The Ben Shapiro Show - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

00:00:00.000 Folks, the alleged of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week has now been arrested.

00:00:06.000 He was arrested yesterday in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

00:00:09.000 This apparently happened because somebody at a local McDonald's saw him and his picture had been plastered across the news and they recognized him.

00:00:17.000 They called the police.

00:00:18.000 The police showed up.

00:00:19.000 They searched him and they found a so-called ghost gun, a 3D printed gun.

00:00:22.000 They found a bevy of fake IDs.

00:00:25.000 He apparently also had a two page manifesto on him that was radically anti-capitalist in nature.

00:00:31.000 And it's sort of fascinating to get into who this person was.

00:00:35.000 I want to get into that.

00:00:36.000 I also want to get into the public response to him, which to me is far more disturbing.

00:00:41.000 And yes, I've seen the comments on my recent shows talking about how, believe it or not, it is very, very bad.

00:00:46.000 It is, in fact, evil to shoot the UnitedHealthcareCEO, even if you are upset, at the healthcare industry in the United States.

00:00:53.000 The fact that this has to be said is sort of incredible, but it does have to be said.

00:00:59.000 So, let's start with what we know about the alleged shooter here.

00:01:03.000 His name is Luigi Mangione, and we have a policy on this show that we don't normally say the names of mass shooters.

00:01:09.000 He is not a mass shooter.

00:01:10.000 He's an individual murderer.

00:01:11.000 And obviously his name is plastered all over the news.

00:01:13.000 So you've seen him and you know about his name.

00:01:15.000 His name is Luigi Mangione.

00:01:17.000 He is 26 years old.

00:01:19.000 We know that he had upon him a 262 word handwritten document.

00:01:25.000 So presumably written at the last minute in which he said that United Health Care's market capitalization, even though it has grown American life expectancy, has not.

00:01:32.000 This is according to the UK Daily Mail.

00:01:33.000 He condemned companies that, quote, continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.

00:01:41.000 Mangione then reportedly also added that he acted alone and that the entire effort was self-funded, saying, quote, to save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly I wasn't working with anyone. 0.94

00:01:50.000 These parasites had it coming.

00:01:51.000 I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done. 0.97

00:01:54.000 We'll get into that particular argument that it, quote-unquote, had to be done in a moment because one of the things about evil is that it tends to masquerade as good.

00:02:03.000 Nothing in the American healthcare system changed because the United Healthcare CEO was shot.

00:02:08.000 And in fact, one of the sort of outlying symptoms of evil is to use broad-based rationalizations about systemic problems in order to justify individual acts of evil, like murdering a father and CEO of a legal company.

00:02:22.000 That even if you don't like how the company runs, and I know a lot of doctors who don't like how United Healthcare runs, they think United Healthcare rips off customers and fights them at every turn.

00:02:32.000 Whatever you think about UnitedHealthcare is irrelevant to the question of whether Brian Thompson should have been shot to death on the streets of New York.

00:02:39.000 So, more about the alleged shooter.

00:02:41.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, a review of his reading diet suggested that at some point his ideas about activism had crossed into an interest in violence.

00:02:48.000 His circumstances were hard to reconcile with his standing, says the Wall Street Journal, less than a decade ago when he was a fresh-faced valedictorian at the nearly $38,000-a-year Gilman School in Baltimore, which he attended from the sixth grade until he graduated in 2016. Again, this is a very upper-class person from a very upper-class family.

00:03:05.000 He ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania.

00:03:09.000 Where he would major in computer science and earn a master's degree.

00:03:12.000 So this person has a very high IQ, intelligent person.

00:03:16.000 A particular person from that class named Luigi Mangione, according to the Wall Street Journal, was inducted into an academic honor society reserved for top students in electrical and computer engineering.

00:03:24.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, he appeared to enjoy Greek life, posting photos on Instagram of him and his Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, often on a couch outside their house.

00:03:32.000 In Maryland, the family is a well-known clan.

00:03:35.000 They founded something called Lorian Healthcare, which is a senior care company with services including nursing and assisted living in 1977. And they also developed something called Turf Valley Resort, which is a spa and conference center, In Maryland and suburban Baltimore's Hayfields Country Club.

00:03:49.000 One of his cousins is a Republican member of the state House of Delegates.

00:03:52.000 So again, very rich family, very wealthy family.

00:03:55.000 It appears, and you can examine his sort of political record all you want, and again, if you view his old Twitter account, for example, what you will see is a sort of bizarrely heterodox, sometimes center-right Twitter account.

00:04:08.000 But what is very clear is that in recent months, he underwent some sort of serious health crisis, which was probably exacerbated by psychedelic use.

00:04:18.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, in recent months there were hints he'd become estranged from friends and family, according to interviews as well as his social media accounts, which might also shed light on his own health.

00:04:26.000 So the banner photo of Mangione's X account features an X-ray of a person's back.

00:04:32.000 And the picture is pretty horrifying.

00:04:34.000 This appears to be like an L4, L5 surgery.

00:04:37.000 A spinal fusion surgery, which has a very low rate of success.

00:04:41.000 It usually leaves people, or very often, at the very least, leaves people with significant pain for life.

00:04:47.000 So this person must have had a massive back injury.

00:04:49.000 According to his friends, he did that while surfing.

00:04:52.000 His Goodreads profile showed that he had been reading books about back pain and apparently he suffered from chronic back pain that, quote, affected all parts of his life, including his ability to have a romantic life or enjoy sports such as surfing, according to a person named Josiah Ryan, who is spokesman for the founder of a Hawaii co-housing complex where Mangione lived a couple of years ago in 2022. About six months ago, he says, Mangione stopped replying to texts and sort of disappeared.

00:05:14.000 So Mangione told a person named RJ Martin and others at this co-living facility in Hawaii, a place called Surf Break, that he was returning to the mainland to have back surgery.

00:05:23.000 In late 2022, Ryan said that Mangione sent friends at Surf Break photos of his spinal x-ray and injured back.

00:05:28.000 He did move back to Hawaii, but he stayed not at surf break and then stayed in touch by text with his friend R.J. Martin.

00:05:34.000 And then he dropped off the radar about six months ago.

00:05:36.000 According to a friend of R.J. Martin's, he just stopped replying to R.J.'s text.

00:05:40.000 Part of the cognitive dissonance for R.J. is there was no indication from anyone, anyone at all, that this sort of thing might be in his future.

00:05:46.000 Now, again, it's not a giant mystery because Mangione was posting about anxiety and mental health.

00:05:52.000 He shared a quote by an Indian philosopher that read, quote, Again, you can start to see the radicalism creeping into his social media accounts.

00:06:03.000 The law enforcement community is still trying to figure out exactly what happened in New York.

00:06:08.000 He stayed at a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

00:06:11.000 And then, of course, Thompson, Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was intercepted by the alleged shooter Wednesday morning as he was walking to the Hilton Hotel for the UnitedHealthcare Annual Investor Conference.

00:06:21.000 But apparently, according to social media posts, a lot of his friends were reaching out to the shooter asking where the hell he was.

00:06:26.000 Quote, Hey man, I need you to call me.

00:06:28.000 I don't know if you are okay or just in a super isolated place, but I haven't heard from you in months.

00:06:33.000 This particular friend said, you made commitments to me for my wedding, and if you can't honor them, I need to know so I can plan accordingly.

00:06:38.000 And then on October 30th, another person posted to his ex-account, hey, are you okay?

00:06:42.000 Nobody's heard from you in months.

00:06:43.000 Apparently, your family is looking for you.

00:06:46.000 Now, according to the UK Daily Mail, he suddenly went radio silent while he was recovering from this back surgery, and he sought alternative forms of pain management, including psychedelics and magic mushrooms.

00:06:55.000 So, let me just be clear.

00:06:56.000 There are a lot of podcasts and people out there who recommend use of, shall we say, untested, unverified, uncontrolled studied drugs.

00:07:07.000 And there are a lot of young people who are listening to these people and then taking these psychedelics.

00:07:11.000 And it turns out that they are not harmless.

00:07:14.000 One of the amazing things about sort of our constant information environment is that many of the same people who will suggest correctly that the overuse of pharmaceuticals can mess with your brain will then pump themselves full of psychedelic drugs that are completely untested that you don't know the effects of and that can in fact cause serious mental issues.

00:07:35.000 On X, for example, Mangione had created a titled Psych full of tweets about psilocybin.

00:07:41.000 Those would be magic mushrooms.

00:07:42.000 In January 25th of this year, he added to his Goodreads a book called Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, an Identification Guide, and quote, Mushrooms of Hawaii, an Identification Guide, which sort of suggests that he's walking around Hawaii, picking up mushrooms, identifying them, and then ingesting them, which is not going to be good for your mental health, folks.

00:08:00.000 Emergency physician Dr. Kashif Perzada wrote on X, the picture looks like a lumbar spinal fusion surgery.

00:08:04.000 This would be his spinal fusion surgery that we talked about a moment ago.

00:08:07.000 And again, there are lots of books on his goodreads.com about pain management.

00:08:13.000 There's a guy named Jack Mack.

00:08:15.000 A staffer at Barstool Sports who said that high school friends of the alleged shooter claimed that he went crazy after being injured, quote, spoke with a source that had a lot of friends that went to high school with Luigi Mangione.

00:08:24.000 What keeps coming up is a back surgery that changed everything for him, and he went, quote, absolutely crazy.

00:08:28.000 He moved to Japan.

00:08:29.000 His contact with family stopped about a year ago.

00:08:31.000 Recently, the family reached out to his friends from high school asking if they even had information on him.

00:08:36.000 Some of the books that were on his Goodreads list included, quote, Back in Control, a spinal surgeon's roadmap out of chronic pain.

00:08:42.000 Another is, quote, Crooked, outwitting the back pain industry and getting on the road to recovery.

00:08:46.000 Some friends, according to, again, this is the Daily Mail, now say that Mangione seems to have become radicalized after being laid off from a job at Trucar last year and then, of course, undergoing bad surgery.

00:08:56.000 So that keeps coming up over and over and over.

00:08:58.000 And again, there are indicators of just how radicalized he had become.

00:09:03.000 So, for example, he had posted...

00:09:07.000 About the Unabomber's manifesto over on Goodreads.

00:09:12.000 A four-star book review.

00:09:15.000 And here's what he wrote.

00:09:16.000 It's a window into his mind, and it's a window into how people who have, quote-unquote, social concerns can start channeling those into acts of individual evil, just as Ted Kaczynski did, the Unabomber.

00:09:26.000 Quote, clearly written by a mathematics prodigy, reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life. 0.72

00:09:32.000 It is easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic.

00:09:36.000 Again, this would be the alleged shooter who is writing this about the Unabomber.

00:09:39.000 In order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.

00:09:42.000 But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.

00:09:46.000 He was a violent individual, rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people.

00:09:49.000 While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a craty Luddite, however, they're more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.

00:09:56.000 A take I found online that I think is interesting.

00:09:59.000 Had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere, and at the end of the day, he's probably right.

00:10:04.000 Oil barons haven't listened to any environmentalists, but they feared him. 0.94

00:10:07.000 When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive.

00:10:11.000 You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution.

00:10:16.000 Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way, and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the Earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun.

00:10:25.000 Peaceful protest is outright ignored.

00:10:26.000 Economic protest is impossible in the current system.

00:10:29.000 So how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense?

00:10:33.000 Again, this is his review of the Unabomber.

00:10:35.000 So some like minds happening here.

00:10:38.000 These companies don't care about you or your kids or your grandkids.

00:10:41.000 They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?

00:10:46.000 We're animals just like everything else on this planet except we've forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival. 0.98

00:10:54.000 Violence never solved anything is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.

00:10:58.000 And that is a quote that he is quoting, a take that he's quoting, about the Unabomber's manifesto.

00:11:03.000 We'll get to more of this in a moment.

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00:13:07.000 So you can see the extreme political radicalism here that suggests, again, That violence is justified because the system is unworkable, because the system is unfixable, and because grievances are justified.

00:13:20.000 Now, the family of the alleged shooter did put out a statement saying, quote, The statement also says the family only knows the facts of the case that had been released in the news.

00:13:34.000 We're devastated by the news, the short statement says.

00:13:38.000 Obviously, windows into the mind of people who have had serious health problems, who are messing around with psychedelics.

00:13:46.000 It is very difficult.

00:13:48.000 And I've said this before about alleged shooters and alleged criminals right and left.

00:13:54.000 Mental illness, psychedelic use, all of these things play a role.

00:14:00.000 But the generalized willingness by many members of the media and in the political class to justify this sort of stuff is a symptom of something deeper and sicker going on in our society.

00:14:14.000 So, for example, when this alleged shooter was still at large, according to the UK Metro, some of America's highest profile amateur sleuths are flat out refusing to help identify the killer.

00:14:27.000 TikTok sleuth, that Danish guy, told 2 million followers in a video, quote, I don't have to encourage violence.

00:14:31.000 I also don't have to condone violence by any means, but I also don't have to help.

00:14:35.000 Savannah Sparks, who has been reportedly tapped by police to help train officers on how to track suspects online, told NBC whether she's working on the case, absolutely the F not.

00:14:45.000 Michael McCorder, better known as a person named Tizzy Ent on TikTok, explained in a video, quote, I've yet to see anyone online posting, we've got to find this guy, we've got to get him off the street.

00:14:52.000 I have, however, seen people making an argument, doing the hear-me-out thing, talking about how attractive the killer is, people calling him Robin Hood, people quite literally making fan art.

00:15:00.000 I don't think it's that difficult to figure out why.

00:15:01.000 I don't think there's a single person in this country who hasn't themselves or had someone very, very near and dear to them suffer from the absolutely abysmal thing that has privatized healthcare in this country.

00:15:10.000 Now, the thing about that that, of course, is amazing is that nationalized healthcare in places like the UK are full-scale disastrous.

00:15:15.000 And the same people who presumably were cheering on the alleged shooter in this case are in favor of a healthcare system that ends with lower life expectancy and actual government rationing of care, many of them.

00:15:27.000 But there is something deeper, a sickness that is going on in our political class, best exemplified by the absolute nutjob, Taylor Lorenz, who used to work for the Washington Post, As well as for Box.

00:15:40.000 She was fired yesterday, it appears.

00:15:41.000 She appeared on Piers Morgan yesterday.

00:15:44.000 And I have to say that Piers, his show is entertaining largely because it has become the Jerry Springer of politics.

00:15:50.000 But he had on Taylor Lorenz, and she said that she felt actual joy when the UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered on the street.

00:15:58.000 I do believe in the sanctity of life, and I think that's why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately, you know, because it feels like...

00:16:08.000 Joy?

00:16:08.000 Serious?

00:16:08.000 I mean...

00:16:09.000 Joy in a man's execution?

00:16:11.000 Maybe not joy, but certainly not empathy.

00:16:15.000 Because again...

00:16:16.000 We're watching the footage.

00:16:17.000 How can this make you joyful?

00:16:19.000 This guy's a husband, he's a father, and he's being young down in the middle of Manhattan.

00:16:24.000 Why is that making you joyful?

00:16:26.000 So are the tens of thousands of Americans, innocent Americans, who died because greedy health insurance executives like this one push policies of denying care to the most vulnerable people.

00:16:42.000 Okay, again, this is the case that is being made by the political and media chatter in class.

00:16:46.000 Not all of them, but a large number of them.

00:16:48.000 And it is, in fact, a real problem.

00:16:50.000 By the way, it is not designed at solving the actual healthcare problems in the country.

00:16:53.000 It turns out that healthcare in the United States is a giant cluster F. Everyone knows this.

00:16:57.000 It is a mix of massive government subsidization, massive government regulation, and then private healthcare companies who are attempting to navigate all of that.

00:17:06.000 And one of the big questions that you should always ask in a quasi-market system is why companies are choosing UnitedHealthcare.

00:17:12.000 And the answer is because UnitedHealthcare is cheaper for the companies.

00:17:16.000 And why aren't companies getting better healthcare for their employees?

00:17:19.000 Because it turns out that there aren't a lot of other companies that are significantly better than UnitedHealthcare.

00:17:22.000 Why?

00:17:23.000 Because of the regulatory environment that surrounds health insurance companies.

00:17:27.000 The profit margins on health insurance companies, by the way, are not 50%.

00:17:29.000 They're more like 3% on average.

00:17:32.000 2% to 3% on average.

00:17:34.000 And it turns out that large parts of that are because of the bizarre subsidization of particular parts of the healthcare industry and the bizarre regulation of other parts of the healthcare industry.

00:17:44.000 The American health insurance system is basically a Frankensteinian monster crafted by the conjunction of politics and business.

00:17:54.000 And it ends up wasting an enormous amount of money on administrative overhead, It ends up with ugly negotiations between patients and insurance companies over what sort of doctors they can get.

00:18:05.000 The history of the American healthcare system is really complex.

00:18:08.000 It is also really difficult to untangle because it also has disparate results in a wide variety of areas.

00:18:14.000 So, for example, if you have cancer, you would prefer to be in the United States.

00:18:18.000 If you have a broken leg, you might prefer to be in a nationalized healthcare system depending on how the care is getting rationed.

00:18:25.000 Emergency care in nationalized healthcare systems sometimes is quite good because, again, basic care happens with alacrity.

00:18:32.000 But if you have any sort of complex problem, you're not going to want to be there.

00:18:35.000 You're going to want to be in the United States, which is why you see people from foreign countries like Canada and the UK traveling to the United States if they have cancer.

00:18:41.000 A lot of this is really complicated, and that's sort of the point.

00:18:45.000 There's a piece by Alicia Finley talking about how Obamacare helped exacerbate all of these problems.

00:18:50.000 Quote, Obamacare's perverse effects are fueling public rage against insurers and support for a single-payer system that would eliminate them.

00:18:57.000 Mr. Obama, Barack Obama, who pushed Obamacare, of course, and Peter Orszag, the law's chief architect, must be smiling.

00:19:03.000 Orjag, who is now CEO of the financial services firm Lazard, has dined out on advising health insurance on mergers he said were spurred by the law's regulations.

00:19:11.000 The U.S. is spending $2 trillion more on health care than it was back in 2010, but Americans are not any healthier.

00:19:18.000 Now, again, one problem is that having insurance doesn't change people's behavior.

00:19:22.000 It causes them to use more care.

00:19:24.000 Medicaid beneficiaries, for example, rush to the emergency room for non-emergencies because they are covered by Medicaid.

00:19:29.000 They don't have deductibles or co-pays.

00:19:32.000 Also, the Medicaid reimbursement rates are significantly lower than UnitedHealthcare, for example, so there are a lot of doctors who will not accept Medicaid.

00:19:41.000 And then Obamacare expanded eligibility because states have tried to hold down Medicaid costs by reducing reimbursement.

00:19:47.000 Patients with exchange plans are not faring much better.

00:19:50.000 Affordable Care Act plan networks include, on average, only 40% of local physicians and 21% of those employed by hospitals.

00:19:57.000 Insurers are narrowing coverage to keep down costs.

00:19:59.000 Because they sort of have to in many cases.

00:20:02.000 They're also hiking deductibles, which this year averaged $5,241 for a typical plan.

00:20:08.000 It turns out there are not a lot of easy solves for a complex system.

00:20:11.000 And herein lies the actual problem.

00:20:14.000 There's nothing new about the United States people cheering murderous criminals.

00:20:18.000 This has happened for a very long time in the United States.

00:20:20.000 There are full movies about this sort of stuff, right?

00:20:22.000 Bonnie and Clyde, famously with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, is a movie about the glorification of actual murderous criminals.

00:20:29.000 John Dillinger, who robbed some 24 banks with his gang, He was widely proclaimed a folk hero in the 1930s by one segment of the population.

00:20:38.000 According to the Sunday Times, for example, his gang robbed more than a dozen banks between May 1933 and July 1934, stealing over 300 grand.

00:20:45.000 He also destroyed thousands of mortgage records during the robberies, which made him very popular with poor people who were seeking to escape the payments that they owed to the banks.

00:20:54.000 So back in the 1930s, obviously, there's a lot of frustration and anger at the banking system because of the Great Depression.

00:21:00.000 And so there was a sort of justification that went on of, for example, robbing banks or shooting bank managers.

00:21:05.000 And as you can see in the alleged shooter in this case is justification of Ted Kaczynski.

00:21:10.000 You can easily see the logic of this extending out to pretty much every aspect of free market enterprise in the United States.

00:21:17.000 Healthcare, oil companies, banks, literally anything. 0.73

00:21:21.000 If you don't like the way a business is acting, according to this logic, you should shoot somebody.

00:21:29.000 So why is that happening?

00:21:32.000 Well, there is now an entire media and political class dedicated to a simple proposition.

00:21:36.000 America is so flawed, its systems are so corrupt, that criminality is a reasonable response to those flaws.

00:21:43.000 This is demagoguery.

00:21:45.000 In a democracy, in a republic, the way that you change policy is by electing politicians.

00:21:50.000 And then those politicians work with each other and with regulators and at the state level and at the local level in order to change the policy.

00:21:58.000 Once you say that the system is so broken that the only resort is revolutionary violence and not even useful revolutionary violence in the sense that you're overthrowing the system, at least if you're going to make the case for revolution, you have to make the case for overthrowing the entire system.

00:22:11.000 But that's not what these people are doing.

00:22:12.000 It's just nihilistic violence lashing out at a system that these people believe is targeting them in some way.

00:22:19.000 Why do they believe that?

00:22:20.000 Because instead of saying the truth, truthfully, instead of saying the real truth, which is that these systems are really complex.

00:22:27.000 They are very difficult to fix.

00:22:28.000 There's a whole class of demagogues in political office and in the media who spend their days saying that all problems are easily solved except that there is an intractable coterie who want to keep people in misery for their own profit.

00:22:45.000 And there's just a bunch of people who don't care, for example, if you are being denied alone.

00:22:51.000 There are a bunch of people who don't care if you're having a tough time with the healthcare system.

00:22:55.000 They don't care about it.

00:22:56.000 If they just cared more, then it would all be solved. 1.00

00:22:58.000 This is ugly, and it's stupid, and it's not true. 1.00

00:23:01.000 One of the easiest things in politics is to attribute malice to your opponents. 1.00

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00:25:10.000 There may be people who are perfectly willing...

00:25:14.000 To keep people in misery for their own profit.

00:25:16.000 Maybe there are those people.

00:25:17.000 That is not the vast bulk of people in the United States or in positions of high power or in positions in high industry.

00:25:22.000 That is not how it works.

00:25:24.000 This is a strategy, a political strategy that was termed by the philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, emotivism.

00:25:30.000 The idea that you, instead of making an argument about the policy the person is promoting, you actually just say that the person has bad motivations.

00:25:37.000 That person is evil.

00:25:38.000 That person is wrong. 1.00

00:25:40.000 Not just wrong, but motivated by a sociopathic evil.

00:25:44.000 So the only way that you kill somebody like Brian Thompson is by suggesting that he is motivated not by a desire to keep the company working and operative in a very difficult regulatory environment with a bizarre system of subsidies and administrative details and all the rest of that.

00:26:01.000 And you can disagree with his decisions, think they're wrong, but that's the actual...

00:26:05.000 Instead, what you do is you say he's evil and he's just trying to maximize profit.

00:26:08.000 Once you start saying the evil profiteers are trying to harm Americans, like that's their goal.

00:26:14.000 Their goal is to harm Americans, and I'm telling you this is on both sides of the aisle.

00:26:18.000 It is on the left predominantly, but there is a swath of people on the right who are also doing this routine.

00:26:23.000 It's ugly.

00:26:24.000 Now, I will say that there are elites who have lent credibility to this particular argument through their malfeasance.

00:26:31.000 I think COVID had a lot to do with this.

00:26:33.000 You had people like Anthony Fauci who were giving the platonic lies to the American public.

00:26:38.000 Lying for their own purposes, in many cases, quashing their political opposition.

00:26:42.000 But the generalized argument that is made too much in politics, and it does boil the pot, it leads to an increasing temperature that justifies violence, is this language that disagreements on policy are not because of a pragmatic inability to come to a conclusion or starting from different first principles or using...

00:27:05.000 Logical deductions that end up with different conclusions.

00:27:08.000 No, the actual reason that, for example, the healthcare system is a mess is because Brian Thompson is an evil person who is trying to kill grandma.

00:27:17.000 Or the reason that the oil companies are attempting to pump more oil is not because there is high demand for carbon-based fossil fuels because it's still the most effective form of energy production on the planet.

00:27:28.000 It's because they want to destroy the earth and don't care about destroying the earth.

00:27:33.000 Or, the reason the bank denied your loan is not because the bank looked at your loan, assessed the risk, and found that it wasn't worth the price.

00:27:41.000 It's because the bank manager is actually Mr. Potter and is trying to deny your bank loan because he himself is evil.

00:27:49.000 Now, this sort of stuff does get politicians where they want to go very often.

00:27:52.000 Because the easiest form of politics is to label your political opponents Motivated, not by mistake, but motivated by actual sociopathic Darth Vader style evil.

00:28:03.000 People just want to do bad things to you.

00:28:06.000 But this does lead to higher levels of violence across the board.

00:28:09.000 And one of the things that's sort of amazing in the right-left breakdown is depending on who is doing the justifying, using the exact same logic, you'll see one side or the other justify it.

00:28:19.000 So, for example...

00:28:21.000 When Bernie Sanders back in 2020 says that our system creates huge profits by deliberately killing people, which is not the way the healthcare system works.

00:28:29.000 If that were true, life expectancy in the United States would have declined over the course of, say, the last 50 years, rather than radically increasing over the course of the last 50 years.

00:28:37.000 The regulatory environment in the United States, as we've discussed, for healthcare is a complete mess.

00:28:41.000 But Bernie says he could just cut that Gordian knot by suggesting the reason that healthcare isn't better is because we need to nationalize it, and anyone who doesn't want to nationalize it wants grandma to be murdered.

00:28:53.000 The function of our current system, however, is simply to make huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies who made $100 billion in profit last year while people die because they don't get to a doctor on time.

00:29:13.000 Again, the basic notion that Bernie Sanders is spewing there, this Marxist notion, that profit is inherently some sort of grave evil.

00:29:19.000 And if you just got rid of the $100 billion in profit, then magically healthcare would get better.

00:29:22.000 There are non-profitable systems.

00:29:24.000 They're called nationalized healthcare systems, and the outcomes are not better.

00:29:26.000 So it's just not true.

00:29:28.000 But it's a sexy argument to many people on the left.

00:29:31.000 It's even a sexy argument some people on the right again there are demagogues on the right who will do the same exact routine.

00:29:35.000 Well look at these systems.

00:29:37.000 You know it's very difficult for young families to buy single-family housing.

00:29:40.000 That must be because there's a coterie of elite who don't care whether you can get single-family housing.

00:29:45.000 Who want to exploit you.

00:29:46.000 Who want to harm you.

00:29:47.000 And we should go after those people.

00:29:50.000 This sort of demagoguery exists across the aisle.

00:29:53.000 What's funny, again, is depending on the context in which it crops up, you'll see different crowds condemning it.

00:29:58.000 So, to take a completely, the exact same argument, but now applied to a different context.

00:30:04.000 Yesterday, Daniel Penny was acquitted in New York, as he well should have been.

00:30:08.000 Daniel Penny is a hero.

00:30:09.000 Daniel Penny was protecting people on a subway.

00:30:12.000 From the predations of a mentally ill, deeply schizophrenic drug abuser who is threatening them physically according to witness testimony on the subway train.

00:30:20.000 This trial never should have happened.

00:30:22.000 It should not have happened in the first place.

00:30:23.000 He was acquitted yesterday.

00:30:26.000 Okay, and I want to get into the acquittal in a moment, but what's really fascinating is the reaction to the acquittal.

00:30:32.000 So, for example, on the left, you're seeing the exact same arguments that are being made about the quote-unquote racial systems of the United States as you see being made about the healthcare system of the United States.

00:30:42.000 So, Hawk Newsome.

00:30:44.000 Famously, of the Black Lives Matter movement, he says, we need vigilantism. 1.00

00:30:49.000 He's basically making the Unabomber argument here.

00:30:51.000 He's making the alleged shooter argument here. 0.98

00:30:53.000 The racial system of the United States, the justice system, is so broken that perhaps people should be assassinated.

00:30:59.000 Now, you hear that, a lot of my listeners, many of the people in the comments a couple of days ago, and they will say, well, that's evil, what he said.

00:31:06.000 Yes.

00:31:07.000 Yes, it is.

00:31:07.000 Yes, it turns out it is.

00:31:09.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:31:10.000 It's like everybody else has vigilantes. 0.97

00:31:14.000 We need some black vigilantes. 1.00

00:31:18.000 That's right. 1.00

00:31:19.000 People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud.

00:31:26.000 How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress?

00:31:31.000 Right.

00:31:33.000 I'm tired.

00:31:34.000 I know you're looking for us to be like, oh, go and march, go and march.

00:31:39.000 No.

00:31:40.000 This weekend, I want you to hold a community event everywhere from the Bronx to Houston to Seattle to Florida.

00:31:50.000 Black people, hold community events and talk about what you need.

00:31:59.000 Again, he's calling for open vigilantism.

00:32:01.000 This was the Black Lives Matter movement, by the way.

00:32:02.000 The Black Lives Matter movement.

00:32:03.000 Just take the healthcare context away and take the Black Lives Matter movement and put it in and it's the same exact argument. 0.88

00:32:10.000 The system is so broken, it is so despicable, that individual acts of vigilante evil are now justifiable.

00:32:17.000 Fiery but mostly peaceful would be the argument in this particular context.

00:32:22.000 It's a bad argument and it's a wrong argument.

00:32:25.000 It is a morally wrong argument.

00:32:27.000 And meanwhile, as far as the Daniel Penney acquittal, obviously this trial never should have taken place.

00:32:31.000 Here is Daniel Penney explaining the circumstances, this is a few months ago, explaining the circumstances of what happened on the subway.

00:32:38.000 In this instance, I was coming from school.

00:32:41.000 I got out of class around 2.15 and I took the, I was at J Street Metro Tech, took the Uptown F train at 2nd Avenue.

00:32:50.000 A man came on, stumbled on, he appeared to be on drugs.

00:32:56.000 The doors closed, and he ripped his jacket off and threw it at the people sitting down to my left.

00:33:02.000 I was listening to music at the time, and he was yelling, so I took my headphones out to hear what he was yelling. 0.99

00:33:09.000 The three main threats that he repeated over and over was, I'm going to kill you. 0.99

00:33:14.000 I'm prepared to go to jail for life, and I'm willing to die. 0.86

00:33:17.000 You know, this was a scary situation, and Mr. Nearly came on.

00:33:22.000 He was threatening.

00:33:24.000 I'm 6'2", and he was taller than me.

00:33:27.000 There's a common misconception that Marines don't get scared.

00:33:30.000 We're actually taught one of our core values is courage, and courage is not the absence of fear, but how you handle fear.

00:33:40.000 You know, I was scared for myself, but I looked around.

00:33:43.000 I saw women and children.

00:33:44.000 He was yelling in their faces, saying these threats.

00:33:48.000 I couldn't just sit still.

00:33:50.000 Some people say that I was holding on to Mr. Neely for 15 minutes.

00:33:53.000 This is not true.

00:33:55.000 I mean, between stops is only a couple minutes.

00:33:57.000 So the whole interaction lasted less than five minutes.

00:34:01.000 Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true.

00:34:04.000 I was trying to restrain him.

00:34:07.000 You can see in the video there's a clear rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he's breathing.

00:34:12.000 I'm trying to restrain him from him being able to carry out the threats. 0.95

00:34:16.000 And then some people say that this is about race, which is absolutely ridiculous. 0.98

00:34:21.000 I didn't see a black man threatening passengers. 0.99

00:34:23.000 I saw a man threatening passengers.

00:34:26.000 A lot of whom were people of color.

00:34:29.000 A man who helped restrain Mr. Neely was a person of color.

00:34:33.000 A few days after the incident, I read in the papers that a woman of color came out and called me a hero.

00:34:40.000 I don't believe that I'm a hero, but she was one of those people that I was trying to protect.

00:34:47.000 We were all scared.

00:34:48.000 Mr. Neely was yelling in these passengers' faces and they looked terrified.

00:34:53.000 The reason why there was no video at the start of the altercation was because people were too afraid getting away from him.

00:34:59.000 The videos didn't start until they saw the situation was under control.

00:35:04.000 I knew I had to act and I acted in a way that would protect the other passengers, protect myself, and protect Mr. Neely.

00:35:11.000 I used this hole to restrain him and I did this by Leaving my hand on top of his head to control his body.

00:35:19.000 You can see in the video there's a clear rise and fall of his chest indicating that he was still breathing.

00:35:24.000 And I'm calibrating my grip based on the force that he's exerting.

00:35:30.000 I was trying to keep him on the ground until the police came.

00:35:35.000 I was praying that the police would come and take this situation over.

00:35:40.000 I didn't want to be put in that situation, but I couldn't just sit still and let him carry out these threats.

00:35:47.000 Again, the fact that this everyone's trial is totally insane.

00:35:51.000 The bizarre victim mentality that is now being adopted by Jordan Ely's father, the father in particular, is amazing.

00:35:57.000 So Jordan Ely's father, who was completely absent while his son spun into criminality, violence, and heavy drug abuse, is amazing.

00:36:06.000 It's amazing.

00:36:07.000 Here's Jordan Ely's father calling the system rigged.

00:36:11.000 I just want to say...

00:36:14.000 I miss my son.

00:36:15.000 My son didn't have to go through this.

00:36:18.000 I didn't have to go through this either.

00:36:22.000 It hurts.

00:36:24.000 Really, really hurts.

00:36:27.000 What are we going to do, people?

00:36:30.000 What's going to happen to us now?

00:36:36.000 I had enough of this.

00:36:38.000 The system is rigged.

00:36:43.000 Come on, people.

00:36:47.000 Let's do something about this.

00:36:51.000 By the way, Adam Coleman, a columnist for the New York Post, he points out, quote, When I see a father tell the world at the end of a tragic game that we need to do something, my question is, where was he all this time?

00:37:02.000 Where was Andre Zachary when his son was arrested over 40 times, including multiple violent offenses?

00:37:07.000 Where was he when Neely was struggling to mourn his mother's loss?

00:37:09.000 Where was his father when Neely was abandoned in the foster care system with no one to advocate for him?

00:37:13.000 Why is America being held responsible for Zachary's fatherhood issues?

00:37:18.000 The reality of his background is horrifying.

00:37:21.000 Neely apparently suffered as a child growing up in an abusive household.

00:37:24.000 He testified at trial after his mother's boyfriend murdered her and stuffed her into a suitcase to dispose of the body.

00:37:29.000 And then he was running around New York, bouncing from homeless shelter to homeless shelter while abusing drugs and schizophrenically threatening people on subways, and Dad was nowhere to be found.

00:37:40.000 And so society is to blame?

00:37:43.000 No.

00:37:44.000 So here's the thing.

00:37:45.000 The American people will resolve what the BLM movement is gone. 0.98

00:37:47.000 This is no longer a thing.

00:37:49.000 There will not be mass riots in the aftermath of this trial, nor should there be, because the American people are tired of, for example, the justification of criminality on the basis that America is, quote-unquote, racially corrupt.

00:38:01.000 Well, if you're tired of that, then I have news for you.

00:38:05.000 Applying that exact same argument to other contexts where it does not apply is not helpful in any way, shape, or form.

00:38:11.000 In just a second, we'll get to all the updates from Syria.

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00:38:51.000 Meanwhile, chaos has continued over in Syria, where a rebel insurgency that was largely made possible by the destruction of Iran's entire swath of control, ranging all the way from Iran to the coast of the Mediterranean, as we talked about yesterday.

00:39:05.000 That chaos is continuing.

00:39:06.000 According to the Washington Post, a U.S.-backed Syrian peace process begun after civil war broke out in 2011 was moribund.

00:39:12.000 Lines dividing the country into spheres of influence among world and regional powers hadn't changed significantly for years.

00:39:17.000 But the sudden offensive launched by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group leading to the collapse of Bashar Assad's government has left governments around the world scrambling to figure out what to do about it, none more so than the Biden administration.

00:39:28.000 Senior U.S. diplomats have rushed to the region, fanning out for discussions in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq.

00:39:34.000 Egypt and Saudi Arabia are also involved in talks about an effort to maintain stability in Syria and attempt to foster some sort of political transition.

00:39:42.000 The United Nations Security Council held a closed door meeting Monday afternoon with the UN Special Envoy for Syria and the head of UN Peacekeeping Forces in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Israel and Syria since the 1973 civil war.

00:39:52.000 It is amazing, by the way, that the number one concern of the UN Security Council at this point is Israel deploying to the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria in order to create a buffer zone so Al-Qaeda and ISIS don't set up there.

00:40:03.000 And the UN Security Council is like, this is the big deal.

00:40:06.000 Not Turkish-backed Islamist forces taking over the entire country.

00:40:08.000 Israel setting up a buffer zone to prevent the invasion of the Golan Heights.

00:40:12.000 Yeah, that's really where you should be putting your focus.

00:40:15.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:40:16.000 The reality is that Israel is currently doing everybody's dirty work by taking out pretty much every dangerous piece of weaponry in Syria.

00:40:24.000 So Israel has knocked out the Syrian Navy now.

00:40:26.000 They completely destroyed it, sent it to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

00:40:30.000 They are doing that because they do not want that in the control of Islamist fundamentalists.

00:40:36.000 Israel has been taking out chemical weapons depots throughout Syria so they don't fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who are backed again by the Turkish government, which again is a NATO member, which is insane. 0.60

00:40:45.000 If the Biden administration had any stones at all, they'd be applying pressure to the Turks to moderate their friends over in Syria.

00:40:52.000 But that's not what they're doing.

00:40:54.000 Instead, apparently, there is a piece of news breaking that suggests that the Biden administration is releasing more money to, wait for it, wait for it, Iran.

00:41:02.000 According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Biden and Harris administration waived sanctions on Iran three days after the November election, providing Tehran access of upward to $10 billion in one's frozen funds. 0.96

00:41:15.000 I mean, how sick and pathetic is this administration? 0.94

00:41:17.000 They're trying to bail Iran out of its own failures. 0.98

00:41:20.000 The reality is the fall of the Assad regime is most damaging to Iran, which spent billions of dollars trying to not only uphold Bashar Assad, but to set up proxy groups across the Middle East by using Syria as a thoroughfare for weaponry.

00:41:33.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, Iran spent decades and billions of dollars building a network of militias and governments, allowing it to exercise political and military influence across the Middle East.

00:41:40.000 In a matter of weeks, the pillars of that alliance came crashing down.

00:41:43.000 Assad's removal is the climax so far in a cascade of events catalyzed by Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7th of last year, which resulted in the most fundamental change in Iran's security landscape since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. While toppling Saddam Hussein ended up helping Iran, this time Tehran is at a massive disadvantage.

00:42:02.000 According to Ali Valles, director of the International Crisis Group's Iran Project, the Islamic Republic thought Hamas' October 7th attack was a turning point in history.

00:42:09.000 That's true, but in the entirely opposite direction to what it hoped for.

00:42:12.000 The dominoes for the Western Front have fallen one after another.

00:42:15.000 And again, there are forces in Syria that would be much better for the West than, for example, HTS, which is this Islamist terror group that sort of broke away from ISIS and al-Qaeda and ended up fighting both ISIS and al-Qaeda.

00:42:27.000 That doesn't make them good, by the way, because terror groups fight one another all the time.

00:42:31.000 As I mentioned before, there are the Kurds, who are up in the northeast of the country, and who have provided safety and security to members of a variety of religions, including Christians.

00:42:40.000 That is not going to be the case, probably, for HDS, which is a tragedy of enormous and horrifying proportions.

00:42:45.000 And then there are the Druze in the South. 1.00

00:42:46.000 Yesterday, correction, I suggested they were Sunni Muslims.

00:42:49.000 They're not, in fact, Sunni Muslims, of course.

00:42:50.000 They're their own ethnic group, and their religion is sort of a mash-up of some elements of Islam, even some elements of Hinduism or Greek philosophy, so I just want to correct the record on that.

00:43:01.000 The whole thing is a mess, obviously, and containment is likely to be the proper strategy here.

00:43:06.000 In other words, let the pot continue to boil so long as it doesn't bother anyone else.

00:43:10.000 That is precisely why Israel went to the other side of the Mount Hermon range and set up a buffer zone. 0.56

00:43:20.000 So Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu has suggested that it's only a temporary hold.

00:43:23.000 We'll find out how temporary it is because again, security, security holds are temporary until they're not. 0.98

00:43:28.000 Meaning that if Al-Qaeda continues to be on the other side of the mountain range, if ISIS continues to be there, then Israel ain't going to abandon it because that would be incredibly stupid of them. 0.96

00:43:36.000 And then there's the question as to what happens next. 0.96

00:43:39.000 So again, Israel has been doing heavy lifting.

00:43:41.000 In Syria, according to the Times of Israel, there were some 250 Israeli strikes against Syrian military targets after the fall of Assad.

00:43:50.000 Israeli planes bombed at least three major Syrian army air bases, housing dozens of helicopters and jets. 0.96

00:43:55.000 They basically took out all of the MiGs, so the Syrians had these really old MiGs that were, you know, crap. 1.00

00:44:01.000 But Israel took them out because they don't want Islamists in charge of those. 1.00

00:44:06.000 The 50-year-old regime, of course, had some weaponry, including chemical weaponry, and Israel has been steadily taking out all of those military targets over the course of the last few days.

00:44:16.000 By the way, the rest of the world should be thanking Israel for that in the same way they should have thanked Israel for taking out the Osirak reactor in Iraq, and in the same way they should have thanked Israel in 2007 for taking out the Damascus-sponsored nuclear reactor that Bashar Assad was building.

00:44:29.000 Can you imagine?

00:44:30.000 HDS in charge of nuclear weapons.

00:44:31.000 That's what would have happened if Israel had not done that. 0.97

00:44:34.000 So it'll be interesting to see if Israel takes the next step and then goes after the Iranian nuclear facilities.

00:44:39.000 If there's one message that Israel took away correctly from October 7th, the message is, you don't wait until your enemies arm up. 0.99

00:44:45.000 That'd be a stupid thing. 0.97

00:44:48.000 So it'll be fascinating to see what happens next. 0.99

00:44:52.000 Meanwhile, President Trump has made some new appointments to his cabinet.

00:44:56.000 One of them is just fantastic.

00:44:58.000 That, of course, would be our friend Harmeet Dhillon.

00:45:00.000 Harmeet is an amazing lawyer.

00:45:01.000 She has the right priorities, and he just nominated her to serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights within the Department of Justice, which is amazing.

00:45:07.000 The Department of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice, the civil rights branch, has very often been militarized by the left to go after, for example, police departments.

00:45:17.000 Harmeet is not going to do that.

00:45:19.000 Trump has praised Dylan for having stood up consistently to protect people's civil liberties and for representing Christians who are prevented from praying together.

00:45:24.000 Harmeet is a wonderful lawyer.

00:45:26.000 She, of course, has represented Daily Wire in the past when we sued the federal government.

00:45:29.000 She was our representative on that.

00:45:31.000 She, at one point, ran for head of the RNC, an effort that I supported.

00:45:34.000 I think that Harmeet, I can't speak highly enough of Harmeet.

00:45:36.000 She's a fantastic, fantastic representative inside the Trump administration on behalf of Freedom.

00:45:43.000 She said that it has always been her dream to be able to serve the United States, and she's excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers being led by Pam Bondi, who is the new Attorney General nominee from President Trump.

00:45:53.000 So again, very good news.

00:45:55.000 Harmeet is a great pick.

00:45:56.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump posted, I think, one of the funniest things I've ever seen him post on Truth Social.

00:46:00.000 So he met with Justin Trudeau.

00:46:01.000 So Donald Trump despises Justin Trudeau. 1.00

00:46:03.000 Donald Trump thinks that Trudeau is handsome Bernie Sanders, that he is an idiot, that he is a dullard. 1.00

00:46:08.000 And of course, Trudeau has always treated Trump as sort of the The fly in the soup. 1.00

00:46:14.000 He always has treated him as the turd in the punch bowl at all these international events.

00:46:18.000 And now Trump is back.

00:46:20.000 And Trump is going to make Justin Trudeau eat it.

00:46:22.000 It is amazing.

00:46:23.000 So he tweeted, he put out on Truth Social the following statement yesterday.

00:46:26.000 I love this so much.

00:46:27.000 It's so great.

00:46:27.000 Quote, It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada.

00:46:32.000 I look forward to seeing the governor again soon.

00:46:34.000 So we may continue our in-depth talk on tariffs and trades, the results of which will truly be spectacular for all.

00:46:42.000 Remember, he had suggested that if you guys are so dependent on the American economy and you don't give us what we want with regard to trade, then we'll tariff you.

00:46:50.000 And if you don't like that, then maybe we'll just annex you and Canada will become the 51st state.

00:46:53.000 So that is a reference to that specific comment by President Trump calling him Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada.

00:47:00.000 Oh, I love it.

00:47:01.000 I love it so much.

00:47:02.000 It's so great.

00:47:02.000 By the way, we'll be greeted as liberators.

00:47:05.000 Nobody in Canada wants Justin Trudeau anymore.

00:47:07.000 It's time for him to go.

00:47:08.000 Meanwhile, in other good news, Pete Hegseth looks like he is going to continue to sail toward the actual Department of Defense slots.

00:47:15.000 There were some questions last week about whether he was going to be able to get enough Senate votes.

00:47:19.000 One of the votes in question was Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who had questions about some of the allegations that were being made about Pete Hegseth with regard to sexual impropriety or alcohol.

00:47:28.000 As I said, these are all anonymous allegations.

00:47:30.000 And those anonymous allegations, aside from a police report, which is really sketchy at best, from California.

00:47:36.000 That should not be enough to sink Hegseth's nomination.

00:47:39.000 So now, Joni Ernst has released a statement, quote, As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.

00:48:03.000 So, that is great.

00:48:05.000 With Joni on board, it looks very much as though Pete Hegseth is your next Secretary of Defense, which is wonderful.

00:48:11.000 Hegseth has been stalwart throughout this process.

00:48:14.000 Pete has been excellent throughout this process.

00:48:15.000 Again, I highly recommend that people go back and watch the interview I did with Pete just a few months ago, where he talks about what he would do were he Secretary of Defense, which apparently he now will be.

00:48:25.000 Pete is saying that he looks forward to getting his FBI background check back.

00:48:29.000 You know, there have been questions about, is there going to be an FBI background check?

00:48:32.000 He's like, sure, yeah, do it.

00:48:32.000 Why not?

00:48:35.000 Sean, you know what I look forward to?

00:48:36.000 I look forward to the FBI background check.

00:48:39.000 I look forward to the actual under oath conversations with senators as we go through the process because, again, this is what the left does, Sean.

00:48:48.000 It's the anatomy of a smear.

00:48:50.000 They take something and then they add anonymous sources and contortions and flat-out lies and then they try to try you in the media before you can even get into the doors with senators.

00:49:02.000 Okay, again, he's right about that.

00:49:05.000 He'll be a great secretary of defense.

00:49:06.000 Just terrific.

00:49:07.000 So, all seems as though it is working very smoothly for the Trump transition team at this point.

00:49:12.000 Okay, in just a moment, we'll give you the updates on South Korea, on China, and on a bizarre political display from Pope Francis.

00:49:19.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:49:20.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:49:20.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 10, 2024

Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW

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