The Ben Shapiro Show - A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

00:00:00.000 Folks, we have a lot of stuff to get to today.

00:00:02.000 The selection of a brand new pope will be joined by Bishop Robert Barron to explain exactly what about the new pope we need to know.

00:00:08.000 Plus, we'll be getting to President Trump's tariff war.

00:00:10.000 Are we on an off-ramp, or is this all spin?

00:00:13.000 And Andrew Klavan stops by to discuss his new book.

00:00:16.000 But first, parenting is hard, raising stable, responsible kids in this culture even more difficult.

00:00:21.000 This Mother's Day weekend, we are giving you the trailer for Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series.

00:00:25.000 Here is parenting, coming exclusively at Daily Wire+.

00:00:29.000 There is nothing you'll do in life that's more challenging, difficult and rewarding than being a parent.

00:00:37.000 Nothing with greater highs or lower lows.

00:00:40.000 You have little kids for a very short period of time.

00:00:43.000 It is a major mistake not to notice that and not to appreciate it.

00:00:51.000 We're dealing with a pattern of misbehaviors with our son, who's three years old.

00:00:54.000 Whenever we want to leave the house, he starts running away.

00:00:57.000 We have to be places at certain times.

00:01:00.000 When a disciplinary issue arises, you need to make space to master it.

00:01:03.000 I have to not do what I thought I was going to do for ten minutes to set this right.

00:01:09.000 Our 13-year-old throws tantrums quite often when he doesn't get his way.

00:01:13.000 We spoiled the heck out of him.

00:01:15.000 When you spoil a child, so to speak, you take away from them the opportunity to develop their own competence by doing too many things for them.

00:01:23.000 The consequences of his abdication of thought is that other people think for him.

00:01:28.000 That's what'll happen.

00:01:30.000 Our daughter was bullied at her school.

00:01:34.000 As this is happening, our son turned to some substance abuse.

00:01:39.000 Look for mood changes and behavioral changes, and then you can tell your kid, look.

00:01:43.000 It might be an unpleasant conversation that we have to have, but I'm not going to let you be miserable and drift away.

00:01:58.000 Discuss the disciplinary strategies.

00:02:00.000 Discuss the rules.

00:02:01.000 Discuss what it is that you want from your child.

00:02:04.000 Talk that through so that you're the same person.

00:02:07.000 The more effective you are in laying out these disciplinary rules, the more they'll like you.

00:02:14.000 Rules consistently applied with minimal force and plenty of patience.

00:02:19.000 You don't want to let your worry destroy the pleasures of the moment.

00:02:23.000 Just because children know less about the world doesn't mean they're not paying attention and certainly doesn't mean that they're stupid.

00:02:30.000 They're not stupid and they're watching.

00:02:33.000 *music*

00:02:41.000 Parenting with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson premieres May 25th only at dailywireplus.com.

00:02:46.000 Also, the news moves fast, and bad news moves fastest of all.

00:02:50.000 Every day it gets harder to tell what's real, what's manufactured to control us, to discourage us.

00:02:53.000 The world doesn't need more noise.

00:02:54.000 It needs more wisdom, more facts.

00:02:56.000 That's why starting Monday, May 12th, we are giving you more of The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:03:00.000 Actually, two times The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:03:02.000 Twice the analysis, twice the fact.

00:03:04.000 Join in at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:03:07.000 Well, folks, we do have a brand new pope.

00:03:10.000 We're going to get to all the details surrounding the pope in just one second.

00:03:13.000 Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Roman Catholic Church has now elected the first American pope in history, placing 1.4 billion faithful in the hands of a missionary-turned-Vatican prelate who had been critical of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.

00:03:26.000 Now, this is the way that the media are playing this, is that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who's a 69-year-old native of Chicago and a White Sox fan, which is great.

00:03:35.000 There are like three of us, and so I appreciate...

00:03:37.000 He emerged on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, was introduced to the world as Pope Leo XIV.

00:03:43.000 Here is what it looked like when it happened yesterday.

00:03:52.000 Annunzio vobis gaudium magnum.

00:03:56.000 A great joy.

00:03:57.000 Abbemus papam.

00:04:05.000 We have a pope.

00:04:06.000 Thank you.

00:04:10.000 Okay, so he said we must try together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and dialogue always open like the square to receive with open arms everyone who needs our charity and our presence.

00:04:20.000 There's been a widespread debate over where he is politically because for the faithful, obviously for people who are faithful Catholics, this means a different thing than for people like me.

00:04:29.000 I'm Jewish, and so I have no stake in...

00:04:31.000 Him spiritually in terms of him being the leader of a church, of a Catholic church.

00:04:37.000 He is, however, an important world leader, a very important world leader because so many people are, in fact, Catholic.

00:04:43.000 And the Catholic church has been a deeply important piece, a deeply important centerpiece of Western civilization since its foundations were laid 2,000 years ago.

00:04:51.000 And so who leads the Catholic church obviously has a massive impact, not only on how people think, but how a lot of people live, because how you think impact.

00:04:59.000 And so the direction of a Catholic church moving in a far more progressive direction would be quite bad for the world because a progressive Catholic church focused, as Pope Francis very often was, on, say, environmentalism or economic redistributionism or a form of amorality with regard to foreign conflict, that has an impact on how billions of people think, and that could be a problem.

00:05:20.000 On the other hand, a Catholic church that is committed to the eternal biblical values to which it is wedded.

00:05:27.000 That kind of church does an enormous amount of good in the world.

00:05:30.000 And to pretend that the Catholic Church has nothing to do with how people live is, I think, a preserve of the fully secular.

00:05:37.000 In my book, The Right Side of History, there's an awful lot on the history of the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church's contributions to everything from the beginning of the university system to the beginnings of science.

00:05:46.000 And obviously it matters an awful lot to an enormous number of people across the world, Christian and non-Christian, who the Pope is.

00:05:52.000 And so, what exactly does the Pope think?

00:05:55.000 Well, we have some evidence of what the Pope thinks.

00:05:58.000 Some of it is indirect.

00:05:59.000 So he was introduced by the name Leo XIV.

00:06:02.000 The Pope gets to choose his name.

00:06:05.000 He changed his name when he becomes the Pope.

00:06:07.000 And so how that name is chosen may have some sort of reflection on what the Pope thinks, where he is, where he puts his emphasis.

00:06:16.000 Now, when it comes to church doctrine, like true church doctrine, it's not going to change anytime.

00:06:21.000 And that is the foundation.

00:06:23.000 Of the idea of an eternal church, from what I understand from my Catholic friends.

00:06:27.000 So, if the church were to radically switch its positions on, say, abortion or same-sex marriage, that'd actually run up against the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

00:06:36.000 And the Pope can't single-handedly do that.

00:06:38.000 What the Pope can do is decide where to put his emphasis.

00:06:41.000 Is he going to put it on social issues, or is he going to put it on economic issues, where there's more wiggle room in terms of doctrine?

00:06:46.000 Is he going to put it on environmentalism the way the Pope Francis did, or is he going to put it on the spread of values antithetical to Christianity the way that Pope Benedict did?

00:06:56.000 Well, by choosing the name Leo, according to the Washington Post, the 267th Pope is joining a group of 13 other popes who took the name.

00:07:03.000 The previous Leos were reformers, including Pope Leo XIII, elected in 1878.

00:07:07.000 His encyclical, Rerum Novarum, spoke of human dignity and the dignity of labor, according to Reverend Christopher Robinson.

00:07:16.000 Popes have been selecting papal names for centuries.

00:07:19.000 I know, obviously, my friend Michael Knowles, who is extremely Catholic.

00:07:22.000 Was very happy about the choice of Pope Leo's name, suggesting that it has a lot to do with the sort of values conservatism.

00:07:34.000 Beyond that, the media are running around claiming that this Pope is woke.

00:07:39.000 Again, this is, I assume, linked to the fact that he was very close with Pope Francis.

00:07:46.000 With that said, the evidence so far suggests that he is extremely conservative on issues, including social issues, that he is very liberal on guns, that he is very liberal on immigration.

00:07:58.000 Like if you were going to gauge him as a political candidate, not as a pope, which I understand the problems with that.

00:08:03.000 I'm talking about his political impact because that's one of the reasons he matters to the rest of the world who's not Catholic.

00:08:11.000 If we are looking at what he has said, for example, about culture and about social issues, this is a direct quote from him, quote, Another quote from him.

00:08:31.000 So there, indistinguishable from what would be rote Catholic doctrine, it was always funny to me that when Pope Francis would express support for the unborn, the media would run it as though it was a story.

00:08:45.000 Nothing has changed would be the story there.

00:08:47.000 Or when the Pope said, That he was not in favor of same-sex marriage.

00:08:50.000 Then suddenly that was run as like a front-page story.

00:08:53.000 Now, the problem with Pope Francis politically is that he would then kind of play around the edges.

00:08:58.000 Pope Francis had suggested that same-sex couples could come and be blessed.

00:09:02.000 It was kind of unclear whether he meant as individuals or as a couple.

00:09:05.000 It probably was the former.

00:09:06.000 It was treated as the latter.

00:09:08.000 Obviously, he was making some sort of overtures to the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign activists. 0.90

00:09:15.000 Whether this new pope is going to do that or not is absolutely unclear.

00:09:18.000 People are pretending that he is some sort of wild lib.

00:09:20.000 I don't see the evidence for that at all.

00:09:22.000 Apparently, he's a registered Republican because, again, he's from Chicago, so we actually know where he's registered.

00:09:27.000 He's voted in some Republican primaries as well.

00:09:30.000 He's also retweeted a bunch of material that is anti-J.D.

00:09:34.000 Vance and President Trump with regard to immigration.

00:09:37.000 So, for example, according to Mediaite, he joined Twitter in 2011.

00:09:44.000 And apparently, he tweeted on April 14th a retweet of a Catholic blogger named Rocco Palmo that denounced the White House's illicit deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and quoted Bishop Evelio Menjivar, Do you not see the suffering?

00:09:58.000 Is your conscience not disturbed?

00:10:00.000 How can you stay quiet?

00:10:02.000 Other recent tweets from Pope Leo XIV take issue with J.D. Vance's comments about Ordo Amores, the Catholic theological concept on the order of charity.

00:10:11.000 Vance, you'll recall, in January had suggested, That this should be interpreted as love your family, and then your neighbor, and then your community, and then your fellow citizens, and after that, prioritize the rest of the world.

00:10:21.000 So, Pope Leo XIV, his predecessor, Pope Francis, actually put out a letter addressed to American bishops, chiding that particular view.

00:10:29.000 And then, Prevost, who is now the Pope, said, J.D. Vance is wrong.

00:10:32.000 Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.

00:10:36.000 So, you know, this has been used as sort of an excuse by people on the right to reject the Pope.

00:10:42.000 Meanwhile, the left is always eager to embrace a pope that it perceives to be a friend.

00:10:47.000 For his part, President Trump put out a statement about how it was an honor to have an American pope.

00:10:52.000 Here was President Trump yesterday.

00:10:55.000 They have already spoken to us, and we'll see what happens.

00:10:58.000 But again, to have the pope from the United States of America, that's a great honor.

00:11:04.000 That's a great honor.

00:11:06.000 So, again, obviously, if...

00:11:10.000 Apparently, President Trump's tariff plans are working because we're now reshoring American potpourri.

00:11:14.000 We have decided that the pot must be manufactured in the United States.

00:11:17.000 And again, he's a White Sox fan, so that's a nice thing.

00:11:19.000 And we will see where he is politically, where he chooses to put his emphasis.

00:11:23.000 We'll see more on this in a moment.

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00:13:24.000 Well, joining us online is Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Rochester in Minnesota, the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, direct from Italy, where the new pope has been selected, Pope Leo XIV.

00:13:36.000 Bishop, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:13:37.000 Really appreciate it.

00:13:39.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:13:39.000 Always good to be with you.

00:13:42.000 So, first of all, what was it like actually being there during the conclave?

00:13:46.000 It was extraordinary.

00:13:47.000 There was a lot of, you know, kind of tension beforehand.

00:13:50.000 It's always sort of on tenterhooks during a...

00:13:53.000 Conclave period, the interregnum, and we weren't sure.

00:13:56.000 A lot of names were being bandied about, including the name of Robert Prevost, though most of us didn't take it seriously.

00:14:03.000 And then I think leading up to the conclave, there was just a lot of anticipation, a sense of, you know, forces jockeying against each other.

00:14:09.000 The announcement itself was amazing.

00:14:12.000 It came so quickly.

00:14:13.000 Most of us thought this would be a longer conclave that might last into the third, even fourth day.

00:14:18.000 And on the second day...

00:14:20.000 We have the white smoke.

00:14:21.000 And so most of us, again, thought, oh, it must be someone like Cardinal Peroline or one of the really expected candidates.

00:14:28.000 No one expected Robert Prevost, and certainly not on the fourth ballot.

00:14:32.000 So there was a lot of, I think, both excitement, surprise, the wonderment about it.

00:14:41.000 So when we talk about the new pope, obviously a lot of political focus on the new pope because the pope speaks for 1.4 billion Catholics and is interpreting 2,000-year-old tradition.

00:14:50.000 And I think that, first of all, we should discuss the distinction between how people like me would view the election of a new pope, the selection of a new pope, and how Catholics see it.

00:15:00.000 Because obviously it's a very, very different thing.

00:15:01.000 For me, I'm just looking at the political ramifications in sort of the secular world or even in sort of the broader spiritual.

00:15:07.000 But for Catholics, it's a very different thing.

00:15:12.000 Well, you know, I would look at him in terms of his name.

00:15:15.000 I keep going back to his name, Leo XIV.

00:15:17.000 It's very telling.

00:15:19.000 You know, he could have chosen Francis II, obviously.

00:15:22.000 He could have chosen John Paul III.

00:15:24.000 He could have chosen John XXIV.

00:15:26.000 In which case, we would say, oh, he's clearly on this side or that side.

00:15:30.000 Choosing Leo XIV is very interesting.

00:15:32.000 Going back now to a figure more than a century ago, who represents...

00:15:36.000 I'd call it an intelligent, creative engagement with modernity.

00:15:40.000 So think of the 18th century revolutions and then the 19th century innovations in philosophy.

00:15:46.000 Think of Kant, Hegel, Marx, the revolutions, etc.

00:15:49.000 The church's first response to that was an emphatic no, and indeed the church was very persecuted by revolutionary France, for example.

00:15:57.000 But then by the end of the 19th century, you've got a figure like Leo XIII, who represents this Intelligent engagement is both a yes and a no to modernity.

00:16:08.000 I think that's what this new pope was gesturing toward in choosing that name, that he was in the tradition of Leo XIII.

00:16:16.000 You know, and conservative Catholics?

00:16:18.000 To this day, find a lot in Leo XIII they like.

00:16:20.000 Liberal Catholics find a lot they like in him.

00:16:23.000 So it was a very clever choice, actually.

00:16:25.000 Even before you get to particular kind of political issues, just the general attitude toward the modern world, he was telling us a lot about that.

00:16:35.000 So let's talk about the fact that he is an American pope.

00:16:38.000 What does that mean?

00:16:39.000 What difference does it make where the pope comes from?

00:16:43.000 You know, I think in the long run, it probably doesn't make that much difference.

00:16:47.000 Maybe we're all kind of hyped up about it now because it's never happened before.

00:16:51.000 This is a very international character, too.

00:16:53.000 You know, he's from Chicago, indeed.

00:16:55.000 But, you know, he's studied overseas, has been a missionary overseas, spent many years here in Rome.

00:17:00.000 He's a very international sort of player.

00:17:03.000 The standard line everyone's using here is he's the least American.

00:17:07.000 Of the American Cardinals, which could be one reason why he attracted the supermajority that he did.

00:17:13.000 So I hope it's good for our church in America.

00:17:16.000 I hope it revives a sense of the church and the faith in America.

00:17:20.000 But I suspect, Ben, in the long run, people will look at him.

00:17:25.000 They'll look at, okay, what is he saying?

00:17:26.000 What is he doing?

00:17:27.000 Will matter much more than where he was born.

00:17:32.000 So now let's talk about the obvious sort of elephant in the room, which is...

00:17:36.000 All the talk about his politics.

00:17:37.000 So, obviously, he has been mildly active on Twitter.

00:17:41.000 He has some old tweets.

00:17:42.000 He's a White Sox fan, which I'm pleased with.

00:17:44.000 He and I are probably the only two White Sox fans currently in existence.

00:17:47.000 But he also, it turns out, has some tweets, including tweets on immigration.

00:17:52.000 And J.D. Vance, of course, had made suggestions about a Catholic concept called Ordo Amoris, talking about the order of love.

00:17:59.000 And apparently the new pope had tweeted against J.D. Vance's interpretation of that concept.

00:18:04.000 What do you make of that?

00:18:05.000 What should our takeaway be on the new pope politically?

00:18:08.000 Because obviously on matters that the church has never wavered on, like same-sex marriage or abortion or transgenderism, he would be considered wildly right-wing by American political standards.

00:18:17.000 Yeah, I think that's true.

00:18:19.000 You know, he's a man that worked in Latin America much of his priesthood.

00:18:22.000 So he has a natural, I think, sympathy for, empathy for people who have immigrated to this country, to our country.

00:18:29.000 So I think you're sensing that natural sympathy he has for them.

00:18:33.000 I would suspect that he fully knows Catholic social teaching defends a nation's right to maintain its borders.

00:18:40.000 That's part of our social teaching because, as you well know, if we don't...

00:18:44.000 Monitor our borders.

00:18:46.000 That leads to all kinds of moral problems.

00:18:48.000 That's not a xenophobic position, or that's not some jingoistic, nationalistic position.

00:18:53.000 That's a considered moral point of view.

00:18:56.000 So, I mean, I'm sure that New Pope would affirm that.

00:18:59.000 You know, it's when you get down to brass tacks, you get down to the specifics of policy, we can disagree about, okay, how much should you regulate immigration, etc.

00:19:09.000 But in terms of the great principles, I don't think he would disagree with that.

00:19:12.000 The famous Ordo Amoris question, you know, as I read J.D. Vance, he was just citing both Augustine, by the way.

00:19:19.000 So this new pope was an Augustinian priest.

00:19:22.000 He was citing Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

00:19:25.000 I think what people tend to miss on that is they're talking about the kind of objective dimension of love, not the subjective.

00:19:32.000 To say there's an order of love does not mean that...

00:19:35.000 That subjectively, you know, I favor certain people and others I don't care about.

00:19:39.000 It's not that at all.

00:19:40.000 If to love means to will the good of the other, well, there's only so much that an individual or a nation can do.

00:19:48.000 So, the best example is, you know, if your family is under attack, well, yes, you're going to defend them first.

00:19:54.000 If there's a fire going on in your neighborhood, your house is on fire threatening your family, that's your first obligation.

00:20:00.000 That, to me, is all the Ordo Amoris is saying.

00:20:04.000 And we've kind of made it into this sort of co-celeb or this, you know, point of controversy.

00:20:09.000 So I don't know.

00:20:10.000 I think if they got into a room of like J.D. Vance and the Pope, I have a feeling they would probably pretty much agree on these things.

00:20:17.000 Well, Bishop Barron, I really appreciate your time and your insight.

00:20:20.000 Congratulations on the election of the brand new Pope.

00:20:24.000 God bless you, Ben.

00:20:25.000 Thanks.

00:20:27.000 All right.

00:20:27.000 Meanwhile, President Trump's big move yesterday was, of course, this U.K. trade deal.

00:20:32.000 We now know the details of the UK trade deal, and there's less to the eye than it appears.

00:20:37.000 And this is sort of a problem, obviously, for actual policy.

00:20:41.000 So, the markets rebounded somewhat on the fact that President Trump had announced a UK trade deal.

00:20:46.000 And the markets right now, as I've said before, Benjamin Graham, who is the philosophical mentor to Warren Buffett, used to say that the stock market in the short term is a voting machine, and in the long term it is a weighing machine.

00:20:55.000 What he meant by that is that you're basically voting with your stock.

00:20:58.000 As to where you think things are going to go.

00:21:00.000 You're trying to predict.

00:21:01.000 It's like a prediction market.

00:21:03.000 And so, you could be wrong.

00:21:04.000 In the long term, the stock market, over time, weighs the actual value of things.

00:21:09.000 Because it takes a while for prediction to become reality or unreality.

00:21:13.000 Well, right now, the markets are trying to respond and taking new information in real time from President Trump.

00:21:18.000 And because President Trump is spitting out so much new information...

00:21:21.000 Because there are so many members of his administration who are sort of in conflict with one another over trade policy, the markets are roiling.

00:21:26.000 They're going up, they're going down, they're going all around.

00:21:28.000 And in the end, they're slightly lower than they were during Liberation Day.

00:21:32.000 Which is to say that since Liberation Day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the course of, say, the last month or so, is essentially even.

00:21:43.000 Just before Liberation Day, which was April 2nd, the...

00:21:47.000 Stock market was at 42,000.

00:21:49.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average, 42,225 on April 2nd.

00:21:53.000 And today it's like 41,400.

00:21:55.000 So it's down about 700 points.

00:21:58.000 That is not a massive shift, obviously.

00:22:02.000 That shift, however, is in fact indicative of uncertainty because the stock market was going up and to the right and then when it evens out, that's because people don't know what to do next.

00:22:11.000 So, what do we make?

00:22:13.000 Of the deal that President Trump just cut with the UK.

00:22:15.000 So he made a big ballyhooed announcement about it yesterday.

00:22:19.000 Talked about it in the Oval Office.

00:22:20.000 Suggested that it was a historic deal.

00:22:23.000 And then we actually found out the details of the deal.

00:22:26.000 And the details are not much.

00:22:28.000 So President Trump said on Thursday that his administration and the UK had agreed to the outlines of a deal on trade.

00:22:33.000 He said it's very conclusive.

00:22:34.000 We think everyone's going to be happy.

00:22:36.000 Many countries want to make a deal.

00:22:37.000 Many countries are very unhappy that we happened to choose this one.

00:22:41.000 Now, here is the problem.

00:22:42.000 The deal is really, really limited.

00:22:45.000 Okay, so the actual deal here leaves most UK goods still tariffed at the global 10% tariff the US imposed on all countries in April.

00:22:53.000 There had been a 25% levy on steel and aluminum.

00:22:57.000 That levy will now go away.

00:22:59.000 Car tariffs had been put at 25%.

00:23:01.000 They will be lowered to 10% only for the first 100,000 vehicles.

00:23:05.000 Then they go back up.

00:23:05.000 We don't import tons of cars from Britain.

00:23:07.000 We import some, but not like a ton.

00:23:09.000 In return, the UK is cutting some tariffs on US beef imports from 20% to zero, as well as cutting tariffs on ethanol.

00:23:17.000 So this is really, really a limited deal.

00:23:20.000 A very, very limited deal.

00:23:21.000 So the reason the stock market responded positively is because any sign of any deal means that people are voting on what they want Trump to do.

00:23:28.000 What they want Trump to do is to remove all sorts of trade barriers.

00:23:31.000 And so when they see a sign that the trade barriers are going to be removed, the markets get really happy.

00:23:36.000 However, the real problem here.

00:23:38.000 Is that if the underlying policy does not change, then the effects of the policy will be felt.

00:23:43.000 Everybody sees this hurricane coming.

00:23:45.000 This hurricane is the global trade impact of a giant tariff regime placed on nearly every country.

00:23:52.000 Mostly on China, but yes, on every other country.

00:23:54.000 It turns out that when you quadruple the tariff rate on the UK, which is effectively what the United States did, that that's going to have some pretty significant supply chain effects.

00:24:01.000 It takes a while for that stuff to be felt because it might take weeks for ships to leave their port and get to the United States.

00:24:08.000 And that means that people have not yet made their ships arriving now that are still full because the decision was made as to whether to send the ship before Liberation Day.

00:24:18.000 Well, that's all going to change in the very near future.

00:24:20.000 The hurricane has not yet hit.

00:24:22.000 I live in Florida.

00:24:23.000 You check the hurricane map pretty much every day of the summer to see what's going to happen over the course of the next five or seven days.

00:24:29.000 And keep hoping, if you're on the east coast of Florida, the way that we are, that the hurricane is going to swing up and back into the Atlantic Ocean.

00:24:37.000 But that doesn't mean that the impending hurricane has hit yet.

00:24:41.000 So if you haven't actually picked up and left the east coast of Florida to move into the interior or something as the hurricane approaches, because you're betting that it's going to move, that does not mean that the hurricane won't hit.

00:24:51.000 It just means it hasn't hit yet.

00:24:52.000 And so the question here is whether the hurricane can be averted by trade policy before it actually hits.

00:24:58.000 And from what I see from the UK deal, I'm not super complacent about all of this.

00:25:03.000 Prior to the Trump administration, our trade with the UK was governed.

00:25:07.000 By most favored nation tariff rates under the World Trade Organization.

00:25:11.000 Those were generally low.

00:25:12.000 They averaged about 2.5% for most goods.

00:25:15.000 The trade-weighted average most favored nation tariff on non-agricultural goods from the UK was almost 0.5%.

00:25:22.000 For agricultural goods, it was 9.2%.

00:25:25.000 After Liberation Day and the following week, the UK tariff rate was placed at 10%.

00:25:30.000 It remains 10% today.

00:25:32.000 So, if for non-agricultural goods, the trade-weighted tariff rate, Was 0.5% and today it is 10%.

00:25:39.000 That is, if you do your math, 20 times higher than it was just about six weeks ago.

00:25:46.000 And the deal didn't do anything to change any of that.

00:25:48.000 Here's Howard Lutnick yesterday saying, essentially, that nothing has actually changed.

00:25:55.000 He said, he's bragging about the trade deal and he says, we were at 10% and we're still at 10%, which doesn't sound like an amazing trade deal to me.

00:26:02.000 So we feel really good about the deal.

00:26:04.000 You've heard the Prime Minister.

00:26:06.000 He feels really good about the deal, right?

00:26:08.000 And we started at 10% and we ended at 10%.

00:26:11.000 And the market for America is better. 0.79

00:26:14.000 And this is a perfect example of why Donald Trump produced Liberation Day.

00:26:21.000 Okay, so the perfect example of why Trump produced Liberation Day is that we could go from 0.5% on most goods to 10% on most goods and then leave it at 10%.

00:26:29.000 And then we get slightly lower tariff rates on our products.

00:26:32.000 Into the UK.

00:26:34.000 That's why.

00:26:36.000 Again, the question here is what the policy is actually going to look like.

00:26:39.000 Right now, the Trump administration is spinning this policy.

00:26:41.000 And so the spin has impact on the markets because we don't know which way the Trump administration is going to go.

00:26:45.000 Every day, the message seems to change.

00:26:47.000 And right now, the administration keeps putting out very positive signals about wanting to do deals.

00:26:51.000 So yesterday, President Trump said that they intend to make a deal with Europe, for example.

00:26:57.000 We intend to make a deal with Europe.

00:27:00.000 We have found that the European Union treat it as extremely unfairly, very difficult, and hurt themselves in doing so.

00:27:09.000 And they very much want to make a deal.

00:27:10.000 We'll be dealing with them.

00:27:11.000 We are dealing with them currently.

00:27:13.000 So that'll cover pretty much the rest of it.

00:27:18.000 So, again, whether he wants to make a European deal, obviously the market's going to like it if he wants to make a European deal.

00:27:24.000 But what that deal looks like is the thing that's going to matter in the end.

00:27:26.000 If you want to make a deal, you want to go buy a new car, And you go in saying, I want to buy a new car.

00:27:31.000 And then at the end of the day, you don't buy the new car.

00:27:33.000 The only thing that matters at the end of the day is whether you bought it or not or what price you paid for that new car.

00:27:38.000 The content is going to dictate what happens next.

00:27:42.000 Not the spin.

00:27:43.000 Not the talk about it.

00:27:44.000 What the content is.

00:27:44.000 So if these trade deals look like the UK trade deal, the hurricane is going to hit.

00:27:48.000 It will.

00:27:49.000 If these 10% tariffs are maintained on every country, there will in fact be supply line problems.

00:27:54.000 If the tariff rate remains at 125 or 145%.

00:27:58.000 The Treasury Secretary said it's unsustainable.

00:28:00.000 If it takes months to negotiate that out with China, there will be significant supply line impact, supply chain impacts.

00:28:07.000 Listen, every business person I know is being impacted by these tariffs in one way or another.

00:28:12.000 And right now, the markets are hopeful because they know that President Trump likes reality and lives in the business world, that Trump is going to avert the hurricane.

00:28:18.000 I don't see a lot of evidence that he's going to avert the hurricane from this particular UK deal, for example.

00:28:23.000 Meanwhile, the European Union is saying it could target American cars, car parts, airplanes, and other products with tariffs if negotiations with the United States break down.

00:28:30.000 The European Commission, the bloc's executive body on Thursday, released a fresh list of about €95 billion worth of American products it says could face tariffs equivalent to about $107 billion.

00:28:40.000 That includes American chemicals and plastics, electrical equipment, health-related products, machinery, and agricultural products.

00:28:46.000 President Trump.

00:28:48.000 Then said yesterday that they expect a friendly meeting with China.

00:28:51.000 Again, the markets like friendly meetings.

00:28:52.000 The question is, how fast can you get to something that does not heavily impact the American economy?

00:28:59.000 I mean, we're going to see right now, you can't get any higher.

00:29:02.000 It's at 145, so we know it's coming down.

00:29:05.000 I think we're going to have a very good relationship.

00:29:07.000 You know, I always got along very well with President Xi.

00:29:11.000 That relationship was greatly disturbed by COVID, when COVID came in.

00:29:16.000 But we get along very well now.

00:29:18.000 I mean, we had a...

00:29:19.000 I mean, the relationship was hurt with a lot of people, a lot of countries, when COVID came in.

00:29:24.000 But I think we're going to have a very good relationship.

00:29:26.000 I expect to have a very good relationship with China Scott.

00:29:30.000 I think it's a very friendly meeting.

00:29:32.000 They look forward to doing it in an elegant way.

00:29:37.000 Okay, so, again, the spin's fine.

00:29:40.000 What is the actual content going to be?

00:29:42.000 What is it actually going to be inside the package when we open up the package?

00:29:45.000 Is it just going to look like what Letnik said, 10% to 10%?

00:29:49.000 Well, Lutnik continues to be very high on the tariff war.

00:29:52.000 He says we're going to roll out dozens of such trade deals.

00:29:56.000 What we're going to start to do is we're going to start to have templates.

00:29:59.000 You know, so we'll do a small country or two and then we'll have a template and we'll say, you know what?

00:30:03.000 These 20 or 30 countries are economically similar.

00:30:07.000 Let's go over their products.

00:30:08.000 Let's go get it right.

00:30:09.000 And let's go give them the model of how they want to do it.

00:30:12.000 And if they want to modify it a little bit, that's fine.

00:30:15.000 But you're going to see over the next month or so, we're going to roll out.

00:30:18.000 Dozens of deals because we'll find categories of countries that it'll work out just fine.

00:30:26.000 Okay, so whether it will work out just fine, who knows?

00:30:30.000 We're about to find out.

00:30:32.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing, apparently, for higher tax rates.

00:30:37.000 This is a non-starter.

00:30:38.000 It just is.

00:30:40.000 The tax regime that President Trump put into place in his first term, the Trump tax cuts, were a boon to the economy.

00:30:45.000 They disproportionately benefited people who actually were middle and lower class.

00:30:50.000 Revising the tax regime to pay for more kind of loopholes and tax breaks in particular areas by increasing taxes on the highest income earners, what that is going to do is sink investment capital.

00:31:01.000 That's what it does.

00:31:02.000 As somebody who has been in most tax brackets at one point in my life, I can tell you, I will invest less if I have less money to invest.

00:31:09.000 And that's true for everyone who's a high net earner.

00:31:14.000 Increasing the income tax on the top income tax bracket in order to pay for more useless government spending because nobody has the actual balls to say in American politics that we spend too much on our social welfare programs, which we do, particularly our means-tested social welfare programs.

00:31:27.000 And those are going to break the American economy. 0.88

00:31:29.000 And shifting around deck chairs in the Titanic by increasing the marginal tax rates at the top by 2% or something, that's not going to save anything.

00:31:36.000 This idea that you're going to get a...

00:31:38.000 If the Republican Party is now the tax-raising party and the tariff party...

00:31:42.000 We will see how that works out for them at the polls.

00:31:44.000 I do not think it is going to work out particularly well.

00:31:47.000 We'll get to more in a moment.

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00:33:38.000 President Trump apparently is privately urging Speaker Mike Johnson to raise the top tax rate and close the so-called carried interest loophole.

00:33:44.000 So what the hell is the carried interest loophole?

00:33:46.000 You hear about this all the time.

00:33:47.000 Very often, the media will use a term and call it a loophole when it's not a loophole at all.

00:33:52.000 So they'll say something like a gun show loophole, as though if you're a federally licensed firearms dealer, you can just go to a gun show and sell a gun randomly.

00:33:58.000 That is not true.

00:33:59.000 The so-called gun show loophole means a private person who sells a gun to his friend Doesn't have to, necessarily, go through all of the federal background check kind of stuff.

00:34:09.000 And some people called it the gun show loophole, when in fact, all it meant is that if you're not a federally licensed firearms dealer, and you're a private individual, that these rules don't apply to you in the same way.

00:34:18.000 So the same thing is kind of true of the so-called carried interest loophole.

00:34:21.000 So what exactly is the so-called carried interest loophole?

00:34:24.000 It's not a loophole at all.

00:34:25.000 So what is carried interest?

00:34:26.000 So, I asked my sponsor at Perplexity to explain.

00:34:30.000 So, carried interest works like this.

00:34:32.000 Fund managers, Typically receive two forms of compensation if you work at like a hedge fund or in private equity or VC, venture capital.

00:34:39.000 So you have two forms of being paid.

00:34:41.000 One is a management fee, which is just income.

00:34:43.000 You get paid a flat fee to handle people's portfolios.

00:34:47.000 And then there's the so-called carried interest, which is a share of the fund's profits.

00:34:51.000 So the fund makes a profit.

00:34:53.000 You get a share of the profit.

00:34:55.000 But in order for it to qualify for capital gains tax as opposed to income tax, The underlying investments have to be held for more than three years.

00:35:02.000 It's like you just make a quick churn and burn with regard to a stock.

00:35:05.000 You sell it, you make a quick profit, you take the income, and then you paid the capital gains rate as opposed to the higher income tax rate.

00:35:11.000 You actually have to be making a profit off of an investment that held for three years or more.

00:35:18.000 Management fees are taxed at the regular income rate.

00:35:20.000 Carried interest is taxed as the long-term capital gain at a maximum rate of 20% if the underlying investments are held for more than three years.

00:35:27.000 So, here is the question.

00:35:29.000 If you have a share of the profits, isn't that more like owning a stock, right?

00:35:32.000 That's the reason why it's treated as actually not a form of typical income.

00:35:36.000 It's more like selling a stock because you actually are getting a share of stock that was profitable and then it was sold.

00:35:43.000 So it's more like a capital gain than it is like income.

00:35:46.000 Now, you can make an argument that capital gains should be taxed the same as income, but stop pretending that the carried interest loophole is actually just a form of normal income that's getting carved out for hedge fund managers.

00:35:56.000 That's not what it is.

00:35:57.000 This sort of economic policy, this sort of populist left economic, it is.

00:36:00.000 It's a populist left economic policy.

00:36:01.000 Heavy trade restrictionism for the sake of trade restrictionism as a subsidy to particular areas of the American economy.

00:36:07.000 Add on to that higher tax rates.

00:36:09.000 And I'm wondering what the difference is between that economic policy per se and Sherrod Brown's economic policy when he was senator from Ohio.

00:36:16.000 That is not the economic policy that President Trump enacted in his first term and that was so wildly successful in increasing the earnings of everybody from the bottom part of the spectrum to the top part of the spectrum.

00:36:26.000 This is a mistake.

00:36:27.000 Meanwhile, in other news, the President of the United States has now named a new nominee for his Surgeon General.

00:36:32.000 That Surgeon General nominee is a person named Casey Means.

00:36:35.000 She replaces another person, Jeanette Nuscherat, who had essentially been ousted because of concerns about her views on vaccines.

00:36:43.000 Laura Loomer was a big opponent. 1.00

00:36:44.000 Turns out Laura Loomer doesn't like Casey Means very much either. 1.00

00:36:47.000 President Trump, for his part, says, listen, this one wasn't me.

00:36:49.000 This is probably Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy.

00:36:52.000 Here is President Trump.

00:36:54.000 Well, yeah, because Bobbie thought she was fantastic. 0.94

00:36:58.000 She's a brilliant woman who went through Stanford, and as I understand it, she basically wanted to be an academic as opposed to a surgeon. 0.99

00:37:08.000 I think she graduated first in her class at Stanford.

00:37:13.000 Bobby really thought she was great.

00:37:15.000 I don't know her.

00:37:16.000 I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.

00:37:18.000 I met her yesterday and once before.

00:37:20.000 She's a very outstanding person.

00:37:22.000 A great academic, actually.

00:37:24.000 So, I think she'll be great.

00:37:27.000 Okay, so, President Trump, of course, supporting her for this.

00:37:31.000 Casey, who is she?

00:37:32.000 Well, she is a Stanford-trained physician. 0.64

00:37:35.000 She dropped out of residency.

00:37:36.000 She went to Stanford Medical School.

00:37:37.000 And then she turned into a sort of wellness influencer, author, big pharma whistleblower. 0.66

00:37:41.000 She had a bunch of... 0.90

00:37:42.000 Major media appearances, including, of course, Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman.

00:37:47.000 Here she was, for example, on Joe Rogan talking about what she called the devastating state of American health.

00:37:53.000 And if you just kind of run through the list of what's happening, it's unbelievable.

00:37:56.000 Like we are getting destroyed and it's very recent and it's accelerating.

00:38:01.000 The stats speak for themselves.

00:38:03.000 You know this very well.

00:38:04.000 74% of Americans are overweight or obese.

00:38:07.000 50% now of American adults have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

00:38:12.000 These were diseases where there was 1% of Americans in 1950 had type 2 diabetes.

00:38:16.000 Now it's 50% of Americans have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

00:38:19.000 Alzheimer's dementia are going through the roof.

00:38:21.000 Young adult dementias have increased like three times since 2012.

00:38:27.000 So early onset dementias, we're seeing You know, this one in two Americans are expected to have cancer in their lifetime now.

00:38:34.000 One in two.

00:38:35.000 And young adult cancers are going up 79% in the last 10 years.

00:38:41.000 So, again, these sorts of concerns are things that Americans are concerned about.

00:38:44.000 They feel like they've been gaslit on American health for a very long time.

00:38:48.000 You know, the reality is that America is obese.

00:38:51.000 America does not exercise enough.

00:38:53.000 America eats junk food a lot.

00:38:54.000 And this is one of the things that Casey Means focuses a lot on, is this sort of...

00:38:57.000 Holistic explanation of all disease.

00:38:59.000 She says you basically have to stop treating the symptoms, which very often are symptoms of specific diseases, and start treating what she calls the sort of underlying issue.

00:39:08.000 And that underlying issue is supposed to be foundational metabolic cellular health.

00:39:13.000 She says that government policy should focus on things like HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, and waist circumference.

00:39:19.000 Here she was talking about how one of the problems is how doctors basically get paid for treating symptoms, but they don't get really paid.

00:39:28.000 One of the biggest problems with the healthcare industry right now is that it's so siloed.

00:39:32.000 We have over 100 different medical and surgical subspecialties.

00:39:35.000 And the business model of American healthcare right now is volume.

00:39:38.000 It's how many people can you see.

00:39:39.000 And so that's what you get paid for.

00:39:41.000 You don't get paid for outcomes.

00:39:41.000 You get paid for volume.

00:39:43.000 And so that has incentivized a structure of healthcare where it's most profitable to actually be seen by as many specialists as humanly possible.

00:39:50.000 And that's what the average American is dealing with.

00:39:51.000 They go to the primary care doctor with a list of issues and they get...

00:39:54.000 8, 10 referrals.

00:39:55.000 And they spend their life going through the revolving doors of these different healthcare offices and not actually really feeling better.

00:40:02.000 And they feel disappointed.

00:40:03.000 And that's why I think people are frustrated.

00:40:05.000 So we've got all these doctors who are incentivized to really be head down in their specialty lane and not actually step out and look at the big picture of how things are connected when in fact it's all connected.

00:40:18.000 Now, that isn't actually the fault of doctors.

00:40:20.000 Very often, if you're a primary care doctor, if you don't send somebody to a specialist and a disease develops, you get sued.

00:40:25.000 So this is a real problem.

00:40:26.000 It's sort of the system of liability and medical liability.

00:40:29.000 It used to be that you had a family doctor.

00:40:31.000 The family doctor would look at you.

00:40:32.000 Most of the time, the family doctor would say, listen, this problem does not require a specialist.

00:40:36.000 Now, doctors being risk-averse are sending people to specialists more often.

00:40:39.000 All of that is true.

00:40:40.000 She's correct, by the way, that most of the problems that are attributed to sort of disease, if you can treat...

00:40:46.000 Far earlier, the underlying problem with good health, getting exercise, and all the rest, that is going to be a good solution to an enormous number of problems.

00:40:56.000 She has suggested, for example, that you need to eat fruits and veggies, limit alcohol and drugs, get enough sleep, exercise, avoid environmental toxins.

00:41:05.000 Here she was discussing fighting for life.

00:41:06.000 Health is a type of the iceberg of fundamentally like a planetary issue, The planetary issue is the tip of the iceberg of what I think is really, really going on here, which is a spiritual issue.

00:41:19.000 We are not fighting for life in this world anymore.

00:41:25.000 And I think that's more of a consciousness issue.

00:41:27.000 We talk about, why is no one covering this?

00:41:30.000 I think people see it.

00:41:32.000 I think in some way we have like totally lost respect for like the miraculousness of life.

00:41:40.000 That's what our actions are reflecting.

00:41:42.000 Like we know a lot.

00:41:44.000 We have the technology, the money and the resources to fix all of this, the planet and health.

00:41:49.000 And we're not.

00:41:50.000 And that's why I think there's something darker happening on like the consciousness level.

00:41:55.000 All right.

00:41:55.000 you you Okay, so, she has been called out by now Laura Loomer for supposedly being kind of kooky.

00:42:02.000 The reason that Laura Loomer is going after her is because she put out in her newsletter about when she was looking for romance.

00:42:08.000 That she would pray to photos of her ancestors, that she would do full moon ceremonies, that she would talk literally out loud to the trees, plant medicine experience, and all the rest.

00:42:15.000 But the question is, as Surgeon General, are those going to be her recommendations?

00:42:18.000 Or, more likely, are her recommendations going to be things like, you know, you should probably eat well and get exercise and get sleep and all the rest.

00:42:26.000 And back in June 2024, NPR, which is no right-wing outlet, published a very long interview with Casey Means, talking specifically about her thesis.

00:42:36.000 And NPR said Means lays out her thesis for what is wrong in U.S. healthcare in her book Good Energy and how patients can take their health into their own hands.

00:42:43.000 She and her co-author, her brother Callie Means, delineate how common diseases and symptoms that plague Americans are rooted in issues like poor nutrition, lack of movement, and problems with sleep.

00:42:52.000 She says the most foundational level of health is how our cells get powered.

00:42:55.000 You could have a Ferrari if it has no gas and won't run.

00:42:58.000 So good energy is a term to help us understand what we're striving for when we're doing all these dietary and lifestyle investments.

00:43:03.000 Okay, all of this sounds perfectly legitimate to me.

00:43:05.000 Don't really see a major problem, but anything can be turned into a controversy inside the Trump administration.

00:43:10.000 Meanwhile, in a piece of absolutely horrifying news to people who are bound to conspiracy theories, Kash Patel, the new head of the FBI, and somebody who is widely liked on the MAGA right, of course, he was asked about the death of Jeffrey Epstein by Congress yesterday, and he dropped the bombshell that actually Jeffrey Epstein did, in fact, kill himself.

00:43:31.000 Did Jeffrey Epstein hang himself or did somebody kill him?

00:43:36.000 Senator, I believe he hung himself in a cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center.

00:43:41.000 Are you going to release all the information about that?

00:43:44.000 Senator, we are working through that right now with the Department of Justice.

00:43:47.000 When do you think you'll have it done, Cash?

00:43:50.000 I think in the near future, sir.

00:43:54.000 Okay, so, there are a lot of people out there who believe there's a bunch of conspiratorial stuff happening with the Epstein files and all the rest.

00:44:03.000 The people who are in charge are the Trump administration.

00:44:05.000 So if you have ire, that's the place you should be directing it.

00:44:08.000 Cash Patel and company are going to have to, at some point, reveal whatever is there and then say what is not there is not there.

00:44:13.000 It seems to me the best way to treat mysterious issues like the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:44:17.000 Meanwhile, the FBI is in fact going after New York Attorney General Letitia James for her real estate and mortgage transactions.

00:44:24.000 Now, you will see.

00:44:26.000 That Letitia James is the same person who declared that she had to go after Donald Trump because she was fighting corruption every step of the way.

00:44:32.000 Well, now, as it turns out, James is a statewide elected official with offices in Albany, but the transactions involve her personal property, purchases and loans, processed in New York City and Virginia.

00:44:42.000 One of the mortgage documents filed in connection with James' purchase of a single family residence was signed as a witness by Jennifer Levy, who was the first deputy attorney general.

00:44:51.000 The second witness was Sharona Parchment, an executive assistant with the attorney general's office.

00:44:55.000 So the question is why all these government officials were signing a document related to her purchase of a private residence.

00:45:02.000 So, serious issues surrounding Letitia James, as so often happens, people who use their offices politically are, in fact, quite corrupt. 0.97

00:45:10.000 That sort of stuff seems to happen all the time.

00:45:12.000 Meanwhile, Columbia University fallout.

00:45:14.000 So, as we talked about yesterday on the program, Hamas next took over the Columbia Library.

00:45:18.000 Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman.

00:45:20.000 Actually, this is different, right?

00:45:22.000 Because Columbia has now been shellacked by the Trump administration, they're afraid.

00:45:28.000 Let me be clear.

00:45:30.000 What happened today, what I witnessed, was utterly unacceptable.

00:45:36.000 Violence and vandalism, hijacking a library, none of that has any place on our campus.

00:45:42.000 These aren't Columbia's values.

00:45:44.000 Let me be clear.

00:45:46.000 Columbia unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism and all other forms of harassment and discrimination.

00:45:53.000 We at Columbia value freedom of speech, robust debate, and peaceful protest.

00:45:59.000 Today's disruption of Butler Library was not that.

00:46:02.000 We need to recognize that when rules are violated, when a community is disrupted for the sake of a few, that is a considered choice and one with real consequences.

00:46:13.000 There's a line between legitimate protest and actions that endanger others and disrupt the fundamental work of the university.

00:46:21.000 Today, that line was crossed, and I have confidence the disciplinary proceedings will reflect the severity of the actions.

00:46:30.000 Okay, so, again, this is a different note coming out of Colombia, and there's only one reason for that.

00:46:34.000 It's because there's a different administration in charge.

00:46:37.000 The White House, for its part, praised Colombia because it actually called the cops this time when people trespassed.

00:46:43.000 Five hours after a group of about 100 masked protesters forced their way past security guards and pushed through turnstiles into the school's main library, they had their hands zip-tied behind their backs and were being marched out the door by police, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:46:54.000 And Claire Shipman said, violence and vandalism hijacking a library, none of that has any place on our campus.

00:46:59.000 The Trump administration praised Columbia's strong and resolute response to the protesters, saying that Shipman, quote, has met the moment with fortitude and conviction.

00:47:06.000 So yes, all it took was actually enforcing the law.

00:47:09.000 Who knew?

00:47:10.000 Who knew?

00:47:10.000 Meanwhile...

00:47:11.000 The Bidens are out there trying to clear more sacks of cash.

00:47:14.000 Apparently, they are considering a $30 million tell-all book deal that is going to include details from a diary kept by Jill Biden during her time at the White House.

00:47:23.000 The joint book deal is contingent on Jill, whom experts say could be worth $15 million on her own, as according to Breitbart.

00:47:30.000 But Jill would likely be required to review details surrounding the fact that Joe Biden was, you know, losing his mind, and also the terrible debate he had with Trump that basically forced him out of the race.

00:47:40.000 Well, the Bidens were doing the tour yesterday.

00:47:43.000 They showed up on The View, where Joe Biden explained that actually he could have won.

00:47:48.000 Well, Mr. President, you had previously said that you thought that you would have won.

00:47:53.000 Since then, Donald Trump won all the battleground states and made inroads with almost every major demographic, from working class voters to Hispanic men to black men.

00:48:02.000 Knowing what you know now, do you think you would have beat him?

00:48:05.000 Yeah, he's still got 7 million fewer votes.

00:48:08.000 Yes.

00:48:09.000 A lot of people didn't show up, number one, number one.

00:48:12.000 Number two, they're very close in those toss-up states.

00:48:19.000 It wasn't a slam dunk.

00:48:24.000 So he seems like he's in the best of health.

00:48:27.000 He seems like things are going really, really well.

00:48:29.000 He was asked why he didn't get out earlier, and here was President Biden's explanation.

00:48:34.000 Well, Mr. President, some have even argued that leaving the race and endorsing your vice president, Vice President Harris, over 100 days before the election hampered her campaign.

00:48:47.000 What do you say to those critics?

00:48:49.000 I say, number one, that there were still six full months.

00:48:54.000 She was in every aspect, every decision I made, every decision we made.

00:49:00.000 And I don't think...

00:49:03.000 I hope I don't sound the wrong way.

00:49:06.000 I don't think anybody thought we'd be successful as we were.

00:49:11.000 Oh, boy.

00:49:12.000 Oh, boy.

00:49:12.000 The worst part of this interview with The View, by the way, came when he was asked about all these books that are now coming out, including Jake Tapper's new book, about his cognitive decline, and Jill literally had to step in in the middle.

00:49:23.000 They are wrong.

00:49:24.000 There's nothing to sustain that, number one.

00:49:28.000 Number two, you know, Think of what we're left with.

00:49:32.000 We're left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection when I started.

00:49:39.000 Not since the Civil War.

00:49:40.000 We had a circumstance where we were in a position that we, well, the pandemic, because of the incompetence of the last outfit, end up over a million people dying.

00:49:53.000 A million people dying.

00:49:54.000 We're also in a situation where we found ourselves Unable to deal with a lot of just basic issues, which I won't go into in the interest of time.

00:50:07.000 And so we went to work, and we got it done.

00:50:10.000 And, you know, one of the things that...

00:50:14.000 Well, and Alyssa, you know, one of the things I think is that the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us.

00:50:23.000 And they didn't see how hard Joe worked every single day.

00:50:30.000 And there's Jill jumping in.

00:50:32.000 Oh boy.

00:50:33.000 Oh boy.

00:50:35.000 I can't imagine why the Democrats lost the last election cycle.

00:50:38.000 All right, meanwhile, the Trump administration is sending an enormous number of mixed signals about its trip to the Middle East next week.

00:50:44.000 I say mixed signals, I mean really, really, really mixed signals.

00:50:47.000 So apparently the Trump administration is now thinking of giving away the store to the Saudis without involving Israel in an Abraham Accord.

00:50:55.000 I don't really see the upside of this for the United States.

00:50:57.000 I'm not sure why exactly the United States has an interest in, for example, giving civilian nuclear capacity to the Saudis without requiring anything from the Saudis in return.

00:51:06.000 That seems strange to me.

00:51:08.000 The Abraham Accords were largely predicated on the idea that the United States would help broker a broader regional peace.

00:51:14.000 This is what the Camp David Accords were about in 1978 with Egypt and Israel.

00:51:20.000 This is what the Abraham Accords were originally about between the Israelis, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco.

00:51:28.000 The United States played broker.

00:51:30.000 The United States now seems to be, under President Trump, trying to speedrun the process by basically forcing Israel to do what the Saudis want by giving the Saudis everything they want and then saying that Israel can either jump on board or not jump on board.

00:51:42.000 According to Israel Hayom, Washington has now abandoned its insistence that Saudi Arabia establish diplomatic ties with Israel before nuclear cooperation talks can proceed.

00:51:51.000 Reuters reported the U.S. has dropped its demand for Saudi to normalize relations with Israel as a prerequisite for advancing civil nuclear cooperation talks, according to two sources with knowledge of the So here's the question.

00:52:01.000 Why exactly is it in America's interest for Saudi to have civilian nuclear capacity if we don't get anything and the region doesn't get anything in return?

00:52:08.000 What is the upside, precisely?

00:52:11.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Trump administration has now openly announced that Meanwhile, and Iran were to continue to develop nukes, Israel's not going to sit by idly while that happens.

00:52:32.000 So that's a strange move as well.

00:52:34.000 And of course, the Trump administration announced earlier this week that they were no longer going to be fighting the Houthis at all as long as the Houthis weren't attacking American shipping.

00:52:44.000 the Houthis are firing missiles at Israel.

00:52:46.000 It's not the United States' obligation to act on Israel's behalf in Yemen.

00:52:50.000 Anymore, it's Israel's obligation to act on behalf of the United States in Yemen. 0.62

00:52:54.000 However, opening daylight before you go into a fourth round of negotiations with the Iranians, in which the Iranians almost certainly will attempt to play for time, stall for time, gain quote-unquote civilian nuclear capacity that is aimed at weaponization.

00:53:10.000 This seems like very strange policy.

00:53:12.000 These are strange policy moves to be certain Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, President Trump, of course, is traveling only to the Gulf nations.

00:53:24.000 He is traveling to Saudi, he is traveling to UAE, and he is traveling to Qatar as well.

00:53:30.000 So, again, there are multiple reports that there is strain in the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, presumably because Trump wants Israel to get to the end of the Hamas war as fast as humanly possible, along lines that he is laying.

00:53:43.000 And Netanyahu...

00:53:44.000 Can't do that for whatever reason.

00:53:46.000 The Trump administration wants to divest from the Middle East as fast as possible while apparently drawing closer to Saudi Arabia.

00:53:52.000 Wants to cut some sort of deal with Iran.

00:53:55.000 A bad Obama 2 deal is not a win for the United States.

00:53:59.000 So the sort of confusion in the region continues for sure.

00:54:03.000 Meanwhile, GOP senators are saying they're not going to sign off on a treaty that basically gives Saudi civilian nuclear capacity if the United States doesn't get some sort of regional peace in return.

00:54:12.000 The Senate is going to have a say on that.

00:54:16.000 Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tom Cotton also said, if they want the most durable and lasting kind of deal, they want to bring it to the Senate, have it voted on as a treaty.

00:54:24.000 One of the reasons why the Obama deal was so weak, an agreement between the American president, whoever he or she may be, and a foreign leader can be reversed by future presidents, as what President Trump did seven years ago.

00:54:34.000 Harold Graham and Cotton announcing a resolution to ban Iran from enriching uranium entirely, saying, there will be no Iran nuclear deal approved by the Senate.

00:54:41.000 That includes civilian nuclear capacity.

00:54:42.000 That is a fraud.

00:54:45.000 Senator Cotton and I believe that the only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is for them to completely dismantle their enrichment program.

00:54:57.000 Without enriching uranium, you cannot make a nuclear weapon.

00:55:02.000 That is non-negotiable for us.

00:55:06.000 Complete dismantlement.

00:55:08.000 President Trump said that this weekend.

00:55:10.000 And in our resolution, we describe in granular detail what dismantlement would look like.

00:55:19.000 And meanwhile, the United States is now suggesting that the U.S. will be part of distributing aid in the Gaza Strip.

00:55:27.000 Mike Huckabee, who's the ambassador to Israel, he had him on the show last week, spoke about the need to transfer humanitarian aid to Gaza, saying there's a desperate need for humanitarian aid in Gaza.

00:55:35.000 Hamas is not capable or willing to provide it.

00:55:38.000 So, presumably, this now means that the United States or its partners are going to be providing it.

00:55:43.000 I don't understand why the United States...

00:55:45.000 Any more than I understand the Gaza Pier under Joe Biden.

00:55:48.000 I do not understand why this is a good idea.

00:55:51.000 It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, particularly.

00:55:56.000 Delivering more aid into the Gaza Strip, that will...

00:55:58.000 Okay, so let's say they pass it out to civilians.

00:56:00.000 One minute later, Hamas is going to take all the aid from the civilians.

00:56:03.000 That's what Hamas does. 0.94

00:56:04.000 They literally shoot the civilians to take the aid.

00:56:06.000 The United States being involved in that process makes very little sense to me.

00:56:09.000 I don't see what the U.S. interest is there.

00:56:10.000 It doesn't free the hostages, including the American hostage, Adon Alexander.

00:56:15.000 It doesn't facilitate the end of a war in the Gaza Strip.

00:56:19.000 Again, the signals that are coming out from the Trump administration on the Middle East are, at the very least, incredibly puzzling.

00:56:24.000 Joining us online, Andrew Klavan.

00:56:26.000 He has a brand new book titled The Kingdom of Cain.

00:56:28.000 It was released earlier this week, and it's all about...

00:56:31.000 How to deal with the problem of evil in a world filled with it.

00:56:36.000 Andrew, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:56:36.000 Great to talk to you.

00:56:37.000 Good to see you.

00:56:40.000 So, let's talk about the Kingdom of Cain.

00:56:41.000 You look at three murders in history, including Cain's killing of his brother Abel, in order to examine how exactly to deal with the problem of evil.

00:56:50.000 So, what's sort of the thesis of the book?

00:56:52.000 Well, I took these murders, these famous murders, real-life murders, that artists...

00:56:58.000 Continually turned into stories, movies, novels, even works of philosophy.

00:57:03.000 One murderer had his hand mummified, and after he was dead, they mummified his hand, put it in a museum.

00:57:09.000 Poets would write beautiful odes to his hand.

00:57:12.000 These are murders that capture the imaginations of artists.

00:57:15.000 And the thing about art is that it turns life into a creative...

00:57:19.000 It's a creative response to life.

00:57:21.000 And so I started to think, well, if you have a creative response to murder, which is undeniably evil...

00:57:26.000 What are you finding that's beautiful in this that actually feeds into our life, that speaks into our lives, so that we can deal with the world?

00:57:35.000 When you look around at it, honestly, right, you can get very depressed.

00:57:38.000 And yet the Bible tells us to rejoice and it tells us, you know, to live in this world in rejoicing.

00:57:44.000 And so my thesis was this.

00:57:46.000 If you can take a murder like the Ed Gein's murder of women in the 1950s in Wisconsin and turn it into a work of art like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which is a brilliant, brilliant movie, where is the beauty coming from?

00:57:58.000 And I just take a look at the way in which creative people transform evil into something beautiful.

00:58:04.000 And then ask the question in the second part of the book, how do you do that in your own life?

00:58:08.000 How do you take things in your life?

00:58:10.000 What are the practices that you do, the rituals, the beliefs that you have, the ways you deal with people that transform this?

00:58:19.000 Kind of dark world into something beautiful so that you can live joyfully.

00:58:23.000 It's a really, I don't know, I think it's a book that will actually capture people's imagination because these are movies we all love.

00:58:31.000 I mean, Silence of the Lambs is based on the Ed Gein murder.

00:58:34.000 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on the Ed Gein murder.

00:58:37.000 All the slasher movies.

00:58:39.000 And all of those movies, a lot of them obviously are junk.

00:58:41.000 But every now and again you hit one that you think like, oh wait, this actually understood something about evil that actually makes my life better.

00:58:48.000 So that's basically it.

00:58:51.000 So to go back to the original story of Cain and Abel, obviously there have been a wide variety of interpretations of what that story is supposed to mean.

00:58:59.000 Every time I read it, my takeaway seems to be the reverse of many people's, which is that story is actually in the book of Genesis about the redemption of Cain.

00:59:07.000 That Cain is the first character in the Bible who actually repents of sin.

00:59:11.000 One of the big stories with Adam and Eve is that they don't repent of their sin.

00:59:14.000 God confronts them and they blame the snake.

00:59:16.000 Adam blames Eve.

00:59:17.000 Eve blames the snake.

00:59:18.000 And so they have to be cast out of the Garden of Eden.

00:59:20.000 Cain, by contrast, he's told that he's essentially earned the death penalty.

00:59:24.000 And then he throws himself on the mercy of the court and recognizes that he's done something deeply wrong before God.

00:59:29.000 And so it's actually the first, not only murder story, but the first repentance story.

00:59:32.000 What do you make of the story of Cain?

00:59:34.000 Well, the interesting thing about Cain is, unlike the other stories, I didn't go directly to works of art about it because it repeats, the story repeats in the Bible, especially the Old Testament.

00:59:45.000 Over and over and over again, every generation has a brother battle in it, in which the younger brother, instead of the older brother, kind of wins out.

00:59:53.000 So you have the younger brothers continually triumphing over older brothers throughout the Old Testament.

00:59:59.000 And I kind of took the murder of Abel by Cain as a trauma that feeds into the chosen people of God and repeats itself to...

01:00:10.000 Train their hearts to something.

01:00:11.000 This battle, I mean, every brother battle in mythology is looked upon as a battle between a person and his other, himself, you know, because you're kind of like your brother and your brother is kind of part of you.

01:00:21.000 And so I study the Cain and Abel story as a story of the inward struggle between faith and unbelief.

01:00:30.000 And the idea, and a lot of the old rabbis' writings about this kind of deal with this, that the reason Cain's...

01:00:38.000 Offering to God is not acceptable, and Abel's is, is not because of the nature of the offering, not because of the quality of the offering, it's because of the quality of the heart that's doing the offering.

01:00:46.000 And you're absolutely right.

01:00:48.000 At first, when God comes to Cain, he says, where's your brother?

01:00:53.000 He says, am I my brother's keeper?

01:00:54.000 And God has that incredibly...

01:00:57.000 Wonderful response, what have you done?

01:01:00.000 And that line, what have you done, which echoes through Dostoevsky, it echoes through all of the Christian writings, what have you done?

01:01:06.000 And in Dostoevsky, the line is transformed into, what have you done to yourself?

01:01:10.000 That's what, when there's a murder in Crime and Punishment, the woman who loves him says to him, what have you done to yourself?

01:01:17.000 And I think that that's what God asks of Cain, and that's why that story keeps coming back until the Jewish people can kind of work this out into... 0.93

01:01:26.000 Unifying the- And it's a beautiful thing,

01:01:54.000 and it's a thing that we can actually live in.

01:01:57.000 In that Cain and Abel relationship that's inside, I think, every one of us, we can actually live in this joy without fear once we understand what it is we're fighting inside ourselves.

01:02:09.000 Drew, one of the things that I think you do so beautifully, and you do in a lot of your work, is when you're talking about themes like the theme of suffering, you do it in the form of storytelling.

01:02:18.000 You do it in the form of experience.

01:02:20.000 That is really the only way to deal with the problem of true evil or true pain in the universe.

01:02:25.000 You can't do it in the form of philosophizing.

01:02:26.000 Anybody who tries to philosophize evil, who tries to figure out on a sort of rational level, how do you deal with evil in the world?

01:02:33.000 How are you as a person supposed to confront evil in the world?

01:02:36.000 You face the problem of Job.

01:02:38.000 All of his friends keep coming to him and giving him sort of rationalistic responses for why evil has happened to him in the universe.

01:02:42.000 And there is no real answer to that.

01:02:44.000 Your book is much more about...

01:02:49.000 You know, this is what the full thesis, the full theory of the book, is that the only response to evil is beauty.

01:02:57.000 And Dostoevsky said beauty will save the world.

01:03:00.000 And the reason I believe that to be true is because when you get into these conversations, how can there be a good God who's all powerful and all omniscient, and yet there's evil in the world?

01:03:10.000 And this keeps a lot of people from coming back.

01:03:11.000 I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, oh, you believe things, but I just see so much evil in the world I can't believe.

01:03:19.000 But the idea that there is an overall beauty.

01:03:23.000 To the design of the world.

01:03:24.000 And you can see it.

01:03:25.000 You experience it when you see the world rightly.

01:03:27.000 And that only comes across in art.

01:03:29.000 It only comes across...

01:03:31.000 I can only communicate it to you in storytelling, in music, in painting.

01:03:36.000 I mean, how many times have you looked at a painting in a museum of some horrifying thing?

01:03:41.000 Even the cover of this book, which is a beautiful painting of Cain killing Abel.

01:03:46.000 It has a gorgeous painting of it.

01:03:48.000 And you look at it and you think, that painting is so beautiful.

01:03:50.000 But what I'm looking at...

01:03:52.000 It's horrific.

01:03:53.000 It's a crucifixion.

01:03:54.000 It's Cain killing Abel.

01:03:55.000 It's some terrible disaster that takes place in the Bible or in mythology.

01:03:59.000 And yet some artist has found the beauty in it.

01:04:01.000 My question, the book ends with the question, if human beings can do that with the evil that they experience, what can God not do of the entire experience of creation?

01:04:10.000 And so this broken creation that we're in, this creation that's so full of things that darken us.

01:04:16.000 It's actually part of a design so beautiful that when we finally see it, I think we will understand that our joy was always joy, and our joy was always the reality, and not our sorrow.

01:04:28.000 And I think that that is, you're absolutely right.

01:04:30.000 This is so true.

01:04:31.000 Philosophy cannot deal with evil, but beauty can suggest a solution to evil.

01:04:39.000 Well, the book is The Kingdom of Cain.

01:04:40.000 You can go get it everywhere by my friend Andrew Klavan.

01:04:43.000 Andrew, congrats on the book.

01:04:44.000 Thanks a lot.

01:04:45.000 It's great to see you.

01:04:46.000 Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:04:48.000 We're going to jump into the mailbag, answer some of your questions.

01:04:51.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:04:53.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:04:54.000 Use code Shapiro.

01:04:55.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 09, 2025

A New Pope…Plus Will Trump RAISE Taxes?!

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