products and really make sure that the American workers have those skills so they feel comfortable working side by side with AI and not fearing that's going to be their robot replacement.

00:47:02.000 So we have an initiative here, both on the AI literacy side, not just for the current workforce, but future generations of workers.

00:47:09.000 Working with the Department of Education to make sure that AI literacy gets into the pre K through 12 education, working with our state workforce partners, who we give a lot of money to to train the workforce.

00:47:20.000 We believe that every job is going to have an AI component to it, whether you're in construction, whether you're a lawyer, or really any industries.

00:47:27.000 And we're really pushing on the states when we give them federal dollars to do workforce training that they have an AI literacy component to it.

00:47:36.000 So the current generation and the next generation of American workers are entering that job with the baseline skills they need and they won't have that fear.

00:47:46.000 Secretary Sonderling, there's been a lot of focus on the president heading over to China this week.

00:47:49.000 The president has completely reset the table over the course of his two presidencies now.

00:47:54.000 With regard to China, people tend to forget that the Obama administration was treating China as not only a rising power, but somebody we should be sharing geopolitical power with, pursuing a sort of multipolarity with regard to China.

00:48:05.000 The president of the United States has, since his very earliest days campaigning, pointed out that China is a geopolitical opponent of the United States and has refused to allow them to take advantage of us.

00:48:15.000 What are you looking for the president to do with regard to his summit this week with Xi Jinping over in China?

00:48:21.000 Well, I'm very confident that the president will do the right thing when he's over there.

00:48:25.000 You know, he went there during his first term.

00:48:28.000 Which was a very successful visit.

00:48:30.000 And I know they're very much, he's very much looking forward to going this turn.

00:48:33.000 But what's important for us here at the Department of Labor, you know, when it comes to that geopolitical conversation, is bringing back those industries that have left.

00:48:42.000 And that's what the president does wherever he goes throughout the country and throughout the world.

00:48:47.000 When he negotiates with foreign leaders, when he talks to foreign countries, companies, his main focus is getting industry back in the United States to get American workers those high skilled, high paying jobs.

00:48:59.000 So I have full confidence.

00:49:01.000 When he's over there or wherever he is in the world, he will always be advocating for American businesses and American workers.

00:49:07.000 And that's what I look forward to seeing from his trip.

00:49:11.000 Well, attacking Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.

00:49:13.000 Secretary, thanks so much for the time.

00:49:14.000 Really appreciate it.

00:49:16.000 Thanks for having me.

00:49:17.000 Meanwhile, many of the people who have been claiming that America ought to give up global power in favor of multipolarity, well, they've been saying we ought to do so in favor of Russia, right?

00:49:27.000 You've heard this from Tucker Carlson of the woke right or the new left. 0.97

00:49:31.000 You've been hearing this from people like the Hassan Pikers of the world. 0.96

00:49:34.000 There's this horseshoe of people who think that America ought to give up power to the Russians.

00:49:39.000 Well, over the weekend, President Trump announced that the leaders of Russia and Ukraine had agreed to his request for a three day ceasefire.

00:49:45.000 It wasn't really very ceasefire y, shall we say?

00:49:48.000 According to the Kyiv Post, despite that high profile humanitarian ceasefire, the Ukrainian general staff reported 147 combat engagements on the truce's opening day.

00:49:58.000 Russian forces reportedly launched over 7,000 kamikaze drones and conducted 2,000 shelling attacks, resulting in civilian deaths in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

00:50:09.000 Combat was very intense.

00:50:12.000 Ukrainian forces reported the neutralization of some 840 soldiers and 75 artillery systems.

00:50:16.000 Okay, so we should point out at this point why in the world would we concede power to the Russians?

00:50:21.000 Why?

00:50:22.000 They're abjectly, clearly opposed to American interests.

00:50:26.000 This is another area, by the way, where President Trump's actual action versus his rhetoric have not been the same.

00:50:32.000 The president has wanted an off ramp on Russia, Ukraine for a while, but you may notice the president is openly talking about moving troops out of Germany.

00:50:39.000 He's not talking about bringing those troops home, he's talking about moving military bases.

00:50:43.000 East to Poland.

00:50:45.000 He's talking about taking troops from Italy and moving them into Poland, into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you know, like up on Russia's borders to stop them from getting aggressive.

00:50:54.000 And we should point out here that Russia, this war has been a disaster for Russia, a disaster, clearly.

00:51:00.000 Russian fatalities in this war, estimates suggest somewhere between 275,000 and 325,000 dead since February 2022, about 100,000 to 140,000 dead on the Ukrainian side.

00:51:15.000 It's like a two to one, maybe even three to one ratio of dead Russians versus dead Ukrainians.

00:51:19.000 But, I mean, those numbers are mind boggling, truly mind boggling.

00:51:25.000 By way of contrast, the number of soldiers that Russia has lost in the current war against Ukraine is larger than the total number of American soldiers lost during all of World War II.

00:51:35.000 That's crazy.

00:51:37.000 Well, Vladimir Putin says that the Ukraine conflict will come to an end after the West failed to crush Russia.

00:51:43.000 Wait, I seem to remember that the goal here was for Russia to crush Ukraine. 0.53

00:51:47.000 Not for the West to crush Russia.

00:51:49.000 Here is Putin.

00:51:51.000 I believe that it is coming to an end, but nevertheless, that was a serious thing to do.

00:51:56.000 So the question is why did it happen? 0.71

00:51:59.000 Because they expected to crush Russia to destroy the statehood within a few months, but they failed. 0.62

00:52:09.000 Again, the reversal of history here is insane.

00:52:13.000 The declared goal of the Russians was to crush Ukraine and replace the leadership.

00:52:17.000 They tried to invade Kiev on literally the first day of the war.

00:52:20.000 The goal of the West was never to crush Russia, it was not possible.

00:52:23.000 Russia has nuclear weapons.

00:52:25.000 They have failed in Ukraine and they continue to fail in Ukraine.

00:52:30.000 Meanwhile, Putin claims the globalists are attempting to war against Russia, just speaking all the favorite buzzwords of the woke right and the left. 0.84

00:52:41.000 It's a globalist wing of the Western elites, and they are the ones who wage the war against us with the hands of the Ukrainians. 0.66

00:52:54.000 Again, the idea of giving up global power to the Russians is totally insane. 0.99

00:52:59.000 It's ridiculous. 0.94

00:53:00.000 And no, anyone worth their salt should not be talking about this. 1.00

00:53:03.000 If somebody says that we should do that, this is because they are being quite stupid. 0.99

00:53:06.000 Okay, on over to the cultural front. 0.99

00:53:08.000 So over the weekend, Netflix held a roast of the comedian Kevin Hart.

00:53:13.000 It got a little rough.

00:53:14.000 It got a little rough.

00:53:15.000 Some of these jokes were pretty rough.

00:53:17.000 Now, again, the jokes at the Tom Brady roast were also quite rough, but this was rough in a totally different way because, frankly, most of the rough jokes were not at the expense of Kevin Hart.

00:53:26.000 Or at kind of the expense of others.

00:53:29.000 Pete Davidson, for no reason that I can discern, told one of the roughest jokes I can remember about Charlie Kirk.

00:53:36.000 Here's what that sounded like: Tony reminds me of Charlie Kirk, and that he's definitely been on camera letting a guy unload in his throat.

00:53:53.000 Pete Davidson, man.

00:53:56.000 Well, the Coke has done its work.

00:53:58.000 With Pete Davidson.

00:53:59.000 That is a horrible joke.

00:54:01.000 On about eight different fronts, that is a horrible joke.

00:54:05.000 Wow.

00:54:07.000 You know, I got to say, I'm not here to scold people for telling jokes. 1.00

00:54:15.000 Making a gay oral sex joke and a Charlie Kirk being shot to death joke in the same joke, that's a new low. 0.99

00:54:29.000 I'm not sure that I've ever heard a joke quite as bad as that joke right there. 0.99

00:54:32.000 Again, nobody's saying that you can't hire Pete Davidson for your wedding party or something.

00:54:40.000 You can't watch his truly overrated films.

00:54:43.000 But I will say that's pretty egregious stuff right there.

00:54:47.000 Not good, not good at all.

00:54:49.000 Tony Hinchcliffe, the person who he was going after right there, he told a different joke.

00:54:52.000 This one about George Floyd.

00:54:54.000 Again, this is pretty rough stuff here.

00:54:57.000 You've done good, though, Kevin.

00:54:58.000 The black community is so proud of you right now.

00:55:00.000 George Floyd is looking up at us all, laughing so hard that he can't breathe.

00:55:08.000 Not, not, not, yeah.

00:55:10.000 Also, a rough joke.

00:55:11.000 Also, a rough joke.

00:55:12.000 Now, again, controversy surrounding George Floyd's death.

00:55:16.000 You know, these roasts, these roasts, whew.

00:55:22.000 I will say that if you go back and you watch the old sort of Don Rickles roast, nothing remotely like this.

00:55:26.000 The quality of our roasts has degraded pretty significantly.

00:55:30.000 It's pretty, you know, dirty joke and death joke after dirty joke and death joke.

00:55:36.000 Okay, meanwhile, in other cultural news.

00:55:36.000 Not a fan.

00:55:38.000 Okay, so.

00:55:39.000 You may have heard this story that Elliot Page, who, again, Ellen Page has been missing for years at this point.

00:55:45.000 I don't know what happened to Ellen Page.

00:55:46.000 Ellen Page was good in Juno and then was good in Inception and then just disappeared from the face of the earth.

00:55:51.000 And at the same exact time that Ellen Page disappeared from the face of the earth, there was another person named Elliot Page who seemed to be Ellen Page's distant relation.

00:56:00.000 Bears a striking resemblance to Ellen Page, but with shorter hair, still looks female, but apparently has a prosthetic set of genitals and no breasts.

00:56:09.000 In any case, Ellen Page is gone.

00:56:12.000 Elliot Page is now going to be in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

00:56:17.000 Now, eh.

00:56:18.000 Listen, I'm a gigantic Christopher Nolan fanboy, as you all know.

00:56:20.000 I love his movies.

00:56:21.000 The only one of his movies I do not love is Tenet.

00:56:23.000 All the others I love in varying degrees.

00:56:27.000 So there was a report that went out online.

00:56:29.000 The report suggests that Elliott Page was going to be playing Achilles, like, you know, Brad Pitt Achilles in Troy in 2004.

00:56:37.000 Brad Pitt played Achilles.

00:56:39.000 So you'd be degrading from Brad Pitt, kind of uber masculine, heavily muscled Brad Pitt in 2004, to Elliott Page, a woman cosplaying as a male.

00:56:52.000 As Achilles.

00:56:54.000 There's only one problem with this story.

00:56:55.000 It has been confirmed by no one.

00:56:57.000 It has been confirmed by no one.

00:56:59.000 So we know that Elliot Page is in the cast list.

00:57:02.000 I would be rather surprised if Elliot Page were playing Achilles in the Odyssey.

00:57:07.000 That would be kind of surprising to me.

00:57:08.000 Now, there may be other problems with the Odyssey.

00:57:10.000 It turns out that the translation that Nolan used for the Odyssey is a translation by a woman who, shall we say, is strange in her interpretation of the text.

00:57:22.000 It's not the Robert Fagels translation.

00:57:24.000 It's a, it's a newer translation that is a lot more colloquial and that removes some of the implications of the text, apparently.

00:57:31.000 So that may be a problem, but the entire internet went nuts with this thing, like totally crazy.

00:57:36.000 It was a huge trending topic.

00:57:37.000 Elliot Page is Achilles.

00:57:38.000 This is crazy.

00:57:40.000 Do we have any evidence at all that Elliot Page is actually playing Achilles?

00:57:44.000 I see no evidence at all other than an online tweet from Polymarket or something.

00:57:48.000 If you still want to help us find Ellen Page, we do have t-shirts available that will remind everybody that she is missing.

00:57:54.000 They are available at the Daily Wire shop.

00:57:56.000 By the way, I'm not even sure at this point that it's been confirmed that Lapita Yongo is playing Helen.

00:58:01.000 That was the big rumor a few months ago.

00:58:03.000 And frankly, I say I don't really care that much about that one because I understand Diane Kruger played Helen in the original 2004 Troy.

00:58:12.000 Also, Diane Kruger is German, and Germans don't look exactly like Greeks in this time period that we're talking about.

00:58:19.000 So, you know, there are some differentiations.

00:58:21.000 But the biggest thing when it comes to these movies.

00:58:28.000 The rumor mill is so strong.

00:58:29.000 The rumor mill is so strong and happens all over.

00:58:32.000 It happens in politics.

00:58:33.000 You'll see a rumor that goes out there.

00:58:34.000 It's totally unsubstantiated.

00:58:36.000 It becomes the biggest viral thing on the internet for a day.

00:58:39.000 You see it happen in Hollywood.

00:58:40.000 Folks, please use your prefrontal cortex.

00:58:43.000 Just wait for five seconds to see if the story is confirmed before you decide to jump all in on this sort of stuff.

00:58:43.000 Just wait.

00:58:50.000 Okay, back to some more serious news.

00:58:53.000 So, America 250 is approaching.

00:58:56.000 Very exciting stuff.

00:58:57.000 Except for Democrats who are divided between whether to rip the founders or proclaim that they were communist revolutionaries.

00:59:04.000 So, Alexander Ocasio Cortez is trying to grab hold of that American flag by claiming that actually the American founders were Marxists of some sort at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.

00:59:16.000 My goodness, she brought the average IQ at UChicago down by at least 20 points here.

00:59:24.000 The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.

00:59:31.000 And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist.

00:59:51.000 I mean, I have some bad news for her.

00:59:53.000 The founding fathers were pretty rich, comparatively speaking, and also were rebelling against the expropriation of property by the government.

01:00:00.000 That's literally the thing they were rebelling against.

01:00:02.000 So there's that.

01:00:04.000 But, you know, you don't have to be bright to be in Democratic politics.

01:00:07.000 Apparently, you don't even have to be particularly well versed in order to teach history at Boston College.

01:00:12.000 There's a woman named Heather Cox Richardson. 0.94

01:00:14.000 She has the top politics Substack newsletter in the country, something like 3 million subscribers.

01:00:19.000 And here she was in conversation with one David Rubenstein on C SPAN, talking about the founding fathers. 0.79

01:00:27.000 Oh, I think he couldn't have written it unless he was a slave owner, which sounds weird, but that's the very contradiction at the heart of who we are as Americans.

01:00:36.000 When those men, Looked out at their fields full of enslaved people and said, We are all created equal.

01:00:45.000 They were writing out of we all the people that didn't look like them, didn't sound like them, didn't have the same kind of money they did.

01:00:54.000 And by getting rid of the vast majority of humanity, women, people of color, black Americans, and so on, they could say, Oh, yeah, we're all created equal.

01:01:03.000 But the genius of our age from their declaration of that to the present, and I hope. Beyond is recognizing that those principles, even though they had limits on them, don't have to have limits on them for us. 0.93

01:01:16.000 And that's exactly what happened as soon as the Declaration comes out.

01:01:19.000 You have people like Phyllis Wheatley, the black poet from Boston, writing to an indigenous preacher saying, Those are great principles, and we feel the same way.

01:01:28.000 And that's what we've been doing ever since.

01:01:30.000 That's what America is.

01:01:33.000 And her idea is that Thomas Jefferson didn't know what he was writing about when he said, All men are created equal.

01:01:37.000 That is a complete flattening of Thomas Jefferson as a political character.

01:01:40.000 Yes, Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder.

01:01:42.000 And yes, Thomas Jefferson also, particularly in this period, was fully aware of the conflict between his own slaveholding and the principles of the Declaration.

01:01:50.000 This idea that the founders had to write out vast swathes of humanity to come up with all men are created equal.

01:01:56.000 That is not correct.

01:01:57.000 That is not correct.

01:01:58.000 Just because they didn't live up to the principles they were articulating does not mean they did not understand the principles they were articulating.

01:02:03.000 They definitely, definitely didn't.

01:02:05.000 All you have to do is read the letters of Washington and Jefferson and Adams to understand that that is the case.

01:02:11.000 The reality is, of course, That for the left, the goal is to fundamentally change America.

01:02:15.000 This has been true for a very, very long time in the United States.

01:02:18.000 Barack Obama suggested back in 2008 he wanted to fundamentally change the country.

01:02:23.000 AOC is saying that too.

01:02:25.000 See, I don't want to fundamentally change the underlying principles of America.

01:02:28.000 It's a pretty good place.

01:02:29.000 That's not true of members of the left.

01:02:33.000 They assume that my ambition is positional, they assume that my ambition is a title or a seat.

01:02:42.000 And my ambition is way bigger than that.

01:02:48.000 My ambition is to change this country.

01:02:51.000 Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single payer healthcare is forever.

01:03:04.000 A living wage is forever, workers' rights are forever, women's rights, all of that.

01:03:13.000 I love that she pretends that she's not ambitious.

01:03:15.000 She's literally going to run for the Senate in New York or president. 0.85

01:03:19.000 After being one of the least qualified people ever to enter the United States Congress. 1.00

01:03:22.000 So, slow clap for America.

01:03:23.000 It's an amazing place.

01:03:24.000 All righty.

01:03:25.000 Coming up, we'll jump into the left's complete failure to govern, whether we were talking about Seattle or Los Angeles.

01:03:33.000 Pretty astonishing stuff.

01:03:34.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:03:36.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:03:37.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

01:03:40.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 11, 2026

5 Reasons Why Trump Holds All The Cards On China

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